Learning from Frankl

I can’t even begin to comprehend the collective grief, shock and injury in Paris right now. Pain and suffering are the cups that spilleth over. Refugees are drowning in the Mediterranean or freezing in the fields across the Balkans, flood victims suffer in Yemen, and those everywhere around the world subjected to extreme poverty, brutality and murderous war.

This. This is beyond Paris.

I’ve been reading Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” this week and I’m very glad I have. There are several vital points he makes about life in the Nazi death camps but opening the discussion broadly to facing any kind of adversity.

Vitalia puncta ~
1. Know what love really is, because love really is everything.

2. Don’t dwell on expectations or outcomes without first finding meaning. Find genuine meaning to life, whatever that may be, and the human spirit remains strong in the face of daily adversity.

Have these two things close to you and success, even happiness, is more likely to ensue.

If those left amidst the wreckage of these latest horrific events have, or will find, both LOVE and MEANING, they may face the daily adversities ahead of them. They may survive and flourish once again and, perhaps, bring about a better world, so that we’ll also be inspired by their true understanding.

This, the just revenge to all that is hate.