Reading Viktor Frankl's book today, a specific passage really moved me. He spoke of his time at Dachau and of how in order to cope the men would often turn their thoughts to their beloved wives. While entrenched in darkness and abysmal despair these men were able to escape into their memories and move past the pain of their situation if only for a brief moment.
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth-that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of a man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way-an honorable way-in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment."
I love that.
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