<div class="bbWrapper">Galaxy, it seems you have an assumption about life that you live by. Actually several.<br />
The first assumption is: If circumstances are bad enough, than a person has NO POWER OR ABILITY AT ALL to choose a more positive attitude.<br />
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Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning disproves this. Totally blows it out of the water.<br />
Dr. Frankl developed his philosophy and psychology in a World War II concentration camp. After he had lost his family, his home, his freedom, his career, the manuscript to his first book based on a lifetime of research, most of his health, and any hope of rescue or recovery or an end to wartime austerity and brutality.<br />
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I think if we're honest, we need to agree that most people reading this forum will NEVER face a circumstance quite that bleak and brutal.<br />
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And his conclusion, which he explains in great details, is that the last human freedom, to choose our own response to life, at least within the sanctity and privacy of our own minds, <i>still exists and still belongs to each of us</i>.<br />
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His book's sold probably well over ten million copies by now, and in every generation since he wrote it, you can find countless people who say this one book inspired how they think, feel, and believe moment by moment through life's darkest hours, more than anything else.<br />
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There may be some times that health issues prevent enough glucose and oxygen from reaching neurons in the brain, so that a new thought is physically impossible to connect across the neurotransmitters right then.<br />
All other times, Frankl a<i>nd many others across the millennia of recorded human existence and from every inhabited continent</i>, have told us that there IS more measure of free will and choice than you believe is possible for your friend... or for you, while your friend yet suffers.<br />
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I can provide, and others can provide, <i>plenty</i> of the wisest, most profound words and ideas, some of the most acclaimed and influential concepts and books ever expounded in a poetic, moving, and intellectually rigorous way. And I suspect you'll keep on rejecting them, not even cracking open the first page, because they contradict the presupposed conclusions you already assume as givens, the central Scripting of your own life and beliefs. <br />
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So the very same wisdom that can be found in Frankl, in the Stoics and Epicureans, in Krishna's dialogue with Arjuna in the Gita and in St. Paul's letters from prison, in the Noble Truths of Siddhartha (his first one is that Life Really Sucks), in the modern day interviews and Youtube channels of some people who've been through hell, in the advice of the Tao and of the Tenth Guru, in the existentialists and the positive psychologists, in the Strangest Secret retold again by Earl Nightingale... none of this will be a good enough rope, to someone who's predefined the conclusion that <i>there could not be a good enough rope to save me or anyone</i>.<br />
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You also have the assumption that <i>you can speak for your friend</i> about what NEW ideas he <i>definitely </i>could accept or use. Without, as far as I can tell, your having ever discussed these specific concepts with him. And without your giving him the respect and freedom to make up his own mind.<br />
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So, you are splashing deeper into the swamp, with a belief that NO ROPE COULD EVER BE GOOD ENOUGH, rejecting rope and rope thrown in the attempt to help you get to shore... asking again for people outside of you to solve the contradictions are are actually a fight between conflicting ideas within your own mind.<br />
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What is that rope, offered in so many sizes and colors from all directions?<br />
The truth that <i>each of us, including your friend, and including you regardless of what your friend chooses to do, really can choose our own beliefs and attitudes, for our own good or our own harm</i>. Even when life really, really sucks.</div>
