Jeff and Kallie

There are all kinds of people in this world. I've learned that from my own experience and from others. There are people so good that they help complete strangers rebuild their lives after a tragedy. There are people on the other side of the spectrum who hurt people who trust them and rely on them. People who lie and cheat and people who love and nurture. I do believe that everyone is born good, and that goodness either grows into something beautiful or is suppressed and dies for some reason or another. We could argue and say that every liar has a reason to be that way, and that every mean person was treated meanly. We could, if there weren't so many who have been treated badly and turned out so wonderfully virtuous. What about Viktor Frankl who wrote "Man's Search for Meaning". A phsychologist who was in the concentration camps during world war 2. His observations were different than others because of his profession, and he took time to really observe people's behaviors. He saw people become bitter and hateful because of what the Nazis did to them and their families. Other observations he made looked like this:

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting 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 choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

I've always loved Viktor Frankl's book about what he saw, and the love he saw being offered from those who suffered to those who suffered. I read it for the first time when I was a freshman in college. But it seems like the older I get and the more experience I get in life, the more things make sense. I see his observations through my own eyes as I watch good and bad things happen to good and bad people and see their reactions to both.

Lately I've felt frustrated with some of the people I work with and for. But yesterday I had one of those realizations...one I've been learning about for years, but didn't get it until I saw it in myself and in others. All kinds of things happen in life...we come across all different kinds of people...ones who have let life make them hard and unkind, and others who seem to let the bad slide right off their backs. Despite mean people and hard trials and difficult roads, these people are happy and helpful, loving and compassionate.

Yesterday, I decided that people will be people, and I can either let that make me hard and rude and unkind, or I can let it slide off my back and be the sweet, compassionate person that I want to be regardless of what others say or do. I want to be happy and good, and like Dr. Frankl said...it's a matter of choice. No one can take that away from me! Here's to happiness and goodness!!