This morning I woke up around 4:30 AM and read from our book of the month, Man’s Search for Meaning, for 30 minutes.
Whenever I take the time to arise and read, I’m grateful, for mental and spiritual treasures seem to always await the sincere and searching mind.
Today was no different.
In my first network marketing company, I remember the company owner telling me that If I wanted to find success, I should become a student of human nature.
Over the years I’ve looked for those ideas and principles that seem to be common to us all, regardless of whatever divisions of life and society we might happen to find ourselves in.
Man’s search for meaning is a story of Victor Frankl, a doctor, who found himself in one of life’s most horrific and unimaginable circumstances.
Those he loved and all of his possessions were stripped from him, and he was thrown into a concentration camp to endure some of histories most cruel and unusual punishments.
What could possibly be learned from such a tragedy?
First, ‘The truth – that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.”
Reading about how thoughts of Victor’s wife carried his mind into a state of mental bliss, despite the horrific reality his physical body found itself in, touched my soul deeply.
At one point, when he thought he was being shipped off to certain death he tells his friend,
“Listen, Otto, if I don’t get back home to my wife, and if you should see her again, then tell her that I talked of her daily, hourly. You remember. Secondly, I have loved her more than anyone. Thirdly, the short time I have been married to her outweighs everything, even all we have gone through here.”
Second, that humor has the power to lift us all from the troubles of life, even if for only moments at a time.
He writes, “Humor was another of the soul’s weapon’s in the fight for self-preservation. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.
As he told of the conscious efforts he made with a friend to find some scraps of humor each day – catching some rays of light amidst the darkness, I was reminded that I too, can better serve my brothers and sisters on the road of life by learning to make them laugh.
And Third, that Henley was right when he wrote, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
Victor Frankl writes, “Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.
They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.”
Love, humor and spiritual freedom – 3 profound lessons from one of life’s greatest tragedies.