Amor Fati — To Love One’s Fate

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher who is now considered one of the great thinkers of history. That wasn’t his life experience, however, as he was living it. He left academics to pursue his own writing, finding that most people of his time had little to no use for his work. He struggled with women, with his family, with work, and with the experience of life itself. He spent a great deal of his time discussing why one should strive for the life one desires, but he also had plenty of struggles along the way. This led him to a practice that would positively shape his capacity for moving forward. He began a meditation by asking how he could love his fate.

The question was, “what if you were to live this exact life over and over again in an endless loop?” In asking that question about our own lives, would it change the fate we chose? Would it allow us to understand the value of the struggles? Would it change anything? Those were the types of questions spurred on by Nietzsche’s question. The objective was to let go of regrets from our past and see our past mistakes as learning mechanisms for a better life. We would let go of focusing on what went wrong and learn to see that both the good and the bad held a place in shaping us. The exercise also helped Nietzsche embrace that he had lived the life of his choosing. After all, in retrospect, he could see that every outcome was simply the result of a choice made. Instead of being angry, he could love the freedom of being able to make a choice in any given situation moving forward.

Our lives are likely much better than we have given them credit for being. I am confident we have all made poor choices. I am also confident that poor choices are sometimes required to have the intelligence to make better choices next time. What can you do today to embrace the life you have as it is? Can you look back through this life, imagining that you will live that life over again, and then embrace that your fate moving forward is truly in your hands? Can you imagine that the life you are destined to relive over and over again can be shaped beginning now? Take the pen. You are the authority, the author of your story moving forward. Write a life that you would be proud to live again and again.