The title is provoking enough and the book won't definitely let you down. This coming from a profane, with no studies in the domain or pretentions to understand much.
When I was a child, I never asked myself about the issue of repetition. It was nice how the Easter Bunny kept coming, bringing me new shoes, and Santa Claus pampering me with gifts, among which the chocolate was queen. Years after that, I found myself wandering about the purpose of this cyclicity. Well, there was a sense to the seasons, but why did we have to go through with the whole festival with the bunny and Santa Claus?! And finally, any Christian must suffer psychical and spiritual torments regarding the birth, the death and resurrection of Jesus. What's the point in that?!
Mircea Eliade beautifully described this urge of the humanity, written in its DNA, to find purpose and meaning for anything in this world. To make the time seem less ephemeral, less implacable and more at our disposal - for it always comes back; again with the Christmas, again with the Easter and again with the New Year. And more, he exquisitely explained and described as it appeared for the Indians, where karma comes from. The idea that no matter what you have to endure, one day you will be recompensed. Or that you will be punished for your misdeeds. This serious need of the human being to find an explanation for everything. Or a balance. How scared we are of the things we cannot explain!
While reading this book, I realized that 'an eternal return' is found in the relation child-family. We desperately search in the new member of the family something that will represent us in the future, to live on, to live another life through them... to go back.
