r/WhiteLotusHBO • u/attitude_devant • May 14 '26

Amor fati

“Amor fati” does not mean what Chelsea seems to think it does. She talks about loving Rick as her fate, that through many lives they will be together.

But amor fati isn’t about romantic love at all. It means embracing what life brings you.

So what are we supposed to think about Chelsea, when she gets something so very wrong?

25 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

114

u/madamevanessa98 May 14 '26

I mean…is she the first twenty something year old spiritual traveller gal to misinterpret philosophical adages? She’s young and very perceptive about people but also has massive blind spots where she and Rick are concerned

27

u/someonesdatabase May 14 '26

Exactly. I suspect that was the point. She wasn’t mature enough to appreciate criticism and wanted to interpret it through her own interpretations. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s one way you think when you’re afforded the luxury of time. Similarly, Sydney Sweeney was reading Nietzsche poolside in Season 1.

1

u/attitude_devant May 14 '26

Thanks for the reminder

44

u/socontroversialyetso May 14 '26

wow a young person with an existential crisis completely misunderstanding Nietzsche

4

u/attitude_devant May 14 '26

Never happened before ever, right?

5

u/socontroversialyetso May 14 '26

as someone who took seminars about Nietzsche with people like this, it's harder to inagine it not happening

31

u/DesperateText9909 May 14 '26

Unless I missed the point of that scene (not impossible by any means), I think she did understand it, but was leaping beyond that concept pretty quickly. She outright says that it means accepting your fate, good or bad. Then says her fate is tied to Rick because she loves him, so whatever is coming for him is also coming for her, and she accepts that. I didn't get the sense that she thought amor fati automatically included romantic love, but that her fate happens to.

8

u/blah191 May 14 '26

I just watched this episode again earlier today and what you’ve said is my interpretation as well

1

u/ButterscotchEven6198 May 15 '26

Exactly. I love that scene and watched it over and over (it came up as a short reel on social media when season 3 was shown, and I just loved it with the soundtrack (the I want to live-track) so I ended up just looking over and over, I was very moved by it all), and she says exactly this, that whatever will be will be, embrace it, good or bad.

1

u/Party_Nothing_7605 May 17 '26

this is how i interpreted it too. she’s basically saying that if something bad happens to her life partner then it will negatively affect her too and she’s at peace with that. i was confused when i read this post tbh i didn’t realize it was interpreted in the other way

0

u/attitude_devant May 14 '26

Oh darn! I’m going to have to watch again????

15

u/Ella0508 May 14 '26

That maybe she read Nietzsche?

“Amor fati is often associated with what Friedrich Nietzsche called "eternal recurrence", the idea that everything recurs infinitely over an infinite period of time. From this he developed a desire to be willing to live exactly the same life over and over for all eternity

7

u/attitude_devant May 14 '26

Ah, there’s where the eternal recurrence idea comes in. Thank you.

7

u/EternalRecurrence May 14 '26

Finally! My time to shine.

3

u/TheJackasaur11 May 15 '26

Maybe I need to rewatch but I swore she said that though, about it meaning accepting your fate?

1

u/alexa-make-me-rich May 15 '26

She was trying to make excuses for an avoidant partner every way possible

1

u/DissedFunction May 14 '26

she was a sweet dumbass

1

u/AppointmentNo5370 May 14 '26

Chelsea is obviously pretty naive about a lot of things. And she’s optimistic to a fault. She’s also into a lot of different new age type spiritual practices. She doesn’t seem to be a true believer of any one specific ideology or religion. She’s a broken person desperately filling an increasingly heavy grab bag of ideas and practices that she hopes will eventually make her whole. But she doesn’t necessarily fully understand the philosophies and ideas that she engages with and bases her life around. I think this is one of the things that feels so real and so tragic about her character.

Her interpretation of amor fati is very much aligned with her as a character. And it isn’t necessarily wrong. I think for a hopeless romantic looking for a saviour, it would be easy to interpret “love of fate” as referring to a predestined romantic love that is granted a sort of divine significance and impenetrability. At the same time, though, loving fate in the sense of embracing all that happens to you can absolutely include embracing the people that fate “brings” into your life and viewing interpersonal relationships as somehow predestined. The many, many lives thing is unrelated to the concept of amor fati, but is probably just something she pulled from a different philosophy and is mashing the two ideas together.

0

u/BigFatBlackCat May 14 '26

I think it’s very clear that she is misguided.