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A Soul’s Compass
My search for Why? in Vienna
I’m here.
I breathe.
I eat.
I sleep.
I walk.
After a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles, I’ve managed to pry myself out of the hotel room, shuffle along unfamiliar cobblestone streets, and somehow — almost unconsciously — end up here.
At the Viktor Frankl Museum in Vienna, of all places.
Still jet-lagged and hollowed out by recent loss, I’m not sure what the hell I’m searching for. But this feels like the right place to find some answers to the unsettling of my being. Maybe not the kind of answers I can write down. Maybe just something that keeps me going.
The Quiet Power of the Museum
The museum isn’t grand. It’s modest, tucked away on a narrow street, upstairs in an unremarkable building far from the spectacle of Vienna’s imperial past. No chandeliers. No velvet ropes. Just clean rooms, curated quotes, and the heavy presence of suffering transformed into something else — something lighter, but no less real.
Inside, I find an unexpected exhibit: Humanity as Unity. It was added in 2022, on what would have been Frankl’s 117th birthday. It’s not flashy. But it’s powerful.
