“Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”
― Marcus Aurelius
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That's the first Marcus Aurelius quote I've ever disagreed with. The universe isn't Cartesian or Newtonian. Fate is what you make it.
The Stoic philosophy does seem to have a somewhat strange mixture of determinism and free will.
But I'm in their boat. Life seems to be that very strange mixture. Fate is unpredictable, often unkind, but there seems to be a power in each of us to choose our responses to it. The way we respond shapes our personalities, our personal realities; and by us shaping that we consequently shape the world and bring fate, whatever it is, into being.
Now I do think that at the base of this process, faith is necessary. Trust in the Divine, in the providence of God, in an underlying order that is not blind or meaningless. That's Amor Fati. Love of fate, or: faith in fate.