On Purpose
The central argument Frankl makes is that life has meaning whatever the circumstances, even when profound suffering is encountered. The title itself is the core message: we can and must say „yes to life“ not because of circumstances, but in spite of them. It is easy to say „yes to life“ when everything is going well. If that „yes“ is contingent on circumstances, however, it can never be sustained because, as we all know, circumstances change as much as the weather in my native Ireland. Everything, even our existence in this incarnation, is transient…
Unlearning
When I thought I was heading to the most densely populated central quarter of town, I could feel the energy of the city ebb away into the calm of the countryside, beyond the countless improvised homes of the peri-urban belt. Then, in a moment of clarity, the riddle solved itself. Of course! I had, as always, been working on the premise that the sun was in the south. Not here! Roughly 2,500 km south of the equator, the sun appears to be in the north. This was the first of many lessons in unlearning which came my way during my African adventure…
State of Grace
When the guided meditation concluded, we all slowly “came back”, stretching limbs in all directions and blinking our eyes to re-adapted to the artificial room lighting. There were many smiles to be seen on the faces of the small group which had thus gathered in our corner. After a period of silence, a conversation slowly began to unfold on what we had just experienced. We quickly began to explore such topics as connection and alienation. Why is it that, during deep meditation, some of us find our bliss tempered by sadness, even grief. And what about the high degree of sensitivity that some of us manifest? Is high sensitivity simply more than a somatic or emotional manifestation? Is it not primarily spiritual sensitivity?
Redemption
That is what the Twelve Steps are all about: a shift in perspective. Before we begin the journey of recovery, we are caught firmly in a trap that we cannot spring through self-sufficiency or mere egoic willpower (ergo the need for a “Higher Power” of our own understanding). We also suffer from a chronic perception disorder because of having lived so long in chaos, overwhelmed mode, denial, delusion, and the suppression of all the emotions we could not process or endure during the first, formative years of our lives. As traumatised adult children, we see the world as we are, not as it is..
Change Paradox
The caterpillar does not engage in a coercive attempt to change herself into a butterfly. She is wholly at one in her caterpillar existence. Without this self-acceptance of “what is”, the organic transformation cannot take place. How do we get to such a point of growth and development? The first step is to quit running away from our version of “what is”. Our society stimulates us to be on the run, around the clock. Addictions, both substance-related and behavioural, are the grease that keeps the wheels of our modern global consumer society moving. As long as we buy into the lie: “I’ll be happy when…” we will be tilting at windmills like our old friend Don Quixote…
Weariness
In the neglect arising from the absence of the caregiver attuned to our needs we soon learn to take care of our own needs. We become the children who are often admired for our maturity beyond our years, a target of warm praise from our caregivers, our teachers, and later, our bosses. We are the hyper-independent self starters everyone wants on their team because we require little or no supervision. We learn to become the compliant partner in relationships or flip to the other extreme of trying to dominate them…
Response-Ability
Our brain, therefore, if stuck in autopilot, will keep flooding us with emotions. Without the ability to pause and reflect before responding, we generally get caught up in the mental reactions or even reflexes of old, of which we are not aware. And we are generally not aware that we are not aware. Today’s world is in many ways an echo-chamber of the earliest circumstances of childhood. This impulsivity tends to get us into a lot of trouble, with ourselves and those around us, causing conflict, strife, even disease…
Trauma-Informed
The survival strategies and coping mechanisms we develop in those earliest of years become etched on our neurobiology, especially our limbic system. The good news is that discoveries are being made right now, which help us rewire the brain and retrain the body such that we can heal from the wounds of the past. It is often a case of learning the three-step process of regulate, relate, and reason. An unregulated body cannot successfully engage in the subsequent steps. The inability to relate, both in inner discourse and with those around us, will keep us beyond the range of sound reasoning…
Supersedure
The fact that our species has reached such heights in the creation of beauty, — the music of Mozart, the paintings of Monet, the poetry of Rumi, etc — has produced great scientific innovations, and is filled with stories of loving-kindness to each other in the most challenging of circumstances, reminds us that the human potential for love is boundless. Why do so many of us operate below our full potential and what can be done to rectify this? How can we restore the abundance of self worth to ourselves and others once it has been impaired?
Be Kind!
On one such engagement he was holding a symposium for corporate executives on the topic of leadership. He began by asking those members of the audience who had grandchildren to raise their hands. Most of the hands went up. He then asked them at exactly what point of the day they switched from being loving grandfathers (most were men) to being CEOs, incumbents of corporate power, who made largely rational, short-term yet wide-reaching decisions which ultimately undermine the future of our grandchildren and subsequent generations…
