Viktor Frankl

I woke up this morning with some random thoughts. I had decided to flip through an old book on my shelf and as I was reading through the pages...things popped out at me. So I thought I would put some of them down...not really as a blog...but instead...things for me to think about throughout the day.

The meaning to suffering, love and life.

Just some words from Viktor Frankl's Book "Man's Search For Meaning"


"...but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way...there is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings...

"if there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannont be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under the most difficult circumstances-to add a deeper meaning to his life...or in the bitter fight for self preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for 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."

"...but my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise...for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire...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..."

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actuallized."