In the winter, my grandparents' house smelled like cooked food, coffee, and wood smoke. Is this why I sometimes light a wooden match, blow it out, and sniff the rising wood smoke? I think so. I do this sometimes before I write, before I try to make sense of a memory. It takes me back to a simpler existence when I could afford to listen to my grandparents' stories while we drank coffee and ate cookies.
In Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, there is a scene that has stuck with me since I first came across it. Frankl describes the horrid conditions of Auschwitz -- how the sky was gray, the tattered uniforms were gray, the snow was gray -- but off in the distance in a house on the side of a hill, someone turned on a light. This one light broke through the grayness of his existence, and defying all that he was up against, gave him hope.
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