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Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, __hat would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?_ __h,_ he said, __or her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!_ Whereupon I replied, __ou see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering _ to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her._ He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
Viktor E. Frankl Man's Search for Meaning
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Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, __hat would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?_ __h,_ he said, __or her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!_ Whereupon I replied, __ou see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering _ to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her._ He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
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Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning

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