Is This the Life You Really Want to Live?

One day, as you’re walking peacefully through the serene woods, a demon suddenly appears. The demon informs you that you must re-live your life for all of eternity. You will have to experience all of your successes, failures, trauma, and letdowns in life.

Would you be horrified at this revelation or excited and heaping praise upon the demon’s news?

THOUGHT EXERCISE

This thought exercise comes from Friedrich Nietzche’s book “The Joyous Science.” aphorism #341. He states:

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 innumberable 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…The eternal hourglass of existence will be turned over again and again, and you with it, you speck of dust!”

This thought exercise really cuts down to the heart of the matter. Are you living the life you want, to the point that you would be content with living it for all of eternity? Or, to the contrary, are you living a life of misery and disappointment and terrified to live your life forever?

Nietzsche continues:

Would you 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!

The answer to this question is simple. If you’re not living a life or taking actions that you’d be happy with for all of eternity, stop and change course. Change and alter your circumstances in life to the point where you would want to live it for all eternity. However, if you’re ecstatic about living with your actions in life for all of eternity, just keep doing what you’re doing.

This way of thinking is very empowering. It shows that you are in control of your own life circumstances. You can reduce the regrets that you have in your life by changing your perspective.

References:

Nietzsche, Friedrich (1882). The Joyous Science. Penguin Group.