About love, the will to survive, and circumstances

This post is a bit of a different one, but I guess there could not be any better date to bring it on than the time of All Saints Day, the day when we do actively remind our ancestors and the ones that left our lives. Beloved ones.

I have been in Auschwitz this week, and It’s been tough. Just entering everything gets tight, compared to the second one Birkenau. It feels like there is no peace at all, even though one cannot particularly say that it is ugly as such, except for the Barbed Wire. And of course the story behind, the energy that it holds. It feels like death, the cruelty of mankind, and walking through, there is only one question left in the mind: How? We will never know.

But nothing is purely bad, not even this. It’s hard to see it any different from the aspect of the, but look at what came about: Besides all the death, there was love. There were people, helping each other. And there were people from outside, fighting the regime, or stretching all the means they had to save lives. There was a man called Viktor Frankl, a German psychotherapist, who after he survived, wrote the book “man seeking meaning”, which became a bestseller. And you know what it is about? How to find happiness and the meaning of life in the concentration camp. And it is true. It’s not about the circumstances. He found peace here. I believe there is a lot to learn, from the side of the inmates.

In life, finding the meaning often comes along with the toughest crisis. It is not the sunny times, that get us to rethink what we do, who we are, it is the challenges that make us long for something, something better, something more. Some of us cannot even find peace in the comfort of their nice home. Others find it in a concentration camp.

So what can we learn from this?

• That the will to survive is very, very strong. If looking at the massive suffering, the insecurity that each of the inmates had not only on a daily basis but every second, because it did depend on the mood of someone else. And they killed, just because. No reason, no rules. This will to survive lives in each one of us. The key to trigger it is to accept fully what is now. And make the best out of it.
• There is love everywhere, in us, around us, even though we cannot see it. We are loved, always. Whether you are too big, too skinny, your nose is too big or too small, you don’t like your lips or your boobs – know one thing and keep telling it to you: I am perfect. And find someone who is giving you the peace of knowing that this is right.
• It is never about the circumstances, even though we like to see it this way. It is about us. About our will to accept the knowledge and move on. Being grateful every day. And if you tell me you don’t know what to be grateful for? Then think for a moment about the inmates of the Auschwitz concentration camp: what would they have been grateful for, every night? That they were alive. Does this apply to you? So if nothing else, here is your start.

Lots of love.

Tina