4.6 billion years ago, the earth appeared and began to rotate seemingly endlessly; 3.3 billion years ago, life appeared and began a long period of development and evolution; 2 million years ago, late apes began to walk upright; 40,000 years ago, modern humans appeared...
And how many years does a person's life take? In just a few decades, placed in the long river of time, not even a grain of dust is counted.
Think about the earth, think about the universe, and then think about your small self, and can't help but start to sigh, what is the meaning of life, especially to often endure the critical blows from life!
Nietzsche said, "A man who knows what he is living for can endure any kind of life", but what do I live for? I often think about it for a long time and can't think of an answer.
After reading The Pianist and Auschwitz, I picked up for the second time the book Living the Meaning of Life, a very short book of only 76,000 words in total, but it has touched thousands of people and has been voted one of the ten most influential books by the Library of Congress.
If you want to have a book in your lifetime reading experience, and one of its chapters or some kind of thought can not only touch your soul and lead it to dance with it, but even change your daily life and destiny, then "Living the Meaning of Life" is such a book.
It tells us that the meaning of life, experiencing suffering is not necessary to find meaning, but no matter how much suffering, life is always meaningful, and even we have to be thankful for suffering, which gives us such an opportunity.
In order to take on family responsibilities, Frankl gave up the opportunity to go to the United States, chose to stay in Austria with his family, and was later imprisoned in Auschwitz and spent 7 years of nightmare life. His parents, wife, and brother all died in the gas chambers.
But Auschwitz's pain did not bring Frankl down. On the contrary, he objectively observed and described everything about Auschwitz from a scientific point of view, and both he and his suffering became interesting objects of his psychological research. Through this method, Frankl successfully transcended the circumstances and sufferings of the time and pioneered the therapy of meaning, which is known as the Viennese Third School of Psychotherapy after Freud's psychoanalysis and Adler's psychology of the individual.
What life did Frankl find?
According to meaning therapy, we can discover the meaning of life in three different ways: (1) by creating a job or doing a certain cause; (2) by experiencing something or facing someone; and (3) by adopting a certain attitude in enduring inevitable suffering.
By doing a certain job, creating performance and gaining recognition. At Auschwitz, Frankl's manuscripts to be published were confiscated. The desire to rewrite the book helped him overcome the harsh conditions of the concentration camps. For example, in the Bavarian concentration camp, he had typhoid fever and took many notes on shredded pieces of paper, hoping that if he was lucky enough to live until the day of liberation, these notes would help him rewrite the book.
Success, money, praise, these are all add-ons, and if the add-on becomes an end in itself, it will be detracted from. For example, the more men want to show their sexual ability, or the more women want to show their ability to orgasm, the less likely they are to succeed.
At Auschwitz, a man next to Frankl suddenly said, "What if our wife sees us like ghosts?" I wish they had a better life in the camps than we did and would never know what we were going through. ”
People staggered forward silently, but they all missed their wives in their hearts, and their faces appeared with her slight smiling faces and frank and encouraging expressions. For the first time in his life, Frankl realized a truth: love is the highest goal that human beings pursue throughout their lives. If a person who has nothing in the world has a moment to miss his lover, then he can grasp the true meaning of happiness.
One of Frankl's cellmates, when he first arrived at the concentration camp, tried to make a deal with Heaven: to save his loved ones from suffering with his suffering. Love makes his suffering and death meaningful.
Even in seemingly hopeless situations, even in the face of unchangeable doom, people can find the meaning of life. It was important then to be able to witness the ultimate in human potential, that is, to be able to transform personal calamities into victories and personal misfortunes into human achievements.
Once a general practitioner was suffering from the death of his beloved wife for many years, frankl asked him a question: "Doctor, what if you go before her and your wife is still alive after you die?" The doctor suddenly realized that he had replaced his wife's pain, and his pain had meaning since then.
Many times, the pain of bad luck is actually an opportunity for people to have the opportunity to surpass themselves. Recently watched a video of a paralyzed son taking care of a paralyzed father who would post the details of his life online, and every time I watched it, I would be very touched and think of the plot about surpassing myself in pain.
In fact, these three aspects, can not be said to be the meaning I want to find, the first two are the way of sustenance, the third is the way of passive waiting, although the meaning must always be realized through some carriers, we also have to endure the hardships that may occur at any time in life. But I always hope that there will be some sense of self-determination.
Frankl has a saying that I find very reasonable: "Anything that man has can be taken away, but the last freedom of human nature, that is, the freedom to choose one's own attitude and way of life in any situation, cannot be deprived." ”
With a self-righteous attitude, find the meaning of your own life.
Zheng'er, a boy-like name, also has a woman's heart. I like thrills and excitement, and I also like to be quiet and quiet. Insist on getting up early for 3 years, join the 007 writing community for a year and a half, and insist on writing one article a week. The girl who once had inferiority to the bone was determined to live as her own sun.