The Lexicon
Meaning, will, destiny
Meaning
Meaning is not found in the world but assigned to it; the same event is tragedy to one soul and initiation to another, and the difference is the meaning we give. The teachers insist that no situation, however dark, can take from a human being the final freedom: to choose the attitude one will hold toward it. He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Suffering itself ceases to be suffering the moment it finds a meaning, and a life oriented toward meaning is one no circumstance can finally defeat.
Carried by 21 teachers · across 5 traditions · 14 quotes
This is the quiet revolution at the heart of the inner path. You are not the passive recipient of a fixed reality; you are the one who interprets, and the interpretation shapes the experience. True meanings are shared meanings, the teachers add, ones in which others can take part, for meaning made only for the self soon collapses. To live meaningfully is to keep asking what life is asking of you in this moment, and to answer with your whole being. Where attention finds meaning, the heart finds the strength to endure and the will to act.
In their words
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.Viktor Frankl
Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space is our power to choose.Viktor Frankl
The mark of all true 'meanings of life' is that they are common meanings — they are meanings in which others can share, and meanings which others can accept as valid.Alfred Adler
There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so.William Shakespeare
Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.William James