WWB Archive

Audio Edition

Newsletter last updated 19 hours ago.

Browser Read-Aloud Optimized

Speed: 1.00

I’m your host, Michael Alan Prestwood and this is the

Wednesday, January 14 2026 edition

of the Weekly Wisdom Builder. The expanded audio edition.

Our goal here is to cultivate your inner wisdom, empowering your inner voice, your inner coach – your philosopher guide, as Socrates would say.

Let’s get started.

This week’s Weekly Wisdom Builder centers on New Year’s resolutions and Nietzsche’s idea of Eternal Recurrence. It’s about stepping back and looking at your life from an unusual angle, and ask a simple question:

Would I want to live this life again and again?

What follows here are the bottom-line takeaways, a short read. I’ve also written a longer essay this week, linked below, that brings these ideas together in reflection on alignment, self-becoming, and what it might mean to live a life you’d willingly repeat.

I hope you enjoy it.

With that introduction, let’s frame this week.

This week’s idea is Eternal Recurrence.

Reframe your day-to-day life in a way you would want to live it forever.

Now, the story of the week:

Friedrich Nietzsche

born 1844

1844-1900

For Nietzsche, the collapse of inherited meaning is not a tragedy but an opening. With “God dead,” humanity is no longer bound to borrowed values, inherited morals, or cultural scripts. Meaning must now be created—through strength, intellectual honesty, and the difficult work of becoming. Nietzsche’s philosophy is not about despair, but about responsibility: if the old meanings have fallen, then living authentically means daring to create new ones.

To center our minds, here is the “Quote of the Week.”

A Philosophy Quote.

From History:

Subject: Eternal Recurrence.

Could you affirm your life so fully that you would will its eternal repetition?

Friedrich Nietzsche.
1882.

Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence is asking you to affirm your life eternally. Make sure you live in a way you would willingly repeat forever.

In short.

Nietzsche’s idea of Eternal Recurrence asks us to treat life as if it might repeat endlessly. Not as fate or punishment, but as a measure of affirmation. Would you embrace your choices, struggles, and values again? If not, the task is clear: live more deliberately, honestly, and fully.

Now, the details…

That question of eternal repetition is a faithful paraphrase from Nietzsche’s book “The Gay Science.” The following is a more accurate and full translation of the original Geman:

“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…’”

This is the Eternal Recurrence passage from Nietzsche. He does not present it as cosmology or metaphysics, but as a psychological and existential test. This framing is not despair, nor doctrine. It is responsibility and affirmation.

Nietzsche wrote extensively on the eternal recurrence and his framing is clear. Live your life in a way that you would want to live it forever. The following quote from his German book “Ecco Homo” frames it as life affirmation.

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”

Here Nietzsche is saying his “eternal recurrence” has an emotional core. That core, a love of fate. If you truly love your fate, you would accept its eternal return.

That Philosophy Quote,

was first published on TST 13 hours ago.

Now for this week’s Weekly Crossroads.

Onto this week’s 4, 1-minute Hot Topics.

On the home page at TouchstoneTruth we provide the key ideas for each. The online edition uses the core takeaways. To get the details, you have to click the link. The audio edition give you all three: the key idea, core takeway, and details of the four FAQs.

The goal, to blend their intersections to forge wisdom.

First up, a question rooted in observation. Science-first philosophy is the key.

1.

What does neuroscience say about “identity?”

Biologically, you’re constantly changing: cells, synapses, even memories shift. Identity is less a fixed thing and more a maintained pattern. Neuroscience shows that identity isn’t a fixed object stored in the brain. Your are constantly changing. What feels like a stable “you” is a maintained pattern: held together by memory, habits, and the story you keep updating.

Next, a question rooted in the minds of our great philosophers…

2.

Eternal Recurrence: If You Had to Live This Year Forever

This year’s resolution isn’t about doing more or becoming someone new. It’s about living deliberately. When you imagine repeating this life again and again, excuses fall away. Some habits lose their grip. Some dreams stop waiting. The Year of the Eternal Recurrence invites honest choices, made now, in real time.

Our penultimate topic this week takes us into the area of thinking well…

Perhaps at the core of philosophy is the idea of skeptical thinking. Remember, one of the few things you have control over in your life is what you allow into your mind.

3.

What’s the difference between intentional change and wishful thinking?

Many attempts at change fail not because of lack of desire, but because of faulty reasoning. Wishful thinking, the planning fallacy, and magical thinking all confuse intention with causation. Real change requires identifying the mechanisms that produce outcomes—not just declaring new goals or identities.

Our final topic this week brings historical context to our lives. Knowing the past helps you navigate the future…

4.

What is the history of existentialism?

Modern existentialism has roots going back to the late 1700s and modern psychology has roots back to the late 1800s. Both have deeper roots going back to prehistory. Kierkegaard’s focus on anxiety is part of the story of psychology. Existentialism explores the meaning from a nihilistic view. While it can be fatalistic, modern externalism focuses on living fully and authentically.

That’s it for this week!

Join us again next week. A new set of ideas lands every Wednesday at 3PM, and is emailed on Thursdays at noon. If you don’t subscribe, please visit TouchstoneTruth.com and click the Subscribe button.

Until next time, live your days in a way that sends virtuous ripples into an unseen tomorrow you will never witness. Be authentic, and may you always:

“Enjoy the journey, with truth and honor, causing no harm.”

— The End. —