Amor fati

Amor fati (lit. 'love of fate') is a Latin phrase that may be translated as 'love of fate' or 'love of one's fate'. It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. Moreover, amor fati is characterized by an acceptance of the events or situations that occur in one's life.”The first question is by no means whether we are content with ourselves, but whether we are content with anything at all. If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event—and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.”'Winter brings the cold and we must shiver; summer brings back the heat and we have to swelter. Bad weather tries the health and we have to be ill. Somewhere or other we are going to have encounters with wild beasts, and with , too, – more dangerous than all these beasts. Floods will rob us of one thing, fire of another. These are conditions of our existence which we cannot change. What we can do is adopt a noble spirit, such a spirit as befits a good , so that we may bear up bravely under all that fortune sends us and bring our wills into tune with nature’s; reversals, after all, are the means by which nature regulates this visible realm of hers; clear skies follow cloudy; after the calm comes the storm; the winds take turns to blow; day succeeds night; while part of the heavens is in the ascendant, another is sinking. It is by means of opposites that eternity endures.I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.'All that is in accord with you is in accord with me, O World! Nothing which occurs at the right time for you comes too soon or too late for me. All that your seasons produce, O Nature, is fruit for me. It is from you that all things come: all things are within you, and all things move toward you.' — as quoted in Hadot (1998), p. 143. Amor fati (lit. 'love of fate') is a Latin phrase that may be translated as 'love of fate' or 'love of one's fate'. It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good or, at the very least, necessary. Moreover, amor fati is characterized by an acceptance of the events or situations that occur in one's life. This acceptance does not necessarily preclude an attempt at change or improvement, but rather, it can be seen to be along the lines of what Friedrich Nietzsche apparently means by the concept of 'eternal recurrence': a thought experiment that ultimately demands both an affirmation of our lives—an affirmation not only of our moments of joy but all of our inextricably linked moments of pain, suffering, and loss, as well—and an acceptance of our lives in their entirety, such that we not only could live exactly the same lives, in all of their infinitely minute detail, over and over for all eternity, but would “long for nothing more fervently than for this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal”. The concept of amor fati has been linked to Epictetus. It has also been linked to the writings of Marcus Aurelius, who did not use the words (he wrote in Greek, not Latin).