My formula for human greatness is Amor Fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not in the future, not in the past, not for all eternity. Not only to endure what is necessary, still less to conceal it—all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity—but to love it. Friedrich Nietzche

Greetings Dear Ones!

Someone asked me recently if I had one day of my life to live, what would I want to do with it. I said “hem prom gowns with eight layers of tulle each—then at least it could be the longest day of my life!” The list of things I could do on my “last day” includes things like discovering a new lamb has glue for poo and needs his bum washed (not just washed, but picked clean by my gloved hand because the “glue” has hardened like epoxy, effectively sealing him closed), or attempting (for hours) to get the mower to start, and when it finally does, I cannot drive it up hill because the safety mechanism shuts it off when I don’t sit fully back on the seat, which I cannot do uphill because my legs are stumps that don’t reach the pedals... These (and attending a swim meet or golf tournament) are all things I would definitely save for “last.”

I’ve been at the shop until eleven p.m. every night this week growing more and more vexed with Marcus Aurelius, who taunts me from the quotes adorning the margins of my work table. “Make every day your best day,” he chirps. “Who’s best day includes having to vacuum the work table for glitter four times?” I want to know. “Sweat more in practice and you’ll bleed less in battle,” he says smugly, as I accidentally jam a needle under my thumb nail and cause it to spurt a cranberry drop on fabric intended for a white dress someone wants to wear to an upcoming graduation ceremony. “What does a 2nd century Roman statesman know of suffering?” I say to him, “What are kilted men with swords and grudges, who bind their wounds with red wine and raw garlic, to a bride who has just glimpsed what she thinks is some extra fat on her back?” Marcus goes silent a moment—he knows we can face no more devastating foe than the one in the mirror. He says quietly, “The Happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. Therefore, guard accordingly and take care that you entertain no notion unsuitable to virtue.”

“Listen here, my good man! I’ve had quite enough of your chipper little platitudes,” I grunt, as I heave a dress the size of a Volkswagon onto the table and begin my foray into a forest of bramble-ridden tulle. I am definitely having thoughts unsuitable to virtue. I’d rather be de-pooping a lamb.

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength,” whispers Marcus encouragingly, unable to help himself.

“Oh, for God’s sakes! Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one!” Barks Prudence.

“Hey! That’s MY line,” says Marcus petulantly.

Attempts to philosophize, to draw wisdom and understanding from the ordinary are how I make it through Prom season. It’s no use thinking thoughts like “how did this [the full rack behind me] get like this? Who said yes to all these things we now have to do? Could we have done differently? Could we have known better? Would a different system (such as simply refusing to answer the phone… EVER) have netted us fewer negatives and ultimately more positives, or at least slightly less glitter?

Stoicism is not going to cut it at eleven o’clock at night with four gowns to go. The part of me grieving sleep is going through Kubler-Ross’s five predictable stages: denial—“it’s not so bad, dawn’s a long way off”, bargaining—“if we go to bed now and get up early, we can knock this off then we are good and fresh,” rage—“why the hell do we even have events that require such dumb things as having teenagers spend an entire family’s disposable income on a gown they will wear ONCE?” grief—“no one is coming to save me… I am pitiful…alone… I will die here, choking on glitter,” to…finally…Acceptance of my fate. Back to the Stoics.

“The Stoics were good, but not quite good enough,” says a new voice. It’s Nietzche.

“Hey Nietzche,” I say wearily. “Welcome to the party.”

“We don’t want any of that shit about God being dead,” warns Prudence. “The only thing keeping us going right now is the thought that Saint Peter is the desk clerk at that fabulous Hotel in the clouds and will one day scan his list of reservations, find our name at the top and say Oh! You! We’ve saved a special place for you. You hemmed nineteen prom gowns in four days? Welcome! You get a non-smoking room right next to some quiet Mormons and the ice machine.”

“Don’t worry,” says Nietzche calmly. “There’s more to what I said than that. As lives go, mine contained its share of misery so I studied the Stoics too. Every generation invents its own form of fashion and misery—the ultimate union of which has to be gowns constructed of swimsuit material that runs like Hussein Bolt when you pull one bloody thread the wrong way, but I digress. The trick is not just to accept the inevitability of our suffering but to try to fall in love with it. All of it. Love and embrace Life exactly how it is—with all the good and bad, success and failure, the satisfaction and pain, yummy vegetable pakoras you got at the co-op and the blistering glitter that is ruining your iron.”

“Are you asking me to LOVE glitter?” I ask Nietzche.

“Yes,” he says, not in these actual words, “Instead of stoic acceptance of our fate, what if there was enthusiastic and total adoration of What Is, a declaration against Regret, a version of affirming that it’s not just ok if we are not ok. It’s actually Magnificent.”

Love glitter… hmmm….the best I can do is love some of the people who wear the stuff. Some of them are truly adorable. Why otherwise fabulous people want to roll themselves in sparkling crumbs of toxic waste confuses me but I try not to judge (not much, anyway).

“If she just controlled herself better, she wouldn’t have this fate, be it miserable or Magnificent,” tuts Prudence. “I remind her daily, to no avail.”

Prudence and Nietzche grumble amongst themselves for a while.

There is always the mirage of Wishful thinking lurking like the remnants of a bean burrito in the dressing room—the idea of “if only…” We regret and yearn for “otherness”. (If only I was playing fiddle right now… if only I was in a hot bath outside under the stars right now…) We all assume that if we made better choices, we might have better outcomes. There were potential different options of ways for things to go in the past and there are still potential ways for things to go in the future but in the reality of NOW, the reality we must live, there is no option to have done anything differently and there is no way out except to grab a gladius or rotary cutter and get in there and start chopping. Every decision we make is the one we must live out.

To regret or desire to go back and edit the past assumes that the things we wish to change, especially the things we perceive as “wretched” now, once contained an option for a camoflaged “best” we should have recognized. We become obsessed with how things could have gone differently (had we measured twice before cutting) and that somehow everything would be different now had we done so. This is the sentiment of every bride who enters the dressing room wishing she had simply confronted her future mother-in-law like a grown-up, instead of spending her time between fittings stress-eating her feelings with two pals called Ben and Jerry.

Eventually, we realize it’s not that “Life could have been different” (or even should have been) that is the problem but that we resist finding the Beauty in how it inevitably has gone. Resenting what has happened to you or because of you only heaps additional misery onto the Now—adding more to resent or resist. (Prudence loves that part—the compound interest of Regret.)

Can we fall in love with things right now, as they are?

Nietzche says,(his real words) “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor Fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I don’t even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. All in all, and on the whole, some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”

The notion of what people will say yes to boggles the mind. “Like four-inch heels and underwire bras,” observes Prudence. Why not add in a little treachery and loneliness, failure and disaster, loss and death? It’s hard to imagine crowing “YES, I lOVE it” in a case by case sense, especially when poo-glue and glitter are involved… but in a larger sense, we CAN gain perspective. (For those who cannot, there is this lovely stuff called Scotch. When you’ve had enough, there are 12-steps back to Serenity.) But when sufficiently distanced, when in high enough Spirit (NOT the Scottish variety), like after a soak in a rusty cast iron tub out under the stars, it is possible to practice a certain love for the Whole of It.

I’m with Nietzche on this--to see all things through the lense of love. Perhaps the only way to experience the beauty of things is to think about them beautifully. Yep… that includes glitter. And zippers people have removed themselves “to help you.” And lambs who are glued shut with their own poo. This is a Gladiator-sized struggle in a society which values self-overcoming, achievement, power—the constant defining and accomplishments of goals set forth in the image of what one views as their “ideal self,” (“a self devoid of back-fat,” sniffs a bride).

If we try to overcome life itself, we fail, as the end has already been determined. (Our Heavenly Hotel reservations have been pre-paid!) But overcoming the Ideal of Overcoming—surrendering the notions of an unattainable ideal self and ideal life, to smile, even as we are being defeated… Wow. Prudence finds the conundrum too dizzying and falls silent.

Amor Fati—to “love one’s fate” and accept at last the way things have gone and will go—to love a life that in many moments will try to make you hate it or yourself—to look it in the eyes in the dressing room mirror and say “Yes, I love YOU,” even with your hair a mess, your raccoon eyes, and that armpit meat hanging peeking out from each side of your bra.

This Life is Beauty and so are YOU.

A wise person once said “He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, head, and heart is an Artist.” If we must labor, let us labor with Love. It might not change the outcome but it certainly changes US.

I’d love to write more…to write all day in fact… but I’ve got two more gowns that just came in. Keep up your Good Work, Dear Ones! I love hearing from you! Thanks for sharing these letters with our fellow Menders.

With sew much Love,

Yours Aye,

Nancy