A dark hand had let go its lifelong hold upon her heart. But she did not feel joy, as she had in the mountains. She put her head down in her arms and cried, and her cheeks were salt and wet. She cried for the waste of her years in bondage to a useless evil. She wept in pain, because she was free.
What she had begun to learn was the weight of liberty. Freedom is a heavy load, a great and strange burden for the spirit to undertake. It is not easy. It is not a gift given, but a choice made, and the choice may be a hard one. The road goes upward towards the light; but the laden traveler may never reach the end of it.

If a man has a genuine, sincere, hearty wish to get rid of his liberty, if he is really bent upon becoming a slave, nothing can stop him. And the temptation is to some natures a very great one. Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded. In common life we shirk it by forming habits, which take the place of self-determination. In politics party-organization saves us the pains of much thinking before deciding how to cast our vote.

In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens.
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?
...That is the question. The only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all.

But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid? The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously the image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

We are weary and heavy laden, and our heavenly Father offers to carry us and our affairs in His own everlasting arms. And so far as the weariness is concerned, we consent; we consent to be carried and find rest to our souls. But " heavy laden," — no, we cannot part with the heavy load. This responsibility, this nervousness about the absent, this household worry, this mercantile venture, this literary experiment, this invalid friend, we cannot transfer to Him who says, "Cast thy burden on the Lord," but even our bleared and sleepy eyes we open from time to time to see that it is still there, and ("O fools and slow of heart!") when we can guard it no longer, the relaxing arms are still in attitude as if they enclasped it, all unconscious that it is now better cared for elsewhere.

What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.

Freedom brings responsibility and often guilt. It may indeed provide a deeper satisfaction and a richer life, but the evaluation of such rewards is a distressingly subjective process. Perhaps no argument in favor of liberty can satisfy the intellect; perhaps the best we can hope for is a shared emotional conviction.

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

"My burden is light," said the blessed Redeemer, a light burden indeed, which carries him that bears it. I have looked through all nature for a resemblance of this, and seem to find a shadow of it in the wings of a bird, which are indeed borne by the creature, and yet support her flight towards heaven.

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction
the weight, the weight we carry is love.
Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born in human - looks out of the heart burning with purity - for the burden of life is love,
but we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love.
No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love - be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love - cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied:
the weight is too heavy
- must give for no return as thought is given in solitude in all the excellence of its excess.
The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the flesh, the skin trembles in happiness and the soul comes joyful to the eye — yes, yes, that's what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born.

Light burdens, long borne, grow heavy.

the heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. the absolute of a burden causes man to be lighter than air.

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

The fact that this weight [of existence] becomes too heavy and that it can be experienced as a weight and as an unbearable weight, is due to the fact that it is impossible for life to undo that with which it has been burdened, that is to say, itself. [...] Culture is the set of enterprises and practices in which the overflowing of life is expressed. All of them are motivated by the "burden", the "too much" that prepares living subjectivity internally as a force ready to be dispensed and required to act under this burden.