In the opening chapters of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he references Nietzsche:
"If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross."
While Kundera calls it a "terrifying prospect", it’s not that hopeless.
Thinking like this is what Nietzsche called Eternal Recurrence or Eternal Return.
His full image of the matter goes like this:
“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' ...
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.”
To Nietzsche, it serves as more of an acid test for your life.
If you had to do everything again, would you enjoy it?
If the answer is yes…well…congratulations.
If you say no, this gives you questions to ask yourself:
What would you change?
What would you keep exactly the same?
It’s easy to pass some things off as just a temporary bad thing that just has to be survived.
Time moves in one direction after all.
But Eternal Recurrence doesn't allow for such an easy out.
It gives each of our choices more meaning as we come to them.
That's all well and good for the past but what about the future? What can you do about those decisions you wouldn't choose again?
Lead your life by confronting life's Practical Questions:
What should I do?
What can I do?
How should I act?
Recognize the decisions you make or risk living a life devoid of life that becomes a terrifying prospect to even consider going through it again.
Lead a life you'd want to relive for eternity.
As philosopher John Kaag notes, it’s these choices that guide us towards what we really want:
“Of course you can choose anything you want, to raise children or get married, but don’t pretend to do it because these things have some sort of intrinsic value — they don’t.
Do it solely because you chose them and are willing to own up to them. In the story of our lives, these choices are ours and ours alone, and this is what gives things, all things, value.
Only when one realizes this is he or she prepared to face the eternal recurrence, the entire cycle, without the risk of being crushed. Only then is one able to say with Yeats, “[A]nd yet again,” and truly mean it.
Sometimes making the right decision at the moment requires widening your perspective.