Come What May, Love of Fate (Amor Fati)
I felt my old heart stir and tears well up in my eyes as I embraced this beautiful niece of mine, for the first time, just before her twenty-ninth birthday.
My brother had not fared must better in terms of connection with his daughter. She’d gone to see him a couple of years ago, just before he died. This was their only contact since she was a baby. Yes, it’s complicated!
This beautiful, slender, elegant, vibrant and intelligent young woman had certainly not had a fairytale start to life.
Her mother, who possessed all the above attributes, and then some, had briefly come into my brother’s life in what would be a whirlwind, passionate affair. She was a woman who, by her very presence, demanded attention. One of those people who could light up any room she entered. Her stunning Jamaican beauty, charm, wit, and charisma were second to none.
Little did those of us know who gazed on in awe, that the life ahead of this larger-than-life woman would be so tragic.
The flicker of pain in my nieces’ eyes as she spoke about her mother was, I suspect, just a glimpse of much deeper wounds. She had heard stories about the dynamic, irresistible woman that was her mum. But by the time she was school age, her mother had suffered a terrible accident and was confined to a wheelchair.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, her mental health also seriously declined, to a point where she never recovered physically or mentally.
The heartbreaking story of her mother moved me deeply. But I was in absolute awe at the remarkable resilience of my young niece. This young woman had not only survived a childhood that no one would put the hand up for, she was a thriving example of strength, courage, and character built out of adversity.
The ancient Greeks were big on character building. Forget the glitz and the glamor, comrades, especially for the Stoics, character is all that matters. The sort of character that gets forged in the fire of hard knocks.
Much later, Nietzsche, probably taking his cue from the Stoics, developed a maxim for human flourishing, “Love of Fate” (Amor Fati).
This philosophy of life is not for the fainthearted. Essentially, it is the embrace without fear or favor of whatever life throws our way. The highs and the lows, the beauty and sorrow, and the sometimes-rampaging ruin. A practicing Stoic must bend before all this and embrace it with the same love. This is their vital formula for character-building in pursuit of the good life.
Epictetus, probably my favorite Stoic, was a crippled slave who knew all about adversity. He left us with this enduring “love of fate” gem to ponder when life’s inescapable curve balls come out of nowhere:
Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that life happens the way it happens, then you will be happy. — Epictetus
I don’t know if by niece has ever turned her sharp mind to the study of the Greeks. But damn, comrades, she stands beautiful and tall and bends it like Stoic.
– Cormac Stagg, author of The Quest for a Humble Heart