A choice between living and suffering

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Madelline Romero holds a degree in Broadcast Communication from the University of the Philippines. She works for a development organization that hopes to somewhat alleviate the “suffering” of people in Mindanao.

I remember the scene very vividly: my mother was wearing her old floral-printed housedress, and was sitting drooped over dozens of freshly baked cheese bread loaves that she was packing. She looked like she hadn’t had decent sleep in days, the rings around her eyes so deep and dark.

My father — emaciated from his lung disease — was resting on a bed just a few paces away, his struggle to breathe painfully apparent even in sleep. Hot air from the oven in the bakery at the back of our house where the kitchen used to be combined with the humid July air and permeated our entire house, making moving let alone breathing a pain. My mother was a ticking time bomb; touch her and she would explode. The “touch” came when my younger brother asked for school money, and there was nothing to give. My mother stopped packing, covered her face with her hands and let loose all her bottled-up emotions — the agony of anticipating death and the overwhelming responsibility of holding our family together — albeit soundlessly, lest my father awakened.

This, I thought, was suffering.

I got a hold of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning five years later as a reading requirement in an application to a human rights youth organization, and it gave me an entirely different perspective on what I’d say had been a difficult life. I thought I had stumbled upon another book on western philosophy that talks about ideas in technical terms using abstruse language. Man’s Search for Meaning, using plain yet poignant language, talks about a familiar universal phenomenon — suffering. It is this familiarity of a universal phenomenon that makes the account comprehensible to a reader whose generation is twice removed from that of Frankl’s, and whose impersonal knowledge of wartime’s concentration camps is devoid of strong emotions, the vicarious knowledge having been derived from history books.

I was prepared to find yet another self-help book whose armchair psychologizing categorizes people into Types A through Z, and in the end puts forward (simplistic) solutions to the human mind’s malaise in bullet points. Instead, I found a personal account of a war prisoner who, against discouraging circumstances, forced himself to still wear his psychiatrist’s hat in an attempt to make sense of his and his fellow prisoners’ experiences. The account is endearing in the author’s humility, and finds its effectiveness — ironically — in the non-imposing way Frankl presents his ideas.

The idea that man, despite external fetters in any form, ultimately “decides what shall become of him” had a self-empowering effect that effectively struck a chord previously desensitized by feelings of vulnerability and helplessness. Suddenly I (re)discovered the power of the mind to ignore all abominable external physical conditions and pursue what my essence is based on the dictates of my spirit. It is, after all, this “spiritual freedom (as opposed to physical freedom) — which cannot be taken away — that makes life meaningful and purposeful.”

Every day I encounter people whom I would love to ask whether they find meaning in what by any standards appear to be a difficult existence. In my everyday walk from home to work I get approached by children in rags asking for coins so that they may buy food. At “luckier” times I get waylaid by families asking for fare money so that they may go home (I later found out that this was a ploy to get people to give them money). At almost every train station I am greeted by homeless — some of them obviously sick — people with arms outstretched, palms up to anyone who’d look their way. I am accosted by images of human suffering every day and I ask, “Do they see meaning in their suffering?”

I am a firm believer in Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I am inclined to believe that the most basic of the human needs takes precedence over what feeds the mind or the spirit. For how can one even contemplate feeding the intellect when the stomach is growling? I have seen attempts to defy this seemingly perfect logic falter — students who can’t concentrate in school because of hunger pangs, and those that simply can’t continue going to school as the family needs the money for food. This is not to undervalue efforts — and laudable, indeed, these efforts are — to transcend the physical for the mental or spiritual; this is merely to recognize the limitations that our human existence imposes on us. And break free from these physical limitations, Frankl seems to tell us, even while recognizing the concomitant difficulty when he concedes that “only a few people are capable of reaching such high moral standards.” A difficult situation, he says, affords a man the opportunity to attain moral values. Whether he makes use of or foregoes the opportunity such situation affords is the litmus test of whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Those who opt not to traverse the road less traveled unconsciously make their deprivation the license for their depravation, as if preying on a faceless individual is their way of getting back at a society who has caused their insufferable existence. They — we — forget that what becomes of us is the result of an inner decision, that everything can be taken away from us but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — the freedom to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose our own way. I have seen family members stop talking to each other as if each one is preoccupied with their own survival. I have seen laughter drain out of homes, this even when humor is regarded as the only element in the human makeup that has the ability to rise above any situation. We blame it on our fragile existence; I say now that we chose to be that way.

Freedom is often defined as the lack of either the literal or figurative shackles that restrain one’s movements. Here, Frankl offers a more active actor-centered definition when he says that freedom is one’s conscious decision to adopt an attitude towards life. I could choose to be sour or bitter or cynical about what I feel life has dealt unfairly to me. Or I could choose to be serene and positive and engaging with what life throws my way, looking for new opportunities instead of pining over lost ones, and finding meaning even in suffering. Suffering, after all, is an inescapable part of life. One can make the decision to live rather than to suffer. And I choose to live.