Alexandersmap

    Tag: Amor Fati

    • Rejoice In This Moment

      “Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.” – Michel de Montaigne

      “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 . . . but love it.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (borrowed from Ryan Holiday)

      “Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.” – Homer, The Odyssey

      One thing that’s impressed me over the last three months is the resilience and grace of so many people facing adversity.  Is the world unfair?  Yes, of course it is, but that doesn’t mean we have to be bitter about where we are in this moment.  Embrace the suck, love the moment and learn from it.  And really, it doesn’t all suck, does it?  There’s so much good happening in every moment – change the focus of your internal lens and you’ll see it more clearly.

      The Homer quote above has stuck in my head since I read The Odyssey at the age of 19.  It’s sitting on a shelf waiting patiently for me to come back to read again like Penelope waiting for Odysseus to stop pissing off the gods and get home already.  Anyway, it’s come in handy over the years, right up there with “this too shall pass” on my list of phrases I say to myself when things get challenging.  And let’s face it, things are challenging at the moment.  But how we react to it is more important than what we’re reacting to.  Amor fati: love of fate, seems to have worked for the stoics, for George Washington, Friedrich Nietzsche and countless others over the centuries, and it will work for us too.

      I’ve been guilty of complaining about things a bit too much, and I’m working to change that little character flaw.  If I’ve learned anything, it’s that complaining just fuels the suck.  It all ends badly for all of us, or it all ends as it should for all of us; it’s all a state of mind either way.  Rejoice in what you can control, forget what is beyond you, and love the moment you’re in.  For this moment, even if it’s not what we might want, is the only moment we have.  This, and we, too shall pass.  Rejoice in this moment.

    • Living Heartily

      “I’m not the river
      that powerful presence.
      And I’m not the black oak tree
      which is patience personified.
      And I’m not redbird
      who is a brief life heartily enjoyed.
      Nor am I mud nor rock nor sand
      which is holding everything together.
      No, I am none of these meaningful things, not yet.      ”
      – Mary Oliver, I’m Not The River

      I walked outside barefoot to a chorus of woodland song early this morning. Robins and cardinals and even those clever rascals the crows were all singing to each other at the edge of the woods where humans begin. Birds don’t give a thought to human worries about COVID-19 or mortgage payments or how many steps show up on your watch. No, they go on living heartily, not thinking about the briefness of the duration but working hard to ensure this particular moment isn’t their last.

      It’s Spring in New England. The world wakes up similarly to the way it woke up yesterday, but there’s a slight shift in attitude. The mild winter and a pandemic cancelling everything normal in life and Mookie Betts dumped for money and Tom Brady moving on all make this Spring feel different from any other in my memory, but walking out into the morning chorus you see it’s all the stories we tell ourselves. We’re all just living this brief moment and trying to live another day. Stoicism offers a guide to living more powerfully.  To accept fate (Amor Fati) and our ultimate fate (Memento Mori), and to apply this knowledge, this understanding of the world, to embrace every moment.

      “It’s time you realized that you have something in you more powerful and miraculous than the things that affect you and make you dance like a puppet.” – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      I’m working on things just as we all are. Holding things and people together, working to be patient with this world around me, working on small, daily improvement. Living heartily might seem a challenge right now, but it’s more important than ever. I’d think it was a lot more challenging a hundred or a thousand years ago. No, we live in relative comfort compared to those before us. They’d surely laugh at the things we call hardship. We can hold it all together and get beyond this too. Walking barefoot out to greet this first day of Spring and embrace the chorus seems a good first step. But there’s so much more to do with this day, isn’t there?