L09 · Lens
Meaning-making
Find the why that makes any how bearable: a task, a person, a value or a stance toward unavoidable suffering.
Use: Suffering, depression, purposelessness, chronic hardship.
Boundary: Meaning is discovered and chosen by the individual, never imposed from outside.
Cues
Showing 11 of 11 cues
“For sometimes even to live is an act of courage.”
“If you apply yourself to study you will avoid all boredom with life, you will not long for night because you are sick of daylight, you will be neither a burden to yourself nor useless to others, you will attract many to become your friends and the finest people will flock about you.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“A scholar knows many books; a well-educated person has knowledge and skills; an enlightened person understands the meaning and purpose of his life.”
“For you see what our discussions are all about - and is there anything about which a man of even small intelligence would be more serious than this: what is the way we ought to live?”
“To be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself ... the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.”
“The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required. After major alterations in circumstances, fundamental reappraisal of the significance and meaning of existence may be needed. In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.”
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal calling in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.”
“He who has a why can bear almost any how.”
“Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.”
Tolstoy's circle of reading
Tolstoy spent seventeen years collecting a wise thought for every day; in his late seventies, seriously ill and confronting mortality, he wrote the book and felt elevated by communion with the wisest people.