Book suggestions

Listen to your suffering for it’s trying to teach you something.

You’re probably suffering because there is no meaning and purpose in the way you’ve chosen.

Viktor Frankl spent three years in Auschwitz and other concentration camps during WWII. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he writes:

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis, it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner-decision and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally then, any man can, under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an eradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life.

There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which
admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an
existence restricted by external forces.