Amor Fati
I didn’t expect to make it through my twenties. I lived like an out-of-control juggernaut that somehow managed to avoid a fatal collision, barely, but it was only a matter of time before I hit something that would bring me to a final stop. It wouldn’t be pretty, but it would be welcome. I’d had enough. Thoughts of moving the process along would come but like the words from a song by Neutral Milk Hotel, I would dream of all the different ways to die but each one was a little more than I would dare to try.
In the meantime, I hung onto relationships like life rafts experiencing bitter disappointment when they didn’t save me. I dreamed of uncovering some hidden talent that would force people to love me. I frequently imagined being head-hunted by a talent scout who would recognize my amazing potential. He or she would walk up to me in a bar and say, “hey, I’ve been watching you, and you know that you would make a great…” Then I’d be respected. It never happened, so I drifted without purpose or hope waiting for the shitshow to end. There were mornings when I woke up crying because I was still alive.
If my younger self realized that I’d still be alive in my fifties, I would have been distraught. I’d feel like Sisyphus who was condemned to push a giant rock up a mountain for eternity. I would have been appalled to know that life doesn’t get any easier. I’d be shattered by the news that there is nobody out there who can save me and no relationship capable of fixing me.
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw how we humans are in a similar predicament to Sisyphus. Life is one challenge after another. Sisyphus could get his revenge on the gods by learning to love pushing his boulder up the mountain. Nietzsche calls this amor fati (to love our fate). It is by learning to accept and love the life we have that things get better (the more we can do this, the more wonderful our life becomes). This can be so hard to see when we are struggling with the pointlessness of trying to continue push our own rock up that mountain. I want to shout to the younger me, “it’s not about the f’ing rock, stop complaining about it, and look at the amazing view from the mountain.”
