How Beautiful the World Could Be
If These Guys Could See It, So Can You
One evening a group of men stood admiring a beautiful sunset, billowing clouds of ever-changing reds, blues, and golds.
Puddles on the ground reflected the enchanting light, and the forest trees were lit with an ethereal glow.
Deep appreciation and awe welled in their faces and shown in their eyes as they stood in silence.
Nearby, a group of rough, dingy huts stood hunkered against the cold, wet ground.
“How beautiful the world could be,” one of them said.
The men’s faces were gaunt, their bodies withered.
The place was a German concentration camp. The men were prisoners, exhausted to the brink of death, but still with spirits roused by the unrelenting beauty of nature.
The scene was described by Victor Frankl, who survived the camps and wrote about his experiences and insights in his acclaimed book Man’s Search for Meaning.
He also described their efforts to cultivate humor and find delight in the smallest of pleasures or moments of relief—impromptu plays, stories, songs, making up funny scenarios that might happen long in the future when they were free again.
