What did Marcus Aurelius mean by amor fati?

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.