November 11, 2006 8:41 pm
A Book
When the book meme was making it’s round on the autism blogs this past summer, one of the topics hit a nerve and stuck with me. The topic was “Name a book that changed your life”. I’ve read a lot of books but I couldn’t think of any that changed my life in a significant way. Still, I kept thinking back to the topic.
A few weeks ago, it hit me. There was a book that changed my life in a significant way. It shaped the way I look at the world and, more importantly, shaped the way I look at myself. After reading a very upbeat post that Kevin Leitch recently wrote, I knew I had to write about it.
The book is Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. About 15 years ago, three people, referred me to the book, over the course of only six weeks. I had never heard of Frankl or the book before but the referrals were enough to send me to the library.
Victor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who was deported by the Nazis to a concentration camp. He spent the last several years of World War II in various camps. Fankl and others in his concentration camp were eventually liberated in April 1945.
Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is primarily based on his experience in the concentration camps. During this time, Frankl saw both the best and worst of mankind. And more importantly, he saw examples of each in both his captors and his fellow prisoners. Despite losing his freedom, his family, and nearly his life, he recognized that he still carried the most important freedom inside himself. Frankl wrote:
…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. (emphasis added)
I’d like to be able to write that I always use the freedom Frankl describes to choose attitudes that reflect my most fundamental beliefs. I don’t, but his ideas are always there as a goal. Through Frankl’s writings, and others that he influenced, I know that what happens within me has far more impact than anything that happens to me.
Another quote, which goes to the core of Frankl’s impact on me:
When we are no longer able to change a situation, . . . we are challenged to change ourselves.
Blogging is bad for me, it makes me buy books!
Best wishes
November 16th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
We could spend our money on worse things than books!
November 16th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Never read the book but have heard of that sentiment, reminds me of what my dad used to say. “when faced with the inevitable you might as well enjoy it”
I don’t think he really enjoyed his own inevitable, but then maybe it was written that he would not.
The only thing I can really chose is the illusion of free will
now there’s a paradox for you, but then it was written that it would be written.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
A book I came across with a similar idea (the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances) was Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD. I didn’t have a lot of success with the meditation (still trying, on and off), but one of the things I took from the book was that ultimately we can choose how to deal with stressors (including animate stressors) and how to respond. We really do have free will on this, and as such, someone else’s bad behaviour really is not a justification for my own.
Now if I can only live up to that…
November 24th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
blogs
March 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am