She's been reading Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World by Tim Ferriss and one of the most recommended books is Viktor Frankl's, Man's Search for Meaning. So she decided to go against her normal tendency of wanting to finish one thing before starting another and downloaded the ebook from her local library.
“To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.
It also follows that a very trifling thing can cause the greatest of joys.”
― Man's Search for Meaning
Suffering is always on the forefront of her thoughts since she has become aware that life IS suffering so she is very interested in contemplating anything anyone has to say about it. And obviously as a concentration camp victim and survivor, Frankl should have some pretty good insight into suffering.
Sometimes she fills guilt when thinking what little trials she's experienced in life should be at all compared to what other's, like Frankl, have experienced and call it suffering. How could there be any comparison? How could she possibly think she has suffered at all? She expects Frankl, in sharing his experience, to tell her as much,
But he seems to confirm that we cannot experience life without some level of suffering whether big or small. At whatever level, we will experience it fully as if it were the hardest trial in the world until the next trial shows us we can actually suffer more.
She's often wondered if she manufactures suffering in her mind, but maybe she needs to. Perhaps Frankl is right in stating that the size or amount of suffering is all relative, and that any sort of suffering helps us recognize the greatest joys. So maybe she's experiencing suffering or maybe she's imagining she's suffering.
Maybe unconsciously she does this so she can recognize joy.
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As a mom to a medically complex kid like Austin, she worries that she has allowed or even forced him to experience suffering just by choosing to let him live in the first place; and then by choosing to use some of the medical interventions offered in today's day and age to facilitate his ability to go on living.
But if he has suffered, then according to Frankl, he has also been given the ability to experience great joy. He may cry out in pain or discomfort at times, but he also cries out with squeals of delight and laughter.
And don't we all?
HE is living.
WE are living.
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