Having put forth this idea:

The importance of our decisions. The lack of importance of our decisions. The unavoidable importance of
life. The unavoidable lack of importance of life.
The Concept
Challenging Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe and its events
have already occurred and will recur ad infinitum), the story's thematic meditations posit the alternative:
that each person has only one life to live and that which occurs in life occurs only once and never again
thus the "lightness" of being. Moreover, this lightness also signifies freedom.
In contrast, the concept of eternal recurrence imposes a "heaviness" on life and the decisions that are
made to borrow from Nietzsche's metaphor, it gives them "weight". Nietzsche believed this heaviness
could be either a tremendous burden or great benefit depending on the individual's perspective.
Spark Notes
Practically, accepting the lightness of being means accepting a certain lack of ultimate meaning in life,
and living for momentary beauty. Kundera argues that man only has the opportunity to try one path, and
hence has no point of comparison or meaning. Instead, those characters who are heavy cannot accept this
unbearable lightness of being, and seek to attach a meaning and weight to what they consider important in
life.
Appreciating Beauty: If I'm to give a book five stars, it needs to affect me in some profound ways -- it
needs to change me, at least a little. This novel has affected my view of life; how I see the world.
Specifically, its helped me better understand beauty. I have trouble elaborating on that because beauty is
such an abstract concept; you know it when you see it, or rather you know it when you feel it. Beauty
has some melancholy; it is appreciative -- special but fleeting -- and never fully absorbed as its full whole.
Maybe that's a major aspect of beauty -- knowing it is beyond your grasp. Beyond you.
Decisions and dilemmas: Kundera's characters seem to searching for an elusive something, trying to find
that perfect place in life where they would want to live forever. However, it is difficult to know for sure
the direction in which that perfect place lies. If they find their current lives suffocating, going the other
way could be liberating. But is it worth leaving behind all that will be lost? The moment they take a step
ahead, they begin feeling the pull of what they had just turned their back to. Often the choice is not
between perfection and imperfection, it is a trade-off.
The ability to shape our own lives, to some extent at least, is a power. Sometimes it can be a burden too.
Especially when there is no way of knowing what waits for us at the next corner. Do we choose being
happy today at the expense of 'What ifs..' plaguing us tomorrow? Or do we put us through an ordeal now
in anticipation of it paying off in the future? What if we end up in a mess, unable to turn back?
Importance of Openings:
Suffice to say, Kundera had me at the very first paragraph. Has any other modern novel had such a
wonderfully philosophical opening than this one?
2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in
want of a wife. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy, Anna
Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)
16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born,
and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me,
and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the
truth. J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
28. Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I cant be sure. Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans.
Stuart Gilbert)
38. All this happened, more or less. Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
1. Call me Ishmael. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)
Opposite Point, Bhagavad Gita:
8.17 - Knowing that thousand eras constitute a day of Brahman, [and] thousand eras complete a night, are the people
who know day, [and] night.
8.18 - On arrival of day, all manifestations originate from "Unmanifest"; on arrival of night they annihilate into
[what is] known as "Unmanifest" only.
8.19 - This [same] elementary world only happens again & again; Annihilates upon arrival of night, [and] originates
upon arrival of day.