The following 3 questions test your knowledge in making healthy choices. If you get all three correct, you know your stuff! You’re a health guru!
Note; A wise person told me, “Ray we always find time to do what we want to do.” If I want to be happier, I’ll find time to make the items on this list part of my life. Is it time for a personal assessment on how you choose to spend you time?
I conclude my reflections on Victor Frankl’s work Man’s Search for Meaning, with Frankl’s affirmation of the human freedom to determine what he/she becomes as Frankl says, “within the limits of his/her endowment and environment.” A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. . . . In concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory, and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine, while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions. P. 155
NOTE: Hopefully we will never experience the living hell of a concentration camp as Frankl and millions of others have. We, however, are confronted each moment with choices on how to live our lives. Will we be faithful to our commitment to a partner? Will we honor and love our parents as they age? Will we support fairness and justice for all people? What kind of neighbor am I; do help my neighbors when they need help? These are a few examples of the choices that we have to make. How we make our choices determines the kind of man or woman we want to become.
Victor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning challenges us to think about life in a way that is far different from what we read and watch in the media. He says, “We had to learn ourselves, and, furthermore, we had to reach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. . . . Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems, and to fulfill the task, which it constantly sets for each individual. Pp 85
NOTE: Our lives are not identical but they are similar. We each face moments of challenge. Some face burdens that make me marvel at their inner toughness and how they managed. I think of my grandmother (nonna), widowed with eleven children still at home. There was no welfare in those days. Yet, she knew her responsibility was to serve and protect her eleven children. To her credit, all eleven grew up to be productive citizens. We can’t choose what happens to us, we can choose how we respond to it. Stay strong.
“You make mistakes. Mistakes don’t make you.”
When life knocks you down, do you rise to fight again? Everyone gets knocked down. It’s a tough blow. It knocks the wind out of us. We may wonder if we have the strength to rise again. We may wonder if we have the strength to rise will we have the strength to go on. The answer is a resounding YES! We are so much stronger than we can imagine. All the small hits made us stronger. They prepared us for the bigger hits. We all get them. They happen. When they do our choices are limited. We can rise to live and fight again. Or, we can give up and slowly die. To me, there is only one choice, rise, rise, rise, again and again.
