It has been four and a half years since I last wrote a blog post. And in recent months, I have felt the call to return to writing. Today feels like a good day to start.
A lot of people are feeling despair today. Those whose candidates lost last night are feeling numb, nauseous, dismayed… and so many other things. But here’s the thing: we already knew that no matter who won the election, the next day, half of our country would be feeling like doom had befallen the nation.
In total honesty, I’m not entirely sure whether I’d be writing this blog post if the result had been different. But because I live in Vermont (a state that has voted blue since Bill Clinton), I have many friends, clients and colleagues who are grief-stricken. So I have found myself today trying to bring solace to the despair.
What to do when you’re sinking into despair?
At moments like this, when we have no power over the circumstances that surround us, we can draw inspiration from those who have lived the worst of adversities and have found an empowering message to share.
So today I want to invite you to join me in connecting with a man who inspired me and millions of others during the 20th century: Viktor Frankl.
If you’re not familiar with him, Viktor Frankl was an Austrian, Jewish doctor and psychologist who survived the Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. Immediately following the war, he returned to Vienna where he resumed teaching and wrote his famous book, Man’s Search for Meaning, about his experiences and insights in the camps. He also developed a style of psychotherapy called Logotherapy.
If anyone was ever in a position to despair, it was Viktor Frankl. He was stripped of all of his human rights. His whole family was murdered at the camps. His career and all of his possessions were taken from him. And yet, he is famously quoted as saying:
“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.” – Viktor Frankl
Our freedom to choose how we respond (both internally and externally) is the ultimate human freedom.
Everything else can be out of our control — the result of elections, what will happen next, what will unfold is out of our control. But we always have the freedom to choose how we will engage with the events that are taking place.
There’s a story Viktor Frankl tells in his book, of being forced to walk for miles in the middle of a brutal winter night. He is reduced to skin and bone. His prisoner clothes are tattered. His shoes have holes and he has no socks, so his feet are wet from the snow. He collapses into the snow in the middle of the road, and for a moment he contemplates how much easier it would be to just stay there. He has no strength… And then he thinks of all the things he will be able to teach his students when perhaps one day he is no longer in a camp. So he picks himself up and keeps walking.
So what do you want to choose for yourself?
Here are some ways to perhaps invite yourself to pick yourself up and keep walking:
Hug the ones you love a little tighter, and count the blessings you have so that you can give yourself strength to keep going.
Focus on the things inside of your control: your body, your job, your relationships. We can keep on keeping on.
Pay a little extra attention to your self-care. Now is the time to dig down into yoga, meditation and anything that helps you feel centered.
Get yourself a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning. You will be moved and inspired.
Join me on Monday nights in the meditation group I host (it’s usually a paid membership, but I will be welcoming any and all who wish to come in the coming weeks at no cost).
And finally, in light of the privilege that we all enjoy for the mere fact that we are blessedly not in a war-torn country, or facing famine, or imminent collapse, I’ll leave us all with another quote by another inspiring human:
Someone asked me, aren’t you afraid about the state of the world? I allowed myself to breathe and then I said, ‘What is most important is not to allow your anxiety about what happens in the world fill your heart. If your heart is filled with anxiety, you will get sick, and you will not be able to help.’ There are wars – big and small – in many places, and that can cause us to lose our peace, anxiety is the illness of our age. We worry about ourselves, our family, our friends, our work, and the state of the world. If we allow worry to fill our hearts, sooner or later we will get sick. – Thich Nhat Hanh