The mistake cost us time. The bankruptcy cost a fortune. Those years we spent drinking or dicking around? We'll never get back what we lost…we're still digging ourselves out of that mess. The fallout from the pandemic, this nightmare of a work situation we're stuck with, the problems big and small that life gives us?
They are not cheap. They are not free.
They are also not without their benefits either. As we've said before, it's in struggling and dealing with these problems that we've discovered things about our capacities—indeed, we've had to increase our capacity in order to deal with them. Adversity costs us, sure, but it also gives us more of ourselves. It unlocks something in us that was not reachable in ordinary circumstances, that we didn't know was there.
When the Stoics practiced amor fati, it was not the failure or the loss or the physical pain that they loved. That would be ridiculous. No, they were embracing who they could be in response to it. They were embracing what they would become because of it. They were embracing the new parts of themselves—and of relationships and life itself—that they were given as a result of it.
We had something taken from us by fate, but by turning towards it, by facing it and struggling with it, we found something too. We found out who we really were, which was someone greater and stronger than we ever could have imagined.
P.S. Our Amor Fati medallion serves as a tangible reminder to not just accept, but to love your fate—including the struggles that make you stronger. Hold this coin tight when you feel life throws more at you than you could handle and remember: your challenges aren't just costs, they're investments in who you're becoming.
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