3 hours to go, meaning in suffering and "A Mans Search For Meaning"

pete43lost_at_sea

While I have been laying in hospital in pain i read the book below, it got my mind working.

"A man's search for Meaning" by victor frankle "Experiences in a Concentration Camp"

See the extract below, one of so many that touched me. this book is so rich and just what i needed. i hope you read the extract if your interested. i purchased the book online and then found the pdf online. I am going through a slightly contemplative phase at the moment.

As my 11 months of treatments will be officially finished in 3 hours for my crc experience
i transition from a restricted life to an active life with goals.

I can still hear the drip pumping in IV antibiotics, its clicks and squeaks. The sounds of the hospital, I won't forget. I recorded them. I hope I don't hear them anymore.

I hope the passage below makes sense, if you like it i'd read the book. i enjoyed it! and I found it around the time I was worried about worry.

Hugs,
pete

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far removed from real life. It is true that only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their suffering afforded, but even one such example is sufficient proof that man's inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.
Take the fate of the sick—especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance.

If you want to read more search online its freely available, otherwise PM for PDF details