Most of the time, I am thinking about questions. I spend this time on Sunday mornings reflecting, thinking about the past and the future. Work life, home life, some ideas about the world and beyond.
At the end of 2025, I was very sick with the flu. I didn’t expect to get it and I didn’t expect to be as sick as I had become. It got me thinking about Viktor Frankl again and a little bit beyond. This post is about hope, optimism and an understanding of our responsibility and accountability to ourselves as we experience challenges in modern times.
Meaning is found through three pathways:
Work or contribution (creating or accomplishing something)
Love and relationships (caring for someone beyond oneself)
Suffering (transforming unavoidable pain into growth)
What people generally want and need is connection and community but not at the cost of peace. There are many ideas on how to achieve “the goal” but this “goal” or set of goals and objectives may not lead the ultimate human driver. The ultimate driver is not happiness, it is understanding or believing in our purpose. Not all people but many are looking for peace.
In most stories, we have learned that the villain is generally NOT inherently evil or bad, they are the hero of their story. This matters because they believe they have their purpose. They believe they have their reasons for being.
We cannot always control our circumstances, but we can control our response. If you never read Frankl, he observed when everything is taken from a person, one freedom remains: the freedom to choose one’s attitude. The inner freedom to choose becomes the foundation of enduring resilience.
Being and Optimism
If the world was in total peace and harmony, what would challenge us? What would peace mean? What would we create and what struggles would we overcome in the face of danger or nature? We want to attain peace and tranquility and of course the natural world offers challenges on its own but are these enough for us? Do they feed into our narrative? Our meaning? Our purpose?
In the end, the world will not exist. It will be dust in the universe and we will be long forgotten, not even a memory. We will be as if we were never here. At the same time, we worry about all the things in our lives. Our responsibilities, our longevity, our families. We worry about making a better world.
All said, most of us get lost in the focus of today. Rightly so, today is the day we are dealing with. We may have ideas or hopes for the next day but today is today. Yesterday is absolutely gone, at least for us it is. Whether the universe can play it back or go to this time doesn’t matter because for you and me, we are in today and hopefully tomorrow.
This is very important because if we understand that no matter what, we will come to a natural end and our children and childrens, children will be in the same situation, we can choose a different frame.
Please understand, that I am not dismissing the value of tomorrow as much as, celebrating what it is that we can choose to do today.
If you woke up this morning and you said “the world is shit and..” the people are doing bad things, companies are assholes, I don’t have a job, life is hard. All these things can be true and at the very same time, you can choose to do something with today that can create change or change your situation or status. You might think, “it is impossible or impractical or unrealistic.” That is true if you make it true.
Reality is, the possibilities, all possibilities, events, opportunities, real and manifested in the moment within our world bound by universal rules. If we work and live within the rules all things allowable can happen. What does this mean? It means if you want to change your life and you can realize the reality of this type of change and you can envision it, you can achieve it. As long as it doesn’t violate a universal or natural rule. Meaning, you can’t travel through time but, you can think ahead and envision a future where you have peace (if this is what you want to achieve.)
The idea of the outcome, the meaning beyond this for you, this is your “why” and this may be your purpose. Your purpose is not an indefinite unending outcome, it is meant for a moment in time or some expanse of time and it will come to an end like everything else.
This is all important because we may realize that we are empowered to make a difference especially in the western world and we can do amazing things under the most challenging and unfortunate situations.
With religion or not, we can realize that we are here and we exist and we have some ability to choose and influence what happens in our lives. The boundaries we see are often created by our own subset of rules and belief. These are very real to us and should not be discounted as they may seemingly hinder our ability to take an action.
The most damaging and harmful thing we can do to and for ourselves is live in the past or the future without holding, acknowledging and being mindful of our moments. No matter the circumstance and challenge we face, the moments matter. Being optimistic is an after effect of understanding our current situation with hope and confidence of a successful outcome which within itself is only a moment.
These are critical points because it takes the power of despair and victim mentality and it exposes this as only a manifestation of our lack of understanding, confidence or self abuse. Many of us beat the heck out of ourselves.
Do you understand? You are here and you are reading this right now. You have a super power of possibilities and potentialities that you can realize based on the choices and decisions that you make. It is absolutely true that environmental factors and the choices of other people have an impact on you.
How you manage these and how you receive these and what actions you take are your responsibility.
Just a few other points here for you. I speak with a lot of people about work, life and in some conversations what is happening in our world and history. There are a few themes that I find are common to most of us.
We don’t know what we want.
We don’t know what ability or power we have for ourselves.
We refuse help and advice.
We ask for help and advice.
We are victims of something.
Many are for “me” not “we” but “I” not “us.”
When I ask the question “what do you want?” The answer is mostly “I don’t know.” People believe they know what they “can” do but not what they “want” to do. I’d offer they don’t know what they actually can do because they limit themselves to the box of what they “must” do to make money or whatever it is that drives them on the daily.
The other thing is they are controlled by the master overlord(s) of their world. If it is wife or a husband, their boss, their leadership, their country or they may say G-d. If they say “G-d” and they allow all the other masters to rule them first, we know how this ends for them. They are just walking victims, zombified by the lack of control they have in their own lives.
“I can’t because.”
The message to you today, person I care about, is; you CAN. If it is in the realm of possible and realistic within the mathematical rules of our current universe and the immutable foundational laws of nature and man, it absolutely equals “1” meaning, you can do it. This doesn’t say whether one should do something but it helps for us to know, that we have real options and real choice in the matter.
My hope is for a better world, not for tomorrow but for today. The only way this can happen is if I understand my part in this world, the actions I can take and the realistic possibilities and probabilities within my line of continuity.
If you are saddened by corporate greed, social issues, political issues, disruption in our society, fighting, negativity and the impact to you personally and professionally. You are not alone.
What you may come to realize in the perceptual chaos, trouble and challenges that you personally can choose to take action for yourself and realize new opportunities, new and exciting outcomes and live a life that you dreamed of, if only for sometime because we live in a perpetual illusion and idea that we have some unlimited boundless time when realistically, we are only here for a blink.
Understanding, living and appreciating our moments helps us to realize the power of possibilities, our meaning in life, the reason we are here as we may discover. It may help us to be courageous and fearless. It may help us to realize our dreams. It may help us to love more and find peace where we can.
The universe is made of energy, you are made of the universe. You are made of energy, you are light and for you to shine, there must be some darkness. It is true, if light was all around you at all times and it was as bright as you, how would we see you. Frankl spoke of suffering which created darkness for people. This could envelop someone and extinguish their light and their being. In many cases, it did. People chose to die without requiring a tool or sword. They died of sadness, grief and the lack of hope and optimism. Many of us don’t have this extensive void around us but we do face darkness.
In this darkness, you are a candle, you are the light and you can be seen. Your investment in yourself is the fuel which manifests the brightness. Eventually, we may all connect with each other in some way but for now, we are together and at the same time alone. It is with this knowledge that we can be bright for others and help ourselves. Be mindful of our moments, be optimistic while envisioning outcomes of peace and purpose.
“For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour.” – Viktor E. Frankl
Which may mean “LIVE TODAY and BE MINDFUL OF YOUR LIFE”
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