Reddit reviews The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In (the book) Unbearable Lightness of Being the main character is quizzed by his female friend about why he is promiscuous. He replies that he is driven by the need to know what sounds, motions, words a woman makes when she orgasms.

I thought that a profound answer and it in turn answered my own reason for promiscuity. <shrug>

So the post was actually about existential loneliness. I don't suffer from a lack of people in my life.

tldr version: I want people to know me as I often feel I know them. I want people to predict my thoughts and jump from them to new places.

Here's the depressing shit I sent to OP, with a minor edit:

Hey thanks for the posting re: loneliness. I mostly deleted it out of the realization that the kind of loneliness I often feel is likely intrinsic to the human condition. If you've not read it I highly recommend http://www.amazon.com/Unbearable-Lightness-Being-Milan-Kundera/dp/0060932139

And in case you haven't there is, as I recall, a short chapter specifically about this melancholy. That as we age and grow as people the more we grow the further we grow from others. That as we grow in complexity the more difficult it becomes to speak the same language as other people. For a simplified example: when I say "balloon" that word is tied to a thousand thoughts which are in turn tied to a thousand more each. It would be impossible to take another person on that journey with me. To pull them into the simulated reality of my mind and let them smell the air, feel the hum, watch the reflections dance and so on. The best that I can hope for is to approximate. It feels like describing color to a blind person most of the time.

That said, with some few people I am able to share parts of my neural net and for fleeting moments it feels as though they can see through my eyes. Their responses not only show that they perfectly understand my perspective on what we are discussing, but that they have new thoughts to add. Those moments are like the best drug.

And I feel as though I have devoted a great portion of my life to chasing that dragon. It gets harder and harder to find those rushes.

I do work in one of the smartest cities on the planet, and I am certainly not the most intelligent person here.

Yet where I find intellect I so very often find a soul which has been sheltered from the world. I can discuss science, or food, or history and really enjoy it! But there are those darker parts of life which, for those who have experienced them, can be so integral to who you are as a person. The darker parts of life are like pillars that the web weaves around and through. Adversity truly does define us in many ways and often not for the worse.

Finally where there is a cultivated intellect there is also usually a paucity of general real world experience. So very often the erudite among us haven't even so much as waited tables or ever worried if they would be able to eat. I suppose I'm again speaking of adversity, but also glorious exposure to the 99% of the world that struggles and rages and suffers in cages. The salt.

I feel like an expat everywhere I go.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. I'm reading it right now.

Dune by Frank Herbert.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. You have probably read it, but if you haven't, it's superbly funny sci-fi comedy.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. A book that I re-read once every few years, and every time I find something new in it.

Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. A gripping, heartbreaking non-fiction book about police detectives. It inspired the acclaimed TV series "Homicide: Life on the Street." Simon would go on to create "The Wire."

The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. Noir-ish procedural crime fiction. If you enjoy "Homicide," you may well like this.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera, "a philosophical novel about two men, two women, a dog and their lives in the Prague Spring of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968," according to Wikipedia. One of my favorite books.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. Detective novel meets sci-fi in one mind-bending existential work. If you watch "Fringe," well, this book is Fringe-y... and more.

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis. Time travel. Victorian England. A tea cozy mystery of sorts.

Graphic novels! Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. Maus: A Survivor's Tale by Art Spiegelman. Love And Rockets by The Hernandez brothers. The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Elektra: Assassin by Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz. And of course, Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. To discover yet more great comic books, check out the Comics College series.

The Harry Potter series has made a seriously huge impact on my life. It changed my life. I love it so much--it has so many great life lessons about love, acceptance, and bravery. I don't understand people who think they're just kids' books--there are so many beautiful passages that have really shaped my worldview.

I would love to read this book (used) from my Under $6 wishlist. Or really, any book from that wishlist would be great! But I have read some of them, and you specified a book I haven't read.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera (Amazon link) might be something that you'd find interesting. This book sometimes gets an unfair bad rap because it was immensely popular around 15-20 years ago and there was some backlash; I think it's terrific, however.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It's absolutely brilliant. Here's the book

Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being.