The Formula for Human Greatness
“That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backwards, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it….but love it.”
The Stoics
were not only familiar with this attitude but they embraced it. Two
thousand years ago, writing in his own personal journal which would
become known as Meditations, Emperor Marcus Aurelius would say:
“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.”
Another Stoic, Epictetus, who as a crippled slave has faced adversity after adversity, echoed the same:
“Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to; rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens: then you will be happy.”
It is why amor fati
is the Stoic mindset that you take on for making the best out of
anything that happens: Treating each and every moment — no matter how
challenging — as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not only be
okay with it, but love it and be better for it. So that like oxygen to a
fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential.
When
we accept what happens to us, after understanding that certain
things — particularly bad things — are outside our control, we are left
with this: loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing
cheerfulness and strength. As bestselling author Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power, Mastery)
has put it, we need to “accept the fact that all events occur for a
reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as
positive.”
Amor Fati
prompts us to say: We will put our energies and emotions and exertions
only where they will have real impact. This is that place. We will tell
ourselves: This is what I’ve got to do or put up with? Well, I might as
well be happy about it.
The goal is:
Not: I’m okay with this.
Not: I think I feel good about this.
But: I
feel great about it. Because if it happened, then it was meant to
happen, and I am glad that it did when it did. I am going to make the
best of it.
And proceed to do exactly that.
If the event must occur, amor fati is the response.
Yes,
it’s a little unnatural to love things we never wanted to happen in the
first place. But what other, worse adversities might this one be saving
us from? What might we learn from this unchosen experience? What good,
equally unexpected events might result from it? We know that in
retrospect we often look back at difficult times fondly, almost
wistfully, so we might as well feel that now.
That
is not to say that the good will always outweigh the bad. Still,
embrace all of it. Don’t wish for it to be any different. You don’t have
to like it to work with it — to use it to your advantage. Amor fati — a love of what happens. Because that’s your only option.
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