The Life-changing Impact of Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy — 10. The Meaning of Suffering: You Are Chosen!

1. 1. Suffering instructs us by calling us to attention and making us aware of the preciousness of life.
2. 2. Suffering humbles us by stripping away pride and reminding us that life is not ours to control.
3. 3. Suffering confronts us with the demand to live an accountable life and fulfill our duties.
4. 4. Suffering shapes us into more sensitive, caring, and decent human beings when we yield to its lessons.
5. 5. Suffering commissions us with a sense of destiny and vocation, emerging with a mission.
6. 6. Suffering empowers us with the defiant power of the human spirit to oppose evil and alleviate suffering.
7. 7. Suffering leads us to our destinies: our specific areas of suffering become our callings in life.
8. 8. Suffering frees us from fear and victimization, rendering evil powerless over us.
9. 9. Suffering makes us witnesses for life, demonstrating that life retains meaning under all circumstances.
10. 10. The story of a tourist guide in Israel who survived a terrorist attack illustrates how suffering can become a mission of consolation.
11. 11. Rabbi Halberstam's response to Nazi taunts—'As long as we are not the ones kicking and beating innocent people, we can call ourselves chosen'—exemplifies moral triumph over humiliation.
12. 12. Holocaust survivor Dinah Benedikt maintained inner dignity by refusing to beg for her life, stating, 'That I do not beg for my life is mine.'