Many philosophers and authors have made an impact on humanity – for life. Victor Frankl is such a man. He is best known for his ground-breaking book Man’s Search for Meaning, which dramatically changed my outlook on life.
Frankl, a psychiatrist, therapist and the creator of Logotherapy, survived the horrors of the holocaust. He discovered that although everything can be taken away from a human being, no one, not even Hitler, could take away man’s search for a deeper meaning in life. And that ultimately, this meaning is what makes people survive and thrive.
I recently read his Yes to Life, in spite of everything, a series of lectures that Frankl gave in 1946, nine months after his liberation from the concentration camps. Despite the most horrific torture and losses, the choice to say YES to life is a choice available to all of us. Meaning in life is a gift that no one can take away from you, Frankl maintained.
At the same time, I listened to economist and businessman Warren Buffett talking about the way to judge people’s success and value. He told a story of a good friend, a Polish Jewess. She decides whether a person is a good or bad friend by asking herself: “Would they hide me?” Her next question is to ask: “Would I hide them?”
With pictures of Anne Frank, Corrie ten Boom and Victor Frankl at the back of my mind, these questions hit me in the gut. Of course, there can be no better way to know whether you can trust a person than by asking these two questions…
Buffett says that he knows many successful people that he wouldn’t think of hiding. Simply because they are not likeable or lovable human beings. Should we still call them successful people? I wonder.
If you and I would ask ourselves how many people would consider hiding us from the enemy
– would we pass the test?
