Amor fati

I got a medallion recently with the words "Amor Fati" engraved on it. It's Latin for "a love of fate." On the other side it says, "Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less conceal it... but love it."

It is a nice physical reminder of my new attitude toward life, which is one of acceptance. Acceptance of what life has in store for me. Acceptance of the world as it is, and of other people as they are. And acceptance of myself -- my faults and imperfections; my stress and anxiety; my grief and guilt; my love and hope.

Things cannot be any different than they are. Is this fate; is everything predestined? Are we not in control -- do our actions not matter? Of course, our actions matter. Every action we take creates a branch in reality -- a particular universe in the infinite multiverse. (Yes, I think the universe -- the multiverse -- works exactly as described in Everything Everywhere All at Once.) We choose the reality we live in with our actions. But how things beyond our control will turn out -- that we cannot know. We can influence those things, but we cannot determine them. And if we cannot control them, why should we stress over them? The best we can do to keep our sanity is accept the outcome. 

That does not mean that we should stop caring. We should love with all our hearts because nothing else matters in life. We should grieve when we lose loved ones. We should constantly try and do better next time than we did last time. Always strive to make the world a better place. But we should embrace what fate has in store for us with open arms. For if we do not, we will never find peace.

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Remains of the Day is about regret; of what happens to someone after a life of what, retrospectively, turned out to be numerous bad decisions. But the protagonist Stevens, who should evidently be full of regret, refuses to be consumed by it. Poignantly, at one point, he wonders, "But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way."

We cannot know what fate has in store for us. But we are not in control of that. What we are in control of is how we respond. And we should respond like the land responds to the sea. By letting the waves wash over us. 

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