I actually have time to sit here and write right now, however, not sure what to say. I am actually sad. I bought a book the happiness website recommended but it has me really down. It is called "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl and well I am just part way thru the first part and I forgot how much this stuff could depress me. I can't even begin to comment on the book, because well, I am not qualified to speak about something, I have just started, but I do know that it has brought me down. I mean we (Earthlings) can be so awful to each other. I forgot. However, I think what also concerns me is the sick fascination I have with it. Like I want to hear more about it. I want to go research WWII again. Then you sit there and think what the hell is wrong with me. Which, I know nothing is, we all have a fascination with morbid. Why else would horror movies and fright fests be all the rage. I don't know.
It actually is a sad reminder to me of one of my worst days on this planet. It was 1997 and IU was on spring break, I remember that because my good buddy Chip came to visit in Maastricht, where I was studying the 2nd semester my junior year. We ended up in Munich for the weekend, we were supposed to go to Prague but we took the wrong train and ended up where we ended up with a bunch of crazy futball fans singing and keeping us up all night. We did the German tours, the beer gardens, all that jazz. Then we went to Dachau towards the end of our time there. It might be the most miserable place on the planet. If there are hell's on this Earth these places are definitely them. The place sickened me and saddened me. Little did I know at the time I was slipping into deep depression that would dominate and rule my life for a time, but this journey made it all the worse. I see Dachau as the beginning of the end of the joy I had on my European journey. I have no pictures from Dachau, i have none because I took none. Just like I took no pictures at the house of Anne Frank. I just felt like it wasn't a tourist attraction, and it certainly wasn't a place I wanted to remember. I remember seeing people taking pictures and I wanted to scream and yell at them, because I thought they were disrespecting the dead. I said nothing. I walked around somberly looking at the somber sites, and hating what I saw. There was no morbid fascination that day. There was only empathy, and hate for the disease of the human condition, that would lead men being so cruel and ugly to other men. For me Dachau was everything a dreamer never wants to endure. It is a visual representation of how awful we can be. It left me with no hope. I remember standing there just hopeless. From the train ride out to the middle of no where, to the tiny barracks they shoved people in, to the ovens or whatever the hell I saw, it was pure misery. For a man who wants to believe in happy endings, and that good will ultimately defeat evil, this was living proof it doesn't. Listening to Frankl's account, I am reminded of my time in hell. I have no right to speak of these things, I know so little of, and can't imagine how a survivor might feel or someone who had family there.
However, I find myself cautiously optimistic. For I feel there has to be a reason I was pointed to this book. I want to find that meaning, i want to know it. I want to find the happiness on the other side. Maybe this is the first step. Maybe, I can find some redemption in this misery. I think I am halfway thru it, and will get to the other side.
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