Your Life on a Loop

What if life stretched on eternally, repeating itself endlessly without any chance to change a single thing about the way we live it?

In "The Greatest Weight," a section of his book "The Gay Science," German classical scholar and philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, presents a captivating thought experiment centered on life and mortality. Through the voice of a speaker known as "the demon," the experiment poses a question I can’t stop thinking about: What if life were to unfold eternally, repeated endlessly without the possibility of altering any aspect of the lived experience? Nietzsche writes:

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 once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh … must 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 over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not 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 were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and everything, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?’ would lie upon your actions as the greatest 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? 

This concept of eternal recurrence—a notion where life and all its joys and sufferings recur infinitely - emphasizes a life brimming with "tremendous moments," rather than insisting that every moment be "tremendous" in itself. This thought experiment serves as an invitation for us to contemplate how we can shape a life that strikes a balance, one that cultivates the utmost sense of happiness. I also see inherent in this question the willingness to accept the suffering that comes with living as much as we pursue joy, understanding that both are required for a fulfilling life.

If you could live the same way, with the same experiences and change nothing, would you be content with reliving your life? Why or why not?