A letter to my son, who asked me to write him something long.

When I see you growing in knowledge, wisdom, and temperance (self-control), it makes me so proud!  My greatest hope for you is that you grow to be a man of honesty, courage, and mercy. 

I want to tell you something about life, and about finding hope and happiness in everything, even when you feel hurt, disappointed, or frustrated. 

Are you ready? 

The secret to life is…that this world, and all of the people in it, and all of the places and everything that exists…is a masterpiece. The master artist is God. 

This masterpiece is in bad shape. People stain and rip and crumble parts of it every time they are ugly in their actions and selfish. Sometimes we get confused and think that our own impulses are more real and important than the entire masterpiece of creation around us or the Design of the Creator. 

But, once you learn to see the beauty underneath all of the stains and sins and tears, you will find it a remarkable source of peace, joy, and guidance. 

This is hard to understand, I know. I’m using a lot of figurative language, and children like plain speaking, or fairy tales, but maybe not the poetic middle ground of metaphor.

Here it is as plain as I can put it though: the secret to happiness is to find the beauty in the world and the people around you, and take care of it. Pursue the things that you love that make the world a more beautiful place and add to the work of the master Artist. When you are sad, or hurt, find things, places, and people that remind you to see the beauty, and let the beauty heal you.

Never forget that the people you meet are each masterpieces of the Creator as well, as are you. Don’t spoil His work by being selfish or petty or hurtful, to yourself or to anyone else. 

And avoid lies, which are like hiding poopy underpants…the stink doesn’t go away and it makes everything else stink too, and you can’t save the underpants from the garbage if you don’t get them in the wash as soon as possible. It doesn’t matter whether your life looks good on the outside, or if it looks like you’re doing the right thing…if you are hiding misdeeds or ugly thoughts, they will pollute everything else around you and spoil even the good that you do. After a while, lies pollute the way you think, and you become nasty, like Eustace before he became a dragon. His nastiness made the entire world look ugly to him. Eustace was able to become a better person by being turned into a dragon and learning to see and appreciate how good the people around him really were, when before he had been suspicious of them. It isn’t always that easy in real life, when there is no magic dragon treasure to force us to see how monstrous we have been. It takes humility to let go of meanness and self-pity, and see the reality that we are a small part of a beautiful, miraculous creation. 

Never forget that it is a privilege, a blessing, and a wonderful good thing to be alive and be part of this amazing world! No matter what life brings, there will always be opportunities to find meaning and purpose, to throw your heart into and find beauty in.

I am reading a book called Man’s Search for Meaning, by a man called Victor Frankl. He was a Jewish man who spent time in the Nazi death camps during World War II. He saw a lot of horrible things, and he saw a lot of people give up hope, and become depressed over the awful things that happened to them and around them. He said that they gave up on life. That didn’t surprise him though, since it was such an awful place where people were starved and killed. Some people became horrible themselves, angry at everyone, like wild animals trying to survive by trampling on everyone weaker. But those people couldn’t cope when they left the camp and had to live normal lives with normal people. What surprised him was the people who lived and thrived, not just while they were in the camp, but even afterwards, when they had to go back to normal life after everything they had known was changed.

What made those people different?  They were still sad about all of the people who died, and they had been hurt and sometimes lived with pain for the rest of their lives. They weren’t cruel people in the camps, like the wild angry ones. They cared about others, even though loving people makes it easy to be hurt when the people you love are hurt. But they still thought that life was worth living, and they knew how to be happy and build new lives when the war was over and they were free.

Victor Frankl realized that what kept him alive was his work and ideas, which made him want to live to write his experiences down and think about what they meant. He saw people who were kept alive by their love for their family or friends, and desire to take care of them. Some people stayed alive because they believed God had a reason for their suffering and that somehow, even if they never understood it, their suffering had a reason in God’s plan for the world. Some people saw the suffering as something that might teach them something, and used it to become better people. Some had great works they wanted to do, to make the world a better place, and they hung on to life out of determination to live to accomplish those goals. All of them, Frankl observed, were living for the sake of a meaning or purpose outside of themselves, whether a person, an idea, or a goal. Even in that horrible place, they could see the beauty in their loved ones and in their dreams, and hold on to that.

So that’s what I hope you learn–how to find meaning in everything that life brings you, and how to use everything to make the world more beautiful as you spread kindness, love, and beauty to those around you. If you can learn to do that, even when you feel discouraged or angry, you will grow to be a good man, and your happiness will always be in your reach.

I love you!!

Mama