Today at 10am the sirens blare nationally and in Israel we remember Holocaust Memorial Day. It is a sad, sad day, and I wrote about it on Times of Israel here. It is also a day in which I have made a major life decision which I think serves to honor the nature of the day, albeit on a tiny scale.
I have decided to embrace the thoughts of one man who has inspired me – Viktor E. Frankl. He survived three camps, including Auschwitz, and wrote an incredible book on “Man’s search for meaning.”
In regard to his experiences in the Holocaust, he says the following, which I find inspiring:
“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.”
Walker Decision
Yesterday, I set out my fears and concerns about the walker as per the following post. Sadly, the day seemed to continue, and my walking has stayed bad. It may come back but is very weak. I have never published a video of my walking, but it is important people who know me from the Ben of old understand what I mean. In the hospital for an appointment yesterday, this was how it was (to show my doctor).
I hope it improves, but this is a progression of recent times despite exercise, treatment, yoga, etc.
So yesterday, I debated getting a walker and my fears about it.
Many people took the time to respond and say who I am is what I give to people and my meaning, and not the way I walk, and the risk of falling is simply too great. A couple of people led me a walker that fits my height and is made for PSP/PD.
In doing so, I reflected on that and the words of Viktor Frankl, who says the following:
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” and…
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.”
Therefore, I can choose my attitude, and it is to continue to have meaning. How does that impact my decision regarding a walker? For this, I will go to his quote which quite literally sums me up now… He says:
“The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him?
No, thank you,’ he will think. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.”
In that respect, I remain an optimist and both look back fondly on all the immense richness I have had and the meaning I draw from it in my ability to use it to give my thoughts and service to those around me, showing them, hopefully, some inspiration from my relatively unique situation. Me falling to make a point doesn’t help me or anyone.
He goes on to state how we must not be judged by how we seem at one moment. It is a little high-brow language, but you will get the gist that my value is not my current ‘usefulness’ but the value I can bring in a different way, which is not purely action/task and functional… He says…
“But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.”
So… today we remember those lost to the hatred of the Holocaust, but we also remind ourselves of the inner strength of people like Viktor Frankl.
I use this moment to re-assert my optimism in the face of suffering and pledge to use all tools, such as a walker, if it helps me continue to have a meaning and a purpose.
May all the 6 million souls be comforted.
