I am just now discovering Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning. This little book has sold over 10 million copies world-wide, over three million copies in English. Frankl, a psychiarist by training, tells the story of his four years in the prison work camps during World War 2. The second half of his book goes on to speak of his discipline in psychiatry called logotherapy. There is so much in the little book of such great value, it is difficult to choose what I want to write about. I must start somewhere, and so I have chosen the following quote from page 64. --
"a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative."
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I have often thought when I was suffering from some "little" pain, that it was not worth trifling over becasue, after all, there are so many others out there who have "big" suffering. No doubt my work as pastor, in some of my ignorant or hard-hearted times, has left little room for empathy or compassion to the "little" suffering of others when, after all, little children are starving from lack of food, or people have buried every family member due to AIDS. My pain, or the pain of my fellow suburbanites, always seemed less than others "out there" in my heart and mind.
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And yet, if Frankl is correct, pain and suffering is real and relative. If his analogy is correct, it is not appropriate to compare the suffering of one to the suffering of another. Every human soul will indeed be filled with suffering, and like a gas, it will fill the soul completely. This is real. And it is also relative to the individual soul.
My call and task is not to "judge" the suffering of one or another. I think my call and task is to share in the suffering of my fellow brothers and sisters. Each person, including myself, will have suffering that is real and consuming. My task is not to "judge" it, but to share in it.
