The Eternal Recurrence: The Greatest Weight

What if one day or night a demon came to you in your most solitary solitude and said to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live again, and innumerable times again, and there will be nothing new in it; but rather every pain and joy, every thought and sigh, and all the unutterably trivial or great things in your life will have to happen to you again, with everything in the same series and sequence – and likewise this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and likewise this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!’
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke to you thus? Or was there one time when you experienced a tremendous moment in which you would answer him: ‘You are a god, and I have never heard anything so divine!’ If that thought took hold of you as you are, it would transform you and perhaps crush you; the question with regard to each and every thing, ‘Do you want this again, innumerable times again?’ would weigh upon your actions with the greatest weight! Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life, that you might long for nothing more than this final eternal confirmation and seal?

- The Joyous Science, Nietzsche

Perhaps the reason why we remain stagnant and never seek change is because we assume things will change. But I am certain that if we were confronted with the possibility that everything in our life would repeat itself again and again, infinitely, we would surely take action with the most eagerness!

All those moments we refrained from pursuing what we knew we could get because we were afraid, hesitant, and lazy - surely to experience those moments again infinitely many times would be most painful!

This is a valuable insight to have, and remarkably (considering who it was written by) it is a Christian one. Everything we sow here on this earth we will reap in heaven - and heaven is eternal! If we laze around collecting pleasures and comforts and hiding behind anxieties and fears, surely 'heaven' will merely be an infinite repetition of this! God will only give us what our heart wants, and never force our hand towards desiring Him.

Oh, but what life is one to live that he would love to have repeated innumerable times! A life will all its pains, thoughts, suffering, joy and happiness! What a mysterious question and it surely provokes us to consider how fruitless most of our lives are. Most of our lives would be unbearable to live through again - not for its pains, or sufferings, or strifes - but for its mundanity.