Viktor Frankl has written that peace means freedom in the face of three things: our instincts or "lower nature," our inherited traits or disposition and our surroundings .... Few of us, Dr. Frankl goes on, make important life choices with any degree of decisiveness. Backtracking here and compromising here, we often lack the backbone to stand by our own decisions. Because of this, we remain in a continual state of angst. At times we hold a planless, day-to-day attitude toward whatever comes our way. At others we are fatalistic, defeatist.
One day we exhibit spinelessness and have no clearly defined opinion at all; the next we cling so strongly and stubbornly to an idea we become fanatical. Ultimately, Frankl says, all these symptoms can be traced back to our fear of responsibility, and the indecision which is its fruit.
--Johann Arnold, Seeking Peace
(Pennsylvania: The Plough Publishing
House, 1998), 140.
