Let me explain: the pleasure I experienced came directly from being too vividly aware of my own degradation, from the feeling of having gone too far; that it was foul but that it couldn’t be otherwise; that there’s no way out for you, that you’d never make yourself a different person; that even if there remained enough time and faith to change yourself into something different you most probably wouldn’t want to change yourself. And that even if you did want to, you’d end up by doing nothing because there might in fact be nothing to change yourself into. But finally, and most importantly, all this proceeds from the normal, fundamental laws of heightened consciousness and from the inertia which is the direct result of those laws and therefore not only could you not change yourself, you’d simply do nothing at all. 

Notes From Underground. Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 1864.

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground….The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an 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 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?

Milan Kundera-The Unbearable Lightness of Being