Here are more reflections shared by the founder of logotherapy, Viktor Frankl, from his book Man’s Search for Meaning. This time, the theme is the choices we make in difficult situations, because it is precisely then that we discover whether we live what we preach.
“Sigmund Freud once claimed: ‘Let someone try to subject a number of very different people to hunger under identical conditions. As the imperative drive of hunger increases, all individual differences will be effaced, and in their place will appear the uniform expression of the one unsatisfied instinct.’ Thank God, Sigmund Freud was spared the experience of getting to know the concentration camps from the inside. His patients lay on couches made in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, ‘individual differences’ did not ‘disappear’; on the contrary, people became even more different; they took off their masks – both the swine and the saints…”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Frankl gives the example of a man who was later canonized as a saint for everything he did for others during his time in the concentration camp – a priest named Maximilian Kolbe. When I read about him, I think of life in “difficult” countries – such as Bulgaria. We sometimes complain about life here and dream of living in some other – clean, wealthy, and well-ordered – country. And although the difference between life here and the life in the camps Frankl writes about is incomparable, the principle is the same: life under difficult conditions gives us the opportunity to take off our masks and make our choice.
I know of foreigners who, after coming to Bulgaria, begin to throw rubbish in the street – something they would never do in their own clean and orderly country. And I know Bulgarians who pick up the rubbish left by others because they choose to live in cleanliness. This is a small example of practicing choice in accordance with one’s deepest inner values, rather than in accordance with external conditions. If we look at our life in this way when it is difficult, we may more consciously choose who we want to be and whether to join the minority.
Frankl continues:
“Perhaps you are inclined to reproach me for referring to examples that are exceptions to the rule. ‘Sed omnia praeclara tam difficilia rara sunt’ (‘But everything noble is as difficult as it is rare’) is the last sentence of Spinoza’s Ethics. You may, of course, ask whether we really need to call them ‘saints.’ Is it not enough simply to call them decent human beings? It is true that they are a minority. More than that, they will always remain a minority. And yet it is precisely here that I see the challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become even worse unless each one of us does the best he is capable of.”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
It is evident that to make the difficult choice in a difficult situation is the hardest way to create oneself by embodying the values one has chosen. That is why Frankl’s account of the heroism of people in the camp is such a powerful source of inspiration.
“Austrian researchers in public opinion recently reported that those held in the highest esteem by most of those surveyed are neither great artists, nor great scholars, nor great politicians and athletes, but those who meet a harsh fate with heads held high.”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
This is all for today – a small reminder from V. Frankl to hold our heads high and, if we are in a difficult situation, to give the best of ourselves. To make the difficult choice by finding meaning even in suffering.
Kameliya
