Oddly enough as I was reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, I began to question my faith a bit. As much as I hated to admit it, I was a bit shaken by the cruelty and despair that those in Auschwitz endured. The human ugliness caught me a bit unaware as I have to say for the past year I’ve been filling my mind with endless positivity. I’ve been engrossing myself in the word, reading spiritual books and really working on combating some of the unfavorable thought patterns that have pervaded my existence to this point. I’ve been going to therapy, working on a better future, and really working on defining meaning in my life. I have been working on becoming the person that I believe God always intended me to be. I’m leaning on Him more heavily than ever before in my life and have really been feeling this make a world of difference for me.
However, as I read page after page of this book, I was brought to a place of questioning. My mind wandered to the question that many have asked before me and many, I’m sure, will continue to ask long after I’m gone should the world continue to be in a state where tragedy occurs, pain is prevalent, and morality is nothing more than a word in many people’s vocabulary rather than a goal to attain or someone to become. The question was, “How can a good God allow all of these people to go through this?” or similarly, “How can a good God allow such evil?” As the thought entered my mind, for a moment I tried to fight it because I am committed to unwavering faith and I felt that this question was a moment of wavering… I was rocking the comfortable love boat that I had been sailing in with God for the past year.
Knowing that I could not answer this myself, I quietly prayed on it. I know that the Bible indicates that there will be trials and I suppose, for the people in Auschwitz, that this was their trial. I also pondered it deeper and then gave up because I did not want to be Job’s friends who incessantly assume that they know the reasoning behind all of the misfortune that is happening to Job. I suppose Job is a good book to read should you ever find yourself asking this same question. There are some things that are too great to understand or comprehend at our current level of existence. In that moment, I felt God guiding me to that book and I chose to return to faith despite my discontent with the horrors I was currently reading. In essence, I began to feel uneasy and that going down the rabbit hole of overthinking was exactly what I was working on staying away from as it tends to fuel my anxiety and fear, which is also what I am working on gaining a hold of in an effort to be filled with more love.
I put the book down and went to sleep. I slept surprisingly well and the next morning it was business as usual. I got ready for work, put in my 8 hours, then commuted home. While commuting, I decided to listen to Oprah’s Super Soul Sessions. I hadn’t listened to these in a while as I’d been listening to my uplifting music and sermons, mainly Joyce Meyer, on my way home. It seems I was divinely guided, though I didn’t know it at the time. I chose an interview with Elie Wiesel, whom I had never heard of before. It was entitled “Living with an Open Heart. Oddly enough, Elie too, was an individual who had endured and survived the Auschwitz concentration camp at the young age of 15. As I listened, I began to remember how to best think of tragic events. Listening to his talk and remembering the largest tragedy I’ve lived through, September 11th, 2001, I began to realize once more the beauty/necessity of tragedy.
As humans we so often forget to grab hold of each moment as though it were our last. We take our family for granted. We work in jobs that lack meaning or passion. We spend time with people we know are not good for us. In essence, we waste time. I choose to believe that tragedy is God’s loving way of sending a wakeup call to those of us who are still living on this Earth. It’s a signal to “wake up” and embrace those you love. It’s a signal to open up more to life. It’s a signal to let go and live the life you want to live while you still have the time and energy to do so. It’s a guidepost that can help us to think about all we have to be grateful for… all He’s given you. It’s a sign for us to do that which we were all created to do, lean into him and allow him to comfort us in our times of need. For some reason, many of us feel this way at funerals, but with death on a mass scale, the sentiment of these emotions and thoughts runs a lot deeper. In these moments, we’re especially drawn to reaching out with compassion and kindness. I remember the times after 9/11, it seemed everywhere you went, there was shared compassion for others since you never knew if the person you were speaking with or passing by had been directly impacted. Regardless of whether you were directly impacted, we were all greatly affected. I remember feeling nervous about being under a full-fledged attack when the first plane struck that tower. I immediately wanted to be with my mother, who was the closest person to me at that time. I remember thinking,
In the grip of tragedy, it seems that a lot of what we once thought was important fades to the background and what really matters in life is brought to the forefront. This is illustrated in this book as Viktor Frankl states in the midst of his suffering surrounded by death:
In this passage, I was affirmed in the discovery I’d made a few months back. The purpose of life is love… to grow into love in all its many forms, to allow love to become who you are. As I revisit this passage now, I realize that my mind in the worst of times has also been redirected back to love. When I gave birth to my daughter and hemorrhaged for 12 hours before having an emergency procedure done to stop the bleeding, I see that my mind, in all of it’s fear and confusion of the moment, was consumed by love for my daughter. I was fearful that this was the end for me when the doctor said something to the effect of, “You have to let me do this,” with a look on her face that told me my situation was dire. I see clearly now, how my mind immediately wrapped itself around the responsibility and love I felt for the tiny human I had nurtured inside of me for months on end. In that moment, this was my meaning and my reason for living.
Tragedy has a way of allowing the sludge of life to be swept away so that we can see the diamond in the rough. In the midst of suffering and tragedy we, who are living, are given the gift of clarity. Think about it, in moments of tragedy, what or who were your first thoughts about? I’m willing to bet that for most of you, it was a loved one. Once the tragedy subsides, the key is holding onto that feeling of what gives your life meaning and ensuring that you live in a way that reflects that moving forward. When we fail to do this, we fail to make meaning out of the tragedy. When we fail to make meaning of the tragedy, we fail to honor those who have endured and suffered to give us this gift. When we fail to use their suffering as a lesson that sets the path of love on fire for us to follow, we fail them. We allow their misery and suffering to have been in vein. We forsake the blessing that has been afforded to us.
How many tragedies will it take before more of us begin to grasp the lesson? How many times will some souls come to dig up the diamonds for others? Each time being worn for about a week, or two, maybe a month, then lost down the drain never to be embraced again… Is this the fate of humanity? That we will continue to circle the drain tragedy after tragedy, never quite understanding that we have the power to plug the drain by learning the lesson to embrace love from those who have suffered before us to more brightly illuminate the goal of life.