Eternal return

I've been awake and up since 4.30 am and can't believe that for the past few hours I've been reading FaceBook posts, making comments and flitting around the Internet, in between eating breakfast, making my bed and feeding the magpies. Each day that it's cooler than 30s or 40C degree I'm grateful. Every day I don't experience symptoms of a vertiginous migraine and don't have back pain I'm grateful. God, having all this gratitude is beginning to sound like one of those steps in a depression, alcohol or drug recovery program. But being grateful doesn't come easily. There is an old Taoist saying: All expectations are seeds for resentment and being active and capable all of my life I expect to remain that way and yet my body betrays me as it gets older. The fact is, I don't feel grateful much of the time. I have to remind myself to be thankful. Often though, recognition of gratitude comes with an inner voice that says I am not grateful when things go wrong and my thankfulness revolves around comparing myself with others - my health problems could be worse - or others are worse off. Nietzsche who was one thing, but his writings another (Ecce Homo, p3:s1) was plagued with chronic health problems as well as mental illness and through his writing attempted to overcome many debilitating conditions. Knowing this vindicates me in writing about my own struggles. And, anyway, as someone said to me the other day, some of those who read these posts may benefit from knowing they are not alone with their experiences. As I undertake repetitive tasks everyday I think about Nietzsche's notion of the eternal return and that amazing thought experiment of his that goes:

What if a demon were to creep after you one day or night, in your loneliest loneness, and say: "This life which you live and have lived, must be lived again by you, and innumerable times more. And there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and every sigh - everything unspeakably small and great in your life - must come again to you, and in the same sequence and series...". Would you not throw yourself down and curse the demon who spoke to you thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment, in which you would answer him : "Thou art a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!" The Gay Science, 1882

I've thought about this a great deal and if we were to experience our life again without previous knowledge of the life we had already lived then it would be lived as we had lived it. I think that Nietzsche is not asking us to consider regret, for there is no place here for saying, well I'd live my life over again if I could change some things.  He is asking whether we embrace pain and joy and our life in its totality. In déjà vu moments we might already feel that we have lived this life before. My biggest issue with it is that it fixes the individual in her choices, decisions, actions and doesn't allow a fluidity of expression in the next life lived in this eternal return, if indeed there is a next life. However, within the context and intent of Nietzsche's words,  I say, bring it on!