Amor Fati: Love What Happens

This entry is part 15 of 41 in the series Journey Through Stoicism

There is no shortage of heartbreak right now. The world feels like it’s tipping toward violence, toward injustice, toward cruelty made official. It’s not just politics. It’s personal. It seems the headlines blur into lived reality: another ruling that strips away rights, a flood, another child gunned down, another lie spoken like truth. And still we’re told to carry on, to adapt, to stay resilient, as if resilience is just another task we can perform.

But what if resilience isn’t something we perform? What if it’s something we become through suffering, through struggle, through staying awake?

The Stoic tradition offers an idea both beautiful and bracing: Amor Fati, the love of fate. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “Not merely to bear what is necessary, still less to conceal it, but to love it.” Not just endurance. Not silence. Love.

That’s a radical invitation in a moment like this. It sounds almost absurd in the face of rising authoritarianism, deepening inequality, and a public discourse increasingly shaped by fear and manipulation. When Project 2025 looms in the background, when transgender rights are being stripped in state after state, when books are banned and fundamental freedoms put up for debate, how can anyone speak of loving what is?

But Stoicism doesn’t ask us to love injustice. It teaches us to face reality without illusion, and to choose how we respond. Amor Fati is not submission. It’s resistance by clarity. It’s the refusal to let what is hard or unjust deform us into bitterness or apathy. It means claiming the raw material of our lives, even the painful parts, as something that belongs to us. Not because everything is good, but because everything can be used for good.

That kind of thinking might seem distant or abstract, but sometimes it shows up in the ordinary rhythm of a conversation. On a recent Friday morning, I spoke with Rev. Justin LaRosa, one of the associate pastors at my church. He was preaching that Sunday as part of a series on famous prayers, and his assignment was the Serenity Prayer.

You know the one.

In that short prayer is a roadmap, not so different from Amor Fati. Serenity in the face of fate. Courage to act when action is possible. Wisdom to live in the space between. Justin, in his sermon (punctuated with literal thunder), described it this way: “What if peace comes from knowing when to act and when to surrender? The Serenity Prayer beautifully balances personal agency, humble surrender, and keen discernment, making it one of the most repeated prayers of our time.”

This isn’t passive acceptance. It’s active discernment. And it’s one of the most challenging disciplines we’re ever asked to learn. Because sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s ours to fight and what’s ours to carry. Sometimes we get it wrong. However, the effort, the turning toward life with courage and humility, is where the real work lies.

For the Stoics, this was a daily practice. Epictetus, who lived with physical disability and slavery, taught that we can’t always choose our circumstances, but we always choose our response. Seneca, navigating political violence and forced death, wrote of enduring misfortune with dignity. And Marcus Aurelius, emperor and philosopher, buried his own children while trying to govern a fracturing empire. These were not lives of leisure. But they were intentional. They refused to waste their suffering.

And that’s what Amor Fati asks of us. Not to pretend. Not to spiritualize cruelty or gloss over injustice. But to recognize even difficulty as part of our becoming. To say, “This moment, as it is, is mine to meet.”

That includes the political moment we’re living in. In an earlier essay, Cruelty as Governance, I wrote about how national policies can normalize dehumanization. When cruelty becomes routine, compassion becomes rebellion. Choosing to care, and continuing to do so, is no small thing. It’s the kind of courage the Serenity Prayer names. The courage to keep speaking the truth. The courage to keep showing up.

But it also includes the personal moment we’re living in. I won’t pretend everything in my own life is smooth or certain. I have questions without answers, plans in flux, and mornings when energy runs low. But I’m not overwhelmed. I’m not lost. I’m leaning more intentionally into what matters. I’ve been walking, reflecting, journaling, and doing the kind of inner work that doesn’t fix everything, but helps me stay steady.

So when I say Amor Fati, I’m not saying I love every problem. I’m saying I love the life I’ve been given enough to keep engaging it, even when it’s frustrating or unclear. I’m saying I don’t want to miss the lessons that live inside difficulty.

And in that way, the Stoic and Christian paths overlap again. Grace, like fate, doesn’t always come wrapped in comfort. Sometimes it comes through struggle. Through change. Through the fire. We don’t get to skip the cross on our way to resurrection. But we do get to carry something with us through it, a sense of purpose, a clarity of soul, a hope that defies the evidence.

In another piece, “Can’t Defeat Sunrise or Hope,” I wrote that hope isn’t the same as optimism. It’s not naive. It’s the refusal to give up on what’s possible. It’s the belief that what we do matters, even when uncertain. That’s why I keep writing. Why I keep organizing, it’s why the Serenity Prayer still moves me. Why Amor Fati still holds power. Because both remind me that I don’t have to solve everything. I just have to be faithful to the piece that’s mine.

So I say this again, not as a final answer, but as a working truth:

If this is the life I’ve been given, this complicated, wounded, beautiful, aching, unfinished life, then I will not wait for perfect conditions to begin living it.

I will love what happens, not because everything is good, but because even the hard things can shape me into someone good.

• And in that, there is serenity.
• And in that, there is courage.
• And in that, there just might be wisdom.