Yesterday, I lay around for much of the day. I felt so tired and even napped two times. I thought maybe it was a combination of my lack of sleep the previous night and walking ten miles the previous day. Despite the extra sleep I got, though, I’ve felt tired and sleepy and I napped today, too. It’s led me to consider that maybe it’s because of the thing I started yesterday. Maybe this tea is currently chamomile tea…
Despite the tiredness, I’ve been in a decent mood. Though I lay around and did pretty much nothing today (I have been hella procrastinating.), I’ve been thinking about what I’ve done in my life and the idea of memento mori and deciding to do things as though life is a dream that you’ll wake up from. I’m glad that I moved here. I’m glad that I did the things. I’m glad that I’ve started this other thing. I’m glad for the connections I’ve made, especially, at the moment, one in particular—the one whom I look forward to seeing again in a few months as I wonder what the conversation will be like. I’m glad that I’ve completed my writing project—I’m proud of it actually—and I’m glad that I’ve shared it, even though I feared it could cause someone to spiral into an existential tailspin. But when I mentioned this fear to the last person I shared it with—the person I’m looking forward to seeing again in a few months—they told me they thought people knew how to protect themselves.
“Eternal recurrence”—I decided to look that up today. I came across Nietzsche’s “thought experiment” on having to live one’s life over and over and over again. During summer of last year as I reflected on the past, I felt that I didn’t want to relive life ever again, didn’t want to have to go through what I’d gone through in life ever again—through the depression, the emotional turmoil. But I concluded that if life were to keep happening, then we could at least try to make it better.
I can confidently say that my life feels better than all those years ago. I’ve been so happy—like near the beginning of my long-distance walk when I felt so alive. And I can think of moments in my life I wouldn’t mind reliving. In one article about Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence, to be okay with life happening the same again and again would be to affirm life, to find your own path, would be “to become who you truly are.”
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