COMMENTARY: Circumstantial evidence

(RNS) When times seem tough, it’s a good idea to try to put things in perspective. Reading Viktor Frankl’s short book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” is a great place to start. Frankl spent three grim years at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Amazingly, during those years of suffering and degradation — and partly because […]

(RNS) When times seem tough, it’s a good idea to try to put things in perspective. Reading Viktor Frankl’s short book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” is a great place to start.

Frankl spent three grim years at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Amazingly, during those years of suffering and degradation — and partly because of them — he developed the belief that life’s meaning is found not in our circumstances, but in our response to them.

He learned that even in the most horrendous, primitive and inhumane physical and emotional circumstances it is still possible to deepen one’s spiritual life. He observed that prisoners who didn’t cultivate a rich spiritual inner life were more emotionally damaged than those who did.


He experienced beauty breaking through even in the midst of impoverishment. One night, as the prisoners sat on the dirt floor of their hut, dead tired, empty soup bowls in hand, a prisoner rushed in and asked them to come and see something wonderful. It was a sunset. The mud puddles outside reflected a sky alive with a dazzling prism of color reflecting off various shades of clouds.

One prisoner broke the moving silence with the words, “How beautiful the world can be.”

But Frankl learned beauty breaks through the darkness most profoundly through acts of human kindness. In prison, he learned that love is the one ultimate goal to which all humans can aspire. For him, love was the highest form of a noble, rebellious response to the brutality imposed on him as a prisoner.

He learned that to be “free” in prison consisted in making a choice. In the darkest of times, humans can choose a heroic course of action by overcoming apathy, suppressing irritability and converting hatred and bitterness into love.

In short, Frankl found that to be fully human is defined by our response to our circumstances, not by the circumstances themselves.

Why am I reflecting on finding life’s meaning in difficult circumstances?

If our little island in Puget Sound is a microcosm of the bigger world where you live, I suspect many of you are suffering in one way or another right now.


Here on Orcas Island, things like unemployment statistics wear a personal face. The bad economy and lack of work has forced a friend out of his home; he is now camping in a lean-to on a friend’s property. No electricity. No running water. No bathroom.

A promising college student opted for community college because her asset-rich but cash-poor parents can no longer afford the private college she always expected to attend.

Once proud, self-sufficient elderly folks whose fixed incomes have tanked, and who are barely getting by, are swallowing their pride and lining up at the local food bank.

In this economy people who define the meaning of their lives by a steady job, a nice home and adequate resources are now wondering whether life is worth it.

On our small island, Johnny Baker just died of cancer, Dan is fighting pancreatic cancer and Clarena just learned she has an aggressive form of cancer. When a meaningful life is defined as a physically healthy life, terminal illness can leave you wondering about our life’s worth.

I know students who are full of promise but are saddled with learning disabilities. They are wonderful kids, but socially awkward and different. All their lives they’ve been cordoned off in special classes. Every day when they get up, they face almost insurmountable challenges and ask whether or not this lifelong battle is really worth it.


Frankl’s situation in the Nazi concentration camp was about as bad as it can get, yet he believed the universe expected something of him; he could only discover what that was through his personal situation in life.

His meaning wasn’t found in changing his circumstances, but in facing them, nobly, with character, dignity and most of all, through selfless, life-affirming acts of love. The same is true for you and me.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)

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