03 Apr De Profundis
Viktor Frankl, a survivor of the death camps of Nazi Germany, one of the great psychiatrists of the 20th century, and the author of one of my favorite books “Man’s Search for Meaning,” once told a story of a woman who called him in the middle of the night. The woman calmly informed Frankl that she was about to die by suicide. She had considered her choice carefully and had decided on this option. There would be no changing her mind; she was calling only to let him know.
Frankl kept her on the phone for hours, listening to her feelings and sharing ways she might find meaning even from the greatest depths of suffering.
As dawn was breaking, the woman finally promised she would not take her life, and she kept her word.
A few weeks later, Frankl met with the woman and asked what reason he had shared that had convinced her to live.
She looked at him, quizzically.
“None of them,” she replied, as if struggling to remember any reasons at all that he had shared.
Confused, Frankl pressed her, wondering what else it could have been that persuaded her to change her mind.
The woman paused and then replied that it was Frankl’s willingness to take her call and listen to her for hours in the middle of the night. A world in which someone was willing to sit with her in her pain, she said, was a world worth living in.
The story is a good reminder of the truth about what helps people explore and decide on a path toward change or growth. And usually, as this story reminds us, it isn’t the most perfect argument or the most persuasive set of facts.
More often than not, it’s someone simply being there.
Somewhere in the safety of that unrushed and compassionate presence is where people frequently find the answers within themselves, where they’ve been all along.