No wonder Nietzsche went mad. If his answer to the problem of existence was to look upon it as a continuum of moments among which might be found at least one moment that would affirm all the others, that would, through the happiness that single moment brought him, compensate for the rest, however tedious or painful they might be (so that he’d even allow that his life should recur eternally, and that he must live it over and over, as if on repeat), how would he know that he’d experienced a moment where the happiness was adequately profound? That he’d gone far enough in pursuing that moment, in ‘saying yes’ to it, in participating in its creation, its substantiation? And that, instead, he hadn’t somehow let it go, or watched it pass; that he had been there with it in the realm of space and time, but hadn’t responded to it in a way that produced the fullest amount of joy? How could such a life lead to anything less than a wild and mind-bending regret?