These series of photos were taken by one of my best friends (and photography adventures pal as well) in the middle of the night while having one of the best trips of my life crossing all the way up the East Coast of the South Korean Peninsula. The night had a special midst, maybe because we were having a lot of fun, letting ourselves be a little bit easy and appreciate those moments that indeed appear just once in a lifetime; we were living each day and second.
After coming back home and seeing these photos, I came to not only have a fresh and vivid remembrance of those summer days full of laughs, wine and crazy sunburning with my best friend. These photos also somehow reminded me of a very specific puzzle that a book by Kundera ("The unbearable lightness of being", 1984) that I was reading posed on its first chapter: What to chose? The wonderful lightness of being or the terrible weight that this one implies?
Shall we chose to be regardless of the symbiotic nature that human has or shall we chose to be and to bear every single repercussion of our proceedings and thoughts? The truth is that we find much more comfortable following the latter and pretending we live as following the former, when it is not. It is not easy neither to do it. Becoming conscious of our acts and realizing if those are positive or negative for us and the ones that surround us is never easy, specially because we might end up choosing what it is confortable for us ( which it is not necessarily something negative).
But after thinking about this, I just realized that the most dangerous part of us is that we might not even consider this. We might think that the way we live is just the only and best way we can do, the contemplation of deeper insights of what consequences might come are automatically blocked. But the truth is that those decisions and our lives in general are so interconnected to a series of circumstances that are out of control. Therefore, what can we do if the best we can do is rely in what is under our control (us)? Do we decide to just chose the best for us and just be regardless anything or even tough, knowing that we might be just that 1% of what happens around us, still taking that "terrible weight" instead of a temporary "wonderful lightness".
I think it is impossible to do either of them completely. But I do believe we do have much more to enjoy and be grateful for whilst bearing the terrible weight of our actions than living so shallowly. That shallowness, that wonderful lightness of ours, can any day, at any time, convert into a timeless shadow that will prevent us to be more humanists, less mundane, more sensitive, less oblivious of others existence and role in our lives.
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