"Amor Fati"

Would you lead the same life over again,  and again,  and again? If you were told that you could go back in time and lead your life once more, but nothing really would change? Or to quote Nietzsche :

"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 and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence" ... 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."

It's a deep question.  Now truth be told,  hard as I may dig through all my memories, there's nothing specific that I have experienced in my life that I like so much that I would want to experience it over and over again. And there are on the other hand,  things I wish hadn't happened, choices I had made differently. And then a whole host of  maybe just not exciting enough stuff you wouldn't want to relive over and over.

And yet, despite all that,  thinking it through,  I would answer that question in the affirmative.  I think the sum of all that I experienced , what makes me "me",is worth living over again and again , despite all the disappointments, despite all the regrets, despite all the ennui. Maybe I just love myself way too much, or rathet I love my own conception of my own self way too much :)

 And not just what's gone behind,  but also what's ahead, despite all the uncertainties,  for all the hopes, all the disappointments and maybe even all the nothingness

Or to quote Nietzsche again, 

"that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity"

Amor Fati - to love one's own fate




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