Giovanni's Room

"And these nights were being acted out under a foreign sky, with no one to watch, no penalties attached-it was this last fact which was our undoing, for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom. I suppose this was why I asked her to marry me: to give me something to be moored to...But people can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life" (5).

This is a loaded observation. What does the narrator mean to say that nothing is more unbearable than freedom? Is it that people without guidelines and rigid rules don't know what to do with themselves? And what does it mean that we can't invent our own mooring posts? Is it that humans innately fight against freedom, but that they cannot control who or what comes into their lives to deny them of freedom? I think the greatest magnitude of this passage comes from the fact that it accepts the impossibility of controlling destiny. It seems to say that humans are naturally followers of rules and easily accept the people and situations that life throws at them. However, humans also detest change. When life changes the rules and situations without notice humans resist. I see some truth in these ideas. It is not always easy to say Yes to life. Humans strive for freedom yet they set up societies and governments filled with rules and guidelines for living. It is a paradoxical concept that I never quite thought about before.