We ended up in the first part asking the following questions:
What about REAL difficult situations? Is pain a friend or an enemy? How to find Joy internally in order to help me overcome the external circumstances?
What about REAL difficult situations? Is pain a friend or an enemy? How to find Joy internally in order to help me overcome the external circumstances?
Let us have a look on the following real story:
By this real life
story we're trying to get closer to someone who faced unwelcomed dreadful
circumstances with no apparent exit, no tools to support him enduring, no
entertainment, no friends, no comfort, at many times no food & many other
basic life essentials. What did he do & how he managed not to collapse
before all these inhumane challenges? Let us have a look:
Dr. Victor Frankl
An Austrian
neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. In 1942, Frankl
and his parents, wife, and brother were arrested and sent to the Nazi
concentration camps, he didn't know about their death until he was liberated.
In the camps he faced the most brutal &
inhumane circumstances one can never imagine, prisoners had to give all of
their possessions, even stripped of their humanity. Any prisoner caught trying
to hide any possessions would be killed by the Capo (senior prisoners chosen
very well according to their level of brutality), even your good & fitting
shoes would be given to receive another unfitting ones.
Prisoners were also
stripped of their names; the Nazi’s had assigned them with numbers instead.
They had to work 20 hours each day in snow & worn-out shoes, digging and
laying railroads with sore feet, if you looked weak, you were beaten. If you
stopped working, you were beaten; all this in undernutrition conditions where
they had to survive on one small piece of bread a day and some watery soup, the
need for food was the “primitive drive” on which their desires centered; there
was no room for any other desire for anything not directly related to survival.
Staying alive each day
was a struggle, each day numbers are taken to be burnt or killed in the gas
chambers, being sick does not mean you'll find mercy & compassion; rather
it means that you're going to be killed. Those who give up & lose their trust
to continue would go to touch the electrified barbed wire or drink a cigarette
(when he can get one).
“What else remained for us as a material link with our former lives except our naked existence?” Dr. Victor Frankl
He had the freedom to choose death, but he chose life, he had all the
reasons to be turned into a wild animal; but he chose to remain human. How did
he survive & endure all this?
His best-selling &
groundbreaking book: "Man’s Search for Meaning" tells
the story of how he survived the Holocaust, observing the behavior of the
prisoners & observing his Mind by being alert not to get drowned in the many
waves of negative thoughts & emotions; this helped him to endure this
terrible experience by finding a meaning in his sufferings. Out of this
experience he wrote this book & later he founded a new school called
"logotherapy" which means "therapy by meaning".
Striving to find meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man (Frankl 1992, p. 104)
Many lessons can be
learnt from this book; but in brief I share with you the following points
excerpting from his words. I ask you to pause at each point & write your
thoughts, asking yourself how this can help me face my challenges:
Finding meaning in life
& in suffering
Frankl quoted from Nietzsche: “He who
has a WHY to live for can bear with almost any HOW”
For Frankl; having something to live for; was the only reason
helped him help him survive & endure in such conditions more than anything.
Prisoners who had completely lost their ‘why’ in life lost their life as a
result. He said:
"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us"
“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".
He said that everybody’s ‘why’ is different,
His (3) whys mentioned in his book were:
(1) Love:
Frankl carried on a
conversation with his wife in his mind, not knowing if she was alive or dead
but feeling that he was in real connection with her either way:
"…The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved, In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
(2) Work:
Frankl imagined
returning back to his work, lecturing halls full of students on the
psychological lessons he gained in the camps & the logotherapy, so he
worked on reconstructing his lost manuscript, which he began to rewrite on tiny
scraps of paper in an attempt to survive when he was ill with typhus.
(3) Meaning in
suffering:
Frankl believed that
there is great meaning in suffering; he actually regarded it as an opportunity
that can help you find the meaning of your life, test of your inner strength,
& go beyond yourself.
It was forbidden to
prevent someone from suicide, but few weeks before being liberated he was
permitted to practice his profession & to help prisoners.
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life ... Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
"Most men in a concentration camps believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners."
As we can see here that suffering was
not an enemy at all; on the contrary it helped Dr. Frankly as a friend… harsh
but a real friend.
To a great extent his story has met
many aspects in the definition we previously mentioned in part (1) about Joy, of
course he experienced pain, but he was consistent, coherent, had reasonable
inner resources. However many of the opportunities to live were called by him
as "fate & good luck",
He was courageous & had a healthy mind; but someone might say: "what
if I'm not as lucky as him?, does this kind of belief “fate & luck “ can
make anyone feel at peace & contentment? Why there's pain ? How to find
meaning out of my pain & can anyone help me ?.
That's our topic in Part 3 & 4
from this article.
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Resources for further
reading:
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