“…my eyes stray from my textbooks towards a dog-eared copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Written in 1984, it is at once a philosophical discussion of the nature of the 20th century ‘being’, and a novel of love, infidelity and politics in communist-run Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the early 1980s. While I had always admired its astute observations about relationships, the central philosophical themes of ‘lightness’ and ‘weight’ caught my imagination this time… . Kundera’s themes of ‘lightness’ and ‘weight’ derive from Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return which posits that the changing nature of the universe means that every state of the world could recur ad-infinitum, trapping us within a type of fate, something Nietzsche proclaimed a terrifying, ‘weighty’ burden.”

— The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Doctor, Georgina Fozard, British Journal of General Practice, 2010 May 1; 60(574): 37

The photograph captures my father and mother in their mid-30s, several years prior to my sister or I being born, but half a world past the ‘weight’ of their younger lives.

For the wiki on my mom, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Zimmer_Friedman

For one of my dad’s published works, click here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC279201/pdf/jbacter00473-0090.pdf