Reading Assignment: Man’s Search For Meaning
It is not just disappointing, but absolutely heartbreaking to see what man will put another man through. I can’t say that I know what it’s like to be Jewish and go through this situation. I do know what it’s like to live in bondage. I know what it’s like to have to be made feel less than a human. To be made to feel like less than an animal. In the book where he describes the store house they were cramped into where there wasn’t enough room to even lay down reminded me of the bull pen I was in for two days in a hold over with the nick name “Castle Gray Skull”. This holding pen had a mixture smell of urin, feces, and vomit. The cold stone floors, cold stone walls, and 1 cold stone bench that was already taken by a man that’s been in here for weeks. 40 or so men packed in with 1 toilet to share between us all. I luckily was able to get my hands on a roll of toilet paper to use as a pillow for days. When you don’t have much you value the small things so much more. So for Viktor I definitely understand and relate to having so little, and making the best with so little and cherishing the small things. When he spoke about the world outside of the bar wire fence didn’t seem to even exist, and time was a paradoxical warp. I could see grass on the other side of the barbwire, but it felt like anything past that fence it would take a rocket ship to reach. Anything out there would take a world moving power to get me there. Days would feel like months, and months felt like years. When I was in solitary confinement the minutes then absolutely felt like hours. The mind would turn in on itself as if it was a never ending ouroboros of torture. “He who has a why to live for, can bare any how.” In horrible circumstances, even with all your humanity stripped away there is still something that can be gained from this. Viktor learned that those who hold on the hope and purpose were the ones who would survive, those who lost all hope would soon lose their life in the concentration camps. We are unable to change certain circumstances and situations we have no choice but to change our outlook and most of all change ourselves. There was a portion of my incarceration where I felt like I went through hell, was the most enlightening part of my life. My suffering was brought on by my own choices. There were absolutely atrocious things I had to witness in prison. I witnessed murder and killings of the most harshest sort. I met people who were career assassins, who were haunted by the lost spirits of all the slain victims on their conscience returning in their dreams and nightmares. Conmen who knew nothing but working another person. Men so deep into darkness that their hearts froze over, and only thing that made sense was to spread their misery to anyone around them. Sharks that smelled blood of any person that showed weakness, ready to be devoured at a moments notice. So finding hope in a hopeless place was hard for people, suicides were a regular thing. I can relate to when you see a man break, and you can see it in their eyes. The windows to the soul showed that some men were already dead. Mr. Frankl nails an aspect of humanity on the head, that being human kindness can be found in all groups. In that same the worst of humankind can be found in the groups as well. I myself have come across guards who would go out of their way to dehumanize us, to beat, and or abuse us mentally and physically. Then others who saw you as a person that was going through a situation what you presented is what was accepted. Quoting Viktor “There are only two races of man in this world. The race of the decent man and the race If the indecent man.” He found decent people that ran the concentration camps, and I know that’s a hard thing to even comprehend. Even among the worst of the worst I too found decent, highly intelligent, and extremely insightful men. One in particular names Legree would have agreed completely with Viktor’s point of view when it came to holding on to hope that you will be free. Legree was in prison for his first offense, which was selling drugs, and he had a life sentence to complete. He once told me that he knew he would be free one day because he had hope and to never let that go, after that you truly will be in prison forever. The prison of your mind. I remember watching a bill being passed on CSPAN. Politicians coming together to fix an unjust law he had been stuck under since he was 18 years old. Here he was soon to be 50 and was now a free man. That next morning as sun rose we saw him off he said it “I held onto faith and hope and now I’m free you all will be too just hold on, and find the good and take it with you.” I held those words and I pass it on always, to learn from those hard times and just hang on because sunshine is coming! It can’t rain all the time!
