In this episode, and not for the first time, Dara is reckoning with old wounds. Life has a great knack for shocking you out of your complacency, but what do you do when you are reminded of stuff you thought you had long since put to bed? Some things just refuse to stay down, and maybe the harder you push the more likely they are to push back.
Dara argues that we can never outrun ourselves, no matter how fast we go or where we run to. We never stop encountering ourselves. Nietzsche’s paradigm of eternal recurrence has a similar idea at its core. It can seem bleak at first pass, but on closer inspection it reveals something enormously affirming that anticipates positive psychology and even echoes Buddhist principles of radical acceptance.
Everything must be embraced because nothing else is ever going to happen – until you come round again. And again. And again. What are you going to embrace – love or cynicism?