1. Groundhog Day
Have you seen the movie Groundhog Day?
（—-Warning: Spoilers after the illustration—-）
This 1993 film depicts an arrogant weather anchor named Phil, who becomes trapped in the small town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on “Groundhog Day” (February 2nd). From the moment he wakes up at 6:00 AM, this day repeats infinitely; the calendar page never turns over.
If it were you, how would you choose to spend a day that repeats infinitely, potentially for the rest of your existence?
In the movie’s setting, Phil retains all his memories from previous loops. Therefore, he can accumulate experience and change his behavior: committing suicide, robbing banks, toying with the feelings of the female producer, and later learning piano, ice sculpting, saving people… Eventually, through love and acts of kindness, he escapes this death loop.
Does this sound a bit like the Save/Load (S/L) mechanic often used when playing video games?
Groundhog Day, the movie, uses the outer shell of a time loop to package the core of an American-style redemption drama—”You can become better, so you don’t have to repeat the past forever.”
Of course, a series of literary and film works with similar settings followed, such as Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow in 2014, which vividly demonstrated the utility of the S/L mechanic. XD
2. The Professor Went Mad
In 1879, Switzerland, a professor at the University of Basel, only 35 years old, resigned from his teaching position and began to wander.
This professor, presumably like Buffett, had earned enough money early on and resigned to enjoy life, right?
Unfortunately, that was not the case. As sincere as Buffett is, he tirelessly mentions how lucky he is—a winner of the “ovarian lottery.”
This professor resigned because he was plagued by health problems: migraines, eye ailments, chronic constipation and diarrhea, and gastrointestinal discomfort.
He hoped that through long-term sojourning, he could find an environment that would alleviate his symptoms and maintain his health.
Once this journey began, for this professor, it became a nomadic life that lasted for ten years.
This period was the most painful decade for his body and soul, yet it was also the decade where his creativity was most vigorous and his thoughts most mature.
Did this professor, in the end, cure his health problems through his travels?
Ten years later, on January 3, 1889, in Turin, at Piazza Carlo Alberto.
A coachman, because the horse pulling his carriage would not obey commands, raised his whip and lashed the horse viciously.
The horse screamed in misery, suffering greatly; those who saw and heard it were heartbroken.
Suddenly, from a street corner, a middle-aged man rushed forward, hugged the horse’s neck tightly, and wept uncontrollably, tears and mucus streaming down.
While the coachman was astonished, this man—the resigned professor who had been wandering for ten years—suddenly lost his mind and collapsed.
Passersby subsequently contacted the man’s landlord and together brought him back to his rented room on the third floor of a cheap apartment.
In the following days, the professor was extremely manic and delusional, his mind drifting between clarity and chaos—he had gone completely mad.
He frantically wrote dozens of extremely bizarre short notes, mailing them to friends, acquaintances, and even European royalty and celebrities.
“I have been crucified… not on wood, but vividly among men…”
The professor’s friend, Overbeck, rushed from Basel immediately after receiving a postcard.
When Overbeck opened the door to the apartment room, he saw the professor dancing naked and shouting. He subsequently forcibly took him back to Switzerland and sent him to the Jena mental asylum.
Thereafter, the professor never regained his sanity.
This pitiful professor was none other than the famous German philosopher—Nietzsche.
His early work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was initially self-published with only 40 copies, of which he barely managed to give away 7.
Years after Nietzsche passed away, his thoughts became the epicenter of an earthquake in modern philosophy and the intellectual world, having a long-lasting and profound influence on philosophy, literature, psychology, art, and music to this day.
3. Are You Happy?
“Are you happy?” A friend suddenly asked these three words after listening to a bout of venting from Bookboy [the author].
Am I happy? I froze there, at a loss.
Not happy, of course not happy.
At that specific moment in time, the most direct and decisive emotional reaction was very clear, without any stagnation or hesitation.
But should I admit this to my friend right there? That I am always unhappy, that I have always been a pessimistic and negative person?
It seemed there wasn’t a huge obstacle to admitting this to a friend.
I identified that what made me pained and feel it was difficult lay in the fact that doing so meant admitting to myself, my own unhappiness.
Immediately following that, what shocked me even more was that I had never asked myself such a simple yet soul-shaking question: am I happy or not?
Looking back at the past, of course, there were joys and sorrows, but can I assert that the joys outweighed the worries? Oh, certainly not, happiness is fleeting; I am almost certain that for the majority of the time, I felt anxious, uneasy, exhausted, and tired.
I held my chopsticks in my right hand, suspended in mid-air, staring at the plate of signature Wasabi Hand-shredded Chicken from Chen Gen Ji on the table covered with a disposable plastic sheet before me. My ears were filled with the noisy, boiling human voices of the Dai Pai Dong [open-air food stall]. My lips and teeth trembled slightly a few times, yet my brain could not form any complete sentences.
“Not happy.” I said these two words quickly and softly, like blowing dust off the table—a bit awkward, yet a wave of relief washed over me.
Immediately after, I threw the question back: Are you happy?
I don’t remember my friend’s specific answer anymore. My impression is that he seemed to say he was calm and joyful; of course, there were hard and very hard times, but he would try his best to live well in the moment. Then he asked me, have you watched The Long Season?
“Look forward, don’t look back.”
I certainly know this point, but I do not accept it.
Isn’t simply looking forward just avoiding facing one’s past and present? If one avoids it like this, isn’t that indifference and dereliction of duty toward one’s past life?
But I am very certain, regarding such a simple three-word question, I can only give a firm “No” as an answer.
So, friend reading this, are you happy?
Have you ever sincerely looked into your own heart and gently asked yourself these three words: Am I happy?
4. Eternal Recurrence
Let us return to the theme of this article: If your life ended right at this moment, would you choose to replay it, or sleep forever? (Elaboration 1)
This is not like using the S/L mechanic in a game, carrying your current cognition and memories back to 2010 when Bitcoin just emerged, where you could mine thousands of Bitcoins with just a laptop;
This is also not about you being able to return to the college entrance exam hall, correcting the careless mistakes you once made, scoring ten more points, and stepping over the threshold of Tsinghua or Peking University.
This is certainly not about you being able to reverse decisions that caused you infinite regret, rewriting the history of the life you have already forged.
This is merely a repetition without change. Like starting from the beginning, replaying a song, or a movie.
Accurately understanding this proposition is truly too important. So now, please allow Bookboy to become more long-winded; I will repeatedly interpret this profound philosophical proposition in a progressively layered manner, based on Elaboration 1.
If your life ended right at this moment, and you had the right to choose: You could repeat your life in exactly the same form, from the moment you were born until today, until this very moment your life ends. Would you choose to replay it, or sleep forever? (Elaboration 2)
If your life ended right at this moment, and you had the right to choose: You could, once again, without a hair’s breadth of difference, experience every moment of joy and pain in your life, every mistake once made, every achievement once gained, every act of kindness or harm you did to others, or every act of kindness or harm others did to you; you would smile again at every moment you laughed, and be stricken with grief at every painful hour; everything, everything, would be reenacted exactly as it was, without any change. Would you choose to replay it, or sleep forever? (Elaboration 3)
This thought experiment is simply too profound. It is so profound it is uncomfortable, so profound it causes pain; it pokes directly at a person’s spine and lungs, even making many people feel nauseous and suffocated.
How will you respond to this interrogation of the soul? This veritable, worthy-of-the-name interrogation of the soul?
Clever as you are, you must have guessed it: the person who first proposed such a bizarre and tormenting question must be the mad philosopher Nietzsche.
Nietzsche first proposed this idea during the second to third year of his travels, writing it into his book The Gay Science.
Please allow Bookboy to quote, verbatim, the translation by Mr. Sun Zhouxing [or a standard English equivalent], placing this bone-deep interrogation of the soul below:
The Greatest Weight.
— What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
— Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: “You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
If this thought gained possession of you, it would change you as you are or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “Do you desire this once more and innumerable times more?” would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?
5. Not Necessary
A few days after my friend left Hong Kong, I admitted to myself: I am not happy.
I no longer pretend not to see the elephant in the room: My psychological baseline is pessimistic and negative.
But how can I accept that this elephant is just there?
Cruelly, I have glimpsed, and know for a fact, that there are many people who can be treated gently by life. I am truly so envious.
Oh, I also once glimpsed, and from then on remembered, Nietzsche’s heart-tormenting, soul-torturing thought experiment.
For a long time afterward, the philosophical proposition of Eternal Recurrence, like a cursed colossal iceberg, awoke from slumber and surfaced in my mind: it stood towering, it stood immovable.
I am not happy, so why would I choose to replay my life?
I am not happy; I “gnash my teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus.”
But what I must continue to ask is, am I negating the entirety of my past life?
Thinking deeply about this question, there seems to be no good answer. Bookboy found some appropriate opportunities to ask the people around.
Interestingly, including Mushroom [Spouse], most people’s answer was negative.
“Too tired, forget it.”
“Replay completely? Then I can’t do Bitcoin, what’s the point of that, forget it, forget it.”
“Too tired and bitter, not necessary.”
Does everyone deny their whole life because of this? That’s too absolute, isn’t it?
6. Better to Sleep Forever
At the end of September this year, Bookboy and Mushroom went for a painless gastroscopy and colonoscopy together.
In 2021, I had a painless gastroscopy, but I had no impression of it.
The anesthesia process was just like deleting a segment of conscious time frames. The conscious experiences before and after were just spliced back together.
But this time, the Propofol anesthesia for the colonoscopy/gastroscopy thoroughly gave Bookboy a “high.”
Mushroom recorded my state upon waking up from anesthesia on video.
Coming out of the endoscopy room, I was sleeping昏ly on the gurney, the pillow soaked with a large patch of saliva. Mushroom and the nurse tried to wake me up several times; after struggling to get up, I lay back down every time.
I remember the last time I slept until I drooled was in 2023, the sleep that lasted 12 hours after finally recovering from COVID.
During COVID, persistent tachycardia and panic attacks tortured me so much that I could only sleep two or three hours a day for a week straight.
“You can’t sleep anymore!” The nurse came over and slapped my shoulder and back hard, pulling me up, making me sit up.
I started speaking, my tongue not straightening out, slurring indistinctly; but inexplicably, I was very happy and joyful. After every sentence of “That was so awesome,” I would close my eyes and chuckle for a while.
In the background of the video, someone said: “Like he’s drunk.”
Bookboy still has a deep impression of that unique euphoria, as if different functional areas of the brain were all powerfully connected together—an incomparably smooth, relaxed, and lucid synesthetic experience.
The fleeting glimpses of enlightenment in meditation are like twinkling meteors, vanishing in an instant; whereas waking up from Propofol was a dazzling display of fireworks and silver flowers.
While admiring the fireworks in my mind, I suddenly pronounced judgment on the proposition of Eternal Recurrence: I do not want to experience my past life again, it was too hard, better to sleep forever.
Once you stop struggling, you become relaxed.
Deleting the space-time experience of consciousness—this is great. Death itself is nothing to be afraid of; eternal sleep is quite good!
Buddhism says: birth, old age, sickness, and death are all suffering. Why is birth also considered suffering? Finally understood, living is also suffering.
The Six Realms of Reincarnation are truly bitter.
Because Propofol is milky white, it is also called the “Milk Needle.” Michael Jackson died from an overdose of Propofol injection.
6. I Was Willing, and Will Be Willing
[Note: The source text repeats the section number “6”, kept here for fidelity]
At the end of October, Bookboy completed the most important and urgent to-do item on his life list.
In the golden autumn of October, taking my parents to Hangzhou again.
Why? For the simplest reason: on October 1st, 1999, National Day, at age 8, the family of three playing in Hangzhou is the happiest joint travel experience in Bookboy’s memory.
Before that, few impressions; after that, the condition of “family of three + traveling + I am happy” was too harsh, couldn’t be found.
Bookboy decided last year that while my parents’ mobility is still acceptable, I must draw this circle and complete the ritual.
Too important, and also very urgent.
The warming climate even became Bookboy’s helper, delaying the Osmanthus blooming period by nearly a month.
October 1, 1999, Hangzhou, the fragrance of Osmanthus, nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape.
October 30, 2025, Hangzhou, the fragrance of Osmanthus, nowhere to hide, nowhere to escape.
For the past 26 years, I have liked the unique scent of Osmanthus so much.
Searching high and low, longing in my heart, even for the faint fragrance of the Lingnan Four-Season Osmanthus in winter.
The unique experience of the Osmanthus scent belongs only to me.
In 1999, the state-run guesthouse at Xiaoying Alley where Bookboy and parents stayed has now become the sub-district party-mass service center.
The day before coming to Hangzhou, with Mushroom, and parents, in Suzhou.
Meeting parents, completing the ritual. Inside Bookboy, there were too many surging emotions, unable to be released. Late at night, Mushroom saw it; she caught that sorrow of Bookboy’s.
Before falling asleep, waiting for clothes to dry; a close friend was in isolation in Guangzhou due to Chikungunya fever. We voice-chatted, discussing the proposition of Eternal Recurrence.
Unexpectedly, this close friend gave this proposition an affirmative answer.
He said, you go look at the night sky, you will definitely not stare at the pitch-black deep space without starlight.
That profound, bottomless black is just the background setting off countless stars.
And the life journey must have many brilliant moments, like stars twinkling in the night sky.
Looking back at life, what you see must be the bright stars, and you won’t stare at the darkness of the background, right?
Ha! How fortunate is Bookboy, to have a lover, to have a close friend!
They caught the entangled emotions between me and my parents that were hard to speak of, hard to resolve.
October 1, 1999, that little boy running to his heart’s content on the grass by West Lake, that little boy listening to his mom and dad chatting and laughing, that little boy staring wide-eyed at the toy airplane model, that little boy inhaling deeply to capture the fragrance of Osmanthus in the air.
I go back and ask him, shall we replay life from zero to eight years old?
Okay! Why not?
The little boy, the little boy living in the moment, the little boy just experiencing the happy present. Then all the unknowns of the future are things that make him curious and are worth looking forward to.
The so-called heart of a child.
So, imagine on this day last year, this day the year before, this day three years ago… back until I have memories, on this day when I was three or four, constantly asking the self in history: are you willing to replay your life once?
I was willing. In 1999, the me by West Lake was willing.
What about the future? This day next year, this day the year after? Until the day I really leave this world?
Why not strive so that when I really leave this world, I can have an answer different from now?
Wow! Thinking of it this way, isn’t every day of the rest of my life a day earned for free to rewrite the history of this life?
Suddenly it became clear! Wang Xiaobo said: “I didn’t come to this world to reproduce offspring. But to see how flowers bloom, how water flows. How the sun rises, and when the sunset falls. I live in this world, wanting nothing more than to understand some truths and encounter some interesting things.”
Haha, so cool, why not? In the Korean drama My Liberation Notes, there is a line that is also very popular: “I don’t want to go to heaven after I die; I want to see heaven while I’m alive.”
Replay this life—I was willing, and will be willing. So now, am I willing?
(End)