Amor Fati (for the love of fate)

Learning to love what happens, even when it doesn’t make sense

As I am packing away my stuff today, preparing to put them away in storage and at the same time getting ready for a year on the road, I found myself going through old memorabilia I’ve accumulated over the years.

A framed photograph of the hotel I first worked in Vancouver, with a signed dedication from my old co-workers. That hotel closed and turned into a condo back in 2010, somewhere in the aftermath of a recession.

An old name tag from when I was first promoted at a provincial hospital. An old license plate. A graduation photo of my son. Hospital records from when I gave birth to my daughter. A photo of me and my ex-best friend during a Chippendales post-show.

An old scarf from when I was a flight attendant. A mini Eiffel Tower from my first trip to Paris with my ex-husband. Old IDs. A necklace from my first luau in Hawaii. Fridge magnets and trinkets from places I’ve been.

All of it sitting in a medium-sized box that I haven’t opened in a long time. It’s strange how something can feel so small in your hands and yet hold entire versions of your life inside it. This brought back so many memories as I am, once again, in transition to another chapter.

These things, maybe insignificant to other people, hold something for me. Not just the memory itself, but who I was, and who I was with, in those moments.

That photo of me and my ex-best friend.

I remember that trip. Vegas. It was the first time we travelled just the two of us, and it was full of ups and downs.

We went to our first pool party where everyone looked like they had just stepped out of a magazine cover. We got pulled into a timeshare presentation just to get free Cirque du Soleil tickets, and we both ended up falling asleep because we were so tired from the pool party.

After the Chippendales show, we were starving, but she only wanted soup and salad because she was on a diet. I was in 5-inch heels, exhausted, and honestly ready to fight her or anyone standing between me and a burger and fries. She ended up giving in, and I finally got my burger and fries. Everything felt right again, and we were back to laughing and talking about the highlights of the show.

At that time, I never thought we would have a falling out just a few years later.

It just took one moment to end it. Or maybe it was a lot of small moments leading up to it. And just to be clear, nobody is the villain here. Maybe we just grew into different versions of ourselves. Maybe our timelines needed to part ways. Maybe the direction of our lives no longer matched. Looking back, it was painful, yes, but I would be a hypocrite not to say that there were good years too.

We’ve known each other since elementary. Most of high school. The same university. We stayed in touch long after. There was a whole life there before the ending.

And this got me thinking, not only about friendship, but about everything I’ve left behind. Some relationships. The hotel job. The hospital job. The airline job. Roles that I once loved, mostly because of the people and the friendships that came with them. I left because they no longer fit the life I was growing into. And yet, I still keep in touch with a handful of those people to this day.

I think before, I used to look at things like this in a very simple way. If it didn’t last, then something must have gone wrong. Like the ending somehow cancels out everything that came before it. But reality is, life isn’t that clean. It’s not just good or bad, right or wrong. We are human. A little messy. A little flawed. Most of us are just trying to figure things out as we go.

And going through this box now, nothing in here feels like a mistake. Not even the painful parts. The falling out, the heartbreaks, the disappointments. If anything, I can see more clearly now how each of these moments, these people, these versions of my life shaped me in ways I didn’t fully understand then, and maybe never fully will.

Not in a neat, “everything happens for a reason” kind of way. If you know me, you know how I hate that phrase. Life doesn’t work that neatly. But more like… this happened. And because it happened, I know myself better now.

I think this is something I’ve been circling around even when I was writing The Magic of Not Knowing. That uncertainty is not something you solve, it’s something you live through. And sometimes, something you learn to trust, even when you don’t fully understand where it’s leading you.

Looking at this box, I’m not trying to rewrite anything. Not the endings. Not the misunderstandings. Not even the parts that hurt. There is nothing here that I would undo. Which is a strange thing to admit. Because if you had asked me a year ago, I probably would have said otherwise. It doesn’t mean I would want to go through all of it again, but it does mean I can look at it now without wishing it had been different.

Maybe that’s what it means to love your fate. Amor fati.

Amor fati. A Latin phrase that translates to “love of fate.” But it’s more than just accepting what happens. It’s not just saying, “it is what it is” and moving on. It’s choosing, in some way, to be on the same side as your life. To see everything that happens, the good, the painful, the confusing, not as something working against you, but something that is shaping you.

Not passively enduring it, but learning to work with it. Even the parts you didn’t ask for. Even the parts you would never choose again. It’s the idea that nothing needs to be taken out of your story for it to make sense. That there are no wasted experiences. That even the things that broke you into a thousand pieces had a place.

And maybe not immediately, not in the moment, but eventually, you get to decide what to do with it. To turn it into something meaningful. To learn from it. To see it from a different perspective.

I don’t know if I fully live like this all the time. All I know is I am trying to.

And maybe it doesn’t stop with the past.

Because the truth is, not everything will make sense as it unfolds. Some things will end without explanation. Some paths will only make sense much later, if at all. And some things, you may never fully understand.

But life doesn’t wait for clarity or certainty before it moves forward.

And neither should you.

Maybe loving your fate is not just about making peace with what has already happened, but also learning to walk into what’s next without knowing all the answers first.