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Eat Your Words: Eternal Return

Are you familiar with the philosophical concept?

Justin Cox
2 min readApr 13, 2021
Photo by Sophia Sideri on Unsplash

I just finished reading The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold. Billed as “Station Eleven meets The 5th Wave,” this brilliant post-apocalyptic book raises the philosophical concept of “eternal return.” Put quite simply, everything has happened before, and everything will happen again.

There are a lot of variations on this theme throughout academic and literary work. History is often accused of repeating itself. Everything online is a copy of a copy of a copy…

Today, there’s a lot of talk about “returning” to life as usual. With vaccination rates racing infections, the pandemic may have an end date in sight. Maybe. Hopefully.

Look anywhere, and there are signs of a return to some semblance of normal. Granted, normal wasn’t great, and I really hope we don’t return to normal as it was. That said, I can’t wait to return to exploring the world.

My wife and I were ardent travelers pre-pandemic. It’s been 477 days since I last spent a night in a hotel. Sure, some people are now and have been traveling, but the two of us have remained safe and adhering to CDC guidelines.

We booked our first post-pandemic trip for later this year. To say I’m excited is an understatement. I look forward to…

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Justin Cox
Justin Cox

Written by Justin Cox

I help writers and nonprofits grow. Editor of The Writing Cooperative. Contact at JustinCox.com

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