Who am I?

What great question that is. Grammatically simple, easily understood but as powerful as a heart felted affirmation. “Who am I?”

I’m the inside and the outside. I’m asker and the guesser.
I’m the feeling, the emotion, the sensation, and the thought, but also the doubt, the fear or the denial.

So, “Who am I” has in itself the answer, for it is simply “I am”.

All we are, is all we have, so we can be and strive as anyway we envision, but sometimes, so many times, we don’t understand the power of that affirmation: I am (or I can)

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Say it out loud and feel how it resonates with your soul: I am
(in ancient greek am= love; eu (I) = well, good; I am that I am = I will be what I will be)

So when we ask “Who am I”, we “Become”, but to “Be” their must exist meaning in that.

People who loose meaning in their life, recurrently choose to end it. They loose purpose, they become hopeless and think that there is nothing more to expect from life, nothing to live for.

So, the greatest task in any person’s life is to find meaning in his or her life. That task is each person’s own responsibility.

“A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how”

(...) “Our greatest freedom is the freedom to choose our attitude.” (...) “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Meaning will bring you strength to endure; will bring you grace because you understand and will bring you happiness because you’re listening to your heart’s music.

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still knows bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."

What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans.

You can pursuit happiness, but if any negative events happens, you’re sad and hopeless. If you pursue meaning, a negative event will bring you even more meaning to your life, and consequently, you’ll remember that you’re strong, wise, and loved.

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”

Freedom doesn’t come from the outside conditions. Just because you’re lost in a field of flowers, doesn’t guarantee your mind is free, but when you stand towards the conditions, when you stand proud, meaningfully and with gratitude for being in that field, then you experience true freedom.

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

All quotes taken from:
- Viktor Frankl, in Man's Search for Meaning