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walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, 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.
You always have choice
man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
They carried their suffering with dignity. Similar to Brene Brown's idea of daringly carryinv your vulnerability
If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.
Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered, “It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’”
A man who could not see the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life.
Without goal a ceasing of life
as if they were already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an interesting psychoscientific study undertaken by myself. What does Spinoza say in his Ethics?—“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
Emotion ceases to be suffering
There he remained, lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more.
Oh godd
any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal. Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners.
give them a why—an aim—for their lives,
Have aim, a purpose
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.
Life expects from you
Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
“Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny.
Life has unique meaning for each unique individual
When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place.
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.
confessing, “I have wept it out of my system.”
Wept it out of my system
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.
Become conscious of your responsibility
When the camp authorities heard about it they ordered that the guilty man be given up to them or the whole camp would starve for a day. Naturally the 2,500 men preferred to fast.
(What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.)
What you have experienced no power can take awafrom you
human life, under any circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.
Human life always have meaning
It was the human “something” which this man also gave to me—the word and look which accompanied the gift.
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
“Freedom”—we repeated to ourselves, and yet we could not grasp it.
We repeated freedom but could not grasp it
We had literally lost the ability to feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly.
Relearning , developing meaning takes time
“I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”
Freedom of space
commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.
suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration.
Sufffering as achievement
Certainly, my deep desire to write this manuscript anew helped me to survive the rigors of the camps I was in.
My deep desire to write my manyscripy again
mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. What man needs is not homeostasis but what I call “noö-dynamics,” i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and
What man needs
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.
each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
The categorical Imperative of logotherapy.
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.
Uniqueness of love
sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.
Love and sex
bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds meaning
It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life.
Man 's main concern is to find meaning in life.
turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had already been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in a pocket of the newly acquired coat one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the most important Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael.
What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
Man is incapable of grasping unconditional meanikngfulnrss in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.
The existential vacuum which is the mass neurosis of the present time can be described as a private and personal form of nihilism; for nihilism can be defined as the contention that being has no meaning.
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
We are free with finiteness of our freedom.
Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.
We are finite butpotential is infinite
Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
What u become depemdson ur decision not your conditioms..
an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
depression, aggression, addiction—are due to what is called in logotherapy “the existential vacuum,” a feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.
So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
