In my previous article I shared a few Holocaust survival lessons from Arnold Van Den Berg (Trades, Portfolio)’s speech at Baylor University, in which he talked about the importance of having the right principles in life, never letting arguments get in the way of making up with your loved ones and the power of the subconscious mind. In this installmetn, I’ll share the other profound lessons he touched upon in his speech.
Lesson four: Learn to forgive
Van Den Berg’s important message here is that we all have things in our life that cause pain and people that may hurt our feelings. But if we don’t learn to forgive and instead hold those problems within ourselves, anger and resentment will build up and it will create a lot of problems.
He was so angry at the Germans and become so depressed in life that he got into a lot of fights and troubles when he was young. There were many seemingly legitimate reasons to hate the Germans – for one thing, he lost 39 family members in Auschwitz. The Germans tortured his parents, himself and his brother. Many would say it’s perfectly normal to develop anger and resentment. But for Van Den Berg, it’s only after he forgave the Germans that he could live a normal life again. Why did he forgive the Germans? Here is what he said:
“When you're depressed, you create anger and when that gets into your subconscious mind and you develop that anger, then the subconscious mind has to punish you. And one of the ways the subconscious mind punishes you is by making you depressed. If you have anger and you express it you then generate wellbeing. But if you repress it, it goes inside of you, then it creates more anger. And then it gets into depression, alcoholism, addictions, sickness, and all of these other things.
Almost every ailment that mankind suffers from is due to the fact that people have repressed anger. So one of the things that I learned is that when you have reasons to be angry, find a way to express it and learn to forgive. And one of the biggest problems I had was I had to forgive the German people for what they did to my family. We lost thirty nine members of our family. I don't have any cousins or uncles or aunts or anything like what you have. And that was a very important thing to me to have my own family.
But that creates, obviously, a lot of anger. And so by learning to forgive, you grow and you are able to go beyond that. If you get stuck in your anger, it gets you better, it gets you negative, it makes you depressed, and your whole life goes on a downward trajectory. So I want to encourage you all to understand the principle.”
Lesson five: Learn to control your emotions
It’s important to learn to control your thinking and learn to control your emotions. An example Van Den Berg gave is how to deal with people who say unkind things to you. The first thing you should do when someone says something unkind is ask yourself this simple question: is it true? If it's true, then you should fix it, because you have an opportunity to correct a flaw in yourself. If it's not true, why get upset? So if you learn to think about processing emotions and feelings, you can prevent yourself from getting upset from building up this anger within you.
Lesson six: Take a chance in life
He told the story of how his mother made a real business in Auschwitz where she was buying and selling things for people. She had all these guards running around doing things for her. And she was able to get by and do things that were just incredible. One day, Van Den Berg asked his mother about whether it was a big risk running a business in the concentration camp. His mother’s answer was of course it is but if she hadn’t taken a risk they would have died from starvation because they couldn't live on that little piece of bread and a little bit of water. A lot of people who never took a chance, they died because they didn't take a chance. So in life you have to learn that in order to get ahead. You sometimes have to take a risk. It has to be a well thought out risk. It has to be a calculated risk, but you have to take a risk.
Lesson seven: Always look at the positive side of things and look at suffering as a way of learning
Van Den Berg obviously suffered a lot in his life. I couldn’t even imagine how much suffering he had to go through in Auschwitz and afterward. But from my interactions with him over the years, one thing I can vouch for is that he has extraordinary self-discipline, extraordinary mental toughness, as well as extraordinary wisdom. In his own words: “When you suffer, you learn things that you could never learn any other way. So suffering is a way in which we learn the important lessons of life. ”
He also recommended Viktor Frankl’s book "Man’s Search for Meaning."Â The main lesson from the book is that people could withstand suffering if there is a reason attached to it. If you were suffering and you had no reason for it, it’s very difficult to put up with. But if you have a reason for living, you can get past suffering.
Lesson eight: Understand love
Van Den Berg told one of the most incredible life experiences and one of the most touching stories I have ever heard. During a death march in the concentration camp, all the men were struggling into snow. They were slipping. They were getting hit by the guards. They were suffering, hungry and tired. It was just one of the most incredibly difficult times of their lives. One of the men had just got married. He then recounted:
“And he said that his mind all of a sudden started switching on his wife and he started thinking about her that he could visualize and he could see her smiling. He could even see himself talking back and forth. And he says in those moments of intense suffering, he got such a feeling of bliss in thinking about the person that he loved. And he said that right then and there a thought hit him, which was the most profound thought that he says in all poetry, in all of the great thinkers, they've all come to the same conclusion that the greatest thing that human beings can try for is to understand love to be able to receive it, to be able to give it and to be able to share it. And that is man's highest achievement. And he said that that was the profound lesson that he learned, is that in that incredibly difficult time that you could actually experience a moment of bliss in contemplation of the people you love.
So the greatest lesson of all the things we've covered is the fact that that is the greatest thing to be pursued in a lifetime. And once you pursue that, here is the other beautiful, most optimistic thought of all that. Once you experience that, you never lose somebody you love. You may leave them on this plane. You may lose them for a while, and you may miss them while they're gone. But deep down in your heart into contemplation of that person, you will never lose it. They will be with you forever. And that is also one of the greatest things. ”
Read more here:
- Profound Lessons From Arnold Van Den Berg - Part 1
- A Portfolio Allocation Lesson From Buffett's Washington Post Investment
- Debating Alphabet Inc.Ă‚
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The link below is for Arnold Van Den Berg’s recent talk at Texas Lutheran.
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