When I was a kid, my grandmother told me an old story that goes like this:

One morning in Baghdad, a merchant's servant walked into the marketplace to buy fruit. The square was thick with dust, traders clamoring to sell their product.

As the servant moved through the crowd, he suddenly froze, staring into the eyes of a woman he recognized as Death. She raised her hand toward him.

Terrified, the servant dropped his basket, ran from the marketplace, and burst into the merchant's home.

Visibly shaken, he begged the merchant for a horse.

"Sir, please lend me your horse. I just saw Death in the market. She looked at me with such menace. I must flee. I'll ride all the way to Samarra. There, Death will never find me."

The merchant, confused but compassionate, handed over the reins. The servant jumped into the saddle and galloped away toward Samarra.

That afternoon, the merchant himself went to the marketplace. There, he too saw Death standing calmly among the crowd. He approached her.

"Why did you threaten my servant this morning?" he asked calmly.

Death looked at the man, a puzzled expression on her face.

"I didn't threaten him," she replied. "I was just surprised to see him in Baghdad, because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."

The story is simple, but its lesson is profound:

The servant's fear of fate becomes the very thing that accelerates his arrival to it.

It's a reminder on the futility of our obsession with control. The ever-present human urge to run from discomfort. To escape uncertainty.

I found myself in that same vicious loop, until an ancient idea changed my life...

A Love of One's Fate

If you’ve been reading this newsletter (or any of my writing on social media), you’ll know that I am a firm believer in agency.

The belief that you are in control. That you always have the power to take an action to produce a desired effect.

In fact, a few weeks ago, I wrote this:

You are in control. Of everything. It's all on you. Nobody is coming to save you. But you are entirely capable of figuring it out. Of squeezing everything you want out of this life. You are at the wheel. Never let go.

But, as many readers were quick to point out, that’s not quite true. There are plenty of things in life that are decidedly out of your control.

And while I stand by the spirit of the notion—that you should always believe you are capable of taking action to change your circumstances or create desired outcomes—a literal interpretation may lead you to the same end as the servant in the opening story.

This is a lesson I wish I had learned earlier:

We crave control, but sometimes, to live a happy, fulfilled life, we have to let it go.

Enter Amor Fati—a Latin phrase that translates to a love of one’s fate.

The idea finds its roots in ancient Stoic philosophy.

Epictetus wrote:

"Do not seek for things to happen as you wish, but wish for things to happen as they do happen, and your life will flow well."

Centuries later, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote:

"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."

Contrary to an initial surface-level interpretation, Amor Fati is not a mantra of passive acceptance.

Amor Fati is a mantra of embrace and action: Embrace of the fate beyond your control, and action to shape that which is within it.

An Ancient Mantra For Modern Times

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on a plane headed home when the pilot came over the intercom to announce that we were being diverted due to a storm.

The gentleman next to me, wearing a suit and a few drinks deep, started losing his mind over the unfortunate news. He berated the flight attendants and generally behaved like a child for the remainder of the flight.

What's more, his negative response had ripple effects into everyone around him. It was contagious. The flight attendants became more guarded and terse. The other passengers grew frustrated. One person had infected everyone.

Sitting next to him, I was struck by the contrast in our responses.

Was I upset and annoyed about the diversion? Sure, of course. I wanted to get home to my family.

Could I do anything about it in that moment? Absolutely not.

So, I sat there, listened to music, and jotted down notes about a future newsletter (which you're reading right now).

You see, we live in an age obsessed with control.

We track everything about our lives. We obsess over efficiency. We optimize. We cling to the belief that certainty can be engineered in a lab.

Yet somehow, the more control we try to exert, the less peace we seem to feel.

We have more years of life, but do we have more life in our years?

That is why Amor Fati matters now more than ever. It's the natural counterweight to our modern culture of control. A daily reminder that peace, happiness, and fulfillment aren't found in resisting the river, but in flowing with it.

It's not a surrender of your agency, but a refinement of it. To avoid the futile attempts to control the uncontrollable, and instead concentrate on the actions that matter.

When chaos and uncertainty arrive, I try to focus on two questions:

1. What is within my control?

Create a clear mental separation between what's within your control and what's outside it.

If it's out of your control, it should be out of your mind, too.

2. What would make this a positive in the story of my life?

If you were writing the story of your life, what actions would make this chapter look like a positive with the benefit of hindsight?

When in doubt, zoom out.

Every moment of chaos and uncertainty creates an opportunity for growth. You may not control the events, but you always control the response.

You write the story.

The Quiet Truth of Amor Fati

I often think back on that old story my grandmother told me.

I spent most of my life trying to control the uncontrollable. Running from the uncertainty that life inevitably brings.

But in running from the uncontrollable, the only thing we truly escape is our own peace.

This is the quiet truth of Amor Fati:

Embrace what lies beyond your control—and act on that which is within it.

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