.......As Anna S. Redsand recounts in her biography of Frankl, he was at a loss for what to do, so he set out for St. Stephans Cathedral in Vienna to clear his head. Listening to the organ music, he repeatedly asked himself, Should I leave my parents behind?... Should I say goodbye and leave them to their fate? Where did his responsibility lie? He was looking for a hint from heaven. When he returned home, he found it. A piece of marble was lying on the table. His father explained that it was from the rubble of one of the nearby synagogues that the Nazis had destroyed. The marble contained the fragment of one of the Ten Commandments -- the one about honoring your father and your mother. With that, Frankl decided to stay in Vienna and forgo whatever opportunities for safety and career advancement awaited him in the United States. He decided to put aside his individual pursuits to serve his family and, later, other inmates in the camps. The wisdom that Frankl derived from his experiences there, in the middle of unimaginable human suffering, is just as relevant now as it was then: Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself -- 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. Baumeister and his colleagues would agree that the pursuit of meaning is what makes human beings uniquely human. By putting aside our selfish interests to serve someone or something larger than ourselves -- by devoting our lives to giving rather than taking -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness. Read more: theatlantic/national/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/?single_page=true#ixzz3HFv5LZHr
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 13:05:13 +0000