The final season of “Stranger Things” has started on Netflix.

You’ve already watched it once all the way through. You know the big twists, the heartbreaks, the deaths, the goofy filler episodes. You know exactly how it ends.

Then one day, you see it pop up again: “Start from Episode 1?”

If you’re honest, there are shows you’d absolutely rewatch. Even knowing every plot point, you’ll still hit play. Not because you forgot the ending, but because being in it again feels good: the early seasons when everyone’s young, the one perfect episode, the scene that wrecks you every time.

That, in a nutshell, is how I think about determinism.

I believe our choices are already “on the tape.” Neuroscience keeps showing that our brains make decisions before we’re conscious of them. From that angle, we’re less authors and more actors in a story that’s been scripted.

People hear that and immediately ask: Then why bother? Why love people who will die? Why chase goals that are already decided? Why live a life you might have already lived before, with no memory of the last run?

Because, like rewatching a great series, the value isn’t in surprising yourself. It’s in experiencing it.

Take someone you’ve loved and lost: a parent, a partner, a friend. If you could go back and relive every moment with them — same first meeting, same holidays, same inside jokes, same final goodbye — but you had to do it without any warning, no memory of the pain coming, would you?

Most people, if they’re honest, would say yes. Not because the ending doesn’t hurt, but because the middle is worth it.

After my mother died, a friend told me: “No one really disappears. What dies is your future with them. Your past with them is safe.” That clicked. We don’t actually mourn a person’s existence; we mourn all the breakfasts, arguments, phone calls and hugs we won’t get now. The experiences we did have are untouchable.

Think about an old friend you drifted away from. You don’t grieve them like they’re dead. They’re still out there. What’s gone is your experience of them. The story between you has stopped getting new episodes.

So when I say I’m a determinist, I’m not saying life is pointless. I’m saying the point was never about having a million possible plots. It was always about the felt reality of this one: the specific people, the specific joys, the specific wounds.

If you told me my life is already written and I’ll live it again, exactly the same way, with no memory each time, I’d still hit “Start from Episode 1.”

Not because I’m fooled into thinking I control the script, but because I know what it’s like to be inside certain scenes: my son’s head on my shoulder as he falls asleep, my mother’s voice on the phone, the quiet drive home after everything falls apart.

And, if nothing else, it makes me more determined to enjoy this life and seek out new experiences even more.

Given the chance to feel those things again — for what feels like the first time — I wouldn’t ask if it’s predetermined.

I’d just press play.