life's transitoriness.

I recently finished reading "Man's Search For Meaning", the story of concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl.

Stories like this help put your own life in perspective. The smaller worries of life seem to not matter anymore and you begin to see the bigger picture.

Frankl was a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School. It's this background that makes this book quite different from other books also written about experiences in the concentration camps of WWII.

The entire book is filled with observations and analysis of the mentality of the prisoners and the guards. Two pages in this book connected strongly with some thoughts that have bothered me for some time now.

I often look at the kids I teach with envy. I envy the fact that there is still so much ahead of them. Envious of the potential they each have before them. Wrongly I often think my better days are gone and I wax nostalgic over a time long since past.

In short, I find myself acting like this -- "The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day."

Thinking like that is DONE.

I have not been living in the past, just perhaps not appreciating the present as much as I should. As a result of this I'll now be trying a new approach to things -- " ... the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest."

After reading this section of the book I sat down and thought about the life I have lived and how much I have to be grateful for. I have experienced things I never imagined and have been blessed with meaningful friendships that will carry on for years to come. There is no need to look back with envy, but instead with gratitude for a life lived to the fullest.

It has definitely helped me to understand the need to make the most of each day because "at any moment, man must decide , for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence."