09/04/2026
Decades after spending eight years in a Soviet labor camp for criticizing Stalin in a private letter, Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.” I admire that perspective — and I’d like to hold it with the passion with which Solzhenitsyn held it. But I’d like to gain it without the hardships. ~ Mike Woodruff
