My Search for Meaning
Believe it or not, I've had a harder time deciding what to write about this time than what template to use for this old rag. While I gave serious consideration to writing about something political since I finished up my Political Science class this week, I think I'll stew about it a while longer. A few weeks ago Kjerstin and I were asked to give talks in Sacrament Meeting. Kjerstin's, admittedly, was much better as she talked on being provident providers for our families. I decided, having just finished "Man's Search for Meaning" a few weeks earlier, to talk on adversity. I thought I'd share the gist of the message since it hit my soul with the same magnitude as my body hitting the water during a cataclysmic cannonball.
No one is a stranger to adversity. If you haven't had trials in your life... scratch that... if you haven't had major life-altering tragedies in your life, you may or may not want to check your pulse... or maybe just your frequency of venturing out into the world. The frigid hand of tribulation grasps our lives just as assuredly as death. But this is far from any reason to despair, I've discovered. Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote his most famous work, "Man's Search for Meaning" to introduce the world to his unique therapeutic approach, logotherapy. In a nutshell, he believed that it is through assigning meaning to your life that real mental health can be found. Even finding meaning in our sufferings is an essential extension of this. And a handful of humans throughout history can understand the kind of suffering that Dr. Frankl experienced.
An Austrian Jew, Dr. Frankl endured the Holocaust in its entirety. He had the chance to leave before the occupation, but felt that he couldn't abandon his parents. Subsequently, he spent time in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other scenes of Nazi atrocities. In direct contrast to many works of Holocaust literature, the major message of the book was the appreciation for suffering. Dr. Frankl learned, the hardest way, what suffering offers the human organism. I would paraphrase this but I'd butcher its poetry. In Dr. Frankl's words:
"Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp."
Suffering, then, has a role as The Great Revealer. It is a tool by which we all may look deep down into ourselves, past all the masks and pretensions that we put up for the world, to see what we really are. As hard as it is to admit, I haven't always handled stressful situations with much grace or honor. I got to see into my own soul in those moments and found some of those not-so-nice qualities we all get a little ashamed of. But is this the reason? Embarrassment? Nope:
"Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."
The pattern seems simple. You acknowledge that the universe is hurling its worst at you. You take silent mental note of the way in which you respond, remembering that this is a glimmer of who you really are. You bolster yourself up and make the necessary adjustments, trying to reconcile who you are with whom you want to be. You slowly, trial by trial, become the strong, resolute person you were pretending to be before. Above all, you endure gracefully and honorably, because to simply endure something means only to bite your lip and bide your time.
I apologize, sincerely, for the length of this post. But it is something I feel is so important and is a recipe for real happiness. Not very often does a movie quote sum up a desired attitude for me, but this one line from the most recent version of The Count of Monte Cristo epitomizes the same outlook on life as succinctly as works like Invictus. The Count says in a toast "You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout... 'Do your worst, for I will do mine!'"
May we all risk looking a little nuts and show such strength in the very faces of pain, turmoil, and misery. May we live worthy of our suffering, and be happy, not in spite of, but because of it.
No one is a stranger to adversity. If you haven't had trials in your life... scratch that... if you haven't had major life-altering tragedies in your life, you may or may not want to check your pulse... or maybe just your frequency of venturing out into the world. The frigid hand of tribulation grasps our lives just as assuredly as death. But this is far from any reason to despair, I've discovered. Dr. Viktor Frankl wrote his most famous work, "Man's Search for Meaning" to introduce the world to his unique therapeutic approach, logotherapy. In a nutshell, he believed that it is through assigning meaning to your life that real mental health can be found. Even finding meaning in our sufferings is an essential extension of this. And a handful of humans throughout history can understand the kind of suffering that Dr. Frankl experienced.
An Austrian Jew, Dr. Frankl endured the Holocaust in its entirety. He had the chance to leave before the occupation, but felt that he couldn't abandon his parents. Subsequently, he spent time in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other scenes of Nazi atrocities. In direct contrast to many works of Holocaust literature, the major message of the book was the appreciation for suffering. Dr. Frankl learned, the hardest way, what suffering offers the human organism. I would paraphrase this but I'd butcher its poetry. In Dr. Frankl's words:
"Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again found only human qualities which in their very nature were a mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid open by the concentration camp."
Suffering, then, has a role as The Great Revealer. It is a tool by which we all may look deep down into ourselves, past all the masks and pretensions that we put up for the world, to see what we really are. As hard as it is to admit, I haven't always handled stressful situations with much grace or honor. I got to see into my own soul in those moments and found some of those not-so-nice qualities we all get a little ashamed of. But is this the reason? Embarrassment? Nope:
"Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."
The pattern seems simple. You acknowledge that the universe is hurling its worst at you. You take silent mental note of the way in which you respond, remembering that this is a glimmer of who you really are. You bolster yourself up and make the necessary adjustments, trying to reconcile who you are with whom you want to be. You slowly, trial by trial, become the strong, resolute person you were pretending to be before. Above all, you endure gracefully and honorably, because to simply endure something means only to bite your lip and bide your time.
I apologize, sincerely, for the length of this post. But it is something I feel is so important and is a recipe for real happiness. Not very often does a movie quote sum up a desired attitude for me, but this one line from the most recent version of The Count of Monte Cristo epitomizes the same outlook on life as succinctly as works like Invictus. The Count says in a toast "You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout... 'Do your worst, for I will do mine!'"
May we all risk looking a little nuts and show such strength in the very faces of pain, turmoil, and misery. May we live worthy of our suffering, and be happy, not in spite of, but because of it.
