Amor Fati and my love-hate relationship with Fate and Karma
Amor Fati = Latin for “Love of fate”
I first read this term in Ryan Holiday’s book Obstacle is the Way
I used to hate the word Fate.
As someone born in India, Fate or the other word used for it Karma, was intrinsic to my development.
Whenever things went ‘bad,’ I was told: “It’s your karma, learn to accept it.”
Karma seemed like a way to shift blame to me — either current actions or past lives burden.
Karma was a bad word.
Fate easily turned fatalism. Accept it, do nothing, bear the misery and get on.
And then, Terminator 2 happened.
Sarah Connor with her knife inscribes “No Fate” on the wooden bench and goes away to bust the machines on her own.
I seared those words in my brain with a mental welding flame.
If Karma was a wall, I was the battering ram.
Soon I was banging my head into all obstacles, real and perceived.
Carpe Diem was my motto.
I would move from one victorious struggle to another. There was a fire burning in me.
Literally.
In 2008, I was diagnosed with severe hiatus hernia, and the doc said: “Your lifestyle has busted your digestive system and you have a month to come under the knife.”
Defiantly I asked, “Or what?”
“Fatal.” said the surgeon staring back at my defiance
The wall had just got bigger, and my head hurt.
I took a second and third opinion, and the verdict was the same.
But, everyone said one thing which was common “If you change your lifestyle, it will not recur again.”
I grabbed on to that statement like a drowning man to a branch.
I had another wall now. But this one I wanted to scale not break through.
Dylan Thomas was whispering in my ears
“Do not go gentle into that good night
Rage, Rage against the Dying Light”
I was weighing 200 pounds and almost 50% overweight. I shifted my lifestyle drastically. My meals looked like I was living in the jungle with all greens and yellows on the plate. I signed up for a half marathon.
Ten months later, I finished the half marathon and was weighing 140 pounds.
“No fatal, No fate,” I said to myself.
Little did I know I was still fighting, only the battle had shifted.
In 2010, I decided to move from a secure corporate job into an entrepreneurial minefield.
I also started trading the financial markets as an active trader. And the battering ram came out again.
Dennis Shull in her book Market Mind Games says that traders play out their childhood and adolescent psychological games in the market.
And then they lose.
She was writing about me, at least that is how I felt.
By 2012, I was a nervous wreck. My profit and loss statement was like a giant roller coaster, and I was only going down mentally. I knew that 95% traders esp retail failed and I was going to beat that statistic.
I did not.
I signed up for professional Trader certification and finally learned a major life lesson:
Swim with the tide, go with the flow.
I had defined Fate as a wall which I needed to break down.
Now, I looked at it as a river whose course I needed to navigate.
I did a year long Teachers Training certification in Yoga and got introduced to Karma Yoga.
Damn that Karma again. But, this time I understood for what it was.
Karma means any thought, action or words which one did.
Karma theory says that as long as one lived in a world of karma, one has to bear the consequences.
Karma Yoga means
Accept the situation for what it is i.e. see it clearly and not with your prejudices and limiting beliefs
Do your work with excellence, i.e. just because you cannot control, it does not mean you do a shoddy job. Give your best!
Excellent work will give results. Surrender the results or fruits to God or Higher reality i.e. recognize it was not just me but others incl the elements played their role in getting the results
Now, it started making sense.
I struggled with the last point esp when one gets applauded or praised for exceptional work, but over time, I have learned the benefits of detachment.
Friedrich Nietzsche said
“My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not in the future, not in the past, not for all eternity. Not only to endure what is necessary, still less to conceal it — all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity — but to love it…”
Amor fati: accept the fate for what it is
Karma Yoga: accept the situation and do your best
All my life I looked at Karma as a wily adversary who I needed to outfox.
No more.
Now it feels like Karma is a friend-philosopher who was always on the journey with me, guiding me and beckoning me to rise above my lower self to my highest potential.
Now at every turn, I await, with welcoming arms, for mon amour, my fate!
Back to You?
What is your relation to Fate? to Karma? Do share
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