Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work(doing something significant), in love(caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.
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Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
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Frankl would have argued that we are never left with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.
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An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
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I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out(during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying.“Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.”
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Despite that factor—or maybe because of it—we were carried away by nature’s beauty, which we had missed for so long.
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Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually.
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If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
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In camp, a small time unit, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly. My comrades agreed when I said that in camp a day lasted longer than a week.