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Maya Angelou is an acclaimed author, poet, and civil rights activist. This poem captures Angelou’s experience being a black woman during the time of the civil rights movement and a surge of racism in our society. The poem makes the case that even the most difficult experiences we face in our lives can be changed on the way we choose to view it. Our perspectives and attitudes can provide the groundwork for a better quality of life even with having all odds stacked against us.

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Still I Rise by Maya Angelou | Poetry Foundation

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Barry Blitt is a cartoonist and illustrator known for the many covers and illustrations he has contributed to the New Yorker. The war raging in Ukraine has devastated the country, cut off Russia from the west, and fueled an economic crisis. In Blitt’s cover named “Resilience” he captures Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky's bravery in the face of the Russian invasion has made him a hero for many people. Any peace agreement that denies Ukraine its complete independence and territorial integrity won't be accepted and even as the country faces brutalities brought on by their neighboring country who outnumbers them in arms and soldiers Zelensky and the citizens of Ukraine are determined to not only survive but win the war. This image serves as a prime example of resiliency in the midst of great adversity.

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Until a few years ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian and television personality, was best known in his native country for playing the role of Vasyl Holoborodko, an everyman school teacher turned crusading anti-corruption President. This background, as has been noted by innumerable commentators, seems unlikely for a wartime leader. And yet, as the artist Barry Blitt captures on the magazine's latest cover, Zelensky's courageous conduct in the face of the Russian invasion has made him the hero of the moment for many people. We recently asked Blitt about his connection to Ukraine and its President.

[ Get the in-depth analysis and on-the-ground reporting you need to understand the war in Ukraine. Subscribe today "]
As a funnyman yourself, would you ever put down your pencil and take up arms?
Putting down my pencil once in a while sounds appealing. An afternoon off would be nice. But taking up arms is not a good idea for someone with as much pent-up hostility as me.
Do you feel a special connection with Zelensky?
I admire Zelensky, but I haven't seen any of his comedy. I wasn't really aware of a lot about him before his "beautiful, perfect phone call" with Trump.

Recently, I posted a drawing of Putin in a tank on Facebook, and heard from a distant relative. He had apparently traced our family tree back to the town of Ostropil, in Ukraine. We're talking a long way back, when we were Gerschenblitts, in the early eighteen-hundreds. But, these days, we're all Ukrainians.
For more of The New Yorker's coverage of Zelensky and the war in Ukraine, read: David Remnick's Comment:

Zelensky has galvanized his people through the clarity of his language. . . . " Ya tut," he told his fellow-Ukrainians as he stood on the street in Kyiv. I am here. From his bunker in the capital, he described a Russian missile strike and civilian casualties to members of the European Parliament with such ringing force that even the English-language interpreter could not contain his emotion.

Joshua Yaffa's dispatch from a Kyiv metro station:

Many [civilian] deaths came from air strikes, whether from artillery shelling or missiles. As a result, across the country, especially in the cities where Russia's onslaught has been particularly intense, underground spaces-cellars, parking garages, bomb shelters left over from the Cold War-have become precious. Every night in Kyiv, metro stations fill with as many as fifteen thousand civilians, from young families with inflatable mattresses to babushkas who remember wartime stories from their parents many decades ago.

Kyle Chayka on the first "TikTok War":

On TikTok, Ukrainians appear to viewers less as distant victims than as fellow Web denizens who know the same references, listen to the same music, and use the same social networks as they do. The content of the clips and the digital spaces in which they are consumed create a sense of intimacy that photojournalism, with its tinge of voyeurism, sometimes lacks.

Masha Gessen's dispatch from Russia's last independent TV station:

Shortly after one in the morning, Kseniya Mironova, a twenty-three-year-old correspondent, whose fiancé, the journalist Ivan Safronov, has been in jail since July, 2020, made an announcement. "I want to say that this was the worst year and a half of my life, and the best. I don't know what I would have done without all of you."

For more covers featuring patriotism, see below:

Find Barry Blitt's covers, cartoons, and more at the Condé Nast Store.

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Until a few years ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a former comedian and television personality, was best known in his native country for playing the role of Vasyl Holoborodko, an everyman school teacher turned crusading anti-corruption President. This background, as has been noted by innumerable commentators, seems unlikely for a wartime leader.

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This article covers the concept of positive psychology which can be defined as the ability to cope with difficult circumstances or challenges presented in our lives. Our environments and relationships from an early age are what can lay down the foundation  of psychological resilience, however resilience is something that can be learned even if you were not provided with good relationships or a healthy environment from an early developmental age. This article emphasizes perspective and even teaches a visualization technique which consists of “ Imagining the place you currently exist and slowly zooming out of yourself.” While putting your situation into perspective is not always a solution to all of our problems it is a helpful practice in resilience. Another important topic discussed was learning to perceive obstacles as challenges that can help spark personal growth rather than setbacks that serve as a road-block. And lastly the article illuminates that your sense of resilience relies on progress; when we are focused more on progress than specific goals we will be able to train the brain to embrace challenges and tribulation as something that can work as a positive in the overall scheme of our lives.

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Jolie On ‘Unbroken’ Inspiration: ‘I Can’t Talk About It Without Crying’ | TODAY

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Angelina Jolie talks about the man at the center of "Unbroken", Louis Zamperini. Jolie directed the film adaptation of the best-selling book and spoke the bond she formed with Zamperini. " Subscribe to TODAY: http://on.today.com/SubscribeToTODAY " Watch the latest from TODAY: http://bit.ly/LatestTODAY About: TODAY brings you the latest headlines and expert tips on money, health and parenting.

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Unbroken recites the story of Louis Zamperini, and the atrocities he lived through being a POW during World War II.  The novel highlights the years of war from 1941 to 1945.  Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 would drive Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany, and consequently offset a vicious global conflict. Shortly after Zamperini’s plane crashed in the South Pacific in 1943, he would be rescued by a Japanese patrol boat only to be taken to the infamous Omori POW camp on an island in Tokyo Bay . More than 120,000 Americans would be held prisoner by the enemy during World War II. Camps were notorious for there inhumane conditions. POW's were expected to perform back breaking work while Guards habitually beat and mistreat them. Food supply was next to nothing at labor camps and illnesses and injuries ran rampant

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The Strength Of Human's Will To Be Unbroken:

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The Strength Of Human's Will To Be Unbroken:

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Unbroken examines the extreme limit one can be pushed too while still surviving and even coming out stronger. This Idea is captured very well in psychiatrists Viktor E. Frankl’s book: Man’s Search For Meaning. In this book Viktor Frankl tells how surviving the Holocaust changed his perspective on how people find purpose in their lives. Frankl find the 3 sources of meaning to lie within work; creating appreciable  or significant work, In love; developing meaningful relationships or loving someone or something and lastly in courage; to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. Frankl was exposed to humankind's most malevolent potential, surviving the holocaust, watching all his family members pass yet prevailed coming out stronger than ever. Frankl believes that one of our most prevalent responsibilities in life and the ultimate freedom is to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. If you can live your life following these principles you can overcome all adversities

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Read on Amazon
3 Sentence Summary

In this autobiographical bestseller, Viktor Frankl recounts his experiences surviving the Holocaust and describes how it shaped his understanding whereby man finds meaning for his life. According to Frankl, man can find meaning in his work, in his love for another, and in the courage required to endure suffering. Viktor Frankl passed through the darkest depths of human's capacity for evil, and yet he didn't emerge angry, resentful, or nihilistic, but rather encouraged, optimistic, and hopeful by what he described as man's ultimate freedom and responsibility in life-to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life.

2. 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.

3. The more one forgets himself-by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

4. We should not ask, "What is the meaning of Life?" It is Life that poses the problem and asks the question of us. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

5. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.

Man's Search for Meaning Summary

The following book summary is a collection of my notes and highlights taken straight from the book. Most of them are direct quotes. Some are paraphrases. Very few are my own words.

These notes are informal. I try to organize them by chapter. But I pick and choose ideas to include at my discretion.

Enjoy!

Forward by Harold S. Kushner

Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

The great task for any person is to find meaning is his or her life.

3 Sources for Meaning

1. In Work: Doing something significant.

2. In Love: Caring for another person.

3. In Courage: We give meaning to suffering by the way in which we respond to it.

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

Preface

Don't aim at success-the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

1. Experiences In A Concentration Camp

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as "delusion of reprieve." The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad.

An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.

Apathy

Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner's psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.

Apathy...was a necessary mechanism of self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one's own life and that of the other fellow.

Spiritual Strength

Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Judgement

No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.

Freedom To Choose Your Attitude

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.

Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.

There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
Dostoevski

Meaning In Suffering

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity-even under the most difficult circumstances-to add a deeper meaning to his life.

Hope and Health

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man-his courage and hope, or lack of them-and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
Nietzsche

What Life Expects From Us

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

There was plenty of suffering for us to get through. Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of suffering, trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum. But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.

Responsibility For Your Life

This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude.

That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.
Nietzche

Two Races of Men

It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils.

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two-the "race" of the decent man and the "race" of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of "pure race"-and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards.

Liberation

Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could be called "depersonalization." Everything appeared unreal, unlikely, as in a dream. We could not believe it was true.

Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.

The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more-except his God.

2. Logotherapy In A Nutshell

Logos is a Greek word which denotes "meaning."

Logotherapy is less retrospective as it is introspective [in comparison to psychoanalysis].

Logotherapy helps the patient focus on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future.

Logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced.

In logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis.

The Will to Meaning

Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

Existential Frustration

Existential frustration is in itself neither pathological nor pathogenic. A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive.

Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

The Existential Vacuum

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.

Boredom is now causing, and certainly bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in the leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time.

Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power, the will to money.

In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure. That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.

The Meaning of Life

The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: "Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?" There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one's opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.

The Essence of Existence

The more one forgets himself-by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.

According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

The Meaning of Love

Love enables you to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, to see that which is potential in them, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized.

By loving another person you enable them to actualize these potentialities.

The Meaning of Suffering

When we are no longer able to change a situation-just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer-we are challenged to change ourselves.

"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 beofre and whom he had loved above all else.

Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him?

Well, I refrained from telling him anything but confronted him with the question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?"

"Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!"

Whereupon I replied, "You 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 meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible even in spite of suffering-provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable.

To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.

In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.

The Super-Meaning

What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.

Life's Transitoriness

In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.

Man constantly makes his choice concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be condemned to nonbeing and which will be actualized? Which choice will be made in actuality once and forever, an immortal "footprint in the sands of time"? At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence.

What reason does the elderly have to envy the youth? The youth has only possibilities, while the old have the realities of their past. Not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered.

Psychiatry Rehumanized

Man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes-within the limits of endowment and environment-he has made out of himself.

In every circumstance, man has two potentialities within himself-to behave like swine or saint. Which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Viktor Frankl

Postscript 1984

The Case for Tragic Optimism

Tragic optimism means that one is, and remains, optimistic in spite of the tragic triad of human existence: (1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death.

Optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential allows for: (1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; (2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and (3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

A human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

Man does not live by welfare alone. It's possible to have enough to live by but nothing to live for; to have the means but no meaning.

Not all cases of suicide are undertaken out of a feeling of meaninglessness, but it may well be that an individual's impulse to take his life would have been overcome had he been aware of some meaning and purpose worth living for.

Suffering

Even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

The greatest among us are those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.

Guilt

There is no fully biological, psychological and/or sociological factors that justify/explain why someone commits a crime.

Individuals must be held personally accountable for their deeds. Having committed a crime and become guilty, one now has the responsibility for overcoming guilt by rising above it, by growing beyond yourself and changing for the better.

As for the concept of collective guilt, I personally think that it is totally unjustified to hold one person responsible for the behavior of another person or a collective of persons.

"An American woman once confronted me with the reproach, "How can you still write some of your books in German, Adolf Hitler's language?"

In response, I asked her if she had knives in her kitchen, and when she answered that she did, I acted dismayed and shocked, exclaiming, "How can you still use knives after so many killers have used them to stab and murder their victims?"

Death

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

The opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives.

In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured.

So, let us be alert-alert in a twofold sense:

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.

And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.
Viktor frankl

Afterword by William J. Winslade

Frankl believed strongly in reconciliation rather than revenge; he once remarked, "I do not forget any good deed done to me, and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one."

He renounced the idea of collective guilt. Frankl was able to accept that his Viennese colleagues and neighbors may have known about or even participated in his persecution, and he did not condemn them for failing to join the resistance or die heroic deaths. Instead, he was deeply committed to the idea that even a vile Nazi criminal or a seemingly hopeless madman has the potential to transcend evil or insanity by making responsible choices.

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Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - Book Summary | Tyler DeVries

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Read on Amazon In this autobiographical bestseller, Viktor Frankl recounts his experiences surviving the Holocaust and describes how it shaped his understanding whereby man finds meaning for his life. According to Frankl, man can find meaning in his work, in his love for another, and in the courage required to endure suffering.

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Laura Hillenbrand is an American author. The author is esteemed for her bestselling novels, Seabiscuit: An American Legend (2001) and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010). Both Bestsellers were later adapted into movies that Hillenbrand served as an consultant to. Hillenbrand grew up on a farm in Sharpsburg Maryland and was the youngest of four. Hillenbrand attended Kenyon College in Ohio, however would not be able to complete her degree as she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome and vertigo. Currently she resides in Fairfax Virginia with her husband who is a history professor.