Losing the Future
The prisoners who stopped believing in a future were the ones who died. To lose tomorrow was to lose the strength to live today.
Frankl called camp life a 'provisional existence of unknown limit' — no one knew when, or whether, it would end. That uncertainty was itself corrosive.
A man who could not see a future goal was doomed. He would let himself decline, lie where he fell, and nothing — no warning, no threat — could move him. He had given up.
Frankl tells of a composer who dreamed the war would end for him on March 30th. As the date neared and freedom did not come, he sickened; on March 31st, he died — of the collapse of his hope.
The cure was a future to live toward: a task waiting, a person waiting, a reason set ahead in time that made the present endurable.
Keep a future in view
Set a goal ahead of you
Fix on something concrete you are living toward — a task, a reunion, a role only you can fill. A future goal makes the present bearable.
Don't stake it all on a date
Hope tied to a specific deadline shatters when the deadline passes. Hold the goal firmly; hold its timing loosely.
- Is my hope in the outcome, or only in the date?
Act like someone with a tomorrow
Even in limbo, do the small things a person with a future does. Refusing to decline is itself a decision to live.
Any attempt to restore a man's inner strength had first to show him some goal in the future.