I am experiencing the tension of wanting to move towards the vision I have for my ideal role, and the dissatisfaction that it is not materializing. I know what I want to be doing, I am clear on what it is and why I want to do it. I am taking steps to move towards it, but the details are not coming into place.
It is making me restless. My current full-time role feels more and more like drudgery. The toxic culture at the office is getting harder to tolerate. It is wearing me out and raising my irritability with the people I love at home.
The reality is that I am checked out from my work. I am doing the bare minimum to get by, and the work that I do is half-arsed. I have resigned to the fact that I can’t change the way our company is.
I have a foot in each camp, and they are getting further and further apart.
Coming through the airport last week, I noticed a new version of the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. The book is written by a psychologist’s experience in a Nazi Germany concentration camp. I have read the book maybe three or four times in the past, and parts of it I think about a lot.
This week I came across a section of the book that was completely new. It rang my bell and spoke to my present situation. I was completely surprised by it and could swear it wasn’t in the book before.
Talking about people that faced hardship with honor, he writes:
It can be said that they were worthy of their suffering; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful… If there is a meaning in life at all, there must be meaning in suffering (page 67)
I can’t stop thinking about this profound question, am I worthy of my sufferings?
By no means is my struggle at the level those in concentration camps endured. But if one man can find hope amid those atrocities, then it is possible for me also, in my struggles.
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