Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Viktor Frankl’s video on man’s search for meaning (HT to Vikram’s Learning Antenna).
The great holocaust survivor and logotherapist Viktor Frankl spoke of a flying lesson where his instructor taught him a concept pilots called “Crabbing.”
His flying instructor had said – “If you are starting east wishing to land at a point somewhere west and you have a cross-wind, you will drift and land in a different spot. So, you need to “crab” or head in the direction opposite to that of the wind so you land in the spot that you actually want to land at.” (illustration below)
Frankl explained that he felt this held for people, too. If you take a person as he/she really is, the default negative “crosswinds” in our mind make him/her worse. If we overestimate people, however, we promote them to what they really can be.
So, his advice for us? “Be an idealist, because, then you will wind up as a realist. As Goethe said, if we take a man as he is, we make him worse. But, if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”
PS: Man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl is a wonderful wonderful book.
Source and thanks to: Wikipedia
‘If you presuppose in a man – whoever it may be – that there must be a spark of a search for meaning, you will elicit it from him and let him become what he is capable of becoming.’ | Viktor E Frankl
A Learning a Day 