Continue doing exactly what you’ve been doing: No breaks, no regrets until absolutely necessary. We’re going to keep that accelerator pressed to the floor. So that brief five-minute scare of like oh shiiiiiiiiiiit – I might need to go home to get medical care and then, you know, rationale stepped in logic something – hey LOGOTHERAPY, thank you! Thank you world. Thank you common sense! Do Epic Shiiiiiiiiiiit.
One of my prime motivations for visiting Austria last year [2021] was to learn more about Viktor Frankl. I’d read a book called, “When Life Calls Out to Us: A Love Affair”, and I did the morbid thing first; I went to the gravesite where he was buried and I
was surprised by and fascinated by all the different actors and of course Mozart and Beethoven – there’s a whole garden in the front dedicated to all these composers that are Austrian or from that region… who had their own little garden there in the cemetery. There was, of course, the more renowned Sigmund Freud [OVERRATED] and Alfred Adler; both of whom Viktor Frankl had studied for quite a while…and he came to realize that they were both missing a couple of facets to their methodology and so that’s when he created his own called LOGOTHERAPY. Logotherapy was actually something he created when he was 16 years old and he did an essay in class. I then went to Viktor Frankl’s grave site, which I actually found his like uncle or his cousin first, but also in [these] graveyards in Austria are fascinating because they have sections for Muslims and Jewish people and so I was in the Jewish section [obviously], looking for Viktor Frankl. It was fantastic I – well not the graves – I mean just how beautiful these gravesites are. They’re actually a tourist attraction [so] when you go to Austria… but the booklet I got from the museum. I finally get to the museum. It was a rainy day; it was a tough day to get there and it’s actually in his old apartment. I was talking to the curator, um I believe her name was Susan or Gretchen or Albethantina – I don’t remember but I picked up that booklet, Live a Life of Meaning: Logotherapy a Concise Overview”.
DO EPIC SHiiiiiiT – Frankl’s Logotherapy at Seven Rila Lakes, Bulgaria | Responsibility | Philosophy and Religion
So I was just strumming through that book and randomly opened up to page 20. It’s been like my Bible because I just randomly open up every once in a while and I find gems. I’ve already read the book two or three times but it’s very very dense and, for me with my small pea brain, I can’t always get all the information the first 17 times I read it so I keep reading it and learning more every time I do.
So it’s not surprising that I just happen to open up to page 20 where it says Health Care, and this section is called “Spiritual Health Care /Spiritual Medical Health. [It’s] split up into and it’s not surprising that it’s right after I kind of put up my post on the prostate cancer scare and the same day I uploaded the Tribute to my mother and Cousin Makeda on the 30th anniversary of their passing from cancer. He [Frankl] has this split up into three [BABBLING] he has it cut up into three like pillars of Spiritual Medical Health, Prevention, Patholastics and Spiritual Mental Medical Care. Under PREVENTION he writes “Being aware that one has a task to fulfill in life has life-expanding and disease-preventing effects.” So, with this, he says you’re going to ask yourself – “For whom am I wanting to live for? For whom do I want to stay healthy?” The second pillar is PATHOLASTICS. In Patholastics he borrows from Nietzsche, which is one of his major pillars of Logotherapy, where he says errr where Nietzsche says, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” So if you have a WHY to live for you can BARE ANYTHING, like Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust and the question here you want to ask is, “For whom or for what do I want to get healthy?” So this is obviously for if you’re already sick and you want to say well, “For whom do I want to remain for? For whom do I want to get better for?” And the last pillar is Spiritual Medical Health Care and the question he asks is [BABBLing] Excuse me, “Where we can no longer shape our destiny we have to take the conscious stand towards it.” So basically it means the end of the road is coming and you know that so you have to come to grips with that. You have to understand that we’re not here forever. The last of the Frankl tenets is basically it says when we can no longer control our destiny we must confront its means or its ends. This means basically we’re all mortal; we’re not here forever and when our time comes we must reconcile that there’s a meaning or reason behind the suffering. In understanding that, we can then have more kind of control over our demise – our ending. When I was going through my prostate cancer scare about a month [May] ago, I was lamenting like I hadn’t lived in the 30 years bucket-list life that I’ve been living since I was 26; that I hadn’t done some incredible things – things that were not even ever on my bucket list, that had become part of my bucket list. Yet I was in that mode of “Swing Low Sweet Chariot comin’ fo’…” No. Not yet, and as it turned out I was way off base I’m, you know, in DAM good shape. Still and yet, we all must come to terms eventually with the end which happens to everyone. We’re not here forever – so even before the results actually were properly interpreted and my mind was completely at ease
I came to the conclusion that I was just going to continue living life. I was going to continue doing exactly what I’ve been doing these last 30-some years; pushing forward, striving for more, trying to understand as much as I could because that’s what I believe my purpose in life is…aside from, of course, sharing what I know and sharing what I do with others any way I can.
However I had seriously considered applying for early retirement. It would take all the pressure off of having to actually get another job.
But I have the second career of Filming in mind. I have a whole lot of 2nd, 3rd and 4th Acts; you know like in Shakespeare, after the 3rd Act all the fun is gone. You know usually the Comic Relief is killed – SPOILER ALERT – usually he or she is killed [it’s usually a he there weren’t women [Actors] in Shakespeare, and then everything else is downhill from there – The Denouement you might say. But it’s a long Denouement and there’s also a lot more deaths. You know you can’t just have one or two deaths in Shakespeare you got to have like 25 characters get killed off it’s a great plot they all die! Which is kind of like what Viktor Frankl says, we’ve got to come to grips with where we are and how much time we have left and not be singing that “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” but singing, you know, “Bring me That Higher Life” – the HIGH LIFE – get back to the high life yeah because that’s what we’re here for. The second thing I was considering – seriously considering – was returning home for medical care [D’oh!]
What a joke! and I was like, ‘Wait wait wait wait wait wait – I can get much better care for far cheaper in about 19 or 20 different countries all over the world.’ I mean, hell, here in Turkey, Kenya, The Dominican Republic….Dental in Thailand dental work is pennies compared to, you know, even Canada, pennies compared to American standards.
So I was like, “Wait wait wait wait – why would I return home for more expensive WORSE care?’ I don’t know, my dad was taken care of really well with his dialysis in Maui, Hawai’i, but not so much in Rhode Island not in Massachusetts. Part of that could have been some of his demeanor. He had lost some of that funny comical edge and it just became a crusty old curmudgeon, but I digress. Bottom line is why would I stop doing exactly what I’m doing for worse care at five times or 20 times the cost? So, I came to my senses again and said, ‘HEY just keep doing what you be doing and that’s called DO. EPIC. Shiiiiiiiiiiiit
Do Epic Shit 