If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living.
Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.
It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions.
The incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading” so that “he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.
Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the ‘size’ of human suffering is absolutely relative”.
It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.
Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.
I think it was Lessing who once said, ‘There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose’. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour”.
This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: “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!
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
It is we ourselves who must answer the questions that life asks of us, and to those questions we can respond only by being responsible for our existence.
Man does not simply exist, but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment...
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.
Nadie es conocedor de la esencia de otro ser humano si no lo ama.
To be sure, man’s search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium.
The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.” “That was it, exactly,” Frankl said. “Those are the very words I had written.” WILLIAM J. WINSLADE.
Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance – as whether one escapes or not – ultimately would not be worth living at all.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.