Making The Courageous Choice

Posted on April 03, 2009 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning” is one of the greatest books of our time.  Psychiatrist Victor Frankl’s memoir has riveted generations of readers with descriptions of his time in various Nazi death camps during World War II – with lessons for spiritual survival.  In the book, Victor wanted to convey, by way of a concrete example, that life holds a potential for meaning under any condition, even the most miserable one.

Our quest for meaning in life will inevitably lead us into a serious of courageous choices.  In the preface of the book, Victor tells about a courageous choice he was led to make:

“Someone may ask me why I did not try to escape what was in store for me after Hitler had occupied Austria.  Let me answer with the following true story:  Shortly before the United States entered World War II, I received an invitation to come to the American Consulate in Vienna to pick up my immigration visa to the United States.  My old parents were overjoyed because they expected that I would soon be allowed to leave Austria.  I suddenly hesitated, however.  The question beset me: Could I really afford to leave my parents alone to face their fate, to be sent, sooner or later, to a concentration camp, or even to a so-called extermination camp?  Where did my responsibility lie?  Should I foster my brain child, “logotherapy”, by emigrating to fertile soil where I could write my books on this theory?  Or should I concentrate on my duties as a real child, the child of my parents who had to do whatever he could to protect them?  I pondered the problem this way and could not arrive at a solution; this was the type of dilemma that made one wish for “a hint from Heaven,” as the phrase goes.

“It was then I noticed a piece of marble laying on a table at home.  When I asked my father about it, he explained that he had found it on the site where the National Socialists had burned down the largest Viennese synagogue.  He had taken the piece home because it was a part of the tablets on which the TEN COMMANDMENTS were inscribed.  One gilded Hebrew letter was engraved on the piece; my father explained that this letter stood for one of the Commandments.  Eagerly I asked, “Which one?”  He answered, “Honor thy father and they mother that thy days may be long upon the land.”  At that moment I decided to stay with my father and my mother upon the land, and to let the American visa lapse.”

Victor E. Frankl
Vienna, 1992

** What Courageous Choice Do You Need To Make?