Life in law enforcement comes with a slew of difficulties. Exposure to horrific scenes of violence on the job and the immense public pressure on your profession are just a few examples of how hard it can be to wear the badge and uniform each day.
Psychologist Viktor Frankl would understand a cop developing a negative and defeatist attitude given this environment.
However, to succumb to the negativity and apathy will not help you enjoy your career or your life.
Besides, apathy gets cops hurt!
Frankl in Auschwitz
The principles shared in Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”, were not just theory. He discovered and applied them in the worst environment in history: Auschwitz.
For the capital crime of being born Jewish, Frankl was imprisoned, beaten, starved, experimented on, and still dared to endure long enough to be part of the small percentage of Jewish prisoners to be liberated. Frankl credited his survival to a minute-to-minute decision to not just survive, but prevail over his Nazi tormentors.
Frankl was housed in a packed barracks, surrounded by electrified barbed wire, machine guns, merciless guards and vicious dogs. The threat of sudden death was a constant companion.
Frankl’s life lessons
Still, in his mind, he was a “free man,” because in this surreal world, he was able to conjure up lesson one.
1. “The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
Frankl believed that for all men and women — even those placed in circumstances that are out of their control — their attitude is a personal choice. Since Frankl could do little to alter the people or circumstances in that terrible place, he realized the truth in lesson two.
2. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Frankl was constantly confronted by unimaginable brutality he had no control over. To emotionally survive he used his most powerful tool: his brain. He was able to alter his condition by perceiving himself on a mission. Frankl had to survive to accomplish this mission. This reconfiguring of his circumstances led to lesson three.
3. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Because of a simple change of perception, Frankl took control of his own destiny.
The Nazis could beat Frankl, starve him, work him nearly to death, but ultimately he was determined to prevail. He had to survive to share with the world what he had learned in the hardest of ways!
With his life’s mission set in his mind, this horrible life he was living now had great meaning. This realization led to lesson four.
4. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
This lesson could have been written today in a book called “Cops’ Search for Meaning.” For many officers, it is difficult to find meaning in life when so many fruits of their labor are real, but still intangible.
When you arrive at that domestic violence call, you see the violence. You may not see the children lying awake in their beds breathing a sigh of relief. The sigh is a result of your arrival which caused their mom’s screaming to stop.
Officers who arrest an intoxicated driver have to spend an hour or more listening to a drunk repeat over and over again, “Don’t you — hiccup — have anything — hiccup — better to do?”
It is easy to wonder if the drunk is right and conclude, “Maybe I do.”
Neither you nor the family of four destined to be killed that very night by that intoxicated driver — until you intervened — will ever know that you saved their lives, but you did!
A life dedicated to defending innocents is a life of great meaning.
When a defendant’s attorney calls you a liar, it hurts. But it cannot alter the fact that you are telling the truth.
When a pundit calls all cops racists, it does not change the fact that while he is sleeping at night you are pounding up a set of stairs toward the sound of crashing furniture and a woman’s screams and you do not know or care what color the woman’s skin is. All you want to do is to save that victim. Skin color also does not factor into your decision to arrest the man who is violently attacking that screaming woman.
Despite what we see and what is done to us, Frankl shared the priceless lesson that allowed him to be a “free man” in Auschwitz. In any given situation, you control your own attitude!
That brings us to Frankl’s last lesson.
5. “What is to give light, must survive the burning.”
If you find yourself “burnt out” in this challenging profession, it is understandable. That would be a normal response to an abnormal situation. However, you can’t allow yourself to “burn out.”
When good people you have sworn to protect are in their darkest hours they dial 911. The lights of your approaching squad become their last light of hope.
As long as you continue to be dispatched to calls where you are someone’s last light of hope, you can’t allow your light to “burn out.” For it is precisely when things are at their worst that you must be at your best!
This article, originally published on April 20, 2016, has been updated.
