Alexia Dominique Reyes
I read and listened to this book at the same time, because listening alone was making me sleepy!
The author talked about his life in a concentration camp during the Second World War. What was the ultimate experience at the time? Suffering. We tend to think that if we are suffering, that is the end of us. We can't change our lives anymore because the external events are blocking our way. And if we keep believing that we can't change our lives anymore, our bodies start to believe it, too. And then we're dead. Turns out that there's a connection between mental hopelessness and physical deterioration.
But suffering is one way to find meaning in life, according to the book. We can't avoid it, and we shouldn't. Instead, while we can't control the external events we deal with, we can change our attitude toward them. If we think of suffering as life's way of making us stronger or more resilient, or even more open-minded and empathetic about other people's suffering, then we'll feel less pain as we go through it. The book revolved around the idea of suffering because, again, the author pulled learnings and insights from his experience during the war. But maybe you're wondering, "What is the ultimate meaning of life?"
There is no single meaning. You create your meaning depending on your situation and what life demands from you. Here's what the author said about it: "Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. '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. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response."
Some highlights, because I didn't just listen to this book. I read it!
- "Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."
- "The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who 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."
- "The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him, mentally and spiritually. He may retain his dignity even in a concentration camp."
- "A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality, there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist."
- "The prisoner who had lost faith in the future, his future, was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."
- "We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, 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. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly."
- "Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. 'Having been' is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind."
- "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."
- "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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."
- "Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than himself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself, by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."
- "Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him."
- "As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the findings by Annemarie von Forstmeyer who noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of the alcoholics she studied had suffered from an abysmal feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that 'things seemed meaningless.' "
If you are in search of your life's meaning, you create that meaning.
I read and listened to this book at the same time, because listening alone was making me sleepy!
The author talked about his life in a concentration camp during the Second World War. What was the ultimate experience at the time? Suffering. We tend to think that if we are suffering, that is the end of us. We can't change our lives anymore because the external events are blocking our way. And if we keep believing that we can't change our lives anymore, our bodies start to believe it, too. And then we're dead. Turns out that there's a connection between mental hopelessness and physical deterioration.
But suffering is one way to find meaning in life, according to the book. We can't avoid it, and we shouldn't. Instead, while we can't control the external events we deal with, we can change our attitude toward them. If we think of suffering as life's way of making us stronger or more resilient, or even more open-minded and empathetic about other people's suffering, then we'll feel less pain as we go through it. The book revolved around the idea of suffering because, again, the author pulled learnings and insights from his experience during the war. But maybe you're wondering, "What is the ultimate meaning of life?"
There is no single meaning. You create your meaning depending on your situation and what life demands from you. Here's what the author said about it: "Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. '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. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response."
Some highlights, because I didn't just listen to this book. I read it!
- "Who can throw a stone at a man who favors his friends under circumstances when, sooner or later, it is a question of life or death? No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."
- "The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who 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."
- "The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him, mentally and spiritually. He may retain his dignity even in a concentration camp."
- "A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a different connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality, there lay a certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist."
- "The prisoner who had lost faith in the future, his future, was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."
- "We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, 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. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life, daily and hourly."
- "Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. 'Having been' is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind."
- "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."
- "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, 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."
- "Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than himself, be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself, by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."
- "Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him."
- "As for the third issue, addiction, I am reminded of the findings by Annemarie von Forstmeyer who noted that, as evidenced by tests and statistics, 90 percent of the alcoholics she studied had suffered from an abysmal feeling of meaninglessness. Of the drug addicts studied by Stanley Krippner, 100 percent believed that 'things seemed meaningless.' "
If you are in search of your life's meaning, you create that meaning.