The Trouble With Being Born

I think a better title for the book would be a The Trouble With Being. I read this book after reading it along-side “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” because I thought it would be funny to have read two books with clearly opposite framings on “being”.

I say this book is better titled “The Trouble With Being” because Cioran doesn’t have a problem with birth, but existence. The question of “Being”, of existing with the self, and others questions of the same sense has been a constant throughout the human canon. Buddhism’s “illusory self”, “existentialism” or “the absurd”, “metaphysics” in some ways, Heidegger’s entire project, and even shows up in famous literature.

“To be or not to be, that is the question”