I picked up Viktor Frankl's, Man's Search for Meaning, a moving account of his time as a prisoner in Auschwitz. He provides remarkable and vivid accounts of the brutalities as well as some glimpses of the beauty of humanity he encountered.
Two of his ideas have embedded themselves in my thoughts: humans have the freedom to choose their responses to every situation; and love provides the ultimate hope in the midst of suffering.
The first idea surfaced in the book's foreword, where Harold Kushner writes, "Frankl's most enduring insight, one that I have called on often in my own life and in countless counseling situations: Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation" (x). The freedom to choose one's response to life's is a powerful resource.
Frankl articulated the second idea that I've been thinking about as he described struggling under the agony of constant work and not enough food. Then, Frankl imagined his wife. Picturing her he writes:
Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment (37-38).
What a rich and beautiful example of the power of faith: seeing the unseen reality and living as though it is true. This is really the heart of the Gospel. Seeing and believing the resurrected Christ thereby finding hope and meaning in the midst of life.
I am only halfway through the book but I am sure there will be many more insights to come.
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