Viktor Frankl and Man's Search for Meaning - Rabbi Dr. Reuven Bulka

[Music] the day that Viktor Frankl died was born on the day that Beethoven died later on this give you a little bit of an idea of a type of felon he was when he was reflecting upon this and somebody asked him whether he sees any meaning in the fact that he died on the day he that he was one other day Beethoven died his reaction was tragedy usually comes in pairs insofar as when logotherapy started germinating his mind rabbi Shawn Bach is a thousand percent correct it did not start with the show ah it started when he was in high school and when he was in high school he he had a biology professor of all things that were speaking about what defines him in being reaction formations he's a just a question of a biology and according to the biographies that have come down from Franco he apparently got up in the middle of class in reaction to the reductionist approach that the professor took and said if that's the case what is humanity all about what is the meaning of life basically you reducing all of us to animals it doesn't make any sense so he already was in his own mind at that time thinking about these issues in his earlier life I remember he was living in Vienna which from at one point in time being a big center became a center of hate and he became the victim of that hate in the in a very silly a very painful manner he was the last person to get married according but in other words the Nazis what they did your maximum was they made it impossible for Jews to get marriage he was the last one to get married in Vienna uh through rabbinic auspices the lady that he married mmm her name was Tilly we we know why he chose her to get married and that tells you a little bit about even in his younger years he was a little bit different than the rest he one day in his home in in Vienna he excused himself from a long awaited lunch by saying that he had to go to a hospital because a patient was in an emergency situation and and his wife to be a late his name again sir Tilly was obviously a little bit disappointed he ran away to the hospital as per his dedication came back a few hours later it was a little bit past lunchtime and what Retd him was a concerned lady who asked and how is the patient doing at that point in time he said this is a lady I'm going to marry because instead of her being concerned about hey you're late for lunch and we've been waiting for you all this time her focus was on what was going on out there and I don't know how many people this is a Nellie as a rifki thing right you know the one who's gonna feed the camel not know narcissistic questions or or or desires in terms of the video that you saw is actually quite fascinating and it does in a in a capsule form and remember that you're going to hear Viktor Frankl with a very heavy accent but remember that English is not his first language and it is absolutely astounding looking back how much of a master of the English language he became through through the course of the years let me just introduce you although you know this is not DVAR Torah time but just to give you an idea of of this through a Torah prism you have in this week's Torah readings in the beginning value strata so have bottom be cube of a common came long as iron okey remember this famous pisaq Rivka is pregnant the there's a contentiousness going on inside her womb and she says if that's the case what am i what am i for you know what she was asking she was asking what's the meaning of this she didn't understand it without Taylor she went lead rose to soshim she went to inquire from God what did God tell her snake I am here with Negros Naomi we were mighty paredo if this was an issue of I'm in excruciating pain and I gotta know what this is all about the fact that a doctor tells you well you have this pain because of that doesn't take away the pain her pain wasn't taken away by that but the whole problem was that it was not the pain that bothered her it was what's the meaning of the pain and when God said to rifki what's going on inside you is the prototype of what's going to go on in in Jewish history she understood it not that the pain went away but she saw this God was telling her this is the meaning of your pain what you're experiencing now is the travail of your people that are going to come now if you take a look at this basically a simple little twist compliments of Viktor Frankl who never wrote a parish on Hamish but if he had to explain this this is the way he would do it and what we here today to do is to try to get a handle on what is it that this is all about in other words there is a system here it's not simply speaking making a comment but there's a philosophy that that explains what what this is all about so let's begin with a background of probably an a hidden enemy that I know came up in last in in the last symposium that we had which is probably underlining some of the issues that you're going to be discussing today in that when you speak about this issue of the challenge of living in a life of meaninglessness the most salient example of this is the extraordinarily high rate of depression in our society a rate of depression which according to some at very serious moments can be one out of five but in the more shall we say benign but certainly present expressions of depression that maybe even double that we all have these times that we feel you know why should I what's it all about I don't feel like doing this it is essentially saying what's the purpose in all of this bother that I have and this a very serious issue which governs a lot of people's thinking in other words why what am i well about in the end doesn't mean it does is there a difference a lot of people will say you know if I leave this world nobody will even notice as if to say my existence has no meaning not for me and not for anyone else which is why one of the most fascinating antidepressants is actually free if you go over to someone who you know you don't know at all you can make phenomenal difference I had last week an interesting an interesting happenstance I went I went to a store to buy earplugs for my flip phone I'm still in flip phone mode and they didn't have it in the store that I went to so they said go down a little further and that store does have it so I complimented them for saying that even though it's your competition you recommended them so I went I went there and there they actually had exactly what I needed it was also a Black Friday sale even though was Wednesday I can't figure that one out but all right so I didn't complain on the way back I realized that between those two stores was my favorite bookstore so I went to the bookstore I used go looking for books and the lady there asked me what I was looking for and she showed me a place where a lot of them were on sale and for some reason other we got engaged in conversation and as I was about to leave I complimented her on her helpfulness and how kind she was a day later I get an email this is an email from a lady which goes as follows not Jewish she said I don't know how she got my email I didn't bother asking published in the public domain whatever so she says you you it turns out that she knew me and she searched me out she saw that I was in the stores so she made up her mind that she was going to be serving me which I didn't know that at the time but that's fine and then she said that she had a particularly rough time because she's trying to hold down two jobs B because she can't make ends meet and she has to support two kids and you're telling me that I was kind made my day and I was so depressed going through the day but it lifted me up and I was able to go through the entire day there's nothing to do with me folks it's something that we all can do a little vort that you say to someone what it does is changes their attitude they say somebody really cares about me I really do matter I'm not here for nothing I do make a difference these things are beautiful antidepressants in a sense what you say is give person a sense that their life has a meaning because someone else really notices you those are small little things that can address it I'm not suggesting that this is the end of the depression story that goes much deeper but what we always have these situations of problems say what can I do about it there's a lot you can do about it just simple things that make a difference that in our society which has become disjointed that people don't care for each other in case you don't believe me just watch what happens when you go into an elevator this has been noticed by many social psychologists an elevator usually has four corners right if there's one person in an elevator and then someone else goes into the elevator you can bet your house that they're going to go into the farthest corner away from the guy who is in the elevator or the lady in the elevator and if for whatever reason they would go and stand right next to the person who's the only person in an elevator their goodness feel uncomfortable what's going on here why you hounding me why are you standing on top of me cuz this is the way that we are but I try this now whenever you're going into an elevator try to make conversation with people in the elevator it's a tremendously fascinating exercise it lowers the temperature it gets people more engaged and anybody who leaves the elevator after having been spoken to as a person rather than a bump on on a moving machine they're gonna leave and say thank you have a nice day or whatever it makes a tremendous difference all of these things that we can do but today's about Viktor Frankl and let me begin by by saying that his philosophy which was worked out quite nicely built around one simple little premise and this is that the striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in the human being that is it get that into your head because that's what it's all about the primary motivational force in the human being is to find the meaning in one's life what does it mean to say this is the primary motivational force we see a lot of people who are obsessed with making money obsessed with becoming president of the United States or some other power grab so how can Frankel at the face of these things that he must have seen in his own time how could he say that this is the primary motivational force in the human being what he would tell you and which comes out in various places in his writings is that III know deny that people are obsessed with power I don't I don't know the people are obsessed with wealth but I am saying to you that this is not what human beings are hard-wired to do I'm saying to you that the human being and his or her best is one who strives for meaning and when they do that even though necessarily they may not attain the meaning or whatever the case may be but this is where human action is and this is where you were being flourish there's a classic story in terms of his own wealth not that he wasn't concerned about it obviously you have to be concerned about it but the story goes that he was once offered a summer job as a teacher at Harvard University so that's not a small thing you know I don't know how many of us were ever offered that and days gone by he was offered nine thousand US dollars for teaching a summer course at Harvard that was at the time when nine thousand it probably was be the equivalent of maybe close to a hundred thousand dollars now he turned it down and they asked him why he was turning it down that he wants more money whatever he said now I didn't turn it down for that I turned it down for a very simple reason they said the only reason why I like to make money is because with the money I'm able to buy the time that I need in order to do the things that I find meaningful but I already have the time so I don't need the money do you get it I mean people don't think like that but that's the way you thought didn't I I don't need the money because my focus is it's all good and I don't need it in so far as the pursuit of pleasure he takes an interesting approach which is more or less and almost everything that he he says has a parallel in in in in the Chamorro and in the Hamish whatever I'm not suggesting to you that everything in logotherapy is consistent with Judy that would be probably not accurate but there are so many things that are and the basic rudiments of the psychology are Jewishly oriented if you take the word meaning and you substitute for it taurah you have not logo therapy but logo Torah P and it would work just as well but that hopefully may it may come out over the course of the last of the next of the next one so anyway insofar as the issue of pleasure is concerned he doesn't say that you shouldn't do it but he does say simply speaking empirically anyone who's on a pleasure track the more they have the more they want so it lines up with an existential frustration so he's not saying you shouldn't do it he's just saying you make that decision that that's where your orientation is you're going to be stymied in going to be frustrated so it says what you have here isn't an interesting as it's an interesting approach which is not to say I'm not moralizing I'm not telling you what to do but I am suggesting to you that if you do this it's gonna work better this actually got him into a little bit of trouble down the road because as you hear and in every single film that you have a Viktor Frankl what comes through is his passion when he speaks it so you turn them on and he believes in this fully it's almost like he's a preacher a Bible Belt preacher preaching on the idea of meaning and there were a lot of people over the course of time who resented it if you want to have a little bit of a picture in in terms of where he was psychologically speaking on the spectrum for a long time he was the Donald Trump of psychology I hate using that analogy but not that he used the foul language of Donald Trump god forbid but in the way that people pilloried him and and basically made fun of his ideas he was really shocked and to his credit he never he it bothered him so I knew him well enough to know that it bothered him and it pained him and let me just go back to last year we had a famous in incident where a story that I told was actually involved someone who was actually there when it happened but when he got criticized and over the course of time I had built a nice relationship with him I would sometimes again a call from him saying what did I do here that was wrong because he was really sensitive he didn't he he knew well enough that for his logotherapy to somehow rather make it in the world he had to have credibility so it bothered him knowing that he was totally attacked he he spoke about once that he went to Israel and he spoke to a group of psychologists who were I would say anti logotherapy but Pro some other type of psychology I'll leave it to your imagination which it was and then he said the next day he walked out it took a walk in the desert and he said he felt more lonely at Hebrew University in the Department of Psychology than he did in the desert because they they basically not not ignored him but based but they made Ocean Park for him maybe they said what you're saying is nonsense so that bothered him immensely because he knew he knew what he needed in order to make it but what's interesting to note is that it never deterred him from doing what he felt he had to do so much so that instead of shrinking back and saying alright if you want me to moderate I will he actually pushed further so let's take this simple little thing of the striving to find the meaning in life as a primary motivational force of man it starts building up okay if that's the case so there has to be meaning in the world right because you can strive to find the meaning if there is no meaning so meaning has to be there so where is the meaning and what happens if you try and you and you don't find a meaning and then the more the more profound question is why is this meaning meaningful if in fact the world is going to end up exploding through an atomic bomb this a primal a-bomb atomic which was going on in his day as the idea that the world would be destroyed how can you go talk to people about having a meaning in life when the whole world is going to go to smithereens it's a very very important question so how do you answer a question like that if you Viktor Frankl and you're building your entire system on the idea that world that that the life has meaning and let's go a little bit further life has meaning unconditionally unconditionally that means at any and any in any circumstance there has to be a meaning in the depths of the of the concentration camps in the worst times there had to be a meaning we'll get to that in a second how can you do that how can you say that so you know what he does he basically introduces a phenomenal idea this very person who was affirmative about the existence of God about how the world was created with a purpose introduces the idea to people reading his books that there's such a thing as the world to come all of my BOB crazy remember this is a 1960s 1970s people thought anybody who believed in law about in those days was a loony was crazy and he he doesn't go so far as to posit it as a theologian but he says may not in other words there's a meaning beyond this meaning which is a meaning in the world beyond this world he uses this famous analogy which I think I had shared with you last last time of the ape and the serum and he says when when you give and if when you give an ape a serum to try to find out if it's I work to cure the common cold or whatever and then you asked the ape what's the meaning of this suffering the ape has no clue but we who are administering it we know that there is a meaning to it because that suffering is going to possibly unravel and help us discover what's going to help people with a common cold so we know that there's a meaning to this ape suffering but the ape doesn't know it so I said Franklin says okay so let's go a little bit further maybe that's the way it works with human beings too we don't know the meaning of our suffering in this world but maybe in the world beyond this world the meaning of our suffering will become X placated and he calls this not meaning on its own call this what you call a super meaning which goes into the next generation so here this man of phenomenal courage knowing full well that everybody's watching every word that he says basically he's here take this you know what if you don't have enough to criticize me about here's more but he was stuck I wouldn't say he was stuck but he had to do this because that's where the system was going I remember when I was working on my PhD and I engaged him I was at the San Diego State University where the local therapy Institute was at the time so we had this conversation which became a official document which he actually signed in which we went back and forth I said you know what this is almost like it's it's religion and I pushed MPhil point is saying okay so how do you stop and isn't it dangerous that you're really pushing people towards religiosity and Franco was very clear that he understood the dangers but he said we opened the door but we don't push people through which is very important later on he would get into a tiff with Rolo me on this and a lot of other people who didn't understand they were sort of thinking that logotherapy at least Viktor Frankl vintage was pushing people rather than you know acknowledge their autonomy and presenting things to them for them to choose and then almost as if they were being denied their choice and so Rollem a basically accused logotherapy of being authoritarian and at that point in time it's always good to be in the right place in the right time so I wrote a piece in general view domestic psychology in which I explained why roller roller Mae was wrong and Viktor Frankl wrote a piece after what I wrote saying why I was right and berry Mae was wrong so it's good it was all good there was a happy ending to this because later on in life roller Mae and Viktor Frankl met they had a nice exchange and he gained a better appreciation of what he was all about so in a sense he be created some of this problem because he was so passionate about what he believed in but he was also a pretty he was brilliant fellow and and he knew exactly what psychology is supposed to do and he he stretched the limits because he had this really strong belief that human beings are actually fundamentally spiritual beings not spiritual in the religious sense but really spiritual in the sense of there being this great differentiation between animals and humans and that there's a dimensional difference between humans and animals which by the way if you think about it today is one of the major challenges that we have in our generation a lot of people today he will if challenged to the quick about who they would save a relative or a dog or their dog that was about there were both in danger it's astounding how many would vote for the dog in the 19 was in 1970s it was Dennis Prager who who wrote a piece about a poll that was taken among high school students about if you're passing by and there's a human being and a dog that are drowning who would you save and one third of them said that they would save the dog that's this generation now that was kids then are now adults and watch newspapers today when someone does something nasty to a dog I'm not justifying it god forbid but it's more newsworthy to talk about someone who is cruel to a dog than an axe murderer in in many instances we say you know what people killing people that we understand but that you kill you but you kill an animal that we don't get Viktor Frankl would have had a great problem in our generation with this movement towards thinking of animals as human beings at another level or thinking of them as having as much right to life as as as human beings do but that's a lot of a digression just to show you some of the things that that that even now as we're studying local therapy in the 21st century we find because of the fact that what he taught what he tapped into was a universal truth that were not surprised that he speaks even to the types of untruths that are going on in our generation so unconditional meaning meaning that there's a meaning in this life and that even if there's no meaning in this life there's a life beyond said even if a person let's say on the therapeutic level who would not be able to see meaning here but but they are introducing the idea of the possibility of an afterlife a person may reject it and logotherapy like any single therapy does not work for anyone for everyone but it does open up avenues now let me go back a little bit so there is this unconditional meaning and how do you fulfill it how do you realize this meaning you realize this meaning through the choices that you make your free will to as he spoke about it the will to meeting and you freely choose through your will through exercise of you will the meaning that you're going to embrace and the free will is actually something which is very important we have a famous statement in the Talmud which says everything is in the hands of God how copy - am i everything is the hands of heaven hoots me roccia-meier except for the oh I hate using the word fear say except for the awe of heaven everything is in the hands of heaven except for the awe of heaven what does that mean it means simply speaking that whether you're gonna be rich or poor you don't have that much to say about it whether you're going to be tall or short you have even less to say about it whether you're going to be born in this country or that country probably you have nothing to say about it lots of things that happen about you you don't have short choice you don't have to control over it but you do have control over whatever person you're gonna be a person who is in awe of heaven who the air for chooses to abide by what God asks us to do or someone who rejects it that's your choice so when somebody let's say complaint and says how come I have no say in all this he said it's not a big deal we're not ever put position we have to answer how come we didn't give a million dollars to to talk of because we only made five thousand dollars a year or whatever we're not expected to give a million dollars it's a dollar because we don't have the wherewithal to do it but if we are blessed with that then we have to do it the choices that we make are basically choices within the constraints of what life gives us male female whatever if you're a male and you don't bear children nobody can say to you how come you didn't have someone in your womb for nine months as a male the idea that we should be frustrated because of that take a look at some of the things that are going on in our generation in terms of people's gender identity all of this what would Franco say about all of this being one of the things that you find in him is this outer orientation the excess of focus on the self he tries to switch it off to being putting on the focus on the other so for example and well I think there's a little there's a video on it rabbi Schoenberg tell me about the essence of love is moving away from yourself taut focus on the other from me to we from it may not lead Amelie took a shoddily a Spumante from being focused on myself only to going beyond and focusing on the other thoughts a little little switch which makes an entirely big difference clinically he's able to show that one of the major problems with sexual frustration is the excessive focus on the self and on experiencing pleasure as opposed to focusing on conferring pleasure on your partner and what happens when you do that is that your most successful again I can make a moral argument for it but what he does is make a practical argument for it it works this is the way life works when you stop focusing on yourself excessively and you you really shift to others that's the whole idea of maturity of of self transcendence of outer orientation of finding a meaning in life by giving meaning to others so back again the choices that we make our choices based on our context the the most famous story in this in this regard is the one that Franklin tells of a Jew was stuck in a bunker the First World War and cannons were coming and the his supervising general in the saw that this little Jewish guy was trembling and he set them you see how much better we Aryans are than you you are trembling and look at me you know all the cannons are coming I'm not moving at all I'm fine so I have a lot better than you are so he looked at him and said yeah you got it all wrong he said if you were as afraid as I am right now you would have long ago run away in other words you sank them really what you are as a coward you don't get it so you're not running away because you're stupid guy but I am fearful but I'm still here so the point of the matter is he was saying is the choices that we make may not seem to be so dramatic but in his his galaxy it's a totally different thing whether you are a doctor or a gas station attendant as no is not the point if you are a doctor who doesn't care who is very cold and callous you have squandered an opportunity that your profession is given to you to really give it and invest it with real meaning if you're a gas station attendant who runs out of his way to welcome people and put not only put in the gas but ask them how they're feeling and wishing them a good day what you've done is you've given meaning to your profession what choice that you have as a gas station attendant gee I can't give them penicillin shot so you have no choice of that but the measure of the person is not in the circumstances that dictate who they are or what they can do but in what they do in those circumstances which leads Frankl into a very interesting configuration with regard to values we will to find meaning through the values that we actualize what are those values those are and his in his understanding they're three types this creative values I would say that for example a van Gogh or a or a Beethoven or any of the great artists of our of our history the things that they did were very creative when it was music art or whatever those are creative values the things that we do to make other people's lives better then there's experi initial values which sometimes you have it's hard to explain it but let's say you're going to a concert and you hear let's say the music let's say you've been seen Schenker all over Shalom and you're totally inspired and when somebody says to you does does life have meaning now that turns you on so much you say how could it not have meaning the same thing can happen if you watch a wonder of nature and you say well rubber Mouse echo what is it basically saying yes God doesn't need our praises we need to be able to praise God and then we say oh yeah so a these intricacies they sort of reinforce the idea that life has a purpose there's something going on here that maybe I don't get it fully but I get it enough and then you have the final which is the value of attitude and here Frankel is very clearly says there are times in our life when for whatever reason we can't be creative and even we can't even have experiences but the idea of the attitude we take to the circumstances that we are in this is precious and it is of an estimable value but remember how much it hinges how much it hinges on this primary notion that he has that the striving to find the meaning in life is the most basic human expression so in a situation where someone is let's say cooped up in a hospital with no hope of survival but nevertheless doing things in terms of even in their own attitude to to find a reason to go from one day to the other you're not doing it as a technique you're doing it because you really believe it and because you really believe it it may it changes things enormous ly we for example and and by the way when we're dealing with these values they are of infinite of an infinite type which doesn't say okay if I can do this for five minutes it's good but if I we can do it for one minute it's not that's not the way works so think about this fascinating Jewish law which goes like this you're allowed to on Shabbos intervened to save someone else's life even if the blockage to your being able to do this is a transgression under normal circumstances you allowed to do so one of the bases for this is the idea that you can Hallel all of Shabbat I thought I using the word this yeah to desecrate the Shabbos columns basically maybe to to treat Chavez's ordinary you can treat chalices ordinary on one day in order that they should be able to fulfill later on many Shabbat oh so a simple question that is asked is what happens if this is only for a day or two in other words yes you will intervene now to save this person but they're not going to last more than another day or two can you still do so the answer is yes but if the basis for it is that they're going to be able to observe other Shabbat experiences that doesn't exist in this in this circumstance so what is the basis for it it's a fascinating insight I think comes from the Erie which says in the time that they still have left after you have saved them they can in their own minds mentally go over the times in their lives that they didn't keep Shabbat fully and they can in that and those precious moments that they still have left basically do chuva change their minds and say you know what it was foolish of me to do that I really feel badly so never in other words what they have done is they've transformed previous Shabbat experiences into Shabbat fulfillments so may not be in the future but it's in the past it's fascinating insight what happens that the attitude that you take in the precious moments that you have can't transform a life and probably one of the most powerful stories that Franco tells in in many of his books is a story of his once visiting San Quentin Penitentiary which is where hardly criminals were were placed and when he came remember this is a fellow whenever he went anywhere to speak he usually was greeted by one and a half to two thousand people he goes there and three people show up so one of the people that showed up was the editor of the prison mayor of the prison newspaper and he asks him how come nobody is here did you tell anybody that I was coming he said yeah we let everybody know you were coming and they said what a psychologist no way and why didn't they want to go because they said we don't want to hear another time psychologists saying to us yeah you know it's really unfair that you are here you grew up in Islam you had no parents to look after you and therefore you turn to criminal way they said we are sick and tired of having a psychologist come to tell us it's not really you should be in prison but your mother and your father who neglected you or the environment that you lived in so we're sick of it so we didn't show up so Frankel understood this because this is really not what he was all about but he says okay is it possible for me to speak to them directly said yeah we'll put your name to come see they put him on intercom see speaking out to the entire prison and he's saying to them imagine as a psychologist he said I know how you feel one of the things that you never say to a person right even God god forbid if a person is going through a harrowing experience to say I know how you feel is basically a real turnoff how do you know how I feel you're not me and it's it's a statement yeah you have to be really careful how you say it if I know it comes out of a desire to be empathetic but you gotta watch what you say so here he is saying to everyone they I know how you feel what this psychologist was what's in prison nothing of the sort he said you guys are all on death row right you're convicted you set your sentence is death you're waiting for the for the potion I know what it's like to be on death row I was in death row I was in the concentration camps I unlike you I never had what you would call a sentence that was pronounced upon me it came out of hate but every day we woke up not knowing if this would be the last day of our life and I know how it feels and you know that this limited-time and he said to them more or less something like this you can spend the rest of your life thinking that this was not your fault that you had nothing to do with it but I am telling you that it's more important for you to it these last days of your life think in terms of if I am here because I'm guilty to take this guilt upon myself and to use it not to weigh down upon you but to grow from it this is one of the wonderful things about what Frankel takes these negative impulses and turns them into positive you don't have to think about this as diminishing yourself as a matter of fact his mentor philosophically was max Scheler who really turned guilt on its head and said if you tell individuals no matter what they do that it's not their fault it's not their responsibility basically what you're telling them is that they don't matter that everything that's happening around them is out of their control they have no say in it and it's crazy what you're basically saying you're deluding them of all their human responsibilities he said on the contrary said man has a right listen to this man has a right to be considered guilty because the moment you take away from him that sense of guilt Yelena's will touch change.you denude him of all sense of responsibility it's a horrible thing to do but this is what we're doing in our generation not your fault and you know what if you failed it's because the teacher is not a good teacher and then we have to make believe that you really didn't fail because it's going to dent your self-esteem so we'll do all the stuff to make believe that you really passed and we're gonna have pass/fail rather than grades this entire world that we're dealing with we're coddling a generation which has not been reared with the idea that yeah you did it you're guilty it's a good thing own up and change doesn't happen so he said to them own up in the last days of your life think about how you can if only within your own self repent and regret the things that you did relive it and and do things differently now and and be remorseful and it made a difference the fellow that that was there with him in the room was the editor of the thing wrote wrote a piece about this experience which one I didn't know there's a there's a prisoners newspaper best article of the Year award doesn't doesn't compare with the Pulitzer but it's close right and this guy won the award for telling the story about Victor Frankel's experience what he was doing was basically enunciated what we know all the time shoe vo McAuliffe name is Oscar to repent one day before you die of course you never know the day they you're gonna die so since we may not be here tomorrow we should spend the day in Truvada the word shoe bar may sound a little bit heavy what it means in simple terms is to get better to improve you we can use the heavy-handed words such as repent from your sins but it really means whatever you're doing today do tomorrow better whatever you did yesterday today can do a little bit better it means growing as a human being but growing means that you realize that like every human being were deficient and he was basically trying to take all of these negative ideas and make them into positives so suffering and death for example those are two negatives he turns them on their head he very carefully avoids the idea of suggesting that it's good to suffer it that it's good to that it's good to die it doesn't say that but he says the fact of suffering is very important for human beings think about a situation where a person goes through an entire life unimpeded everything is you know hunky-dory and there's no point in time where he has to wake up to the idea of you know maybe life is not just a bowl of cherries with cream on top maybe there are challenges the truth of the matter is that you cannot go through life without suffering it's impossible to do that and our but but basically Frankel says what do you do in this situation of suffering is to try to grow from it to use that suffering situation as a message to tell you okay I have I have this confronting me will I become a better person because of it one of the things that has impressed me in my life as a rabbi and I say this with great trepidation because I don't want you to think that that I've gone off my off my mind but I have met very very often people who are struggling with cancer cancer is a scourge we know that it hits close to one out of two people during their lifetime it's one of the prices that we pay for living long but what I found fascinating and sometimes I've totally astounded with people who beforehand had been totally narcissistic everything was about having a good breakfast and going for a golf game then having rest in the afternoon and going for supper and movies life was just about luxury and cruises and vacations and everything like that and then all of a sudden this gigantic albatross gets weighed down upon them and you figure this is gonna be devastating and what you hear sometimes is that somehow or other this cancer has woken them up to what life is all about it's it's almost like a near-death experience that people have went for example they they need an organ transplant or something like that well they actually almost died and then they are saved realize that life is a gift truth ever matters that life is a gift even before that but it's the realization that comes with a thud and they they'll realize now that all that stuff was garbage that it was meaningless it took this for that to happen because all all the rushes that were given on Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur during the year didn't make a difference but that experience wakens it up to the fact there is more to life than just the joy right and so these people then get transformed from what's in it for me to what can I do to help the world and they make up their mind that if they survive they're gonna volunteer to do simple things like maybe being in a hospital to help people menial tasks that they would have dreamt of before him and they on their own say that Eve I don't ask them the question but they are the old volunteer that I am happy that I got the cancer it's a very astounding thing to hear because all of a sudden what happens is they now find it to have a meaning in their life they were living thinking oh this is what life is all about turns out there was an Irish guy that's not what life was all about at all and this is Franco coming to the for death the idea he says that's not a positive but think about what would happen if we live forever we could always say okay I'm gonna live forever so I don't have to do anything today because it was always gonna be a tomorrow so look how his mind works he takes what everyone thinks is a negative and he puts a positive spin on it it says if we didn't have the fact of death we could always delay always delaying means that you're never fulfilling it's the idea that we have a finite existence is absolutely crucial for a meaningful life this is all we see how this all builds from that one simple little premise that one simple premise goes out in all directions firstly a word that you didn't hear him say but it's actually implicit in all this is that famous word hope so we talked about people are dealing in concentration camp situations who have a task for them it's it's basically a hope for a future that's coming through but he did get into trouble with this because there were a lot of people were out for his for his skin maybe more than his skin who basically said see I told you this guy is loony because we know that who you saw who survived in the concentration camp had nothing to do with meaning it had to do with it was totally random guard so you didn't like the way you looked at him he shot you you know you go left go right who have control over that stuff so they were basically some who attacked them bitterly and said that what he's saying is totally nonsense and he kept on saying it in spite of all the people who may Satan said you're you're talking stuff which is drivel what was his argument it's very careful maybe we have to put in a little word which is that given the same circumstance people who had a meaning orientation would be more likely to survive it had nothing this is not to say that with all the meaning that you can get shot just a moment you woke up or you didn't even your sleep the point he's making yes insofar as you take two individuals in the exact same circumstances having that meaning is very important in terms of being able to make it we see this all the time we see this all the time in terms of people who are wrestling with illnesses who some of them give up and say what's it all about and there's no reason to fight anymore and others who we try to say you know you have so much to live for and sometimes you have to change the route and say not so much would you have to live for but how much your grandchildren want it to be at the bar mitzva or your grandchildren want to be there when you're doing the wedding is it a trick no this is we're trying to give people a sense of something to fight for that it's dead it's worth it and then there's this interesting thing that he mentioned about suicide that he had that famous encounter in the camps for you to know in the background and he writes about this and it's one of the books written about Franco one of the greatest the things I gave him the greatest pride was when he was put in charge of the polyclinic in Vienna at that point in time the suicide rate in Vienna gone sky-high and what he did was intervene as much asleep as possible and he said he took great pride in the fact that in his watch nobody ever committed suicide this is what drove him there he was a young guy then and this is for him being able to convince the suicidal people are the ones who think that there's nothing left for them in this world for him to be able to do this on an individual basis is something that that he was adept at and he was passionate about to make sure that it didn't happen he considers to be a total failure on his part if he couldn't help doing this and then I I think I'm pretty sure that I told you this story last week last time but therefore you have never been here before there's this classic story that that was told it couldn't happen today because today does anybody have the telephone number of a celebrity you but in those days Viktor Frankl got a call at 3 o'clock in the morning from a woman who was on went even know how this she's contemplating suicide I could make I could dramatize it by saying she was on the bridge ready to jump but he didn't have cell phone set so that wouldn't work but the story was she she called Franco and she was bent on committing suicide and Franco gave her this argument that argument didn't accept any of it and after half an hour on the phone she hung up and he had no idea what the end of this would be and then a few days later he's in his office at the Plaza clinic and they tell him there's a lady here to see him don't know why and again this doesn't happen today he got it through seven secretaries before you get to the guy anyway he came she came in and said doctor factor you don't know me but you remember a few days ago a lady called you at the mall in the middle of the night and that was me so Franco ever the scientist said yeah I know you wanted to commit suicide and I told you this out of the other and what convinced you not to so she looked at him and said nothing so then the next question is okay then why didn't you jump his her answer was a classic she said there was no argument that you told me that convinced me not to convince to commit suicide what convinced me to commit suicide was the fact that you were three o'clock in the morning took the phone did not complain that you woke that I woke you up and took a half an hour to argue with me to save my life that in itself to admit to me that my life was worth saving that there is such goodness in the world so we don't have to have techniques all the time about things just doing the right thing doing the meaningful thing doing the appropriate thing in itself is more affirming than saying yeah you know you really are a good guy but rather you know in terms of get them oriented towards something that will give them this sense one of the magical things that works let's say with people who have you know a really down feeling about themselves is to give them a task say this is thing you're gonna do the cults excel in this they take people who are down and out and they give in you know a broom and say your job is to clean the floor and they think you know now now life has a meaning to us it's what it is nonsense we have so much so many better things that we can give to individuals to give them a sense that life at least they are making a difference but the main and and again critical I come back to that over and over again what Frankel does in almost all of these situations is shift the focus away from me because the moment you start fixating on yourself you're in a really down spiral doesn't mean that you you don't spend time thinking about what is my best vocation what is the best thing that I can excel at but after that you say okay but now my life is a life of giving and you're not making sacrifices by it that's the irony of it that's the paradox of life which leads to one of these very interesting techniques that Franco has which is paradoxical intention where you intend the very thing that you're trying to avoid so when I when I came in here this morning so one of the people who are here one who made the long trip from Montreal we're talking about how life is full of stress and one of the ring one of the biggest stressors in life believe it or not is your focus on yourself and you're saying oh I got to do this I gotta do that this is coming that's coming instead of just saying okay I'll take them one at a time simple little thing and I'll focus on what has to be so how does Franco for example deal with stress I rang Cole's principals and put and and I put them to work in in rabbinic life I'll give you two examples after that I'll stop and we'll open it up to questions that's okay that good okay number one the typical bar mitzvah boy nervous about how he's going to do in front of a crowd so I take this famous thing from Victor frankly says how does he he he had a person who came to him because he was afraid of public speaking because he would do Nanaki so of course the worst thing you'd say to them is don't knock your knees you'll be okay he basically turned around he said you know what I got an idea for you since you're doing knee knocking we can actually make this into an opportunity for you to set the knee knocking purse per minute record in human history so I watch you when you come up there you go up and you make up your mind that you're going to knock your knees as much as you can as you're speaking it's a joke right but it stopped it where'd he get he says a famous thing he tells the story of a high school where there was a play in which one of the parts was to stutter so there was a kid in the class who stuttered so they gave him this part in the play no brainer right he calls the stuttering he's the guy who started all the time fine when he was put on stage and tried to start or he couldn't because now he was making his mind to stutter and he couldn't do it so how does this translate you know so when when you have when you're fighting is when you have the problem so if you're ever having difficulty sleeping don't fight it welcome it so what do you so these are the different techniques but if you in when you're finding that you can't sleep you make up your mind you're gonna stay awake as opposed to trying more and more to fall asleep you're gonna be more successful and falling asleep but yeah but you have to be careful you have to be honest with yourself as you do it so so Bob Milsom boys who are nervous I tell them that's great just be as nervous as you can enjoy it because you're never going to have such an opportunity to be as nervous as you will at your bar mitzvah it's a great thing and it sounds crazy but it works so that paradoxical intention what did I tell them I was they do paradoxical tension and then what I forgot was that it okay so okay I'm done okay so thank you very much paradox attention in other words all of life's a paradox thank you very much [Music] [Applause]