Second Mountain

Not long ago I read a passage about falling into a valley. The valley can be a personal one or a societal one or both. It's a smash. All the way to the bottom.

But in case you thought it must be suffering that shatters everything at the very bottom, let me tell you the meaning of the valley, the lessons I'd learned from David Brooks after reading his new book The Second Mountain. Being in the valley lets us see deeper into ourselves, to move from self-centered to other-centred, to embark on a new journey to the second mountain.

These are precisely the words we need to remind ourselves today, when our city stumbles into the deepest valley ever.

Everyone struggles. Everyone sheds tears.

Of course, crying isn't always a solution. Or even an option. I think, more than anything, it helps to read the powerful book and learn from David Brooks, who has always mentioned the second mountain discovered by Viktor Frankl. Paraphrasing Frankl, Brooks writes that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing - the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one's own way."