Maureen Johnson
Daily Egyptian
When I first considered the word "spirit," memories of my East Coast Catholic upbringing popped into my head.
The Mass in the church with the stained glass windows. My First Communion. Father Mike taking my friend's Jell-O in the school cafeteria.
These things were a part of my spirit.
Then I began to think about some of the people who attended Mass every Sunday without fail but who cursed out the people who double-parked behind them in the church parking lot. There are also people who are devout in their own religion but criticize people who practice other religions.
I began to wonder if our spirits were something to be left inside our respective churches.
But in my Intro to Psychology course, my class was assigned Victor Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning."
We read this book to understand how a man's spirit allowed him to survive the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.
While millions of other innocent people perished, Frankl was able to find his purpose through his suffering. In turn, finding his purpose allowed him to endure unspeakable brutality.
After I read the book, I began acquiring a better sense of what a spirit was. I started to see that if I found my spirit, I understood my purpose. Still, I wasn't convinced that finding my spirit would be necessary for my health or my life in general.
Until that night.
It was about 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 3, 1999, when I got a call from my mother about my brother Pat.
Pat had been severely depressed, and he had problems with alcohol and drugs. Many times before, he had tried to end his own life.
After Sept. 3, there would be no more suicide attempts. Pat had finally succeeded. He had taken his own life.
The weeks and months to follow were times of sadness, anger and guilt for our family. Some of us started to question God. I started to question Pat.
I wondered how someone like Pat could be dead. Why would he do such a thing? The world seemed like a different place to me.
For months, I wondered how Pat could have lost his will to live.
Couldn't he see how valuable he was to everyone? Didn't he understand his purpose in life? Where was his spirit?
Then came that beautiful sunny October day when things began to make sense to me.
I walked around Campus Lake wondering how Pat could have left his life knowing there would more beautiful days ahead. Maybe he couldn't fully appreciate a sunny day because he saw no meaning to his life. Maybe he never looked for the meaning of his life in the first place.
That is the day I knew I had to find my purpose in life. I had to find my spirit.
Just because I had managed to stay out of the doctor's office or was able to finally get back to writing my thesis did not necessarily make me healthy.
I began to start searching for the meaning of my life by appreciating the people and things I had once taken for granted. At this point, I considered my spirituality to be one of the most important aspects of my health.
Don't get me wrong. We would have a difficult time surviving life on this planet without our physical bodies, but our spirits are every bit as important for achieving health as our bodies.
Our physical health just determines how we live, but our spiritual health determines why we live.
Although religion and prayers may not be the same as spirituality, they can be good tools for expressing our spirituality and staying connected to God.
Many of us who have never appeared on Oprah have had trouble finding our spirits, but I think we're okay as long as we keep looking. Let's start appreciating the simple things and never give up the search for our spirits.
By the way, Father Mike eventually gave my friend back her Jell-O.
Reporter Maureen Johnson can be reached at mjohnson@dailyegyptian.com
Published on 11/17/05; 12:24:44 PM
