Have you ever been in love? I mean, have you as a man, ever loved a woman?
Nietzsche dreamed a possibility, founded on the notion of eternal recurrence, that one may be stuck in an endless loop of experience and life. You are not born. You do not die. Because your birth and death is a repetition of the entirety of existence. This possibility is one extended from the christian concept of purgatory or “limbo”. Your life is in a limbo. You cannot go to heaven or hell. In a specific way, this would seem like hell to me. But, perhaps this is only the foundation for either heaven or hell. Because once experience occurs, and recurs, the heaven or hell aspect of limbo immediately appears.
I have a memory, of love. She was my first lover. And the morning I awoke, with her in my arms, both of us naked, with her voluptuous breasts, and beautiful face, sheets half covering us, from the morning sun filtering through the windows. I knew what love was, and is. It is this very memory which I visit from time to time. I still remember this awakening as if it were yesterday. And so far in my life, any other memory cannot compare to this one. It was and is the apex of my waking life, and my very existence. Because it was at that moment, that the definition of love can be realized, again and again, by the visit of such a memory. I can return to it, and experience, as clearly as I type this text. It is as clear as today, or right now. The memory, and the past itself, are fused together into a single stream of consciousness. By reexperiencing this memory, it recurs eternally. And this is what defines my heaven. Hell is nothing more than the absence of this memory, or the forgetfulness of it, or the impossibility of its recurrence.
It is an impossibility that, I cannot experience it again, or recreate such a memory while alive. But I can, and so, the need for love becomes diminished in my heart. Love is not something I seek, but something I’ve lived and known. While most will only ever dream of such an experience, my life experience is already completed in one way, and I ready myself for death. By dying, I will take this memory with me into nothingness. This memory will become relived, as I will, by its reality and existence. The memory itself, is immortal. Hell is only a deviation from it, and unrealizing its possibility, by undoing the memory.
Everybody lives their lives through these competing memories. That’s all life is. And that’s all ER is about. It’s about the creation, and destruction, of memories. Because that is all anyone can value, is, a memory…worth knowing again, and recurring. Such memories embody the standards for existence in and of itself. I lived, one time, and I experienced something so beautiful, and so calming, and so peaceful, to make even the greatest of Gods jealous, for such a recurrent memory. It is this recurring love that guides my actions, to recreate it, or at least recreate the standard of it.
Such love exists like an immortal monument, built of dreams. But in this one case, the dream was realized, and one life was completed, at one point in time. All the passions, pains, and tumult of life, cannot compare to such a tribulation to succeed. The highlight of one’s life, is what eternally recurs as the validity and justification for it. This, is the apex of all existence.