Personal Journal 4

 AN: I am responding to a story called "The Bet" that is commonly used in school work. In the second paragraph, I'm responding to a brief demonstration asking for what things - or whom - would you cross an I-beam, high in the sky, with adverse weather conditions? In the third paragraph, I continue to respond to the brilliant work "Man's Search For Meaning."

I’ve never really grasped what made the lawyer so awesome after he won the bet. To me, he appears to be egocentric, cynical, and downright dreary. I saw a man who’d given up on life, because it has variety, because it can’t be understood. The lawyer was always a pathetic figure to me. The banker who never changed inspires no feelings of victory or grandeur either. To me, neither man won the bet. It sucked the life out of both of them, in different ways, and left both empty shells of what they had been once before. Nobody won.

I would cross the I-beam for my family and friends. I’m not sure if I’d cross it for a complete stranger, but I hope that I’d have the strength to make a sacrifice for another person. If I had that strength, then truly would suffering in all forms have meaning. I want the strength to care for strangers. I’d also cross the I-beam for religion. If the prophet, Thomas S. Monson, told me to walk, I would. If it was a fundamental principle of the church, I would walk. If somebody that I vastly respected told me to walk, I would… as long as I knew that they loved me and wanted the best for me. I suppose some of my governing values then would be: family, friends, idealism, religion, and loyalty.

When Victor Frankl quotes Nietzsche saying that “he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” he’s speaking a universal truth. Frankl has also said that when suffering has a meaning, it’s much more bearable. Those two ideas are deeply intertwined. If we have a cause, then it’s easier to sacrifice. Just look at the long list of martyrs history has provided us. Each had a cause that they believed transcended their life. While it ended up not letting them live, it guided their lives, much how the ‘why’ enables us to bear with any ‘how.’ If you have a goal, then you’ll endure the nitty gritty required to reach it. If you love your wife, you’ll put up with things that you wouldn’t put up with from other people. If you have a why, you can do almost anything. It’s an intrinsic value that will shape our lives. “Why” is one of the most powerful words in the English language. It’s power as a question can unearth people’s motivations (and, more often than not, their deceit), and when used as Frankl means it, it is our motivation. Why indeed.