Sunday, July 14, 2019

Amor Fati: Loving One's Fate

 

I've been debilitated by my current incompetencies and failures. Every time I start writing a draft or continue one of my stories, morbid thoughts will flood my mind, sweeping away my will and creative thoughts in the process. You will fail, this will fail, that will fail, just like everything that you've done a lot of times before. You'll never be able to finish writing this, or even if you finish that, nobody will like it.

Those negative thoughts will invade my mind day and night. And once my passion flares, no sooner it will flicker out and disappear.

I've been practicing stoicism for years. It helped me manage my anger issues and shallow personality. I can't say that I'm perfectly stoic but at least I'm sure that my behavior is way better than before.But still, I'm still afraid of the future. Of the outcomes. Until I discovered the term amor fati.

Friedrich Nietzsche considered amor fati as one of the greatest formula for human greatness. He said, “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.”

It is also important to note that Nietzsche was being tortured by the idea of Eternal Recurrence. It means that events will recur again, so do our fate and lives and their interconnecting pain and joys. He believed that it is is the most burdensome thoughts, the idea that there's no end to all of our earthly sufferings. He thought that accepting and loving one's fate is the only way to ease this burdensome thoughts.

We may not be burdened by these overwhelming thoughts; instead, we may bothered of our future failures. Amor fati means accepting whatever happens. The most important thing is to do our best in the present moment and accept whatever will be the outcome.

Epictitus, a former slave, tormented day by day, best said, “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.”


"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."  - Nietzsche


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