Staying the Course

Staying the course and believing that there is meaning and signfiicance to everything is not as easy as it sounds. One day may be great but the next just awful. But when you see everything that happens to you as good and bad little particles which make up a whole, the journey becomes a great deal easier. Peace and happiness is found within, not outside of the body.

"finding a meaning in life is by experiencing something--such as goodness, truth and beauty--by exeriencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness--by loving him."
--Victor E. Frankl--

Every man and woman suffers from doubt. We doubt ourselves, our ability to face a challenge or overcome one that has already confronted us. So long as one is living he or she is successful; he or she has already faced and succeeded in the face of more challenges than he or she has been defeated. Every single breath is a challenge to the body, whether young and "healthy" or old and "terminal". It is not until a man or woman has taken his or her final breath that the body has been defeated--by any means! It is the same, therefore, with the mind and our subconscience. Every day is filled with endless challenges and obstacles, we just cannot see them because they are small--though not insignificant.

A man gets out of bed in the morning, walks to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, and walks downstairs to the front porch where he sits down on a chair for the entirety of the day, only coming in contact with the mailman, before climbing the same steps back to his bathroom to brush his teeth before lying back down in bed and falling asleep. Sounds like a pretty worthless day, right? Wrong. The extent of this man's success is actually immeasurable.

Let's call him Jack, for name's sake.

1. Jack woke up, therefore his body has defeated the possibility of dying in his sleep.
2. He gets out of bed. He could have decided to lie there all day.
3. He walks to the bathroom. At any moment his heart could have given its last beat for a step, and he collapses.
4. He brushes his teeth. He obviously got the toothepaste on the brush head and his arms were still able to move back and
forth.
5. He walks down the stairs without tripping and plummeting to his death.
6. He sits down on a rocking chair on the front porch. He very easily could have missed, fallen backwards and hit his head.
7. He smiles at the mailman, who in return, smiles back.
8. He is handed one letter, which he opens.
9. He listens as the mailman reads him the letter.
10. He cries.
11. He says one thing to the mailman and waves him off.
12. Once night falls he rises to his feet without his legs giving out from under him.
13. He successfully climbs back up the steps to the bathroom without tripping.
14. He brushes his teeth for the second time.
15. He walks back to his bedroom, his heart beating with every step.
16. Finally he lies down in his bed and falls asleep for the night.

Now, let's meet Jack. He was born in 1913 in the countryside of Austria. At the age of 28, Jack, his wife and three daughters are captured by Nazi soldiers and taken to Auschwitz where they are seperated. Over a dozen times Jack manages to avoid the crematorium and gas chambers--for no other reason than his will to work, in hopes of seeing the faces he loved again. The war ends and Jack is released from captivity. After an extensive search for his family Jack discovers that all three daughters and his wife perished. In 1944, Jack moves to the United States with less than one hundred dollars to his name, and no living relatives to his knowledge. He changes his last name from Schwartz to Smith, to disguise his Jewish ancestry. He takes a job at a factory, welding steel for an automotive company in eastern Michigan. Despite entertaining the idea of suicide many times, Jack always disgards the thought--sometimes immediately, sometimes after several days of inner turmoil. Nevertheless, he stays the course. Jack's life can be viewed as lacking action or great excitement. He spends most of his days after retirement reading on his porch, or walking along the creek near his small, four room house--just thinking and praying and trying to figure out the reason or meaning for his life.

At the age of 97, Jack lives with a terminal respiratory disease, caused initially by the working conditions in Auschwitz, and further made worse by thirty years of work in the factory of eastern Michigan. Jack also suffered from a mild stroke when he was 95, partially paralyzing the left side of his body. His fingers are riddled every day with acute arthritis, and his vertebrae is like a poorly assembled line of dominoes, at risk of giving out at any moment.

On the aforementioned day, Jack had not eaten for three and a half days. He was on the verge of becoming bed ridden. Jack woke up and lied in bed over two hours before gaining the strength to get up. After getting to his feet it took Jack 28 minutes to walk the fourteen feet to his bathroom sink. He has to stop five times, because he's out of breath. It then took him 3 minutes to get the tootepaste on his toothbrush--having missed eleven times--a glob of paste on the counter. Back and forth, back and forth...very slowly, Jack brushes his teeth in just under seven minutes. Now the ever-so-dangerous trip down the stairs. Because of the paralysis on his left side, he is forced to trust his very brittle right side to support all of his weight. Right hand clenches the banister, and supports his entire body as he steps down with his right foot and slowly swings his left down to meet it. 13 steps take one hour and seven minutes. Once Jack is at the bottom of the stairs he slowly walks out to the front porch--31 minutes. He positions himself in front of his favorite rocking chair, and after four minutes his backside is safely touching the seat. Jack then sits and waits. Finally, the mailman arrives.

"I've got a letter for you, Mr. Smith," the mailman says, and then hands it to Jack. The mailman, who's name is Micheal has been Jack's only source for human contact in over three weeks.
Jack looks at the letter. He tries reading the return address, but his vision is all but gone. He slowly opens it. Ashamed of his near blindness he says to the mailman, "Can you please read this to me, Michael?"
"Absolutely, Mr. Smith. Not a problem," Michael says.

Michael begins,
"Dear Mr. Smith, this letter is awfully difficult for me to write, and I ask that you please brace yourself as you read it. My name is Elizabeth Margaret Schwartz, and I am your great grandaughter. I am studying for my Master's degree in history at Columbia University in New York, and I recently became very curious of my Jewish ancestry. My grandmother, your daughter, Margaret, survived the concentration camp at Auschwitz. At the age of 17 she gave birth to my father, Martin Schwartz, while living and making a living as a housemaid in Brooklyn, New York. My grandmother came to the United States in hopes of finding you. I am assuming that she was unsuccessful because you had changed your name to Smith upon arriving. She, as well as my father, lived the remainder of their lives under this assumption.
After an extensive search into my heritage and ancestry I came across your immigration application. I know it is by the sheer guidance from God that I stumbled upon it. A Mr. John Smith from Vienna, Austria had two places to print his name, and one to sign. Clumsily, you printed John Schwartz on one of the lines. How this was overlooked by immigration I do not know. How I managed to see it while skimming through over four hundred applications is clear: God led me to you.
I wanted to write you, because you do not have a telephone, to tell you that I will be visiting you on Saturday, May 12th. I did not want my sudden appearance to come as a surprise. I hope that you are still at this address, as I have obtained it from a steel manufacturer's company directory, dated June of 1978--a year before I was even born. I look forward to meeting you.

Your Great Grandaughter,
Elizabeth Margaret Schwartz

Michael hands Jack the letter. Jack says, "Thank you so much, Michael. May God bless you greatly." Then waves him away.

Jack went to bed the night before, praying that God would take his life in his sleep. When Jack woke up, he knew it might be his last day. Jack could not imagine spending his last day on earth in bed.

The night before, Michael went to bed, planning on waking up for his last day on earth. Michael's wife and three daughters were killed in a car accident earlier that evening. He was going to wake up, go to work, deliver all of his mail, and when returning home, shut the garage door, stay in his running car, and go to sleep.

Once night had fallen, Jack got up, walked inside, climbed the steps, walked into his bathroom, brushed his teeth, walked to his bed, lied down and fell asleep.

The following morning Jack woke up, but could not get out of bed. He had exhausted nearly all of his remaining energy the previous day. Early in the afternoon, he met his great grandaughter, Elizabeth Margaret Schwartz. All evening long a fragile, tired and bed ridden Jack Schwartz lived like he had not lived in 70 years. That night, Jack Schwartz died.

That same morning, Michael McLarens woke up in his bed and lived.

A man gets out of bed in the morning, walks to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, and walks downstairs to the front porch where he sits down on a chair for the entirety of the day, only coming in contact with the mailman, before climbing the same steps back to his bathroom to brush his teeth before lying back down in bed and falling asleep. Sounds like a pretty worthless day, right? Wrong. The extent of this man's success is actually immeasurable.

"He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW."
--Friedrich Nietzsche--