![]() Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. 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. 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. Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how,” could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners. What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? -“Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Instead of taking the camp’s diffculties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under the most diffcult circumstances-to add a deeper meaning to his life. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” ![]() They may have been few in number, but they offer suffcient 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. ![]() 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. ![]() : Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. Several times in the course of the book, Frankl approvingly quotes the words of Nietzsche: “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How. ![]()
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