I have pondered and pondered the topic of "Take Two" for this prestigious Emacs Blog Carnival of 2025-06, and have struggled to stick to just one thing. Proverbial and literal ink has been spilled, chins stroked, skies gazed upon. The question asked was:
“Would you like a second shot at something that didn't land?”
Eh, yes? Or, at least, I'm definitely fond of sitting on a bus staring out the window at the land and skies rolling by and thinking about all the different lives I could have and lived, and could still live. Having read a snippet of Nietzsche here and there, I know that one sophisticated take to the question is to say not just yes but no too. Yes, I want a second shot at every thing, but only to do each thing exactly the same way. The "eternal return", he calls it.
The point being that you embrace every aspect of yourself, every frailty, every pointless injustice you laboured under, every fantasy you left unexplored for fear of judgment, every success too, every joy, all of it. There's something to this. There's a terrible and common tendency to act as if the good things never happened, and fixate on the bad. The weather is bad, the news is bad, the economy is bad, the job is bad, the people are bad, the crime is bad, and on and on.
This is no way to live, and Nietzsche pushes us to have the courage to pull ourselves up out of that despair. This isn't a problem for me, as I've fought hard in life - not with actual fighting of course, but rather a kind of reflexive dissenting stubbornness which was once typical of the working class - to keep the flame of potentiality alive. I don't need poking to fixate on the good stuff, and to image the better worlds.
So, what would I like a second shot at? Or, what needs a second go? What is worth a second go?
1.