"Man's Search for Meaning"

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2 years ago

This is an essay by Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), neurologist, psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor and the founder of the discipline; that we know today as Logotherapy.

It's not you, it's Me...

Who makes you suffer?

Who breaks your heart?

Who hurts you

Who steals your happiness or takes away your peace of mind?

Who controls your life? ...

Your parents?

Your partner?

An old love?

Your mother-in-law?

Your boss?...

You could put together a whole list of suspects or culprits. It's probably the easiest. In fact, it is only a matter of thinking a little and naming all those people who have not given you what you deserve, have treated you badly or have simply left your life, leaving you with deep pain that to this day does not you understand.

But you know?...

You don't need to search for names.

The answer is simpler than it seems, and that is that nobody makes you suffer, breaks your heart, hurts you or takes away your peace.

Nobody has the capacity unless you allow them, open the door and give them control of your life.

Getting to think with that level of awareness can be a great challenge, but it is not as complicated as it seems. It becomes much easier when we understand that what is at stake is our own happiness. And definitely the worst place to place it is in the mind of the other, in his thoughts, comments or decisions.

Every day I am more convinced that man suffers not because of what he happens to him, but because of what he interprets. Many times we suffer from trying to answer questions that pierce our minds such as: Why didn't he call me? Won't you look for me? Why didn't he tell me what I wanted to hear? Why did he do the thing that bothers me the most? Why did he look at me ugly? And many others that for reasons of space I am going to omit.

He does not suffer for the action of the other person, but for what we feel, think and interpret what he did, as a direct consequence of having given control to someone outside of us.

If you wanted to see it in a more graphic way, it is as if we were doing voodoo voluntarily, sticking our needles every time a third party does or stops doing something that makes us uncomfortable. The most curious and unfair thing about the matter is that the vast majority of the people who "hurt" us, continue their lives as if nothing had happened; some even don't even find out about all the theater that you are living in your mind.

A clear example of the enormous dependence that we can have on another person is when a few years ago someone told me: "I need Enrique to tell me that he loves me even though I know it is a lie. I just want to hear it from his mouth and visit me from time to time, although I know he has another family, I promise you that I can be happy with that and I'm content, but if he doesn't ... I feel like I'm dying. "

Wow! I stayed four, will that really be true happiness? Is it not a constant martyrdom that someone spends it deciding our state of mind and well-being? Wanting to force another person to feel what he does not feel ... will it not be a voluntary ordeal for us?

We cannot spend our lives handing over power to someone else, because we end up depending on the choices of others, turned into puppets of their thoughts and actions.

The phrases that lovers normally say to each other such as: "My love, you make me so happy", "I die without you", "I cannot go through life without you", are completely unreal and false. Not because I am against love, on the contrary, I consider myself a quite passionate and romantic person, but because really no other person (as far as I understand) has the ability to enter your mind, modify your biochemical processes and make you happy or make your heart stop beating.

Definitely no one can decide for us. No one can force us to feel or do something we do not want, we have to live in freedom. We cannot be where they do not need us or where they do not want our company. We cannot hand over control of our existence, for others to write our history. Perhaps we cannot control what happens either, but we can decide how to react and interpret what happens to us.

The next time you think that someone hurts you, makes you suffer or controls your life, remember: It is not him, it is not her ... it is you who allows it and it is in your hands to regain control.

"Everything can be taken from man, except one thing: The last of human freedoms - the choice of the personal attitude that he must adopt in the face of destiny - to decide his own path."

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