Still photograph from the Soviet Film of the liberation of Auschwitz. Photo: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Belarussian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography.
‘When we accept life on its own terms, we tacitly admit of a purpose to Life itself.’
How do we live with suffering? Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day Tony D’Souza takes inspiration from Viktor Frankl
What is it that makes you want to keep on living? And how would you maintain your will to live in the face of extreme suffering, such as the death of a child or the diagnosis of a terminal illness? What would make you want to go on? The great Viktor Frankl offers an answer.
Frankl, a neurologist and psychiatrist, endured years of unspeakable suffering in the Nazi death camps. Yet he emerged from this experience not with disillusionment about humanity but a renewed and urgent message. During the years he spent in the camps he observed that those who died soonest were those who gave up hope, or saw no purpose in existence. Prisoners who had the best chance of survival were those who were able to find some meaning in their suffering.
There cannot be much starker circumstances than a Nazi death camp. Life is stripped back to its very basics. In Frankl’s words, all you have left to lose is your ‘ridiculous naked life,’ but this situation brings great clarity. He discovered that, when everything else is taken away, the last freedom we have is ‘to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances’. And it is this freedom to choose our own inner disposition to our circumstances that can save us. The constant starvation, beatings and threat of sudden death in the camps can be made tolerable if the victim is able to make sense of his suffering. If he or she believes there is a purpose to life, they can also believe there is a purpose in suffering. This belief keeps them alive because it gives them a sense of hope and purpose. Frankl was keen on quoting Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.’
Many of those who survived were able to find this purpose. Some people clung secretly to images of loved ones and were able to hang on to life in the belief they would be reunited with their families again. Some had religious convictions, and others believed innately, and against all the odds, that they had something they needed to accomplish – and they must survive for that purpose. Frankl himself survived the camps because he believed he had books to write. One of them was Man’s Search for Meaning, published in 1946, which went on to sell millions of copies.
The Nazi death camps are gone, but suffering remains part of our everyday existence and cannot be avoided. It may not be of the same magnitude as in a concentration camp, but it is just as real to those who endure it. Frankl’s answer remains as valid now as it was then. The last freedom we have is the attitude we take towards our suffering. If we choose to reject it, we say ‘No’ inwardly to the circumstances we find ourselves in, and we resist. This is understandable, as everything in our person, our past, our social standing, our education – our very humanity itself – may cry out against a sudden humiliation or an illness forced upon us. But if we cannot escape our suffering, this resistance is futile and is likely to cause more suffering, not only to ourselves but to those around us, because it serves only to magnify our mental agony.
To survive, and indeed to thrive despite what appears to be the appalling suffering of a capricious fate, we have to raise ourselves up to confront the issue that Frankl faced: ‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.’ The first step is to begin to accept reality as it is, because it is only by doing this that we can adopt an attitude to it. (Indeed, if our circumstances are unavoidable, accepting them is the only choice we have.) Through acceptance, we begin the process towards seeing meaning in our suffering and, almost miraculously, it often begins to be transformed into a source of growth and change.
When we accept life on its own terms, we tacitly admit of a purpose to Life itself, and also a purpose in suffering. For example, can it be possible that Life is asking of us an important question, a question only we are able to answer? This is not the tantrum of the ego that stamps its foot and says ‘No, this cannot be!’ Nor is it the wishy-washy fatalism that shrugs and says ‘everything in life must have a reason’. It is neither resistance nor weak acquiescence. The choice we are asked to make is deeper and greater than these. It is a courageous acceptance of life as it is, and a willingness to cooperate with it. To make this choice takes great maturity and courage and is not for the faint-hearted.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the great mystics arrive at a similar conclusion. George Fox said: ‘As people come into subjection to the Spirit of God, and grow up in the image and power of the Almighty, they may receive the word of wisdom that opens all things, and come to know the hidden unity in the Eternal Being.’ The same hidden unity was discovered by Buddha in India and the Stoics in ancient Greece. As a Tibetan proverb puts it: ‘It’s easier to put on a pair of shoes than to wrap the earth in leather.’ The great Stoic and emperor Marcus Aurelius says: ‘Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.’
I believe happiness, like misery, is a choice we make for ourselves. It is better to work on ourselves and the way we react to the world than to constantly expect the world to please us, and then to react childishly when things don’t go our way. Maturity demands that we grow up and take responsibility for ourselves. While we cannot always master our circumstances, we can always be the master of our attitude to whatever may befall us. Suffering is a fact of life and always will be, but we can face whatever suffering comes our way with dignity, hope and purpose if we can find meaning in it.
As we approach Holocaust Memorial Day, and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, on 27 January, let’s give that great liberator of the human soul, Viktor Frankl, the last word: ‘It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. 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. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.’
