A Space of Quiet 131
he adopted. What he sought, above all, were retreat and renewal,
lived truths, and the image of the life he wanted to live.
Others who would follow his example need to seek their own
approach to the art of reflection. In doing so, they will be embarking
on a path that men and women have been following for millennia—
for, in fundamental ways, Marcus’s Meditations are the ancient counter-
part to Nietzsche’s contemporary plea ‘‘Become who you are.’’
Consider the following passage, in which Nietzsche describes his
‘‘myth of eternal recurrence.’’ It is his advice for reflecting on the
imagined best life. His poetic passage is worth reading aloud and
slowly:
What if a demon crept after you one day or night in your loneliest solitude
and said to you: ‘‘This life, as you live it now and have lived it, you
will have to live again and again, times without number; and there will
be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought
and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return
to you, and everything in the same series and sequences—and in the same
way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and in the same way
this moment and I myself.’’
12
Nietzsche evokes a late-night moment of utter stillness, perhaps like
the moments in which Marcus Aurelius, working by candlelight,
composed Meditations. Work has ended, and the buzzing of daily life
has ceased. It is then, Nietzsche suggests, that a person should
contemplate the prospect of making a particular decision or living
a certain kind of life, again and again, forever. Like Marcus Aurelius,
Nietzsche is suggesting a way to take a moment, a choice, a commit-
ment and place it in the context of a person’s whole life.
In this way, Nietzsche is pursuing the same goal as Marcus Aure-
lius and the other philosophers to whom we have turned. All sought
to help thoughtful people make difficult choices—in ways that stand
the test of time and express standards and values, rooted in the
experience and wisdom of others, that they have made their own.
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