When it comes to overcoming adversity, there are many stories of great men and women who have found meaning and joy through suffering.
About 20 years ago, a family friend passed along a book – Great Souls: Six Who Changed the Century, by David Aikman, former senior foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. The tagline reads, “True stories of virtue to delight the mind and stir the spirit.”
My kind of book.
On the inside jacket, Aikman writes, “What has struck me as a reporter for most of my adult life is the capacity of individual human beings again and again to rise above their times and their circumstances and to change, if only just a little, the direction of the human tide.”
In the book, Aikman tells the stories of six remarkable individuals – Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Billy Graham, Pope John Paul II, Elie Wiesel, and Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn.
I would like to talk about Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn today.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Life in the Gulag
Solzhenitsyn was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, Russia. His father was killed in a hunting accident prior to his birth, so Solzhenitsyn was raised by his mother and aunt in destitute conditions. Despite this, he was a well-studied man who graduated with a degree in mathematics while also taking correspondence courses in philosophy, literature, and history.
Solzhenitsyn served in the Soviet Army in World War II, and was decorated for his heroism. But in 1944, he made a critical mistake.
He wrote a letter to his closest friend and childhood classmate in which he criticized Stalin, not by name, but by unmistakable references. The letter was intercepted and Solzhenitsyn was arrested.
He served the next eight years in Soviet labour camps – the Soviet gulag – where he was humiliated, mistreated, and finally subdued along with other political prisoners.
During this time, he developed cancer and had a tumor removed. Upon release, after eight long years moving from one camp to another, he was sent to internal exile for life.
While in exile, Solzhenitsyn’s undiagnosed cancer from his tumor spread until he was close to death. He was treated in a hospital and during this time, through a series of events, he came to a place of complete forgiveness for all the atrocities and war crimes he had both witnessed and endured during his years as an army officer and in the camps.
He was a new man.
Solzhenitsyn was later exonerated and became a prolific writer. But by documenting his experiences and expressing his views, he angered Soviet authorities. He was later arrested and stripped of his Soviet citizenship.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Spiritual Wellness
In one of his great works, the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn wrote this:
“Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”
How could a man who had endured so much and who had been so mistreated bless the prison that had stolen eight precious years (and so much more) from his life?
Why wasn’t he full of rage? He had every right to be.
Why didn’t he retaliate?
Why did he not become bitter, and why did he instead show gratitude for eight years of misery?
He tells us why: because through adversity his soul had matured, and he had gained something greater.
Peace.
Our Souls Awakened
To me, this is the essence of spiritual wellness. Gaining strength through adversity and looking for the everyday lessons that bring gratitude, not bitterness. And that lead to action, not apathy.
As we go through life, we often resist uncomfortable, challenging, or painful experiences.
But all along we don’t notice that our souls are stirring for more.
We don’t notice that our spirits have become dull.
We don’t notice that we are not truly at peace.
We think we’re satisfied, but we’re not. We’re sleepwalking, going through the motions, or just surviving.
But when something touches our soul, we suddenly become alive.
What is it that touches our soul? Often it is loss.
Loss of a loved one, a relationship, a marriage, a job, a dream. It is then that the noise in our lives is moved aside and we notice the stirrings of our soul. It is then that we pay attention.
I’ve been there. I never wanted the pain and the struggle, but through the pain and the struggle I found a deeper level of living.
There’s great joy and lightness that comes from our spirits being alive, from walking in step with who we are and what we are passionate about.
When we connect to our greater purpose and find our authenticity, we shed the weight we’ve been carrying in our souls. We become more spiritually well.
The 21st Century will have its own Mandelas and Solzhenitsyns and Wiesels. Great souls who overcome adversity to change the direction of the human tide.
Each of us, in our own way, can be one of these great souls. We may not change the world in such an epic way, but we can make a difference. And we can certainly change the world of those we love, and of ourselves. We can change our own tide.
Peace.
Sigh… 🙂
🙂