Faith, Hope or Love: The Secret of Survival of James Stockdale & Viktor E. Frankl

I’ve been reading about our ability to overcome suffering. And, more specifically, what allows some people to survive unspeakable conditions at the hands of other human beings. While others simply give up and die.

I found two examples from history that will take your breath away. And, maybe we can learn something together.

Admiral James Stockdale: American Hero

Admiral James Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam on September 9, 1965, while flying his A-4 Skyhawk jet. Stockdale was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for the next seven years.

He suffered in conditions we cannot fathom, including frequent rounds of torture.

American author Jim Collins made Admiral Stockdale famous when he outlined his story of suffering in the best-selling book From Good to Great.

Collins studied the discipline of survival psychology. He questioned how Stockdale could endure such incredulous conditions without losing the will to live. Moreover, how could he get through each day without knowing how the ordeal would end.

He coined the now famous term, The Stockdale Paradox.

To put it in the proper context, Stockdale’s incarceration time was equivalent to the time you spent in both high school and college.

So Collins wondered, “if it feels depressing for me to read about his story, how on earth did he survive when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?”

When Collins posed that very question to the former prisoner of war, Stockdale replied: “I knew I’d prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.” Stockdale simply had faith that the ordeal would end someday in the future. Stockdale’s later life was full of joy and happiness.

See, one of the things that is nearly impossible to fathom is that hardships in life often prepare us for an extraordinary future.

I reminds me of a good book I read. It opined that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance produces character; and character produces hope.

That all sounds pretty wise, but it’s nearly impossible to understand this wisdom when you’re in the vortex of the suffering.

One of the few benefits of suffering is feeling the love and support of others. Some Cancer survivors say, in hindsight, that the support and empathy of their friends and family was the greatest medicine of all. But imagine being a prisoner of war, where everyone is suffering. Everyone is starving. Everyone is sick. Everyone is dying.

I imagine that there is very little sympathy for one another. That lack of sympathy is a compounding form of violence. Their suffering happened without the love and support of other human beings. Like learning you have pancreatic Cancer and not telling anyone.

Hope vs Faith

It turns out that many of those who did not survive the ordeal simply didn’t share Stockdale’s faith in the outcome. Instead, those who did not survive had hope. While the difference in the two words is semantics, the difference in outlook says everything about the ability to survive the most inhumane of human conditions.

See, hope is rooted in optimism. According to Stockdale, “Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

Stockdale surmised that the optimists had hope that they would be rescued by a date certain. In contrast, Stockdale had faith that the ordeal would end….someday. And that, in the end, he would prevail.

I can imagine that, in these circumstances, the biggest enemy of all is the voice in your head. Just imagine the discipline required to control your thoughts and emotions.

Cause while it’s often easy to display confidence and faith in an outcome it is often difficult to truly believe in the outcome. Especially in the face of overwhelming uncertainty. See, in times of suffering it’s our own internal dialog with ourselves that can become the biggest enemy of all.

Viktor E. Frankl & The Meaning of Life

Viktor E. Frankl was a Viennese doctor and psychiatrist. He survived three years in four different Nazi concentration camps during World War II. In the midst of his unthinkable suffering in the Auschwitz concentration camp, he developed a deep sense of the true meaning of life.

This great book was recommended to me many times over the years. When I finally retrieved it from my bookshelf I found that I had purchased it three times. Probably a good thing, cause the Library of Congress lists the book as one of the 100 books that shaped America. Other books include the Bible. \”Atlas Shrugged,\” by Ayn Rand. To Kill a Mockingbird,\” by Harper Lee. \”Gone With the Wind,\” by Margaret Mitchell. Pretty tough competition. In addition to my three copies there are about 15,997,000 others floating around the world.

Similar to Admiral Stockdale, Frankl learned that what happens to you – including suffering – is secondary to your response to it. The prisoners who could maintain a small sense of the future found that it helped them survive over the long haul. The prisoners who lost their faith in a future lost their will to live-and simply died.

In February 1945, in the deepest part of a bleak winter, Frankl’s bunkmate experienced a vivid dream. He dreamed that the camp would be liberated in March 30th—- date certain. The dream gave him hope in a future.

On March 29th, news reached the camp that the Allied advances had slowed considerably—and that their rescue was not imminent. On March 30th, the man developed a high fever. He died the following day.

Frankl believed that life has meaning in all circumstances, even the most miserable ones. This means that even when situations seem objectively terrible, there is a higher level of order that involves meaning.

According to Frankl, there is only one thing that you cannot take from a man. You cannot kill the way we choose to respond to what is done to us. The final human freedom is the ability to choose our attitude, even in the most dire of circumstances.

While some men leaned on hope during their incarceration, men like Admiral Stockdale leaned on faith. In contrast, Victor Frankyl leaned on love. That’s right, he leaned on love. Even in the degradation and abject misery of a Nazi concentration camp, Frankyl found his inspiration in the memory of his wife. Frankyl recalls during one particularly harsh winter march through the freezing snow:

See, I think what Frankl realized was that faith and hope are earthly gifts. They only last as long as we last. But, love lives on even after we are gone. While the Nazi guards could break his spirit and body, they could never destroy the love in his heart.

And, ironically, love is the ultimate demonstration that our faith is active in our lives. Or as my friend, Tony Sundermeier recently shared, “memory is part of the rich soil where faith can bloom“.

See, we think we want certainty in our lives but we don’t. We want to take a new job and be certain it will work out. We want to move to a city and wander into the neighborhood pub like Barney Stinson wanders into MacLaren\’s Pub on How I Met Your Mother.

In reality, we humans love uncertainty. It’s why we love sports and casinos and trying that new hole-in-the-wall, Korean taco joint in the bad neighborhood.

It’s in our American DNA. The distant memory of being chased by all those Red-Coats, I guess. See we desire certainty in all things, but it’s the uncertainty that keeps us alive; the blood pumping and the adrenaline flowing through our veins. When the uncertainty is removed the thrill is gone.

I’m not saying that these men enjoyed captivity and torture. I am saying that their faith in the future and their ability to see themselves looking backwards at these events as the defining moments of their lives. It resulted in an uncertainty that enhanced their will to survive.

Fortunately both men survived their ordeals. And, they lived to see their faith play out in living color.

Viktor E. Frankl’s Release

Frankl’s camp was liberated in 1945 and he learned of the death of all his immediate family members, with the exception of his sister who had emigrated to Australia.

Following the war, Frankl became head of the neurology department of the Vienna Policlinic Hospital and established a private practice in his home. He actively worked with patients until his retirement in 1970. With the success of his books Man\’s Search for Meaning and The Doctor and the Soul he became a sought after speaker, invited to teach and lecture around the world. Frankyl died in Vienna, Austria in 1979.

Admiral James Stockdale’s Release

Stockdale was released as a prisoner of war on February 12, 1973 during Operation Homecoming.

On March 4, 1976, Stockdale received the Medal of Honor. Admiral Stockdale retired from the Navy in 1979 and become a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in 1981. Stockdale died in 2005 in Coronado, California.

So as you begin to ease out of house arrest, give a nod to these great American heroes. And, thank them for teaching us all a great lesson about faith, hope and love and about the will to survive against the greatest of odds.

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And that, my friends, is where the story ends.

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