"Fearlessness is the first requirement of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral." -- Mahatma Gandhi

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Viktor Frankl: On a Meaningful Life

"Time that has passed is certainly irrevocable, but what has happened within that time is unassailable and inviolable. Passing time is therefore not only a thief, but a trustee. Any philosophy which keeps in mind the transitoriness of existence need not be at all pessimistic."

"To express this figuratively we might say: The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who takes life in the sense suggested above is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors. He can then reflect back with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the full."

"What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that young person has, the future that is in store for him? "No thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past - not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of suffering suffered. These are the things of which I am most proud - though these are things that cannot inspire envy.""

"All that is good and beautiful in the past is safely preserved in the past. On the other hand, so long as life remains, all guilt and all evil is still redeemable."

-- Viktor Frankl --
("The Doctor and the Soul, pp. 33-34.)

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1 comment:

  1. This was a really meaningful post! Really does seem like a lot of thought and love had gone into writing it and i am glad i stumbled upon it today

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