Acceptance? Resignation? That’s not me, we say, when we hear the Stoics preach those concepts. I never give up. I’m a fighter.
Ok. If you say so.
But there’s a difference between being a fighter and a doer. Remember, one of the outcomes of “fighting” is losing. And that’s what happens most of the time; indeed, every time when you fight something that is outside your control.
This is why the Stoic instead practices the “art of acquiesce.” Why they learn amor fati--a desire for things to be exactly as they are--so they can use them. As Marcus Aurelius wrote,
“Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces--to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it--and makes it burn still higher.”
Today, ask yourself which type you’re going to be. Are you going to be a fighter or a doer? Are you going to “resist” or are you going to accept obstacles and turn them into fuel for action?
Amor fati. Be made brighter and hotter by everything that happens.
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