Losing the Future
Prisoners who stopped believing in a future were the ones who died. To lose tomorrow was to lose today.
Camp life, Frankl wrote, was a 'provisional existence of unknown limit': no one knew if it would ever end.
A man with no future goal was doomed. He let himself decline, lay where he fell, and nothing could move him.
Frankl tells of a composer who dreamed the war would end for him on March 30th. When the date passed without freedom, he sickened; on March 31st he died.
The cure was a future to live toward: a task waiting, a person waiting, a reason ahead 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.
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