Amor Fati
“Wind extinguishes a candle and energizes fire. Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos: you want to use them, not hide from them.”- Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
No, I am not gonna read your palm or gaze at your star sign to tell you your future. But by the end of this article, you should be able to see the future, at least yours.
It was one of those seminars I had gone into. The “successful” guy on the stage said, “You must create your future.” My reaction was a BIG, “OooooK”. But that’s the thing you can only talk about on the stage. It’s just a facade to hype the audience.
I agree with the general theme of creating your future, but not naively.
You have control but, TO A CERTAIN EXTENT.
Fate is not a course of action in the past, present, or future tense. It is the certainty of a course of action. Here I am not claiming if fate does or does not exist. Here we are observing the model of an entity called fate.
Now even if you and I conclude the essence, the next question is, well how do I benefit from it? what does it have to do with me?
let’s hear it from Nietzsche:
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence’”
Would you take this course again? Would you really take this course again?
The answer to Nietzsche’s question must unquestionably be “YES.”
This is an excellent model to apply in our lives. You and I should be comfortable with this repetition of actions and consequences. Because of this accountability factors into our lives.
Yes, we do have our individual choice and preferences. But there is a reaction and consequences following it.
Nassim Taleb’s starting argument is the world is complex, we cannot possibly try to understand its complexity. Instead of cowering in despair of this realization, Nassim says, “We must accept, love, and learn to thrive in it: Amor Fati.”
Surely you cannot change your past and the origin story, surely the future is full of uncertainty. The idea does not propose an ideal acceptance or an ignorant action.
Rather, Amor Fati represents love for your fate.
Accept and prepare.
In order to foresee someone's future, “the current future”, Look at the books he reads, the people/voices he surrounds with, the activities he invests his time in, and the words he uses in general conversation.
