Einmal ist keinmal

There are so many things in the world one can have. But know that you can get hold of no more than a handful, or two. Then there come the issue of choice, and concomitantly, opportunity cost. And it is the nature of the opportunity cost that it is not normally precisely predictable, even for what might be in the short terms; in the long run, unknowable.

It follows then that we are never given the possibility of evaluating the choices we make in our life, as one will never be able to see what might have become of his or her life if one had made one choice differently. It is not an option to warp into the parallel universes, so to speak, that represent the alternative pathways.

That is what he meant when Milan Kundera said "Einmal ist keinmal". If we can live our life but once, we have not lived. That is because we are never given the opportunity to comprehend it, as we are not capable of comprehending any of the choices or decisions we make.

Quite an astonishing and amusing view, which certainly adds nothing to our wisdom. It says nothing about what is right or good, or otherwise. It is a quite ignorable thing , just like the sex scenes in his book, though people like to talk about it --eh, them, actually.