Escaping the Drift

"What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live it once more and innumerable times more; and then there will nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will return to you, all in the same succession and sequence--even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust. 

Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, "Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" would lie upon your actions as the greatest of weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"

The Greatest Weight from The Gay Science, Nietzsche (1882)

The Dominance of the Drift

It often feels as if you choose your path, as if you made the decisions that now finds you where you are. In some ways, you have decided, even if most of your decisions were imposed on you. Consider that you may have chosen your major in college, but it's likely that you went to college because that was expected of you. You may have chosen a profession, but the decision to get a safe job, one with a 401K, good benefits, and a tolerable, if somewhat annoying, manager came from the Drift. 

While it may feel as if you are making decisions about your life, mostly you are caught up in the Drift, being pulled down a river that runs faster than you would like towards a destination that may not be of your choosing. The eternal hourglass of which Nietzsche refers to begins again, most of us dropping our children into the same running river in which we find ourselves. 

Nietzsche's thought experiment requires you to examine your life and to contemplate whether you would want to repeat it for all eternity, an idea that strikes you as "divine" or one that may "crush you." The powerful challenge in the two paragraphs that begins this message is designed to help you recognize that you, like most others, are caught in the Drift. 

Would You Repeat This Journey for All Eternity?

Breaking free from the Drift isn't about recognizing your regrets. It's not about listing out all the things you might have done differently, knowing what you know now. You've already paid the price for those mistakes in full by living with the consequences of your actions. You owe the past nothing. The question is, “What do you owe your future?” 

The challenge on offer here is to look at what you are doing now and deciding whether you would repeat it forever. While there is no value to be found in your regrets outside of what you learned, there is tremendous value in determining what you will do with your future.

The greatest weight should not be a past you cannot change but the future you create. 

A Single Path from Start to Finish

To escape the Drift, you must work against the current and move in a direction of your choosing. 

Your path and mine both have a start and a finish. The path is singular, there being only one lasting a little over 4,000 weeks. There is no law that suggests that you stay in the river in which you find yourself. At any time, no matter how early or late you recognize you are unhappy in the Drift, you may choose another direction, another life. You have an absolute right to choose that path for yourself, regardless of what it might be, with no regard for the opinions of those being carried away by the Drift. 

If you wouldn't desire to repeat this life repeatedly for all eternity, why would you consent to live it in this, your only life? The genius of Nietzsche's thought experiment is that it forces you to grapple with your power to change your life. You can change who you are, what you do, and the path you choose. Most people would agree with their having the power to change their life, but the power of the Drift is that it moves so fast it’s difficult to escape. It’s easier to go with the current than to swim against it. 

At any time, you can choose to become the person that comes after the person you are now.

Because you only get walk your path once, make certain it is one you would want to walk for the rest of eternity.