7 Days 1 Lesson #24
Finding Your Why
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Put yourself in the shoes of Viktor Frankl, a Jew during World War 2. He was put into 4 concentration camps during his time alive. Moving from the Czech Republic to Poland and then to Germany. He is one of the few who survived Auschwitz.
What would you do to survive? What would your plan be? Would you choose to go out on your own terms like the thousands that did?
I mean, honestly, how could anyone survive what people went through? Starvation, disgusting living conditions, medical experimentation, and the "showers" where hundreds were killed at a time with gas.
In his book Man's Search for Meaning, which was written nine days after his liberation in 1945, he conveyed a very simple message. The prisoners who survived were not necessarily the strongest, but those who had a reason to.
Frankl quoted Nietzsche frequently
I think we are living through a really worrying crisis right now. A lack of meaning crisis.
I've spoken to so many people from all sorts of backgrounds, including upbringing, age, faith, etc.
What I found most striking was that people often lack reasons to be. I found this exceptionally more apparent in the younger generation.
I think a big reason for this is the lack of boredom in most people's lives. People spend less time with their own thoughts, and therefore less time contemplating why they do the things in life.
I recently partook in a lecture on resilience at work. It was two hours of a wide selection of theories, topics and talks. Truly a lecture where resilience was certainly tested.
However, one thing that is sure to give you the best resilience is not a growth mindset, self-awareness, or emotional intelligence, etc. It has a why.
Meaning comes from different things, and at different times in our lives. Mine started young, with wanting to show my family how far I could go in life.
It then moved to wanting to provide for my family, to wanting to be the best version of myself for my fiancée, soon-to-be-wife, and, more recently, to live a life where I make God proud.
These are all reasons for me to live, but it is worrying how little meaning people have nowadays. I think we should all spend some time thinking about why we keep going, and try to find a why, because that is what allows us to survive almost any way.
Quotes Of The Week
- "Let the improvement of yourself keep you so busy that you have no time to criticise others."
― Roy T. Bennett - "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." ― Friedrich Nietzsche
- "We suffer more often in imagination than in reality." — Seneca
- "Most people die at 25 and aren't buried until they are 75." — Benjamin Franklin
