Weekly Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning

By Mark Brown

Suffering is part of human existence. It’s simply a matter of degree. Some may only have to face the “suffering” of unfulfilled ambition, while others will encounter the worst that life can deliver. Viktor Frankl is one of the latter.

In 1942, Frankl, a Vienna Jew, was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. He was later transported, briefly, to Auschwitz, and then to Türkheim/Dachau, near Munich. I can imagine fewer fates worse than that awaiting Jews in the Nazi concentration camps, even those that were not “extermination camps.” For Nazis, Jews were subhumans, which made their lives cheap. In addition to ruthless slave labor, camp inmates faced malnutrition, appalling living conditions, capricious camp rules, brutal guards, and even vicious fellow prisoners.

Amidst all this, Frankl not only survived, but managed to find meaning in the suffering. In fact, Frankl concluded that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful. His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, has inspired millions of people around the world. While hopefully none of you will ever face depredations anywhere near Frankl’s experience, his positive outlook can give you the right perspective to overcome suffering.

I share a handful of quotes that illustrate Frankl’s remarkable outlook:

• We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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 circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
• It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
• Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.

Find Man’s Search for Meaning on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.