Early in the morning, before sunrise, in the eastern sky, and close to the horizon, a very bright star shines! Well, the truth is, the “morning star” is not a star, it’s the planet Venus. In the quiet morning moments before sunrise, Venus shines alone. www.BraveHeartsRadio.org
How much light is needed to command our attention? I did the math: The sun is 600 million times brighter than Venus. Yet in the predawn morning, the morning star, shining alone, can fully engage our consciousness.
Martin Luther King Jr. compared light to love when he said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that”
And Mohandas Gandhi compared light to life itself, when he observed: “In the midst of death, life persists. In the midst of darkness, light persists.”
How much light is needed to command our attention?
How Much Suffering?
How Much Worry?
How Much Joy?
How Much Appreciation, is needed to command our attention?
I did the math: It’s A single thought. A Single Thought can fill our consciousness!
I remember something I learned from one of my heroes, Viktor Frankl, that even a Tiny Gratitude, a “trifling thing” he called it, could fill our consciousness!
Viktor spent much of World War II in concentration camps where he was subjected to unimaginable hardships: Disease, Deprivation, Degradation, Unrelenting Hatred! He survived the war and later wrote about the ordeal.
He wrote about how he drew constantly on human capacities for optimism and humor, inner solitude and hope, and a steely resolve to live.
Most important, he said “No matter what happened, I retained the freedom to choose how to respond to my suffering.”
He compared a person’s suffering to the behavior of a gas:
“If you pump a certain amount of gas into a container it fills the container completely and evenly, no matter how big the container.
In the same way suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.”
I reckon that what is true for suffering must also then be true for other things.
How Much Worry?
How Much Joy?
How Much Appreciation, is needed to command our attention?
I did the math: It’s A single thought.
I am grateful to Viktor Frankl for being the inspiration to my aspiration. Here’s what I mean:
After the war Viktor was awarded honorary degrees from 29 universities, and wrote dozens of books including Man’s Search for Meaning,
Once, he was asked to express in a single sentence the meaning of his own life.
He wrote the response on paper and asked his students to guess what he had written.
Presently, a student replied: “The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs”.
“That was it, exactly” Said Viktor Frankl, “Those are the very words I had written.”
I hope this has been meaningful for you. Please let me know what you think.
