love – Observations and Misunderstandings

It’s that time of year again that everyone gets excited, drinks too much, loves family, drinks a bit more and hates family. The reason I talk about Christmas, I’m sure you’ve already guessed, is that I have been wrapping presents. It is easily my least favourite part of the whole experience as I find it so very tedious. I have obvious reservations about Christmas, the commercialisation has spread like rabies and it can create the same rabid affect on people, but it is also the same people who wince when they see shop decorations in September. People still seem to have retained a semblance of decency in this regard despite the best efforts of those trying to sell joy.

What is it then that makes people enjoy Christmas so much, it can’t just be the buying and selling of presents, despite best efforts our happiness isn’t programmed into the strength of the economy and has nothing to do with GDP. And despite all my reservations I must confess that after the horrors of realising I have to buy presents and think, I actually quite enjoy it, there’s something satisfying realising you’ve had a good idea. Perhaps then it comes back to the initial idea in the very first sentence. The obvious statement to make is that Christmas brings people together, and while that is cheesy and not entirely accurate with it’s disgustingly positive connotations, there is still some truth in it. It may be that in bringing people together and creating an environment in which people can eat, drink and be merry, it allows them to forget the drudgery of their existence for a few days. The highs and lows of life and all the drama that that entails, loving and then hating family, is always something us sensation hooked humans thrive on, evidenced surely by the spike in domestic violence over the period.

Yet we keep on coming back. Year after year we get excited for Christmas, or at least in my little middle class bubble everyone I know does. I suspect it is also an incredibly stressful period for millions of people out there as they take on the new debt that’ll take them until the following Christmas to pay off or spend it without a loved one for the first time. Does that make me enjoy my Christmas any less, and would it make me a bad person if I didn’t let it. It would certainly take a selfish martyr to tell me so. In which case we embrace the bubble we live in. Eat, drink, fuck and fight just as we did last year, and just as we’ll do for a thousand to come.

Having just watched a six minute School of Life video on youtube about Nietzsche and his concept of Amor Fati I find myself slightly confused. Much of what I hear of Nietzsche confuses me, much of what I read of him I agree with but usually forget, and some of which I disagree with but suspect may actually be correct, just a little harsh for my sensitivities to accept. He seemed to be complicated and misunderstood, and I’m sure I remember him saying something along the lines of inferior minds will misunderstand him and terrible things will be done in his name. Certainly my mind is inferior to his or may I say different. I doubt I’ll be such a groundbreaking philosopher as he was, the man was arguably the best, or most significant. And how to define inferior, for at least I can talk to women. Yeah fuck you Nietzsche with your superior mind and your constant rejections. It’s the small victories which keep our egos believing. I remember working as an extra on Game of Thrones and seeing the actor who played the handsome hero John Snow wearing platform shoes and having to stand on a box to make him appear slightly taller, my tall man ego won that skirmish. Unfortunately I may have been the only one playing.

Amor Fati means a love of ones fate and it has distasteful fatalist overtones, which I don’t necessarily feel comfortable believing or accepting. We may debatably live in a mildly predetermined world but the future only exists as much as the present allows. The premise of Amor Fati is that you love what has already passed or that you at least accept it. A refusal to regret what has gone before and not look back, this he believes to be a virtue. Perhaps this is him refusing to accept the hardships of his life, the rejections, the mental illnesses, and on a hypothetical note had his life been wonderful and jolly these ideas may never have come to him. In that case, for creating the environment to have these ideas, all that went before him had to happen. What is not to love about that. Believing in determinism or fatalism is not a requisite of acceptance. While we are all guilty of looking back longingly or regretfully, how we deal with adversity is what is of most importance. There is always something to learn from every moment if we so choose, the good or the bad, and how lucky we are to have adversity in our lives to give us that opportunity for development. If that is to love ones fate then amor fati me.

Tag: love

‘Tis the Season

Amor Fati