Amor fati. Marcus Aurelius 4.10

Marcus, like other Stoics, conceives the world to be a regular, non-chaotic place. We observe cycles of birth, flourishing, decay, and death in nature, and the outcome of these cycles is that life continues. This is what we call just (and within these very broad parameters, predictable and rational). All human action happens within this grand action, so even events that seem bad or wrong to us must somehow, naturally and rudimentally, be just. Our task then becomes to find ways of respecting that justice, observing and moving with it, so that our conscience accepts the standard already required, and embodied, by our life. Seeing how our suffering is just causes us to bear it better, with nobility. Instead of resenting what should not be, we brace ourselves to make the best of our just fate. When it becomes uniquely unkind, we feel the call to become especially heroic. The Greeks dramatized this as tragedy. Reading Marcus and Seneca makes you doubt that all audiences viewed tragedies with the pity and fear that Aristotle has made canonical. Stoics would see them with a kind of grim joy, as mental rehearsals of real events: remember that Seneca took his own life, on purpose, and Marcus too faced the constant threat of sudden death, which ended the career of many emperors.

Ὅτι «πᾶν τὸ συμβαῖνον δικαίως συμβαίνει»· ὃ ἐὰν ἀκριβῶς παραφυλάσσῃς, εὑρήσεις· οὐ λέγω μόνον κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς, ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι κατὰ τὸ δίκαιον καὶ ὡς ἂν ὑπό τινος ἀπονέμοντος τὸ κατ᾽ ἀξίαν. παραφύλασσε οὖν ὡς ἤρξω, καί, ὅ τι ἂν ποιῇς, σὺν τούτῳ ποίει, σὺν τῷ ἀγαθὸς εἶναι, καθὸ νενόηται ἰδίως ὁ ἀγαθός. τοῦτο ἐπὶ πάσης ἐνεργείας σῷζε.

Take this aphorism: "Everything that really happens occurs rightly, in keeping with justice." If you regard it closely, you will see how it is true. I mean not only that events follow one another in natural sequence, but that this sequence is ultimately in keeping with justice, as though some person were distributing blessings and curses with merit as a criterion. Keeping in mind that events will play out justly, watch carefully every action you have begun. Whatever you are doing, do it with this outlook: that you are a noble person, acting with due respect to whatever it is you conceive nobility to be. Remember this over the course of every action.