"One of the chief responsibilities laid
upon the shoulders of man, be he young or old, is the
responsibility of conserving his moral, mental and
physical resources and making the best possible use of
them." Paul P. Harris, Page 125 from “The Founder of
Rotary”, 1928, complete and online at
http://www.whatpaulharriswrote.org/library/founder/book
MY COMMENT:
(C) Imagno / K. Vesely To
discover, to give full care and feel responsible for our
own gifts and values and to make the best of it was also
the central theme of one of the greatest psychiatrists
of the last century,
Viktor
Frankl (26.3.1905 - 2.9.1997) for whom I always
had the highest admiration.
Frankl, as Prof. Dr. George Kovacs from
Florida International University described him, was a
thinker for Hard Times and in fact one of the great
thinkers of his century; he was able and had the courage
to grasp and see through the shocking, tragic events of
our times, to look for the future, to decreed meaning in
being, in living even again the odds. He was deeply
shaken by Auschwitz and by Hiroshima; in the depth of
human degradation and in the pervasiveness of despair,
he found an opening for a vision intuiting possibilities
for meaning and being, for hope and goodness against the
forces of monstrous evil, against the seductive powers
of scepticism, and despair.
Paul
Harris' vision and Victor Frankl’s thinking have
guided my life as a Rotarian and caused the choice of my
Presidential Theme: "Believe in what you do. Do what
you believe in". Dr. Robert R.
(Bob) Barth, RI Past President, Rotary Club Aarau,
D. 1890, Switzerland (Find
President Bob)
