Victor Frankl tells how a student once asked him what could be real in the soul, which is completely invisible. Since he had never seen his own or anyone else’s soul, he concluded that the wisest thing to do was not to believe in fantasies that cannot be seen.
“I confirmed to him,” Frankl writes, “that it was impossible to see a soul by dissection or by microscopic examination. I then asked him why he was looking for the soul in such a dissection or microscopic examination. The young man replied that it was for the love of truth.
Then I asked him if love of truth might not be something psychological since he believed that things like love of truth could be made visible by the microscope. The young man understood that the invisible, the soul, cannot be found through the microscope, but that these are things necessary to be able to work with the microscope.”
If, then, the soul exists, the thirst for infinity that we have is also true. So, why so much fear of death? Because man does not want to die; man wants to live, because man is made to live. Man is mistaken however, because he is not made to live eternally in this life, but to live eternally in the life of God, to be eternally happy in God.
Today all the advances in science, technology, etc. are oriented toward one thing: to satisfy a yearning that exists in man. However, in spite of the great efforts they make, and even in spite of the great advances, they do not manage to make man happier. Actually, and very unfortunately, we can even say that men are more and more unhappy.
Man’s happiness is not found in giving more and more things to the body, but rather in giving more and more love to the soul. Man finds true happiness in love, and that is why when man reaches the fullness of love, he will find the fullness of happiness. Plato said: ” the risk of being immortal is beautiful. “
If happiness is in this life, no one can attain it; if happiness is in the next life, it is worth the risk of living well in order to attain it. For the pleasure of dying without punishment it is worth living without pleasure. The great poet Goethe said “I have lived 73 years and I have not had a single happy day” and he was not lacking in lands, goods, fame, etc. St. Leonard of Port Maurice said “I have lived 73 years and I have always been happy” and he was not lacking in poverty, suffering, etc.
