Amor fati is Latin for “love of fate.” For the Stoics, and for Marcus Aurelius in the Meditations, it means more than grudging acceptance of what happens — it means actively willing it, treating whatever reality hands you as exactly the material you needed. Marcus writes that a person should welcome events “as a physician welcomes symptoms,” because they reveal what the situation truly requires. The idea isn’t passive resignation: you still act, still try, still care about outcomes. But once something has happened, fighting the fact of it only adds a second, self-made suffering on top of the first. Amor fati is the discipline of spending your energy on the part of the situation that is up to you — your judgment, your response — and meeting the rest without resentment. Nietzsche later borrowed the phrase, but its home is Stoic: obstacle as assignment, not as injustice.