More Amor Fati

Recently, author/blogger Katrina Kenison posted about amor fati-- the concept of loving your fate. She wrote:

"To love your fate is to believe that the way things are right now is the way they are supposed to be – even if nothing is quite the way we wanted or expected. We can either go down swinging, or we can die to the way things were and begin instead to live into them as they are."

I've been thinking about this concept of dying to the way things were. While I'm sure I've been dying to things all my life, I've only recently become conscious of it. One of the hardest things I've ever had to die to was the idea that I would raise my kids in the context of a healthy partnership.  I remember one night after my ex left, my daughter was crying  and I couldn't console her.  I actually went outside in desperation and shook my fist at the sky, I was so overwhelmed by her grief and my own. I truly thought I would carry that pain with me for the rest of my life. But here is the most remarkable thing: I grieved it and I died to it and I came out the other side understanding that my family is happier, healthier, and more whole as a threesome (plus doggie).  As I'm writing this, I realize that this example is the perfect expression of amor fati.  

So I've been asking myself, "What does it take to die to something?" I think my answer is that it takes equal parts faith and vulnerability. Having faith helps us remember that what we are experiencing is not permanent, it's a passage. Accepting vulnerability means understanding how little we actually can control. 

Recently, I've been dying to the idea that my body is invincible. My cleaning lady and I were talking today and I became tearful.  At the end of our conversation, she pronounced that after my surgery I will be,  "brand new!" I don't really understand what she means (and she is not the first to say this to me) but I wonder if it has something to do with amor fati-- that the work of dying to my old perception of my health will bring a way of living that is embedded in the strength and truth that lies at the center of living with vulnerability.
 
I remember when my daughter was little, she use to wear her blankie so that she would always have it with her without having to keep track of it. She'd appear suddenly in a doorway, all straight-faced, wearing first a blankie-turban, then a blankie-cape. Maybe, in order to become a lover of one's own fate, we've all got to make like my former four year old and wear faith like an imaginary turban and vulnerability like an imaginary cape.