The R-Algebra:
There’re things that add up, constituting the ordinary processes. There’re things that don’t add up, and those that do add up with the sum being greater than its parts; together defining the universe of mystery, serendipity, and ecstasy!
If Søren Kierkegaard was right when he said: "Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved," then the R-Algebra becomes only an algebra of living, not an algebra of solving.
However, Søren Kierkegaard proceeds to propose that "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards". Then the R-Algebra defines a framework to study life events only backwards, while providing them with a universe to be realized in a life that is lived forwardly.
To Milan Kundera, only an attitude of lightness towards life may assist us to coup with the heaviness of emotions that surround any drama. Therefore, accepting the “lightness of being” is to believe in no ultimate meaning in life at all. To a mind that seeks happiness or fulfillment such lightness- although maybe philosophically sound- is “unbearable”. Thus, the universe of Kundera is a universe that does not yield itself to either forward or backward analysis.
In the words of Abraham Heschel: "Life lived as an event is a drama. Life reduced to a process becomes vegetation. The awareness of life as a drama comes about as a result of knowing that one has a part to play, of realizing that the self is unprecedented and of refusing to regard existence as a waste.”
The drama is thus at its zenith when a self that is “unprecedented” encounters the “unbearable lightness of being”, the experience of vertigo is then to follow! But, if this is in fact the common, inescapable, and recurrent experience of every being then existence becomes a waste, and simultaneously contradicting the unprecedentedness of the self! Thus, the R-Algebra is the algebra of those who refuse “to regard existence as a waste”, conceiving and thus realizing a framework to at least understand life backwards.