Her voice
was like an ancient,
wise,
and sad,
musical instrument.

God only knows how long she’d traveled for,
and where she’d been.

Tears falling in the dark,
unheard and unnoticed.

I know nothing about her,
yet her voice still speaks to me,
and tells me things she cannot say.

I hear her pain,
but I also hear her strength.

I see her in my mind,
somewhere far away,
on a green and blessed hill,
taking everything that life has thrown her way,
and then turning it,
into her sad and beautiful melody.

My feet are bloodied and bruised,
from all my earthly travels.
Thorns of rejection and jagged rocks of disapproval,
are strewn and scattered everywhere.

For all my life,
I’ve tried,
without success,
to pave the earth with leather.

But now I walk in peace,
without any fear,
for I’ve put on the shoes of self-acceptance.

Although I’m not a big fan of Friedrich Nietzsche, I think he was right when he said “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.”

Victor Frankl once wrote:

“An old doctor consulted me in Vienna because he could not get rid of a severe depression caused by the death of his wife. I asked him, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” Whereupon he said, “For her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!”

I then added, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering; but now you have to pay it by surviving and mourning her”. The old man suddenly saw his plight in a new light, and revaluated his suffering in the meaningful terms of a sacrifice for the sake of his wife.”

Even if this story is well known to you, what is unknown is a comment, which was given by an American psychoanalyst some months ago. After hearing this account, he stood up and said, “I understand what you mean Dr. Frankl; however, if we start from the fact that obviously your patient had only suffered so deeply from the death of his wife because unconsciously he had hated her all along…”

If you are interested in hearing my reaction, here it is: “It may well be that after having the patient lie down on your couch for five hundred hours, you will have brain washed and indoctrinated him to the point where he confesses, “Yes, Doctor, you are right I have hated my wife all along, I have never loved her at any time…”

But then I told him, “You have succeeded in depriving that old man of the only treasure he still possessed, namely, the ideal marital life that he built up, their tru love… while I succeeded within a minute, in bringing about significant reversal of his attitude, or let me frankly say, in bringing consolation” – Psychotherapy and Existentialism

After reading this story, I was inspired to write the following lines:

One thousand hours,
split in half,
with a couch,
can teach a lie.

One split-second,
without a couch,
just the truth,
can get you by.

I wrote this poem to inspire a friend…

My hopes are now homeless
at the shelter of broken dreams.
I’m not happy,
this was not the plan,
not my youthful fantasy.
“Life is passing by,”
the mirror keeps on whispering,
“I love you,” now rings hollow,
and no one seems to care.
This can’t be my life,
so now what is the plan?
Wither away in sadness?
like a flower in the fall,
like a prisoner in her chains,
like a dying sick old man,
Or,
Begin to change the seasons,
break the iron shackles,
and find eternal youth.

To read my story, click here: The Boy and His Sand Castle