I recently finished Victor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I had picked it up after my former roommate had said he found it to be a very good book.
And it is. A Holocaust survivor, Frankl’s book is both a recollection of his years in various concentration camps, as well as its impact on his philosophical, psycho-analytical views, with which he terms logo-therapy, or therapy of the human mind through one’s own perception of his/her meaning of life. It’s a dense book, especially the 30 of the last 40 pages. But his premise lies on 3 things:
-That there is no one single meaning of your life. Just as you a chess player could never answer what the greatest chess move is, the meaning of one’s life is what life calls your meaning to be. Conditions that you find yourself in cannot be changed. But your attitude, how you approach the challenges, between the vacuum of purpose and your current state of being, will be the meaning for you in that given month, week, day, and minute.
-Love for others is the only way you’ll ever come close to self-actualization, which is never attainable. This I found myself agreeing to quite a bit, but also find myself and others creating a fascade to achieve that self-actualization. In the end, I can’t help but think love for others is a seemingly unselfish means to a very selfish end.
-There is a meaning to everything life even in unavoidable suffering (which does not mean that suffering is necessary). Kind of like saying everything happens for a reason. In this case, that reason is the meaning. (he cites a story about a man whose wife had passed away. when asked about how his wife would have felt had their roles been reversed, he says she would have been devastated. His meaning of life, or suffering, was then found through meaning of sacrifice.)
The human will should never be underestimated. A lot more people in concentration camps died in days after Christmas than any other days because people had generally given themselves a deadline to look forward to, hoping to be home by Christmas. When that time had passed, their will to survive withered away. “He who has a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how” (this famous Nietzsche quote was frequetly stated. He also said: What does not destroy me, makes me strong”)
Everyone had the capacity to rise above the dire situations in concentration camps. Some held on to their human dignity till the end. Others succumbed to the abominable. Life presents to you a choice. And an opportunity to find your meaning. How you seize those opportunities on a weekly, daily, hourly basis will determine your reflective days on the deathbed. Will you attempt suicide and the murder of your crippled child because of the death of another? (The crippled child thwarted the attempt) Or will you find your meaning withinin your responsibility to those around you?
This man is obviously a lot smarter than I am and has obviously gone through a lot more than I ever will. I have a great deal of respect for him. He died in 1997 at the age of 92.
“Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.” – Victor E. Frankl