On suffering
Suffering it seems has always been our path to redemption and the restorative process. Betrayals are opportunities for psychological growth as we become open and available to broader spectrum of the human experience. Frankl (1959) writes that in moments of our most intense suffering, it is the “mental agony caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all” that is the most intolerable. These things must cause us to lose our reason else we have none to lose he says. In these moments, Frankl continues, we are operating under a provisional existence in which retrospective thinking keeps us stuck in the past and we must transition our thinking from what we may have always expected from life to one in which we ask, “what does life expect from us”. In writing about his internment in a Nazi slave labor camp, Frankl states that under the harshest conditions we still have our one remaining, undeniable human freedom “to chose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances”. Our sense of purpose sometimes miraculously blossoms from the rich soil of our suffering, especially when that suffering draws forth from a betrayal of our sense of who we are in relation to our family and community.
L. appellare “to address, appeal to, summon, name,” iterative of appellere “to prepare.” For more information about what's behind this site,
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