What Amor Fati Means and How Stoicism Can Help You Love Your Fate
“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything
that is thrown into it.”
Stoicism is a philosophy that started in ancient Greece, and was then further popularized in
ancient Rome. Stoicism is an especially unique philosophy in how potently it has withstood
the test of time across thousands of years. Arguably, the teachings and wisdom of stoic
philosophy are equally, if not more relevant today than ever. In recent history, stoicism has found huge appeal. It was used and encouraged by Nelson Mandela, written about by current, popular authors like Tim Ferris, Robert Greene, and Ryan Holiday just to name a few, and has found a rather large community on the internet.
Stoicism’s enduring popularity is not without good reason. The principles of stoicism can
help us find calmness, presence, and resilience in a world of increasingly overt chaos, anxiety, and insatiable desire for more. In stoicism, we exist in a reality that does not care about our personal opinion of it. We cannot ask it nicely to remove the chaos, suffering, hardship, and uncertainty, nor can we will ourselves onto it with force in order to do so. Which is why loving what happens to you puts a new perspective on life.
Amor Fati. "Amor" (lit. "love"), "fati" (lit. "fate"). Is a Latin phrase that may be translated as "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". The phrase "amor fati" goes way back to ancient Greece and Epictetus who introduced us to the concept writing,
“Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.”
When we accept what happens to us, after understanding that certain things, particularly bad things, are outside our control, we are left with this: loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness and strength. But no stoic lesson is ever complete without Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor who later wrote,
"Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?" [Meditations]
It is why amor fati is the Stoic mindset that you take on for making the best out of anything that happens. Treating each and every moment, no matter how challenging, as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be okay with it, but love it and be better for it. So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel on your way.
As bestselling author Robert Greene has put it, we need to,
“Accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive.” [48 Laws of Power]
Marcus Aurelius Later wrote,
“To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.”
Amor Fati prompts us to say: We will put our energies and emotions and exertions only where they will have real impact. This is that place. We will tell ourselves: This is what I’ve got to do or put up with? Well, I might as well be happy about it.
In 1887, the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would later write,
“That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”
To accept the fate we were given is an important Stoic lesson. Nothing in your way will seen as a nuisance but as something that needed to be there, something we can learn from and improve on.
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