Call Me Emilio

Black Swan

ekarakey — Sat, 09 May 2020 21:38:25 +0000

“Is it just me or is it getting crazier out there?”

-Joaquin Phoenix, Joker

In the late 16th century, French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote the Essays or Essais (in French). It was, as the name suggested, a series (107 to be exact) of essays on the essence of human nature and other philosophical-sounding issues. What is relevant about Montaigne’s work is that it was incredibly introspective; he was tortured by the awareness of his own ignorance. His Essais reflected a tentative humility and it’s a large part of why we get the word “essay” today. The word “essay” means a speculative, modest, non-arrogant, attempt. It means taking a stab at figuring things out while simultaneously keeping a steady level of humility. It doesn’t mean writing with a lack of self-confidence, but writing with a healthy amount of self-awareness about how little we truly know about the world. In short, I know nothing, but let me try anyway: an Essais on Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

I would be lying if I said I understood half of what was going on in Black Swan, but the half I did understand was truly mind-blowing. To summarize, a Black Swan event is an event that’s highly unexpected but has severe consequences. It’s referred to as a Black Swan because it used to be a (Western) belief that all swans were white until a dutch settler went to Australia and discovered the existence of a black swan. This was a completely unexpected (deemed impossible) event that profoundly changed Zoology.

I picked up this book precisely because we are going through, what many would call, a Black Swan event: COVID-19. Corona is a Black Swan event because it’s extremely unexpected (a few people predicted it, but if we genuinely had expected it, we would have been more prepared) and it will completely and severely change our lives forever. The future of working from home, online degrees, financial markets, public health, and speculative investing will never be the same. This is an event that has toppled business, causing entire countries to put a “pause” on ordinary life, and wiping out trillions of dollars in the global economy. Yet, only five months ago, not a single relevant government official saw it coming. There was no model or forecast that predicted it. How did this happen? How could we have been so blind?

That’s the central question that Black Swan is trying to answer. It’s a book that covers a variety of topics from philosophy, to economics, to statistics. It deals with epistemology of humanity, Gaussian bell curves, fractal geometry, and other -ities. It’s so broad in its scope that it would take a Montaigne level of essays to make sense of it all. Yet the central claim that I took away is the irony of Black Swans. The irony is that we are so blind to Black Swans, yet our lives are controlled by them. The history of humanity has been propelled forward by Black Swans: World War 2, 9/11, Financial Crash of 2008, the Internet, and the Atom Bomb. The development of history is far from a gradual crawl, but a powerful leap from one war, invention, and development to the next. He makes the claim that our lives are controlled by the extreme, yet in our financial and statistical models for measuring risk, we ignore the extremes and treat them as exceptions.

Unfortunately, the extremes are only going to get worse. As things become more concentrated and connected through globalization, as wealth becomes more concentrated, and as weapons get stronger, the system becomes paradoxically both safer and riskier. It’s safer in that we can distribute risk evenly, yet riskier because it becomes even more vulnerable to Black Swans. Although having our supply chains so interconnected that we have one global economy creates a stronger, more stable economy, it only takes one hurricane, one disease, one atom bomb, one bubble, one housing crisis, or one crazy dictator to bring the entire system crashing down. That sounds impossible, but in the past few months we’ve seen a disease halfway across the world cause unemployment to rise to the highest level since the Great Depression. What is deemed “impossible” may not be so impossible anymore. Everything’s on the table. That is why I wrote this from the perspective of the “essay”. I often write and talk with a sense of unwarranted confidence; a small dash of humility and self-realization of my ignorance is vital, especially since the world’s growing more unexpected.

Like I said at the start, I know nothing, but let my try anyway.

Excellent Sheep

ekarakey — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 01:23:39 +0000

From Exeter, to Trinity, to Vanderbilt, I’ve been immersed in a very unique culture. It’s a culture that I’ve decided to call PrestigeWorld. PrestigeWorld, like all cultures, is messy and complex. It has it’s popular icons (Harvard, McKinsey, and Goldman Sachs) as well as it’s common lingo, customs, and myths. Like most people immersed in a culture, it seems difficult to imagine a world where our customs aren’t objectively true. Here is a popular belief among those in PrestigeWorld: the lower the acceptance rate, the better the institution, and the better the institution, the better your chances for success and a happy life. This is more than just a popular belief, this is PrestigeWorld’s canon ‒ it’s our Code of Hammurabi and its truth reigns supreme. A book I’ve read in the past couple weeks talks about PrestigeWorld in great depth, it’s called Excellent Sheep and tackles PrestigeWorld head on, but from the perspective of the student. The scope of Excellent Sheep is vast: it deals with the brokenness of the rat race of elite education and internships, the depression and anxiety felt by many students at elite schools, and provides suggestions and advice for students to have a more fulfilling and inspirational education.

But there was one aspect of Excellent Sheep that stuck with me, and that was his take on the emotional psyche of students in PrestigeWorld. One of the most accurate analyses of this book is his diagnosis of the mental and emotional state of many students in elite education. Gifted kids often find themselves in a state of being where they swing incessantly between the poles of grandiosity and depression. Because PrestigeWorld is an environment ripe for comparison, students at elite colleges tend to feel an extreme sense of superiority compared with their peers that are doing worse than them, while simultaneously feeling an immense anxiety and insecurity when they compare themselves to those peers that are doing better than them. The issue is that many students, myself included, make arbitrary metrics for human value. These could be anything: GPA, SAT scores, ACT scores, US News Report Rankings etc. For me it was acceptance rates.

I would value people based on the selectivity of the institution they attended or the firm they worked at. The issues would arise when I began to judge myself by the very criteria I used to judge others. Because there is one serious complication that arises when using unfair and binary standards to judge people that are nuanced: I will never completely pass my own standard. That’s where Excellent Sheep’s diagnosis of swinging between the poles of grandiosity and depression fit so accurately in life. I was judging others for the acceptance rate of their credentials while simultaneously being a student of Trinity College, an institution that, at least in comparison to the Ivies and Ivy-lites, has a very high acceptance rate. I didn’t fully pass my own standard for human value; part of me was above the bar, and part of me below. Part of me was valuable, and part of me was not. People are multifaceted and will almost never completely pass the arbitrary metric you can place on human self-worth, and so people will simultaneously be valuable and not valuable, which then gives way for the cognitive dissonance of grandiosity and disillusionment at the same time.

The cure for the diagnosis in Excellent Sheep is quite simple: stop valuing humans on arbitrary metrics of value. A lot easier said than done. I myself am trying my best to not judge others based on their credentials, scores, and acceptance rates. It takes a very conscious effort to undo the myths, nay ‒ the propaganda, of PrestigeWorld. There’s nothing else we can do except to keep saying it: your acceptance rate, credentials, internships, scores, network, and connections do not determine your intrinsic value. Maybe if we say enough times we’ll start to believe it ‒ and then we’ll be on our way to an excellent life and to separate ourselves from the excellent flock.

A Lesson In Failure

ekarakey — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 01:58:31 +0000

At the beginning of 2019 I set an ambitious goal: read 50 books in a year. As someone who wasn’t a very avid reader ‒ I doubt I had even read 50 books for pleasure in my entire life ‒ reading that much tin the next 365 days was a daunting prospect. But, I was confident in my work ethic and my ability to plan, so I made this blog to track my progress and I started reading. If any of you have been following my progress with even the most minimal amount of attention, you might have noticed that I did not achieve my goal. In fact, I failed miserably at it.

Towards the start of the year, my progress was rather strong. But, as I shifted into the gears of the summer with my EY internship and further into the fall with transferring schools, my reading pace and work ethic slowed and slowed to a firm stop. When I look back at my total progress for the year, I can’t help but be disappointed. I have written reflections on a total of 17 books this year, all of which are on my blog. Added to the 7 books that I’ve read that I have not written reflections on, and that brings me to a total of 24 books for the year; a little under half of my original goal; 48% of my original goal to be exact.

I come to the table from the perspective of a student and there is NO class I have taken where a 48% is an acceptable grade. A 48% is a failing grade. I would have most likely dropped out of the course. So as I look forward to the future of the blog in 2020, do I drop it? Retake it? Regret doing it all together? I think this is where the classroom analogy begins to break down. Because although I failed at my original goal, it was quite possibly the most spectacular failure of my entire life.

24 books.

I would never have imagined that I could read 24 books in a year. The only way I was able to do it was in that spectacular failure. I set a goal that was so ambitious, that in the mere striving for it I was able to surpass my expectations. It was in the spectacular failure that I was able to achieve a spectacular success. If all my new year’s resolutions for 2020 could be summed in a sentence it would be this: my goal is to continue failing spectacularly.

As for the future of the blog, I’ve decided to do away with the rigid “One book/reflection a week” strategy I used this past year. I will still post on the blog, but it will be a free-form activity of reflections and other random thoughts. I will also start to venture away from novels and read books on politics, psychology, education, and whatever else catches my interest. Here’s to another year of reading!

“Shoot for the moon Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

-Norman Vincent Peale

On Freedom

ekarakey — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 19:34:02 +0000

A reflection on 1984, by George Orwell

Where do I start.

Every now and then I come across a book so intricate in its composition, so dense in its wisdom, and so daring in its scope, that upon attempting to synthesize it in a reflection I’m only left with four pathetic words:

Where do I start.

Constant surveillance, restriction of thought, and constant wars. These are just a few of the characteristics of this negative Utopia portrayed in 1984. We see this world through the eyes of Winston, a worker at the Ministry of Truth whose job is, ironically, to change past newspapers and pieces of literature to be in form with the thinking of the totalitarian party. Winston is the last human on earth. Of course, there are other people; there are workers and soldiers, but he is the last person left that is actually human. He has what most would consider at the time to be insanity: freedom of thought. He questions, doubts, probes, and then eventually conspires against the ruling party. But he is alone, an outcast, a minority of one. He lives in a world under constant surveillance, where even a trembling lip or a rapid heartbeat would be enough for him to get arrested and locked up forever. He lives in a world where Big Brother controls actions, emotions, and even thoughts. He is desperately fighting against a world where the clocks strike thirteen and where he’s expected to believe that 2 + 2 = 5. This novel is incredibly bleak and contains some of the most horrifying and thought-provoking monologues ever written. As characters give impassioned speeches on the nature of man or on how the world should be structured, it feels real and relevant, as if Orwell is weighing the merits of political worldviews through his characters. That’s why I think I loved this book so much. It’s as much a novel as a book on religion or politics or philosophy, that’s because 1984 is not just a novel. It’s a warning, a critique, a prophecy, a philosophical essay, and a political treatise. It is the definite political manifesto of its author, George Orwell.

One of the most impactful quotes for me was Winston’s reflection on the meaning of freedom.

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

If one is able to speak about reality in an objective way, then they have freedom. If one is able to say two plus two make four, and the government can’t force you to say otherwise, that is true freedom.

Although the world of 1984 hasn’t come true, George Orwell’s dystopia is just as relevant today as it was in the past. The lessons of truth, reality, and power that Orwell lays out in 1984 are warnings that we should heed today. By showing us a vivid example of what losing our humanity would look like, it should impassion us to hold tight to that humanity and fight for it even harder.

All Quiet on The Western Front

ekarakey — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 02:14:38 +0000

A reflection on All Quiet on The Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque.

“This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”

-Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet on The Western Front follows our fictional narrator, Paul Baumer, and his group of fellow soldiers through their experiences as German foot soldiers during World War I. They are initially a youthful and passionate group, but throughout the 12 chapters that this novel presents, we see the war slowly beat and refine their spirits to emotional and physical destruction. Remarque’s prose is simple, so the book reads rather quickly, but, as demonstrated by the quote above, it’s simplicity is not at the expense of its elegance and beauty.

What I found most interesting in this novel is its perspective. In the little over 200 pages that Remarque presents we receive little to no general war strategy and tactics. Of course, we have our own present knowledge of World War I, but from the book alone we get no information on the purpose or main actors in the war. Also, there is very little story arc with a cohesive progression, for in each chapter Paul drifts from vignette to vignette. The perspective of All Quiet on The Western Front is a microcosm around Paul’s battalion, dragging us along from scene to scene. We see Paul in shelling bombardments, in trench warfare, in medical hospitals, on medical leave, on the battlefields, and back in trench warfare. But it doesn’t follow the standard plot you see in most novels: exposition – rising action – climax – falling action – denouement. There’s very little initial character flaws, character progression, and no villain, at least in the traditional sense. And through all of this and because of all of this, the story is that much more real. I grow closer with Paul and his battalion not because he rose up and prevailed against the challenge, but because he got destroyed by it. The hectic vignettes and non-linear storyline make his story that much more believable because life is often hectic and non-linear. Relationships are left in tension, sub-plots are left unresolved, and the ending is anything but happily ever after, and yet I walked away from this book satisfied and invigorated.

All Quiet in The Western Front is considered one of the greatest war novels of all time, in part because of its unique perspective. It provides a vivid, realistic depiction of the war, possibly the most realistic depiction one could provide: that of a soldier. It’s take on war was refreshing and I highly recommend it to anyone who might be interested in novels like these.

I’ll finish off with two quotes that impacted me the most.

“Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades – words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.”

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.”

Lord of The Flies

ekarakey — Wed, 22 May 2019 18:34:31 +0000

“The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.”

-William Golding

I took a brief hiatus from the blog this past month, but since finals are over and summer has started, the reflections will be up once again.

The Lord of The Flies, by William Golding.

This novel is shocking. It’s a book that follows the improbable survival, heroic rise, and eventual downfall of a group of British schoolboys who become stranded on an island after a plane crash. The prose is filled to the brim with hauntingly beautiful descriptions of the seas, mountains, and forests. I use the word haunting because, throughout Golding’s powerfully visual storytelling of the bright seas and luscious forests, I felt a tense sense of unease. It was the same unease that one gets in films like Get Out, where a happy community is almost too happy, too peaceful, and too perfect. It’s a community that will never last, and throughout the novel, I was hesitantly awaiting the inevitable downfall of this island paradise.

The original leader of these British schoolboys is Ralph, a fair-haired boy, one of the oldest on the island. His purpose for the small tribe is simple: keep a smokey fire going and try to catch the attention of a passing ship. At first, the community listens to him. That fire is more than just a smoky signal; it’s the hope of rescue and hope of civilization. The tribe follows rules of decency, democracy, and leaving no one behind. They are Adam and Eve and their island is Eden, but sadly, we know what happens to Eden. The fire goes out and with it, their hope.

The reason that so many people find this book revolting and offensive is the central claim that it puts forward: the idea of an original sin of man. This idea is quite common in Freudian psychology and in many religious circles, but it is not one that is universally accepted. Golding is writing this in the wake of world war II and the Holocaust and he, among many others, are attempting to explain the downfall of society and what went so wrong. Golding holds that it’s not through any corrupt organization of society that caused our evils but it’s through the inherent evil in every person, no matter how small. His group of British schoolboys is essentially a small society, and throughout Lord of The Flies, we witness that society form its own tribes, customs, and dances. It’s a society that’s free from any outside pressures of a larger civilization and yet, through the evil in the children’s hearts, crumbles from an organized democracy into a vicious totalitarian dictatorship in which they are hunting their own for sport.

Golding overturns the conventional narrative of the innocence of children and holds that children aren’t good because they are pure, but only because they are ignorant.

Meditations

ekarakey — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 02:15:40 +0000

A reflection on Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius.

Meditations is, as the name suggests, the meditations of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. There isn’t really another book of its kind. In this volume of 150 pages, we get to witness the private thoughts of the most powerful man in the world at the time as he gives advice to himself on how to be a good and just emperor. There are many points that his meditations cover, but most generally, he advocates stoicism: a philosophy focusing on people’s reactions to events, which allows people to endure hardship without complaint. I decided to take two weeks on this book, but even that wasn’t enough. Meditations was quite possibly the most jam-packed, existential book I’ve read. It contained as much knowledge and wisdom as even the densest parts of the bible. Even then, I’m afraid I merely scratched the surface. This is something that I’ll read again and possibly even write a second reflection on the blog later on in the year.

Since there’s so much to tackle, I’ve decided to spend rest of the reflection on my favorite quotes from the book. A lot of this may seem common sense now, but if any of these seem cliche now, they were the opposite of that at the time. It’s not exhaustive, but I hope it can give someone an idea for what this masterpiece is about.

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

“The soul becomes dyed with the colour of its thoughts.”

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself in your way of thinking.”

“When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.”

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

ekarakey — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 05:24:17 +0000

This is my reflection on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Mr. Utterson, a middle-aged lawyer in London, witnesses a curious relationship unfold between Dr. Jekyll, a prominent doctor, and Mr. Hyde, a short devilish man of mysterious origin. Dr. Jekyll’s will, which relinquished all of his belongings to Mr. Hyde upon notice of his death, was what originally caught the curiosity of Utterson on this queer relationship. As the novel continues, we witness the development of the evil and brutish nature of Mr. Hyde and the erratic behavior of the doctor. Hyde continues his evils, maiming a child and murdering a man in cold blood until the final plot twist of the novel is revealed, arguably the most famous one in literary history: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are one and the same. Dr. Jekyll, through his chemical experiments, was able to extract his evil nature into a physical form of a completely different appearance and stature. This was one of the most monumental revelations for readers of the time, but of course, everyone from our time already knew that revelation before picking up the book. Is the book still worth it if the ending’s spoiled?

I was hesitant about adding this to the list since I already had the ending spoiled. I figured it would ruin the book for me.

Thankfully, I was wrong.

Although I didn’t experience the momentary shock and awe that many of the first readers of this novel must have felt, I experienced a much deeper appreciation for the novel. This book is a piece of art, carefully crafted to explore themes like morality and the duality of humans. Since I knew the ending, I was able to witness how Robert Louis Stevenson crafted the story with that knowledge and how he left sensory descriptions and character development as clues. I was able to witness his artistry and although it was not as superficially exciting as a massive plot twist, the journey itself was a far deeper and richer experience. If the goal of literature is in the journey through an impactful story, knowing the ending could make you appreciate that journey even more.

The journey through the mind of Jekyll and Hyde was a terrifying one, but one I’m glad I took.

The book for next week is The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.

On Science Fiction

ekarakey — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 05:03:13 +0000

A reflection on Time Machine, by H.G. Wells.

“Nothing remains interesting where anything may happen.” -H.G. Wells.

The key to successful world-building is a set rules. In novels with fantastical elements, the talent displayed in good literature is not about what an author includes, it’s about what the author excludes. Anyone can write a novel with sentient cacti and fire-breathing dogs. The difficulty is connecting those fantastical elements to a set of logical rules that give the novel credibility. Although the world of Harry Potter is rife with magic critters and confusing potions, the limit of what those in the wizarding world are able to accomplish is what gives it an illusion of credibility. Harry Potter wouldn’t be nearly as believable nor entertaining if every wizard could do any spell at any time without any difficulty. It’s the limits which make a story believable and science fiction introduces a new kind of limit.

Time Machine is a novel by H.G. Wells, which tells story, as the title suggests, of a time traveler and his adventures. This book has been hailed as the first time traveling book, and one of the foundations for the genre of science fiction. In the preface H.G. Wells talks about limits in fiction. He says that the limit that decieved readers into believing fantasy throughout history was magic. It was magic that would have the reader make an assumption, be held under the illusion of that assumption, and enjoy the book while the illusion held. But on the turn of the 20th century, he noticed that it became more difficult to squeeze this belief out of magic. To convince people to believe in the impossible, he needed a new foundation for that illusion. The decline of belief in magic, not coincidentally, coincided with the emergence of technology such as the steam engine, telephone, and electricity. It was from this industrial revolution that H.G. Wells found an appropriate foundation to limit these books of fiction: science. Thus the birth of the modern notion of the science fiction genre.

H.G. Wells manages to make a story of time traveling, nocturnal humanoid creatures, massive crabs, and glittering sphinxes believable. Under the assumption that science can make the impossible possible, the impossible becomes believable, and a compelling fantasy plot is born. I was hooked in the story from start to finish and as I set down the novel, I realized how ridiculous the plot actually was, but that was irrelevant because I had already experienced the wonder, fear, and joy that Time Machine had to offer.

Time Machine is as much a fantasy as it is a social commentary and it can be read both for entertainment and introspection. I have to admit, I hardly read science fiction growing up, and so I’m glad this was my introduction into a fascinating genre. But even more than the wonder of the palaces of future civilizations and the thought-provoking commentary on humanity, I still am at awe on how convincing H.G. Wells was in a story that’s objectively absurd. The best part about it was that was his aim all along. I think that’s one of the reasons this novel has such a impressive reputation. I’ll finish off with another section of the preface, in which H.G. Wells is describing the powerful illusion of his science fiction books:

“They are all fantasies; they do not aim to project a serious possibility; they aim indeed only at the same amount of conviction as one gets in a good gripping dream. They have to hold the reader to the end by art and illusion and not by proof or argument, and the moment he closes the cover and reflects he wakes up to their impossibility.”

-H.G. Wells.

The book for next week is Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Man’s Search For Meaning

ekarakey — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 05:23:22 +0000

This is my reflection on Man’s Search For Meaning, by Viktor E. Frankl.

“There is only one thing that I dread; not to be worthy of my sufferings.” -Dostoevsky

Man’s Search For Meaning.

The title is simple; straightforward. There is a refreshing sense of sincerity and honesty that runs throughout the pages of this incredibly moving memoir. Published in 1946, Viktor Frankl chronicled his time as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps and the therapeutic methods that he used to motivate himself and others to psychologically survive through the holocaust.

I have to admit I’ve always found it difficult to fully read or watch media relating to the Holocaust. I’ve always had difficulty reading books or watching films on historical tragedies of any kind, so I was quite hesitant on starting this one, but, after dwelling in Frankl’s words for the past week, I’m extremely glad I did. I finished the book overwhelmed by the magnanimity of the atrocities of this time, but also surprisingly inspired. This book is many things: it’s a powerful historical narrative and testimony of the experiences by Holocaust survivors, it’s a testament to the most inhuman of depravities and the most inspiring moments of human courage, it’s an introductory psychological text to the fascinating field of logotherapy, but most of all, it’s an analysis and diagnosis of the most depressingly recurrent aspect of humanity: human suffering. More than that, it demonstrates that although we sometimes can’t control our surroundings, we can choose how to cope with it and find meaning in it.

Viktor Frankl demonstrated, in the most meaningless of settings, that life isn’t primarily a quest for pleasure, as Sigmund Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler believed, but that life is a quest for meaning. If there’s meaning in life, and suffering is part of life, then there must be meaning in suffering. Finding that meaning in suffering, Viktor Frankl held, was the way to spiritually and psychologically cope with any suffering one might confront in life. This philosophy, summed quite accurately by Nietzsche, is this: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”

This book is extremely helpful to anyone who suffers, and by that definition, it is relevant to everyone. Twelve million copies sold is a testament, I believe, to the universality of that struggle. But even more than an experience of a powerfully insightful book, I think I’ve acquired another influential and personal role model. This book is, I believe, one that I’ll return too in future times of need.

I’ll finish off with the ending section of the afterword of this book. It’s a small anecdote, but a powerful testimony to the kind of person Viktor Frankl was:

“Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life. He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written. After some moments of quiet reflection, a student surprised Frankl by saying, “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.”

That was it, exactly,” Frankl said. “Those are the very words I had written.”