We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
Interpretation
We can only experience one life, which limits our understanding of desires and their fulfillment.
Milan Kundera's quote reflects the inherent limitations of human experience and desire. It suggests that because we live only one life, we are unable to compare our current desires to those of past or future lives, making it difficult to know what we truly want. This idea invites introspection about the nature of desire, satisfaction, and the choices we make, highlighting the uncertainty and complexity of pursuing a meaningful life.
In practice
In a speech about pursuing passions, one might quote Kundera to emphasize the importance of understanding one's true desires.
Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.
Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.
Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead.
Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.
It's important that we elevate and primarily focus on the rights of American citizens, but it's also important that we don't forget, 95 percent of the world's population lives beyond our own borders.
Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.
Christ had a specific evangelizing goal in mind when he prayed at the Last Supper that all his disciples 'be one...'The Church's evangelizing mission, therefore, moves along the path of ecumenism, the path of unity of faith, of evangelical witness and authentic fraternity.
As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.