Here is a story of a man named Jonas who lived in a nameless city of glass and steel. Every morning he boarded the same crowded train, stood at the same place on the platform, and stared at the same advertisements glowing above the tracks. At work, he answered emails, filled spreadsheets, and sat through meetings that repeated the previous week’s conclusions. Evenings were marked by Netflix, exercise, or the temporary distraction of scrolling endlessly on his phone. His days were full, but they carried the eerie weight of sameness. One night, unable to sleep, he thought to himself: Have I lived a thousand days, or just the same day, a thousand times?

“Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:4–8, NIV)

Qoheleth, the Teacher, describes not the drama of war or the terror of judgment but the monotony of cycles. Generations pass, the sun repeats its rising and setting, the winds circle, the rivers pour endlessly without filling the sea. The world turns, and we turn with it. Theologians have often lingered here, because this passage dismantles illusions of progress. Augustine, in Confessions, agonized over the fleeting nature of time: the present slips into the past the very instant we notice it. Karl Barth read Ecclesiastes as a warning against the idolatry of history, a reminder that time’s cycles cannot justify themselves. Left to themselves, they are circular motions, grand, majestic, but also oppressive.

Philosophers of the modern world pressed the same point with more defiance. Nietzsche imagined the eternal recurrence: that every moment would repeat infinitely, the same joys, the same sorrows, the same commutes. Could one embrace such a thought without despair? For Nietzsche, only the strongest could affirm the cycle with a resounding “yes.”

Heidegger, though different in emphasis, also saw routine as a danger. Our everyday habits, train rides, office chatter, consumer rituals, lull us into inauthenticity, hiding the truth that each of us is headed toward death.

Kierkegaard, however, opened another path. He spoke of “repetition” as both threat and gift. On one hand, it is weary sameness. On the other, it can be transformed by faith into renewal: the prayer that does not grow stale, the daily act of love that becomes richer through being repeated.

It is tempting to think that our modern technologies free us from these cycles. We have innovation, disruption, constant novelty. Yet the Teacher’s words cut through the illusion. We binge on new shows only to feel emptier when the credits roll. We scroll through endless feeds, searching for novelty, but the images blend into sameness. The “new” phone becomes old within a year, the fresh trend dissolves into yesterday’s news. Qoheleth was right: the eye is never satisfied, the ear never filled. Byung-Chul Han, a contemporary philosopher, calls this the pathology of modernity: excess positivity, infinite choices, relentless stimulation, and yet profound exhaustion. Our cycles are not broken; they are accelerated.

At this point, the passage confronts us with a disturbing possibility: perhaps human life, at least “under the sun,” is defined by repetition that cannot deliver fulfillment. Jonas’s sleepless question, have I lived a thousand days, or the same day a thousand times?, is the same question Ecclesiastes poses to us. If everything repeats, is there any point? Is history progress, or merely motion?

Some answer with distraction. Keep busy, keep entertained, keep moving. The cycle hurts less if you never stop to think about it. Others, following Nietzsche, embrace the cycle fiercely: love your life so much that you would live it forever, every detail repeated without end. But how many of us can affirm that honestly? Most of us feel more weariness than triumph.

Still others take Kierkegaard’s approach: the cycle itself can be transfigured, if we stop demanding novelty from it and instead seek renewal. Faith, for Kierkegaard, turns the repeated into the surprising: the act of love that deepens with each performance, the prayer that opens into new depths precisely because it is said again.

Here theology becomes illuminative. Augustine would say that our hunger for novelty is really hunger for eternity. Created things cannot satisfy because they are passing, but our souls long for what does not pass. Barth would remind us that God interrupts the cycle: revelation and grace are not part of the wheel but a breaking into it, a rupture that reorients time. Without this interruption, the wheel spins on; with it, the wheel can be endured, even embraced, because it is no longer ultimate.

What, then, is the lesson for Jonas and for us? It is not that cycles are evil in themselves. Without cycles there would be no rhythm of day and night, no seasons, no stability for life to flourish. The Teacher’s complaint is not that repetition exists but that we expect it to deliver what it cannot. The weariness comes when we demand from the cycle the novelty it cannot give. We treat time like a drug, seeking a new high, but the effect wears off and leaves us emptier.

To live wisely within cycles is to lower our demands of them. The inbox will refill. The commute will repeat. The sun will rise and set. Expecting them to fulfill us leads only to weariness. But seeing them as rhythms, frames within which meaning can be sought differently, frees us from the illusion of novelty. Augustine saw in this longing the trace of God: our hearts are restless until they rest in Him. Kierkegaard saw in repetition the possibility of faith: every day repeated, but every day new, because received as gift. Nietzsche, provocatively, would tell us to test our lives with the eternal recurrence: if you would not will to live this day again forever, then perhaps you are not yet living authentically.

Now for the didactic turn: the cycle itself will not stop. Your task is not to escape it but to decide how to inhabit it. Will you numb yourself with distraction, rage against the wheel, or learn to live within it with clarity? Ecclesiastes dares us to see cycles not as proof of futility alone but as mirrors exposing our misplaced hopes. If your eye is tired from chasing novelty, the Teacher advises: stop. Attend to the repetition. See what it reveals.

Jonas’s story is fictional, but his question is real. It belongs to anyone who has felt the dull ache of sameness in modern life. The Teacher’s answer is not comfort but clarity: the wheel turns. What you must decide is whether to waste yourself demanding that it give you eternity, or to let the turning itself awaken you to something beyond the sun.

The paradox is that when you stop trying to escape the cycle, it sometimes shimmers. The sunrise is not new, but this sunrise has never been before. The prayer is repeated, but your heart today is not what it was yesterday. The cycle remains, but it opens into depth rather than weariness. And perhaps that is the Teacher’s strange gift: not an end to repetition, but eyes to see it truthfully.