Poetry is a domain in which all assertions become true. Yesterday the poet said: “Life is as useless as tears,” today he says: “Life is as joyous as laughter,” and he is right both times. Today he says: “Everything ends and gives way to silence,” and tomorrow he will say: “Nothing ends and everything eternally resounds,” and both are true. The poet has no need to prove anything: the only proof lies in the intensity of his emotions.

–Milan Kundera, Life Is Elsewhere

I read Milan Kundera’s Life Is Elsewhere when I was twenty-one. A girl named Jen, a one-itis I had a protracted, self-tormenting crush on, leant it to me. And, yes, I sacrificed my dignity in futile pursuit of her, but I did gain this book.

It is one of the Czech writer’s lesser-known works, especially in comparison to The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which resonated far less to me. Life is Elsewhere, on the other hand, I think of almost daily: For those of you at a crossroads in life, especially the artistic life, it is a great book to read.

What I like about Kundera is that he doesn’t give the answers to life; he just asks the questions, and that becomes equally profound.

And, as I recall the book through the haze of memory, what stayed with me about it is that it was the story of the life of a boy named Jaromil, who was born to be a great poet.

Yet due to a combination of the influence of his mother and his upbringing, and the socially and politically conforming pressures of the time, he becomes instead a hack.

And throughout my life, I’ve taken it as a cautionary tale: A reminder to relentlessly pursue one’s passion, and to be careful not to get derailed by family, economic, social, and, in particular, cultural pressures to do things their way. Every day, ask yourself am I doing what I think I should be doing—or what everyone else thinks I should be doing.

That is the legacy Life is Elsewhere left with me. And I’m sure if I read the book now, it would leave me with a completely different message.