AMOR FATI - love everything that happens to you!

AMOR FATI - love everything that happens to you!

I love stories of people who lived in the past and shaped the future. I learn from them every day by listening to them and reading their books. Today's story is called AMOR FATI.

This time I share with you a wonderful excerpt from the book The Obstacle is the Way, written by Ryan Holiday. I was fascinated by it, so I am sharing it with you.

At the age of 67, Thomas Edison (one of the most important inventors of all time, he invented the light bulb) returned home early one evening; he had spent the day in the laboratory. Shortly after dinner, a man arrived at his house with bad news: a fire had broken out at Edison's research and manufacturing campus a few kilometres away.

Firefighters from eight nearby towns arrived on the scene, but were unable to tame the blaze. Yellow and green flames, caused by various strange chemicals stored in several buildings, shot six to eight storeys high and threatened to destroy the entire empire that Edison had spent his life building.

Edison walked calmly but quickly to the burning complex, pushing his way through hundreds of onlookers and desperate employees, looking for his son. “Go get your mother and all her friends,“ he said to his son with childlike enthusiasm. “They'll never see a fire like this again!”

What?!

“Don't worry,” Edison reassured him. “He's fine now. We've just got rid of a lot of clutter.”

What an amazing reaction, isn't it? If you think about it, he couldn't have answered any other way.

But what was Edison supposed to do? Cry? Become angry? Put his hands up and go home?

What exactly would this achieve?

You know the answer: nothing. That's why he didn't waste time with such feelings. To do great things, we need to be able to withstand tragedies and setbacks. We have to love what we do, with all that it entails. The good and the bad. We have to be able to find joy in every thing that happens to us.

Of course, there was a lot more to Edison's buildings when there was a bit of “clutter”. Years and years of invaluable records, prototypes and research turned to ashes. Buildings made of supposedly fireproof concrete have been protected for a fraction of their value. Thinking themselves immune to such disasters, Edison and its investors were only liable for about a third of the damage.

Nevertheless, Edison was not heartbroken, at least not in the way he could and probably should have been. On the contrary, he was invigorated by the event. As he told a reporter the next day, he was not too old for a fresh start. “I've been through a lot of these things. They prevent a person from getting bored.”

Within about three weeks, the factory was partially repaired and production resumed. After a month, the men were working in two shifts, creating new products every day, like nothing the world had ever seen before. Despite a loss of almost a million dollars (today's value is around twenty-three million dollars), Edison summoned enough energy that year to generate almost ten million dollars in revenue (today's value is around two hundred million dollars). It did not just suffer a spectacular disaster, it reacted spectacularly to the disaster itself.

But isn't it a wonderful story, I shed a tear and smiled as I read it. We often give up when an obstacle comes our way, if only we could change our perspective on the situation. A change of perspective will turn an obstacle into an opportunity of a lifetime.

Remember: AMOR FATI - LOVE EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS TO YOU.