What an ancient mantra has to do with Magic Johnson?

During my reading of ‘The Autobiography of Magic Johnson’ a stoic mantra kept popping in my mind; ‘Amor fati’ that means ‘love your destiny’.

Now you wonder why a principle in Latin came to my mind while I was reading the story of a basketball superstar.

Well, Magic Johson is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. He was at the top of his career when he had one of the hardest setbacks of his life and caught HIV. Nonetheless, what impressed me was how he dealt with and still deals with this situation. Was he afraid of dying? Of course. There were doubts about if he would ever play basketball again. Made-up stories about his personal life were spread. However, he saw this situation as an opportunity to educate people about this virus and this disease, and that is where the stoic mantra ‘Amor fati’ comes to play.

The stoic philosophers used to think about that principle as an invitation to use everything that life brings to you and use it as an opportunity to grow, as Marcus Aurelius — a roman emperor — once said: “What happens to each of us is ordered, it furthers our destiny”. The Arabic concept of Maktub that translates to “it is written” also relates to that sense of welcoming your fate. With that in mind, Magic could have blamed the world for that and be mad that it happened to him, one of the greatest basketball players of all time. But he understood his catching HIV as a call to help in the fight against this disease, considering the lack of actions by the government to solve the epidemic that was affecting majorly young and poor adults during the 90s.

Unpleasant experiences, moments, challenges, obstacles are part of our journey as human beings. We do not control if a pandemic will happen or if we will catch a disease, it is silly to get mad at the world, it won’t notice you. On the other hand, we do control our response, our actions, and how we process our emotions and analyze the situation that we are inside.

Magic Johnson during the following years has not only proved that he could play basketball in the Olympic games of 1992 but also that he could succeed in the business world until the present day. He has been serving as a platform for AIDS/HIV prevention. I don’t know if destiny is indeed real, but it is a compelling approach to our experiences that takes off a burden of our bodies and gives us a purpose. Every time that you pass through a difficult situation, always remember these words: ‘Amor fati’.