Concentration Camps and Hyacinths
What poets and philosophy can teach us about ourselves
I was recently re-reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. One passage stood out:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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.
What brings someone in a horrific circumstance to put the needs of others before their own? And are they really doing that? Or is the need for kindness and decency, the impulse for goodness and mercy, really greater than the need for food? Do they serve their own deepest needs by caring for others?
In the world of deprivation, emotional poverty, and with the shadow of death ever present, there are those who transcend the need for survival. This speaks to something profoundly human.
I am reminded of a verse by 13th century Persian Poet Muslihuddin Sadi:
If, of thy mortal goods, thou art bereft,
And from thy slender store two loaves
alone to thee are left,
Sell one & from the dole,
Buy Hyacinths to feed the soul
I try to imagine myself as a poor person, with only enough for two loaves of bread. What would motivate me to sell one for beauty?
It seems impractical, unreasonable. When one is on the edge of survival, why would one lessen one’s chances by purchasing flowers. Even if you buy the potted plant instead of cut flowers, the joy from their fragrance is fleeting. Yet there is something about this poem that speaks to us over centuries.
Mystics, philosophers, wise women, and seers have known this truth for millennia. Human beings are not just an amalgamation of physical parts. We are not automatons, merely a set of chemical reactions or electrical impulses. There is more to it than that. How else do we explain the inexplicable?
