The Hero Within Karen Hall

Beyond Suffering: Finding Meaning And Purpose Amidst Our Struggles; Reflections on How To Find Meaning In Suffering with Jose Pereira

• Karen Hall • Season 1 • Episode 74

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In today's episode, we delve into how Austrian psychotherapist Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, and Jose Pereira, a former hostage in Venezuela, found meaning in deplorable conditions and circumstances. 

Frankl's philosophy emphasized finding meaning through creative pursuits, service to others, contradictory experiences, decisions, spiritual connection, and perceived meaningless tasks. 

Similarly, Pereira found ways to cope during his hostage years.  Likewise, we can apply these lessons in our lives and we can choose positivity, service, finding meaning, optimism, love and joy.

If you enjoy this show, please subscribe, review and rate with your reflections with our community.

I'm wishing you lots of love on your own hero's journey,
Karen
xoxo

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Connect with Jose Angel Pereira Ruimwyk

Jose Angel Pereira, former CEO of Citgo, is one of the Citgo 6, a group of Americans wrongfully detained and held hostage and abused in Venezuela for almost 5 years because he is an American. Beforehand, he spent 35 Years as an Oil Company Executive. 

After returning on October 1, 2022, Jose wrote his memoir while advocating for other Americans unlawfully detained and helps to change US policy on dealing with hostages by leveraging his international experiences to empower others in making positive changes in the world and in their life. His motto is never to give up and never lose faith.
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Speaker 1:

I'm Karen Hall, your host of the Hero Within podcast. I'm passionate about sharing inspiring true stories of unsung heroes who've overcome some of life's most challenging adversities. Come along with me and learn how you too can find hope and healing to return to love. Any who has a why to live for can bear with almost any. How, redrick Nietzsche, do you ever find yourself asking why? Why am I going through this?

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Victor Frankel was an Austrian psychotherapist who survived Auschwitz concentration camp during the Holocaust. He thought a lot about why. Why should one continue to live in such deplorable conditions? In our own life? We often ask why? Why is this happening to me? Why did that person do that? Why did I do this?

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My favorite questions are about why people do the things they do. And then there's my all time favorite riddle what does it mean when that person does that thing? This riddle often plays out in my subconscious and sometimes even in my conscious mind. This can keep me up at night. I'm not unique. Our brilliant brains are busy bees assigning meaning to everything Every joy, every sorrow, every mundane movement. The catch Much of this happens behind the curtain of our consciousness, where negativity often takes center stage.

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As a journalist, there's a saying if it bleeds, it leads. And negative stories do get top billing because they capture our attention. Even advertisers know that fear sells. The same is true with our brain. We default to the negative because we want to solve things that appear dangerous in order to preserve our life. Our brains are constantly scanning the horizon for threats. Sometimes we mistakenly think something is dangerous when it actually isn't. Sometimes I think something is hurtful, unloving or harmful when in all actuality, it isn't even about me. We hear this saying that how someone treats us says more about them than it does about us, but in the heat of the moment, we forget this truth. If we really knew why that person was acting the way they do, we wouldn't take it personally.

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In this great detective story of life, we are both the sleuth and the mystery. The good news is that we're not just passive spectators. We are the playwrights, directors and lead actors. We are the heroes in our own story. The meanings that we etch into our experiences create the script of our lives. It's pretty powerful stuff. We have the opportunity to view every moment as a clue and every hardship as a puzzle to solve in our quest for meaning. Now more than ever, it's crucial to be deliberate with our choices. Will we choose fear or hope? As we go through suffering, we are especially keen to try to make sense of our experience.

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Victor Frankel is the author of Man's Search for Meaning, listed as one of the ten most influential books in America by the Library of Congress. Frankel wrote his book in a mere nine days, one year after he was liberated from the concentration camp. While there, he suffered brutality, abuse, torture, starvation and emotional humiliation. During the time he was imprisoned at four different concentration camps. During the Holocaust, he and his beloved wife, tilly, were forced by the Nazis to abort their baby After Frankel and his wife were sent to different concentration camps, frankel would often reflect on an image of Tilly in his mind that would warm his heart and give him strength to carry on Because of Frankel's love and devotion to Tilly. Being reunited with her gave him a purpose to live.

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Frankel dealt with the chaos in his outer world and his inner world by struggling to understand life. He believed that the search for meaning was not just a secondary thought but a primary motivator for our life. He felt that it was vital to use tools to find meaning so that we can transcend pain and turn it into purpose. He said I can see beyond the misery of the situation to the potential for discovering a meaning behind it and thus to turn an apparently meaningless suffering into a genuine human achievement. I am convinced that, in the final analysis, there is no situation that does not contain within it the seed of meaning. I just love that, that in every single situation, we can find a meaning to turn that meaningless suffering into a human achievement. Oh, my goodness, I love that In Frankel's search for answers, he found strategies to create meaning through several different tools, and I thought this was really interesting, because so many times when we hear about somebody who has overcome something, we want to know how did you do it?

Speaker 1:

And Frankel describes exactly that. So these are the tools that he felt were extremely helpful Creative pursuits, service to others, contradictory experiences, the commitment to a decision, spiritual connection, perceived meaningless tasks through a meaningful lens, creating and pursuing goals and maintaining an unconditional attitude of strength. Jose Pereira also found strategies during his nearly five years of being held as a hostage in Venezuela. If you haven't heard his message, you're going to want to go back and listen to our episode, where Jose tells his story in how to find meaning in your suffering. Just as Frankel's love for his wife sustained him, jose was also devoted to his wife and wrote to her daily, and her letters gave him so much strength. Jose and his comrades also had a strong bond and they promised to care for one another and immediately help if anyone was feeling down. Jose and the rest of the Sitko 6 committed to a plan to not be broken by their experience. They were determined to not only survive physically, but to return home mentally sane. Their plan also included studying the Bible and praying daily, exercising, playing dominoes and making plans for the time when they would return home.

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Frankel described that in the concentration camp, adults and children worked to keep their lives meaningful, and they worked to entertain themselves and others through painting, performing, by acting and playing music, and also by giving scholarly lectures. Frankel saw that both participating in and watching these creative outlets brought him meaning and purpose. Even though he was surrounded by suffering, it was a meaningful distraction which allowed him to transcend the madness of his environment and escape to something purposeful. Frankel also started a suicide prevention program that helped the prisoners adjust to life in the concentration camp. He and like-minded friends helped prisoners who were depressed through his local therapeutic techniques that he had developed before the war, and I thought this was fascinating too, because Frankel had started a suicide prevention program at the hospital where he had worked before the war, and so he used those same skills and abilities that he had honed before the war, during his time in the concentration camp and then afterward.

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Jose was similar to Frankel, and he found that as the focus shifted off of himself and onto helping others, he was able to move past the suffering that he experienced Through contradictory experiences. Frankel also found meaning. He remembered when he was loaded onto a train with other prisoners and they thought they were going to the Mathausen camp, which was known for torturing their victims. When the train changed direction and headed for the Dockow camp, they all felt so relieved. Frankel noted that suffering is relative and even a small experience such as a train changing direction can bring about a great amount of joy. He described how normally being sent to Dockow would not be a reason to cheer, but in this moment, compared to being sent to Mathausen, it was a cause for celebration. Jose also found meaning in his contradictory experiences. Normally a bit of meat in one's bowl of soup would likely bring complaints, but for Jose to receive some meat instead of only broth was a reason to rejoice.

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Frankel was committed in his decisions, such as his determination to write his book, which he had previously written and brought to Auschwitz, but it had been taken from him and destroyed. Jose was also committed and decided to write a book about his captivity too. Being fully engaged with their goals enabled both Frankel and Jose to sustain their focus on their objectives and to maintain their attitude of personal power. Frankel stated that he would focus not only on small goals such as getting food, but also on long-term and future goals, which provided him with the most meaning. Frankel would often daydream about his wife and their future and about giving lectures on the psychology of the concentration camp. This became his goal, and focusing on this goal instead of on his current situation, which he couldn't control, helped him to cope and survive. Jose and the others of the Sit-Go-Six also used their imagination to keep their thoughts positive by reliving past travels and foodstay enjoyed.

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Frankel was also connected in prayer to his spirituality, which gave him the determination to take on the challenges in the concentration camp. Frankel recognized that he was given an opportunity to live what he had previously written and to practice what he had preached about Logo-Therapy before the war. His faith gave him inner resilience to find something to hope for and to keep going in the face of unimaginable suffering. Likewise, jose also drew strength from the Lord as he studied the Bible and prayed. Jose saw many miracles during his imprisonment which gave him hope. Frankel also spoke of hope to his fellow prison mates. He quoted Friedrich Nietzsche that which does not kill me makes me stronger.

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Frankel noticed that it wasn't physical strength but inner fortitude that determined who survived. He said for the prisoner who had lost faith in his future his own future was doomed. With his loss of belief in his future, he also lost a spiritual hold. He believed that he let himself decline and become subject to mental and physical decay. A continual loss of hope ultimately resulted in death. Frankel helped depressive prisoners find a goal that they could live for, such as to live for a child, to be reunited with a family member or for a project to complete. And Frankel noticed that those who had a why could survive nearly anything. Serving others and helping to relieve the suffering of others in the camp brought meaning to Frankel and provided hope for him as he imagined himself continuing to lecture and lift others in the future. Frankel not only blessed those that he served in the camp, but he was also blessed to have purpose and meaning in an otherwise barbaric environment.

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As we seek to find meaning in the grand tapestry of our life, we also have a choice in how we will respond to our situation. We can choose to be a detective in the great mystery of life, looking for opportunities to rise above our current situation. Like Jose and Frankel, we can choose to weave threads of positivity and empowerment into the fabric of our daily existence. We stand at the helm of our meaning-making machines, with the power to opt for optimism, to hunt for hope and to celebrate the countless opportunities for growth and joy nestled in our narratives. In order to thrive on the battlefield of life, we need a guiding North Star. Frankel's guiding North Star was not only God, but he also focused on his love for his wife and his love for others, which he showed by blessing and serving others After Frankel was liberated from the concentration camp. Only then did he discover that his beloved wife, tilly, and several other family members had died. With this tragic news, frankel devoted himself to serving his fellow men by helping them to find meaning in their suffering.

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Our goal is to also take responsibility for the attitude that we pack in our survival bag. Let's step forth with a renewed sense of purpose. We are created with the power to act and not to be acted upon. We are not mere survivors of fate's whims, but adventurers endowed with the extraordinary ability to infuse our journey with meaning, optimism, love, hope and joy. Let's choose to seek hope to uplift and inspire others and ourselves. Remember, in the intricate dance of destiny, the steps we choose can turn the darkest night into a dazzling display of stars.

Speaker 1:

One of my favorite quotes reminds me that life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, nor is it about merely surviving the storm, but rather it's about learning to dance in the rain. I'm sending you lots of love and praying you will tap into your spirituality to strengthen your faith and hope as you find ways to serve and bless others, which will bring fulfillment and meaning to your life. Thank you so much for being here and listening to today's show. I know life is busy. I appreciate you and value the time we spend together. If you enjoyed this message, please subscribe, leave a review and include any questions you have for our guests. I'll read your review and mention you by name in my Thursday episode. See the show notes to get the link to join our Facebook group email list and to listen and watch our episode on YouTube. We're wishing you lots of love in your own hero's journey.

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Karen Hall

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