Book Reflection: Man’s Search for Meaning
Life's Big Questions: A Personal Exploration of Viktor Frankl's Insights.
Imagine you lose everything.
Your family, friends, romantic partner, home, belongings, food, water, hair, safety, physical freedom, job, freedom of speech, basic human rights.
Instead, your life becomes full of constant confrontation with death, physical torture, hunger, fear, pain and suffering. The only thing remaining is your naked existence. Would life still be worth living? Do you think you could find purpose in such a life? Or would you eventually give up on your will to live?
The book Man’s Search for Meaning, written by Viktor E. Frankl, raises these questions by sharing his experiences of living in several concentration camps. It’s a highly emotional, interesting, and mind-blowing book which oftentimes left me speechless. Based on his personal experience, Viktor created a Psychology called ‘Logotherapy’ which argues that we can find meaning in our suffering.
Today I want to reflect and share some of my take-aways. In this article, I won’t so much focus on camp life itself—there are plenty of resources documenting those horrors. Instead, I want to highlight the learnings and insights Viktor gained from his horrible experience.
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Key Takeaways
Everything is borrowed from nature
Everything is borrowed from nature and can be taken away ANYTIME. People you love, food, water, your life, physical freedom— everything can be taken away anytime. It’s important your mindset is in harmony with this reality. You need to set the right expectations for life. If you don’t, and you view something as a common and indefinite part of your life, you will be devastatingly broken when it’s taken from you.
This raised several questions for me. What do I take for granted in my life that could be taken away anytime? How would I react if it were taken from me right now? How can I shift my mindset to perceive them as lent from nature? How would this change affect they way I live?
Love
Viktor was separate from his wife without knowing whether she was still alive. Interestingly, he realized whether or not she is physically present or still alive ceased to be of importance. He argues love goes beyond the physical person, and has its deepest meaning in their spiritual being, in their inner self. No one could have touched the strength of his love because nothing could touch the image he carried of his wife.
This insight put love into a different light for me. How important is physical presence really when it comes to love?
Only you control your mind
The only thing guards could not take from prisoners were their inner lives. Prisoners found refuge in their thoughts, imaginations and dreams. Viktor, for example, imagined being able to feel the presence of his wife to the point where he knew “She was there”. Among other things, the mind is also capable of giving meaning to the suffering. This insight beautifully aligns with the teachings of Stoicism which I also talked about in my last post.
[…] everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of custinstances to choose one’s own way.
With this quote Viktor makes an important point. We are not a product of our environment. Our day to day decisions decide whether you give in to those powers. Despite the egocentric focus of most prisoners on their own survival and the continuous violence in the camp, some prisoners decided to stay generous and kind.
The Role of Humor
I have always been very curious about the role of humor in life. Why do we have a sense of humor? The book doesn’t answer this question but goes into how some prisoners attempted to develop a sense of humor to see things in a different light. For example, with one prisoner Viktor agreed that they would try to make each other laugh once a day. At a primitive level, perhaps you could say humor is a coping mechanism, a tool helping us live through tough times by keeping us mentally sane.
Moral Dilemmas & The Right to Judge
There were many situations where simple actions or decisions decided life or death of a prisoner. For instance, prisoners who were doctors sometimes needed to decide whether a prisoners was physically fit for work. If he wasn’t, he needed to go to the gas chamber. However, those doctors couldn’t risk saving too many lives as this would get the guards attention and potentially get even more killed. So, do they risk their own lives and perhaps the lives of many others to save a few, or do they send some individuals to their deaths to avoid arousing suspicion and potentially save many more?
There also were situations were prisoners were given responsibilities (e.g. handing out soup). In those cases, prisoners in charge of circumstances favoured their friends or the people they knew over other prisoners. To that Viktor says:
No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.
I deeply agree with this and I think it’s a mindset more people should practice in their lives. Of course, we can’t always see the full picture, but that shouldn’t stop us from reflecting on our immediate reaction and confirm whether we can really justify judging someone.
The Meaning of Suffering
Viktors understanding of suffering was one of the most interesting insights for me. He argues that if there’s a meaning in life at all, there must also be a meaning in suffering because it’s an unquestionable part of life. Suffering offers everyone an opportunity to add a deeper meaning to their life. Sure, suffering is nothing anyone should strive for, but when faced with such reality, the way in which one accepts his fate gives them the opportunity to grow, despite the most difficult circumstances.
Viktor also explains how every situation posed an opportunity to prove whether one was worthy of their suffering. In the bitter fight for survival, one could either forget their human dignity and live like an animal or adhere to their moral values and continue living as the person they want to be. This would decide whether one was truly worthy of their suffering. There were people who took up the opportunity and saw the camp’s difficulties as a test of their inner strength, and people who did not see the opportunity to grow beyond themselves. The latter stopped taking their life seriously as they preferred to live in the past. Life became meaningless for them.
One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
The Meaning Of Life
Having a meaning to continue living played an essential role in the survival of the prisoners. They needed a ‘Why’ to bear with the terrible ‘How’ of the camp life experience. Those prisoners who lost faith in their future, were doomed. They experienced mental and physical decay, and eventually, gave up on their life.
He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
Some prisoners created false expectations for their future, and were devastated when those proved false resulting in significant deterioration of their body’s power of resistance. For example, many prisoners hoped they would be back home by christmas. When reality showed up, prisoners lost courage and were overcome by dissappointment. During that period the death rate exceeded all previous experience. I suppose you could say they didn’t have a true and sustainable ‘Why’ to live for. Instead, they hung onto false hopes, which was a gamble and short-term solution.
Viktor says most prisoners were going about it all wrong. They needed to teach themselves that it did not matter what they expected from life, but rather what life expected from them. There is no point in asking for the meaning of life, instead, we are are the ones being asked every day, and every moment. It’s up to the individual to take up the responsibility of finding the answers to the problems and tasks of their life.
One of the most powerful “Why” a human can have is becoming conscious of their responsibility towards a dear person waiting for them or an unfinished work to continue. Such people know the “Why” for their existence and would never be able to throw away their life.
Good and Evil People Can be Found Everywhere
Even among the horrible guards there were people who found pity in the prisoners situation. On the other hand there were capo’s(= prisoners forced to supervise the prisoners) who were much more brutal and punishing than most of the guards. It didn’t matter whether someone was a prisoner or a guard, kindness and malice could be found in both alike. Viktor continues to broaden this insight for all groups of society. Decent and indecent human beings penetrate all societies.
Last Words
I truly believe this is an incredibly valuable book to read. Unfortunately, it is by no means outdated. While there are no more Nazi concentration camps, situations like with the Uyghurs in China prove its relevance even today. This book helps explain the inhumanly situation in such camps, and I truly hope this awareness eventually reaches all people in power.
Personally, I saw this book as an upportunity to learn. It helped me understand humans better, feel more gratitude towards life, and provide a unique perspective on ‘The Meaning Of Life’ which so many people struggle with. One of my biggest takeaways: The universe asks us what the meaning of life is, not the other way around. It’s about how we anwer this question while taking responsiblity for our tasks and problems that we find purpose and become the person we want to be.
Have you every found meaning in your suffering? How will you go about answering your ‘Why’?
Until next time,
Calvin
Well written post, it makes it easier to learn essential points of the book
Can’t relate more to the most powerful whys that a human can have