‘If only I had said something different.’
‘What if people judge me?’
‘How could something so terrible happen to me?’
These are all common phrases that regularly enter the human mind. These are thoughts which only have power once we fail to recognize that they are things outside of our control. Regret, fear and angst take over and rationality is squashed beneath an array of negative thought and emotion. amor fati, or ‘love of one’s fate’ is one tool which can be utilised to overcome such negative thinking.
The philosophical roots of amor fati lie in Stoicism, and accepting life as it is, not wishing how it should be is a key tenet of the Stoic philosophy. Seneca the Younger once stated that ‘fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.’ How you react to things is the crucial component for making amor fati useful. If one is unable to come to terms with those things which we cannot control, the result is only prolonged suffering.
amor fati simply means a love of one’s fate, but both of these words carry with them a substantial amount of weight. I will not spend long discussing what these terms could mean or how they could be interpreted, but this is clear at the very least: that there is a large gap between love and acceptance, and that fate is best viewed as necessity. I will now discuss these two points in greater depth.
First, to bear something and accept it as necessary is far less difficult to do than to love what is necessary. At times it seems barely possible to bear what is necessary, let alone love it. There are some events in life which it would seem are impossible to love, let alone accept. The death of one’s parents, friends or loved one seems like one of these circumstances. How can I love something so tragic? One must bear it, there is no other option, but to love it may seem a step too far and it may be that Nietzsche is expecting something from us that is too paradoxical-to love that which is utterly and completely negative. Yet even in these times of tragedy there are things that come from them. The moments of difficultly, rejection or tragedy are most often the defining moments in an individual’s life. They shape an individual and can be the catalyst for great change.
Freud wrote that the death of a man’s father is ‘the most important event, the more heart-breaking and poignant loss in a man’s life.’ The most tragic event in a man’s life is also held to be the most important. This is key in revealing the necessary role of suffering in human life. Those events which cause the most pain can be at the same time the most meaningful, or at the very least the moments which exact the most change
It can be these moments that make or break a person. amor fati determines that such events will make a person, rather than break them. It is, therefore, ultimately a response to the existence of suffering.
It may be unrealistic to expect people to love things which seem utterly and undeniably negative, but at the very least an individual can (and must) bear these things, recognizing the necessary part they play in human existence. When discussing his stroke with Ryan Holiday (founder of The Daily Stoic), Robert Greene (author of The 48 Laws Of Power) said that he would be lying if he said he loved his stroke, but that he has certainly accepted it and it has made him a better person as a result. That is all one can strive to do in such a situation, but the result of turning one’s mind away from wanting things to be different and towards accepting how things are can, according to both Nietzschean and Stoic philosophy, result in life filled with less unnecessary suffering. The doubting thoughts will likely remain, but how one reacts to them is all that changes, and it is that which ultimately counts.
The main assumption therefore that undergirds amor fati is to maintain that suffering is not only something that is necessary but something that is good. Is it necessary to suffer? Yes. Good-you cannot change this. Suffering is inevitable. Embrace it. amor fati is not merely accepting this inevitability but welcoming it with open arms. ‘Did you make mistakes in the past?’ Yes. Good-learn from them. Use them to become a better individual. That is what Nietzsche meant when he spoke of becoming a yes-sayer. It sometimes means saying yes to those things which we would instinctively say no to. We know it is better for us to say yes to them, and so we must work to train ourselves to do this.
These phrases can then be extended to specific scenarios which are under one’s control. ‘Must I suffer to attain X’ If yes, good. ‘Can I do anything to change this tragic or stressful event?’ If not, embrace it. All you can do is change your mind. Accepting unpreventable tragedy now is only delaying the inevitable. As I mentioned briefly at the beginning, there will come a point at which you must accept it, otherwise you are merely prolonging your suffering. amor fati maintains that there is no better reaction to hardship than open and active acceptance. It is simply a psychological hack in order to relieve oneself of mental suffering that is unnecessary. The best way to do this is to face hardship face on with open arms.
Second, it is best to view love of fate as love of necessity. A key reason being that there is an obvious tension between the relationship of amor fati and free will. If fate is a real thing then how can I be free? By viewing ‘fate’ as necessity this debate of fate and free will is put aside.
The next step is then defining ‘necessity’, a task which is aided by Epictetus’ statement that there are some things within our control and some things which are not. Necessity is all that which is not in our control. The first step, he would say, is to acknowledge what cannot be changed. Once this has been established, there is no utility in doing anything other than loving (or at the very least accepting) those things which cannot be changed. Anything else will necessarily fail to bring mental tranquillity. Genuine acceptance seems to be the first phase in moving towards a relinquishing of unnecessary mental suffering.
There are not many things that you can genuinely control. In fact, the only thing that is realistically in one’s own control is one’s own mind. It is true that even one’s mind can be a difficult thing to control, but it does at the very least has the potential to be within one’s control. There is a whole other debate to be had about the nature of controlling one’s own mind, and I’m sure Sigmund Freud has a lot to say about this and the role of the subconscious, but that is something for another discussion. Many, in fact most, of the events that occur in our lives will not be in our control. They either appear to us as obstacles to be fought against and resented, or obstacles to be climbed over, to be used as a weapon for building strength of character. How these things seem is ultimately up to us, since the influence one has over external events is incredibly limited.
amor fati is a simple concept, but is actually something rather difficult to implement into one’s life effectively. It means training oneself to overcome the instinct to yearn for unchangeable things to be better, to avoid looking back with regret and refrain from moving forward with anxiety. These are not easily done, as Nietzsche recognized. He did not declare that he was a yes-sayer but that he hoped he would become one. It is something that an individual becomes, because the human condition is such that the usual reaction to events is not aligned with amor fati. One can only strive, therefore, to overcome oneself and forge a newly trained mind and character which handles difficult situations with a new outlook.
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