This is a short story from the book Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything by Viktor Frankl (Amazon).
You can find the full book summary here: Living with Meaning: “Yes to Life” by Viktor Frankl (Book Summary)
A Real-Life Meaningful Example of Saying “Yes to Life” (Short Story)
First, let’s cover a quick refresher:
The 3 Main Directions of the Fulfillment of Meaning
“The fulfillment of meaning is possible in three main directions: human beings are able to give meaning to their existence, firstly, by doing something, by acting, by creating—by bringing a work into being; secondly, by experiencing something—nature, art—or loving people; and thirdly, human beings are able to find meaning even where finding value in life is not possible for them in either the first or the second way—namely, precisely when they take a stance toward the unalterable, fated, inevitable, and unavoidable limitation of their possibilities: how they adapt to this limitation, react toward it, how they accept this fate.” — Viktor Frankl
The “Challenge of the Hour” may Change the Direction of Meaning
“In the course of life, human beings must be prepared to change the direction of this fulfillment of meaning, often abruptly, according to the particular ‘challenges of the hour.’ For we have already pointed out that the meaning of life can only be a specific one, specific both in relation to each individual person and in relation to each individual hour: the question that life asks us changes both from person to person, and from situation to situation.” — Viktor Frankl
A Real-Life Example of all 3 Directions of Meaning
“At this point I would like to show, with an example, how this change of direction could both be ‘demanded’ by fate and completed ‘obediently’ by the person in question.” — Viktor Frankl
Changing Direction from ‘Meaning through Action’ to ‘Meaning through Experience’:
“There was a young man engaged in an active and productive career—he was a busy graphic designer in advertising—who was suddenly torn from his work because he fell ill with a malignant, inoperable spinal cord tumor at the top of his spine. This tumor quickly caused paralysis of his arms and legs. Now he could no longer keep up the way in which he had made his life meaningful, namely the path of being active and employed: he was pushed to one side, in a completely different direction; being active was becoming increasingly inaccessible, and he was relying ever more on finding meaning in the passive experiences of his restricted situation, and extracting meaning from life even within such limited possibilities.”
“So, what did our patient do? While he was in the hospital, he read intensively, he tackled books he had never had time to read in his busy professional life, he listened diligently to music on the radio and had the most stimulating discussions with individual fellow patients. So he had withdrawn into that area of existence in which it is possible, beyond being active, for a person to fulfill the meaning of life and answer life’s question in the passive incorporation of the world into the self. Therefore, it is understandable that this brave person, even at that point, by no means had the feeling that his life, even in its very limited form, had become meaningless.”
Changing Direction from ‘Meaning through Experience’ to ‘Meaning through Attitude’:
“But then came the time when his illness was so advanced that his hands could no longer hold a book, his muscles had become so weak; he could no longer tolerate headphones as they caused him such severe headaches; and eventually he found it difficult to speak, and could no longer hold his spirited discussions with the other patients. Thus, this man was again pushed to one side, rejected by fate, but now not only from the realm of value creation but also from that of experiential value. Due to his illness, this was the situation in his last days. But he was able to extract meaning even from this state of affairs, simply in the position he adopted.“
“Our patient knew perfectly well that his days, or even hours, were numbered. I remember clearly making my rounds as the doctor on duty at the hospital at the time, on this man’s last afternoon. As I was passing his bed, he beckoned to me. Speaking with difficulty, he told me that during the senior physician’s rounds that morning he had overheard that Professor G. had given orders to give the patient a morphine injection in his last few hours, to ease the agony of his impending death throes. He went on to say that since he now had reason to believe that tonight he would reach that point, he asked me to give him the injection now, during that visit, so that the night nurse would not have to call me especially because of him and disturb me while I was sleeping. In the last hours of his life this man was still intent on sparing others trouble rather than ‘disturbing’ them! Apart from the bravery with which he endured all his suffering and pain, what an achievement, not a professional but an unparalleled human achievement, lies in this simple remark, in this wish to consider others, literally in his last hour!“
The Morals of the Story
“You will understand me if I now state that no terrific advertising graphics, not the best nor the most beautiful in the world (if the patient had created them when he was professionally employed) would have been an accomplishment equal to the simple human achievement that this man demonstrated with his behavior in those last few hours of his life.”
“It will now be clear to you that the meaning that can ensue from illness and dying cannot be affected by any external lack of success or any failure in this world, that this is rather an internal success, and this inner success exists despite external failure.”
“What may also be clear is perhaps that all this is not only true for special cases, but we can apply it to all our lives and the whole of our lives. For somehow all our lives are ultimately unsuccessful, to the extent that we understand success as only being external success: no external success, no effect, that is to say, no biological or sociological influence out there in the world, is guaranteed to outlive us or even to last forever.”
“However, inner success, the inner fulfillment of life’s meaning, is something that, if at all, has been achieved ‘once and for always.’ The fact that this goal is often only reached at the end of our existence does not detract from the meaning of life but rounds off this ‘end’ to become a true completion.”
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