Amor Fati

In the last week I've found myself in two situations where I had to explain that despite all the crap I've been through, I wouldn't change a thing. That I love who I am, and I'm the product of everything I've lived, hence, I shall love all that past shit as much as I love past sunshine and rainbows.

Amor fati is a Latin phrase that means "love of fate", or "love of one's fate". The concept is rooted in the Stoic philosophy, with people often linking it to Epictetus and/or Marcus Aurelius. The concept was later embraced by Nietzsche, who through his idea of eternal recurrence, wished to live the same life over and over again, exactly as it happened.

The basic idea is: don't just accept what happens to you. Love it.

And this is where it gets tricky. Accepting is easy. We've been trained religiously and socially, especially in Latin America, to accept and be grateful. And really, we have no choice. Reality has this unbeaten track of existing despite its approval rating.

I can curse the deadly heat in my town every day, every hour. The sun still doesn't care. Life rarely is fair. Acceptance is practical.

But love feels like an insane ask.

Am I supposed to love my years of insecurity and low self-esteem? My lifelong dysthymia, my crippling anxiety? The relationships that ended? That time I slipped and fell, spectacularly, in front of half the school outside of the library?

Well, yes.

The idea behind amor fati, as I said before, is simple. There's no plot twist here. No "everything happens for a reason". It's just that we are the sum of everything that happened to us. Remove one event, one heartbreak, one humiliation, one lucky break and you don't get the version of me sitting here writing this.You don't get the version of you reading it, either.

One of the core Stoic principles is the separation between what's under our control and what isn't. And there's nothing less negotiable than the past. There aren't alternate realities. There aren't alternate versions of ourselves.

So, yes. I would choose everything again, not because it was pleasant, not because it was fair, but because it was mine. It is mine.

A few years ago I did this to remind me to love my own fate.

The good parts. The embarrassing parts. The painful parts. The parts I'd never choose to repeat. I love them still.

Amor fati.