amor fati
i love my fate
a blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. — Marcus Aurelius
i was maybe eight, with my mom outside our compound’s gate, when a woman i later knew was a neighbor approached us. she looked at me with disgust and asked my mom, in that condescending tone reserved for judgment, if i was being fed well. my thinness from sickle cell was apparently her business. her reaction and statement cut through both of us.
from that day, i thought sickle cell was something to hide. i learned to cover myself completely with long sleeves and pants that disguised my frame, anything to mask the thinness that invited judgment. it was easier to avoid the questions, the unsettling looks, just like the neighbor gave me, and the inevitable pity that followed when people realized i wasn’t built like others.
even now, when people learn about the condition, they begin to tiptoe around me. people assume they know the script: you must be terrified, counting your days, living under the shadow of a clock that ticks louder than everyone else’s.
they imagine fragility. they imagine fear. but they’re wrong.
granted, some days i’m reminded how thin the line between life and death really is, also considering that sickle cell has claimed the lives of people i used to know — peers, friend, even my best friend. but most days, i feel invincible.
the condition has shaped me in ways nothing else could have. it has brushed me against death twice, in 2009 and again in 2022, close enough that i said goodbye once. but here i am.
and because i’ve looked at death so directly, i stopped fearing it. it comes for everyone, whether we live thirty years or ninety. the question is not when it comes, but how we live knowing it will.
i have chosen to live with a sense of urgency, and with fun woven into my daily routine. my idea of fun is working a job i love, one at the intersection of design and technology, one that i can do from anywhere and at my own pace. not 9–5¹ and definitely not in cubicles².
i cut away illusions early. i am deeply self-aware, sometimes painfully so, and have developed an empathy that i might never have learned otherwise. i see people differently now. i listen more. i care better. i’m a better brother, a better friend, a better uncle.
this i know because people openly admit it. they even write about me. they draw strength from how i carry myself. they see that i am not diminished by sickle cell but rather defined by what it has forced me to become: resilient, deliberate, awake to my own life.
to love your fate is not resignation. it’s not passive acceptance either. it’s seeing the fire you’ve been thrown into and realizing you can burn, or you can blaze.
i blaze.³
every limitation has pointed me toward what matters most. every near-death has taught me how to live more vividly. every loss has deepened my love for the people who remain.
i wouldn’t undo the nights spent wondering if i’d see the morning, because those nights taught me to cherish the morning in a way only someone who has faced the dark can.
sickle cell, for me, isn’t a curse. it’s a compass.
and i follow where it points: to the work i love, the people i love, and the kind of presence that most people only learn after they’ve lost time they’ll never get back.
so yes, amor fati.⁴
it’s difficult. it’s painful. but it has made me who i am. and i wouldn’t trade that for anything else.
Notes
- 9–5: i work more hours most days, so this was not to say i needed to work fewer hours, just that i can decide the start and end times.
- cubicles: referring to the partitioned area of a room with an office desk. technically, my workspace counts as a cubicle. but i was speaking more to the freedom because i could easily decide not to work from my workspace and do so on the couch, at a library, or a friend’s place.
- blaze: double entendre, considering my friends call me Blazers or Blaze…
- amor fati means love of one’s fate. contextually, it means i love my fate.
