Today’s Stoic...Amor Fati or “A Love of Fate.”

If Memento Mori is there to remind us of how little time we have, how temporary our existence can be—then what do we have to remind us of how powerful we can be, what we can draw on even in the face of events completely outside our control? It’s another Latin phrase embodied and practiced by the Stoics: Amor Fati or “a love of fate.” Friedrich Nietzsche said that amor fati was his formula for 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.” Marcus Aurelius would say: “A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.” And it would be the great Robert Greene (48 Laws of Power, Mastery) who would make the connection between these brilliant ideas. Robert describes Amor Fati as a power “so immense that it’s almost hard to fathom. You feel that everything happens for a purpose, and that it is up to you to make this purpose something positive and active.”