There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.

Not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life.

Life Is Suffering

He may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly.

Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!(How much suffering there is to get through!)﻿

To invoke an analogy, consider a movie: it consists of thousands upon thousands of individual pictures, and each of them makes sense and carries a meaning, yet the meaning of the whole film cannot be seen before its last sequence is shown. However, we cannot understand the whole film without having first understood each of its components, each of the individual pictures. Isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life, too, reveal itself, if at all, only at its end, on the verge of death?

Meaning Of Life

And doesn't this final meaning, too, depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual's knowledge and belief?

<ul><li>The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed.</li><li>The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone; in other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love.</li><li>Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.</li></ul>

Three Main Avenues Of Logotherapy

Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich starker(What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger)

These are some of my favorite quotes/ parts of this book. Hope you all get to introspect some of the powerful and wonderful sayings.

A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that he and other inmates coped with the experience of being in Auschwitz. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Only those who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influence - while those who made a victory of those experiences turned them into an inner triumph. Frankl came to believe that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. This outstanding work offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living.

books

Books

Viktor Emil Frankl M.D., Ph.D., was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor. Frankl was the founder of logotherapy, which is a form of Existential Analysis, the "Third Viennese School" of psychotherapy.His book Man's Search for Meaning (first published under a different title in 1959: From Death-Camp to Existentialism. Originally published in 1946 as Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager) chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. He was one of the key figures in existential therapy.

Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning

We all tend to write a story by following a three act structure and end up creating beats with highs and lows for the characters artificially designed. Let's dive deeper into creating a story where all characters are useful and connected with each other.

Prologue

We must have a Premise line, an one liner of our story. We can create a lot of ideas as our wish list and filter out the best one by removing redundancies.Frame the premise line in the following way:WEAKNESS * ACTION = CHANGE

Premise

Weakness, Need, Desire(Want) are three important traits important for defining the perfect character.

Character Definition

Weakness should be the force stopping the character from growth.Desire should be superficial and the main motive should be the need.

<ul><li>Weakness & Need</li><li>Desire</li><li>Opponent</li><li>Plan</li><li>Battle</li><li>Self Revelation</li><li>New Equilibrium</li></ul>

7 Steps To Focus

These are some major events happening in our story. Write them in a rough order.

Story Events

Give as many Weaknesses as possible to the hero. The opponent should be able to attack all the weaknesses of the hero and should try to achieve the same goal.

Weakness And Need

Linear: Sequential story telling. Cause and Event based.Non Linear: They are branched and at times spiral ending up at the centre.

Some Types Of Storytelling

King or FatherQueen or MotherWarriorMagician or ShamanWise man or Old manTricksterClown

Archetypes

Hero, Opponent, Ally, Fake Ally-Opponent, Fake Opponent-Ally, Sub plot characters.Sub plot characters need not be an ally.

Characters

It should always be shown why the hero acts a particular way.All the characters should be related some way or the other. Every character should have a purpose to exist in the story.

Most Important

1) Coming of Age2) Adult to leader3) Cynic to Participant4) Leader to Tyrant5) Leader to Visionary

Character Change/Development

Link every characters either by their function or the type of role they perform.

Character Web by Function/ Archetypes

Write down the Central Moral ProblemShow Variations in Central Moral Problem among every characters.Bring about Hero's Character change

Moral Problem

<ul><li>Good vs Bad</li><li>Tragedy </li><li>Pathos</li></ul>Satire and Irony<ul><li>Black Comedy </li></ul>

Variants Of Moral Problem

<ul><li>Travelling</li><li>Single Grand Symbol </li><li>Connecting two grand symbols in a One Line process</li></ul>

Some Metaphors

1)Create a large umbrella and then crosscut and condense(Multiple arenas under a larger arena)2)Send the hero on a journey through generally the sameareana, but one that develops along a single line.(Linear movement)3)Send the hero on a circular journey through generally the same arena.(Returning to the start point)4)Make the hero a fish out of water(bringing suddenly from one world to another)

Arenas

Ocean, Outer Space, Forest, Jungle, Desert and Ice, Island, Mountain, Plain, River, Weather

Arena Examples

This needs to be used for both the characters and the world they live in to ensure everything is in a flow and connected.

Symbol Web

The bigger the vehicle driving the story, the more unified the arenas become. Ensure there is no forcing of characters in a particular scene or story event if they are not required. There were many movies mentioned in this book. Special mentions are: The Godfather, L.A.Confidential, Star Wars, Tootsie, Shining, Psycho, Gone with the wind, A Streetcar named Desire, Citizen Kane, Braveheart, Batman...

Epilouge

This stash has some key points on creating a story organically.

"If you're ready to graduate from the boy-meets-girl league of screenwriting, meet John Truby . . . [his lessons inspire] epiphanies that make you see the contours of your psyche as sharply as your script." —LA Weekly John Truby is one of the most respected and sought-after story consultants in the film industry, and his students have gone on to pen some of Hollywood's most successful films, including Sleepless in Seattle, Scream, and Shrek. The Anatomy of Story is his long-awaited first book, and it shares all his secrets for writing a compelling script. Based on the lessons in his award-winning class, Great Screenwriting, The Anatomy of Story draws on a broad range of philosophy and mythology, offering fresh techniques and insightful anecdotes alongside Truby's own unique approach to building an effective, multifaceted narrative.

Man's Search for Meaning

The Anatomy of Story

Hariharan Jayakumar