I enjoy reading about Viktor Frankl, this holocaust survivor and psychiatrist. He was neurologist too, but i am more interested by the two first ones.
His biography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
Sacks wrote:
"Already a distinguished neurologist, he preserved his sanity in the camps by observing his fellow prisoners, as if he and they were taking part in an experiment. He noticed the various phases they went through. The first was shock and complete disillusionment. The Nazis began by dehumanizing the prisoners in every conceivable way. They took from them everything that gives people a vestige of humanity: their clothes, shoes, hair, even their names.
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The second stage was apathy, a complete dulling os the emotions. People became automata, hardly living, merely existing from day to day. It was then that Frankl asked the fateful question. Is there any freedom left to a person who has been robbed of everything: dignity, possessions, even the power of decision itself? The Jewish victims of earlier persecutions had been given a choice: convert or die. During the holocaust there was no choice. What remained once you had lost everything there was to lose? Frankl realized that there was one freedom that can never been taken away:
"We who lived in concentration camp can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting the others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms— to chose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to chose one's own way."
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Frankl survived by constantly observing others and helping them find a reason to continue to live."
I already talked about this Jewish woman that i know, C.
She came with her parents from Ukraine when she was a toddler. Her father was a very good person, a kind man. She hates NY and loves it. She used to live in Israel where she met her first husband. She has been married twice with men that she didn't love, and she has 5 children. She is 65 now.
Why do i care about her? She has an European soul. She has no shame and fear to tell me she feels very bad. She is not shallow and has a lot of culture. I don't see her as an American. She is straightforward with me, and as you know, i appreciate that.
Her first true love was a French man that she met in Berkeley University. He was the one!
The other thing that makes me very sad: she has no purpose, saying all the time like in the book of Sacks: "What is the meaning of my life?".
I am worried about her because she talks about suicide and that freaks me out a lot!
Once, i haven't seen it during two weeks at my work place, i was in panic because i just knew her first name, how could i know what happened to her if something happened?
When she came back, i felt relieved and asked her for her contact info.
She doesn't believe in love anymore, she is very negative. NY is not the place for love for sure!
She thinks of moving out where "there will be no Americans", she said. :-)
I started to help her by searching her first love because i want her to have a purpose and a meaning of life, and to end her life in the arms of his beloved French man. :-)
The man has a very common French last name. Namely, his last name is a first name. During the WWII, many Jewish people changed their last name. So if you are in France and you meet someone whose the last name is a first name like Bernard, Nicolas… that might mean that they are Jewish and they changed it during the war. I know a family like that, and they got converted to protestantism…
I don't like them, they have the money disease. They are rich like Croesus, and also very stingy. Yuk!
I found many men on a French website, copainsdavant.com, with the first and last names she gave me. I wrote to all of them, begging them to reply to me if they were the good one or not.
One replied so far: "I am not this man but we can be friends." Kidding? :-)
I am not interested by having 2,000 friends whom i will never speak with. :-)
When i decided to close my business, she thought that i will 'abandon' her. I am very faithful, and when i meet someone like that, i feel attached and i foster our connection.
I will meet her probably this week, and i want her to take care of her. So i will bring the book to show her what it's written.
And then, call me Viktorette Frankl, thanks! :-)
I will rewrite to all these men, begging them once again to reply to me.
I always thought that i was an epicurean, but reading the definition given by Sacks, i was wrong about many points. "The Epicurean formula for happiness is to maximize pleasure while minimizing risk."
I enjoy the pleasures of life: food, sex, travel, drink (with moderation)… They were hostile to religion, i am not. They have no meaning of life, they are selfish, and were probably judgmental.
I take financial, emotional and personal risks because i don't want to have regrets.
My expectations can be high and low, depending on people.
I never had a reject of the religion, but a deep interest by finding the one. Church services were boring, Jewish ones are delightful… I enjoy when the religion is not only in a temple but in a current life. I struggle with my religious feeling since i started to have a need to understand the devotion i met in my friends' life or strangers on my road. I was around 3 years old. Who was this holy man whom you give so much time and interest?
I started to read the Torah, starting by the beginning, not by the weekly reading. I downloaded the application PocketTorah.
It's in old English, so i take my time to understand it. And you can listen to the Hebrew version, and it's very beautiful! My hormones are very sensitive to Hebrew language, and the pronunciation of the 'ch'. :-)
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| application PocketTorah © all rights reserved |
And weird thing happened to me, photo below. Probably because i dive my mind in Jewish studies… :-)
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| mini peyos ©emmarubinstein, 2014 |
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| holy book versus sandals, ©emmarubinstein, 2014 |
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