The Silent Boy

 The Silent Boy by Lois Lowry

2003

Weight: 5.6 oz

Method of Disposal: Recycling (unfortunately)

This is another book that is in such poor shape that I cannot donate it.  The truth is that it was already falling apart when I came into possession of it, and it has only grown worse with each move.  I did want to read it before letting it go though so it was the last book I read in my time off after surgery.

It was a very sad book.  Not the whole time you are reading it, though from the beginning you know the ending will be tragic.  You just do not know how yet.  The tragedy of this book is not some shocking, never heard it before, cannot imagine it happening sort of thing, but something that feels much more common and, maybe because of that, even heavier.  

The book is told from the point of view of a 9 year old girl and much of it is about her feelings and thoughts about a misunderstood boy, who would now likely be diagnosed with autism, but at the time was just seen as different, and even scary to many people in the town.  Though the people that actually knew him knew that he was very gentle.  You could tell by how he loved animals and they loved him.  I cannot say much more without spoiling the book.  Ultimately, I think the author was giving us a snapshot into what it was like for girls and women, for people with autism, for people in different class systems, and for people in general at the turn of the 20th century.  As always, when looking at history, there are moments of nostalgia and plenty of good things happening, but some things can seem unnecessarily bleak due to the customs and beliefs of the time.  It is still haunting in that those customs continue to shadow us today and are not completely gone.

Yes to Life

 Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything by Viktor E Frankl

2020

Weight: 12 oz

Method of Disposal: Giving to my dad 

I thought my father gave me this book, but when I asked him if he wanted it back once I read it and he acted as if he would also like to read it I began to wonder.  I gave it to him.  I do know that the reason it came into my possession is because of him, even if I bought it.

Last year, I was attending a seminar and was asked to consider a quote that might speak to me spiritually or remind me of something important about life and living.  I was struggling to think of an actual quote, though I could find some misquoted snippets supposedly from Buddha overlaid across beautiful, peaceful pictures.  Thank you, Google.

My dad happened to call, and I told him what I was doing.  He immediately recommended a quote from Viktor Frankl and said I should read Man's Search for Meaning.  As soon as we got off the phone, I went in search of it and quickly realized I had read it previously.  At that point, I think I might have then purchased Yes to Life.  It did not seem at all unlikely that a man that survived a concentration camp and the Holocaust to then go on to write books about saying yes to life might know something about what the meaning of life might be or, bare minimum, have an inspiring quote I could share.  The one my dad recommended was some form of this, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  Something I do consistently try to remind myself ever since.

I did not enjoy Yes to Life as much as Man's Search for Meaning, but the power is still there.  Frankl talks about having started to write this book before his time in the concentration camp.  In fact, he sewed the manuscript into his jacket when he was taken away, though his coat was ultimately taken from him.  At some point, at the camp, he began to focus his mental energy on surviving so that he could share what he had written in the manuscript and, while he lived in the cruelest of human conditions, he began writing it again, in his head.  A large part of what I think he wanted us to know is that finding a reason to live will lead us to finding out how to live, which is not to say that there is much that is beyond your control.  The only thing you can always control is how you react to what is happening around you and/or to you.  We do not need to ask what the meaning of life is.  We need to answer the question of life with meaning.