Boredom and The Existential Vacuum + Picture Book Suggestions

Deep thoughts and hard questions from a holocaust survivor

Hello! You can scroll down for picture book suggestions, but warning ⚠️ The discussion questions in the first part of this email are the most challenging, blunt questions we’ve ever asked in these Wednesday book clubs. Viktor Frankl’s writing is to the point, and his book Man’s Search for Meaning pulls no punches. The honest question that he aims to answer in the book, after all, is “Why did some people in the concentration camps still have a will to live?”

Last week we shared Frankl’s story, and over the next three weeks, we’ll share some quotes from the second part of the book. Feel free to screen-shot the following paragraphs and discuss them with a loved one.

• "There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life." (pg 104)¹
  Overstatement? Possibly.² But look at his own life! The desire to be reunited with his wife---and to write this very book---enabled him to not despair of life even when he was treated as worse than an animal for years, in the cold, with death all around him.
  Do you feel like you have meaning in your life? Does that help you get through hard things?

• "What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him." (pg 105)
  We think we would feel better if life wasn't so hard—and maybe there is a life change you need to make that would greatly improve your mental health—but Frankl suggests that what you need more than ease is purpose.
  Do you think that, deep-down, you keep waiting until your circumstances are perfect before you think you’ll feel okay? What mindset shift might be more helpful?

• "The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom." (pg 106)
  Have you noticed that anxiety is a personality type and a sense of humor these days? Have you noticed that the people who post the most about how anxious, stressed, and miserable they are also seem to live boring lives? There’s a difference between helping people with mental health struggles and normalizing—even perpetuating—anxiety.
  Is it possible that you feel sad and stressed not because your life is so hard but actually because your life is so easy?

Picture Book Suggestions

The Seven Silly Eaters by Mary Ann Hoberman and illustrated by Marla Frazee is about a very, very tired mom who tries endlessly to meet all her kids’ dietary demands. (I’ll bet she did a lot of horizontal parenting 😅) Her kids might have become a little spoiled, yes, but by the end you see that their hearts were compassionate and thoughtful like their mama’s. The ending is—literally—quite sweet. (Wouldn’t it be fun to make a Mrs. Peters Birthday Cake, too?)

One Green Apple by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Ted Lewin us about a young Muslim immigrant named Farah who feels alone until she finds friendship at a field trip to the apple orchard. It might be encouraging to a kid who is nervous about making friends at school. Plus, fall is right around the corner, yay! 🍎

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charles Mackesy is about as close to therapy as you can get without booking an appointment. The book is so unique and—even though there are only or two sentences written on each page—adults will cherish it just as much as kids. Lots of wisdom, warmth, and lovely drawings. I’ve bought several copies of this book and love to give them as gifs for a wide variety of ages. I think you’ll love it.

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Was this encouraging? I hope so! Asking hard questions might not be the first thing that comes to mind for a monthly theme of Self-Care, but I love the idea of making it our goal to find purpose in our suffering instead of trying to eliminate suffering altogether. We all become better humans when we do that, I think.

Warmly,

Hope from Family Scripts

P.S. Here are graphics for the other two quotes that you can save to your phone if you’d like. Next week we’ll talk about your unique purpose.

1. Your page numbers might be different than mine because this book has been reprinted so many times.

2. I write this as a Christian who believes that we need Jesus more than anything else. But I also believe Jesus gives everything purpose. As we said last week, an open-minded person can read something that contradicts their beliefs and figure out a healthy way to interact with it.