“There is a suffering beyond all sickness, a fundamental human suffering which belongs to human life by the very nature and meaning of life…” (The Doctor and the Soul, Frankl, p. 113)
“In suffering from something we move inwardly away from it, we establish a distance between our personality and this something. As long as we are still suffering from a condition that ought not to be, we remain in a state of tension between what actually is on one hand and what ought to be on the other hand. And only while in this state of tension can we continue to envision the ideal. As we have already seen, this even applies to the person who has despaired of himself…He could not sit in judgment upon himself if he did not already possess the worth and dignity of a judge – of a man who has perceived what ought to be as against what at the moment is. Suffering therefore establishes a fruitful, one might say a revolutionary, tension in that it makes for emotional awareness of what ought not to be. To the degree that a person identifies himself with things as they are, he eliminates his distance from them and forfeits the fruitful tension between what is and what ought to be.“ (The Doctor and the Soul, p. 108)
What is ‘fundamental human suffering?’
What is ’emotional awareness of what ought not to be?’
Why is tension necessary to envision the ideal?
If you are suffering, what would it mean to identify yourself with things ‘as they are’ and to ‘forfeit the fruitful tension between what is and what ought to be?’