"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments,
but what is woven into the lives of others."
– Pericles
As Bell Canada once again embraces their Let's Talk initiative today, I wish to add my thoughts to the conversation.
I admire and deeply encourage anyone who struggles with their mental well being to continue their struggle because it is a war worth waging; a struggle that is profoundly interwoven into the lives of those who love you, and even those you meet ever so briefly.
I have no solutions, program, advice, or an architectural design for a new religion. I embrace today, as an opportunity to talk, or write, in this instance, in the hope that our conversation doesn't have to stop tomorrow, but continues throughout the year.
In 1993 I had the privilege to attend and immerse myself into the Viktor E. Frankl Logotherapy Conference in Toronto. Logotherapy is the third Viennese school of psychiatry that challenges the ideas of both Adler and Freud. It teaches that it is neither our will for power, nor our will for pleasure that is the key to human happiness. Viktor Frankl set out to illustrate in his book Man's Search For Meaning that finding the meaning of our life is the real the driving force in all human beings.
Man's Search For Meaning was written in 1946, shortly after Viktor Frankl's liberation from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I am talking today, because I owe a debt of gratitude to that wonderful man who I never had the honour of meeting. While I stumbling along through life over the last few years and decades, I have come to realize that what keeps me going is this unquenchable thirst not to be a name on a slab of expensive marble, but a meaningful memory inside the hearts and minds of a few of my victims.
Thank you Viktor Frankl for fighting to survive hell. Thank you for your courage to share your ideas with the world. Thank you Bell Canada for this moment to reflect, to be real, and engage in meaningful conversation.
