Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more

Have been reading a bit on the basics of existentialism and find the following quote by Nietzche quite useful for year end reflection


"The Greatest Weight-

What if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you in your loniest 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. Even this spider, and this moonlight between the trees, 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 not throw yourself down and nash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus, or have you once experienced the tremendous moment when you would have answered him "You are a God and I never have 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 weight, or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life, to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate confirmation and seal.”-end of quote


The idea here is to get us thinking whether we will shudder in horror if we have to live our life exactly the same over and over again. If we hold such thought in abhorrence then what is wrong in how we live. If knowing we will have to repeat our life every moment of it, how would we henceforth live the rest of it?

"Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?" can be a very powerful question worth pondering, especially as the year draws to an end.