I came across this paragraph in an article I was reading today, and it really hit home. It again reinforces the idea that the simplest things in life truly do enhance your quality of life and the lives of others. I was especially struck by the fact that when someone in a concentration camp was given something as simple and small as an extra blanket, suffering disappeared and joy suddenly existed.

This Christmas season, and always, may I remember that I can bring joy to someone’s life through the smallest act of kindness and simple consideration of their circumstances.  It’s about treating people from all walks of life with dignity and respect. When we show respect to others, they begin valuing themselves and others as well.

Viktor Frankl (who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning) was an Austrian psychiatrist deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, with his wife and parents. There he watched his inmates’ behavior consumed by two questions:

1. What does it take to persevere and come through a monumental, tragic experience?


2. Can there be happiness in overwhelming suffering?

Yes, Frankl said, if we have meaning in our lives.

Frankl’s views were renegade in his time. The psychiatric profession believed people were best off living stress-free lives, while he saw those in the camps who survived kept struggling and striving toward a worthwhile goal.

Frankl observed that his camp inmates who looked forward to finding their families again or creating their next great work were the ones who survived. He saw when someone found a forgotten picture of a loved one or received an extra blanket that suffering disappeared and joy suddenly existed.

Frankl also believed we each have a unique mission in life and by enacting it we find meaning, and through meaningfulness we experience being happy and fulfilled.