Suffering Fate for Life's Mean

You cannot avoid unintentional suffering, but you can change your attitude towards it, to give suffering a meaning to you. His main point is that everyone can find the will to go on, even in the direct of circumstances, if only we can identify what we are willing to live for. As Frankl quotes, “Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete” (76). Frankl defines suffering as something that every human being in life must experience. Without suffering one person cannot experience life’s f

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At one point in Frankl’s experience at the concentration camps, he gave up on trying to control his life and decided to let fate takes its course. They were only given a piece of bread and a small bowl of soup a day. Suffering aids us in the end, even though it seems to be bringing us down in present. The SS officers were constantly treating the inmates as if they were animals and nothing more. “The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever. They had to constantly think about liberation and if they would ever get out of the concentration camp alive. “Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a

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clear and precise picture of it” (82). They had hopelessness of their future and had to question their survival everyday. It was the first selection, the first verdict made on our existence or non-existence” (25). Experiencing this, Frankl realized that fate was in fact not in their own hands, but in others. This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one’s master, and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course” (66).

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Frankl quotes from Dostoevski, a famous psychologist, that the way for a man to know that he

is worthy of his sufferings is to still grasp is inner achievement. To have that person still have spiritual freedom of himself is evidence to him that he is worthy of his own sufferings and makes life consequential and purposeful. He hated

making those life and death decisions, so Frankl decided to let fate make it’s own conclusion and what was meant for him.

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Approximate Word count = 1279
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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