(Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence — Preface, aph. 9)

And what is it, in truth, that is hardest to accept in the possibility of Eternal Return—and what repels people from it at the very outset? It is not, as one might first assume, the endurance of one’s own undeserved suffering and ill fate. Something else weighs far heavier: witnessing the suffering and misfortune of others. Let us think, if only for a moment, of all the hungry and the poor, the sick and the oppressed, those deprived of basic rights, and those ruined by the circumstances of their lives. The inventory of human misery is endless, and seems never to exhaust itself. How does one tell people who suffer that their torment will return eternally? The mere thought that someone might be so ill-fated that the bare knowledge of eternally reliving their own misfortune would break them completely is— for the one who witnesses it—utterly unbearable. The true reason for disbelieving in Eternal Return therefore does not lie in the intolerability of eternally reliving one’s own pain, but in the intolerability of witnessing the pain of others—and in the pure horror that springs from it.

Nietzsche himself struggled terribly with this problem. For a time he entertained the thought that the teaching of Eternal Return should be imparted at the end, not at the beginning of one’s education… Perhaps one must indeed first learn how to live the most desirable life on earth, and only after achieving it—after mastering it—learn to accept that everything returns… One might also ask why this insight had not already arisen in many before us… Perhaps it had, but in the end they understood that it was not to be spoken aloud.

Yet the author of this book has nonetheless chosen to speak it aloud. It is the question he pursued the longest, the one that touched him most deeply and weighed on him most darkly in his most dreadful nights; perhaps he has at last found an answer to it, and perhaps he has not… If he has, it is again an answer that will require centuries to be understood—and then accepted.

My work has time — and I absolutely do not want to be confused with what the present age has to solve as its task. In fifty years … perhaps only a handful will become aware of what has been accomplished through me. At present, however, it is not only difficult but (according to the laws of historical perspective) quite impossible to speak of me publicly without falling infinitely short of the truth. (Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche, Venice, 1884., University of Chicago Press)

What makes a life ‘worthy’ and bearable in its return has nothing to do with its meaning, nor with the goals it achieved or failed to achieve, nor with the judgments of others, nor with the judgment the life itself carries of itself—all of that is illusion. What is truly valuable, what gives a person the strength to endure Eternal Return, are those moments of happiness, fulfillment, and inner clarity that arise—amid all our striving after such illusions—in every human being, and which, like suffering, return eternally. And if we focus our thoughts on those very moments in which we felt fulfilled, clear, and joyful—then we shall be able to withstand the thought of Eternal Return. Nietzsche wrote that the ability to endure the thought of Eternal Return depends on whether one has experienced even a single moment one would wish to relive. A person who has experienced even one such moment is ready to endure the thought of Eternal Return.