For too long we have been dreaming a dream from which we are now waking up: the dream that if we just improve the socioeconomic situation of people, everything will be okay, people will become happy. The truth is that as the struggle for survival has subsided, the question has emerged: survival for what? Even more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.
Albert Camus once contented "There is but one truly serious problem, and that is . . . judging whether life is or is not worth living . . ."
Man does not live by welfare alone.
in finding meaning, however, we are perceiving possibility embedded in reality. (skip) It has a "kairos" quality, which means that unless we use the opportunity to fulfill the meaning inherent and dormant in a situation, it will pass and be gone forever.
to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation (skip) we are challenged to change ourselves.
(skip) the meaning of suffering. It can have a meaning if it changes oneself for the better."
as Martin Heidegger said, being human is "being in the world." What I have called the self-transcendence of existence denotes the fundamental fact that being human means relating to something, or someone, other than oneself, be it a meaning to fulfill, or human beings to encounter.
A human being is not one thing among other things. Things determine each other. Man, however, determines himself. Rather, he decides whether or not he lets himself be determined, be it by the drives and instincts that push him, or the reasons and meanings that pull him.
Blaise Pascal once said, "Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connait point" (the heart has reasons that reason does not know). There is, indeed, what is called the wisdom of the heart. (skip) there is more to being human than being the battleground of the clashing ego, id and superego, as Fulton J. Sheen once mockingly put it, (skip) From the man in the street we may learn that being human means being confronted continuously with situations which are each at once chance and challenge, giving us a chance to fulfill ourselves by meeting the challenge to fulfill its meaning. Each situation is a call, first to listen, and then to respond.
the loneliness of "the lonely crowd."
(skip) existential privacy. What is greatly needed is to make the best of being lonely, to have "the courage to be" alone.
the absence of a sense of personal distance, (skip) - he cannot stop informing you about his private life or inquiring about your private life.
Language is more than mere self-expression. Language is always pointing to something beyond itself.
Writers who themselves have gone through the hell of despair over the apparent meaninglessness of life can offer their suffering as a sacrifice on the altar of humankind. Their self-disclosure can help the reader who is plagued by the same condition, help him in overcoming it.
healing through reading.
It is true, the author should be granted the freedom of opinion and its expression; but freedom is not the last word, it is not the whole story. Freedom threatens to degenerate into arbitrariness unless it is balanced by responsibleness.
"tragic heroism" is the possibility of saying yes to life in spite of its transitoriness.
is this memory not also transitory? (skip) It exits and it continues to exist regardless of whether we look at it or think about it. It continues to exist even irrespective of our own existence.
(skip) that wholeness of our life, which we complete in the very moment of our death, lies outside the grave and outside the grave it remains - and it does so, not although, but because it has slipped into the past. Even what we have forgotten, what has escaped from our consciousness, is not erased from the world; it has become part of the past, and it remains part of the world.
for day by day life is asking questions, we are interrogated by life, and we have to answer. Life, I would say, is a life-long question-and-answer period. As to the answers, I do not weary of saying that we can only answer to life by answering for our lives. Responding to life means being responsible for our lives.
This leads to the paradox that man's own past is his true future. The living man has both a future and a past; the dying man has no future in the usual sense, but only a past; the dead, however, "is" his past. He has no life, he "is" his life. (skip) The past is precisely that which cannot be taken away.
-Frankl 박사의 책을 다시 읽어나가면서, 그의 글은 암울한 일상에 지쳐갈 때 등불을 밝혀주는 듯 하다는 생각이 든다.
매일의 생활 속에서 건조해지고 약해지고 무디어지면서 생의 진정한 가치를 의심하게 될 때, 매 순간 삶에 응답함으로써 자신을 완성해가는 인간, 한 세대의 삶이 아닌 시대적인 가치로서의 인간, 과거로서 정형화되지만 그것으로서 영원해지는 인간을 그 본인의 삶을 통해 그의 글을 통해 역설하고 있다.
너무도 단순하지만 그의 주장은 삶에서의 가장 본질적인 가치를 인간에게 부여하고 또 부여된 가치를 인지하고 실행할 것을 삶으로서 세계에 응답할 것을 그의 전력을 다해 종용함으로서, 의미가 있다면 어떠한 상황도 버티어 나갈 수 있다는 것을 그러나 변하는 시간 속에서 가능성을 끄집어 내어 그것을 실재로 만드는 것은 오직 자기 자신만임을, 그것을 기억하고 실행할 것을 거칠고 굵은 목소리도 계속해서 진심을 다해 옆에서 말하고 있는 듯 느껴진다.
