What gives people the will to live? To suffer? To sacrifice? Amidst sickness, loneliness, despair, physical or mental impairment, any kind of abuse, injustice, or intolerance?
What reason do you have to live? What if all your loved ones were taken from you? you became paralyzed from the neck down? you lost your money and all your possessions? your spouse left you? enemies outnumbered friends? you and your spouse were unable to have children? you got turned down 100 times in a row? you haven’t had a date for two years? you were struck with a debilitating illness and you couldn’t care for yourself? your freedom was taken from you?
Your identity is not everything around you or happening to you or done to you. Certainly, all those things can affect who we are and how we think and feel, but they do not define us, at least not completely. Each individual has a mission to fulfill. It is how we react to situations and circumstances that matters and that proves who we are.
What is supposed to happen between birth and death? One cannot just explain the meaning of our existence in one sentence. We are to endure and overcome challenges placed in our paths, to experience good and bad, happiness and sadness, strength and weakness. And for what end? To grow and become whom we have the potential to become. I love stories of people who overcome. I love people who overcome.
Each individual has a meaning in life. They don't always make the right choices, but they were born with purpose. Part of this life is to see how we will use our agency.
Many people are great examples of living life with purpose. This includes Viktor E. Frankl, whose book Man’s Search For Meaning helps us understand how even in the most horrible of circumstances, one can choose to live on and to have purpose. Their quality of life was poor in the concentration camps, but still they fought to live. He tells of times when they would fight to live just one more day by getting a little bit more food, or by trying to gain favor so as to avoid being sent off to the gas chambers or to get breaks from hard labor, which could kill them given their physical state of being. They strove to survive. Many of us would say if we were placed in those circumstances that we would want to die. But why didn’t they?
People like this choose to:
- rely on faith and hope in God's plan for them.
- seek learning and growth from trials.
- be positive instead of bitter.
- develop attributes such as patience, kindness, and humility.
- find gratitude.
- set goals.
- love and forgive.
- put away pride and self-interest and use their means to help others.
- avoid complacency in life.
- understand others instead of avoid others.
- tap into their talents and abilities and work on living up to their potential.
If we can endure, then who knows what blessings lie in our future? It has been said, “The future is as bright as your faith.” (1) If those in the concentration camp chose to surrender to death instead of strive to live, they would have given up hope that there would be an end to their suffering. One poignant example of enduring is that of Viktor Frankl, who, acting as doctor at a camp, had the chance to escape, but instead chose to remain and help his suffering patients.
Whose example do you learn from? Those who remain optimistic or those who are bitter? Who has been blessed because of your kind words or acts of service or attitude? How have you felt when you have chosen to be happy and hopeful instead of bitter and in despair? Each person has a purpose which no one else can fulfill. “His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.” (2)
“Sadness, disappointment, and severe challenge are events in life, not life itself. I do not minimize how hard some of these events are. They can extend over a long period of time, but they should not be allowed to become the confining center of everything you do.” (3)
“Sometimes the very moments that seem to overcome us with suffering are those that will ultimately suffer us to overcome.” (4)
Christ said, “To this end was I born,” (5) when speaking of His Atonement, death, and resurrection. He knew perfectly his purpose in life and knew it included the greatest suffering--more than any human could endure. Our path is not as clear, but to follow Him.
2. Man's Search for Meaning, p. 67
