A Meaningful Life Amidst Terrible Conditions
Frankl knows all too well because he lived through it. In World War II, he was taken, along with millions of other people to concentration camps. He saw it all. People were hauled in trains. Families were separated. Those who were deemed “weak” were killed. Everything was taken. No possessions, no families, no clothes, no identities. Frankl wrote about his experiences in this book.
Being a psychiatrist, he also noted and observed the psychological phases a prisoner goes through. Upon admission, a prisoner feels shock. On his day-to-day existence, he starts to feel apathy and helplessness. When finally set free, he feels things are unreal, laced with an underlying sense of guilt.
For those that weren’t killed, Frankl noticed a difference between the people who kept going, and those who didn’t. The people that survived had meaning in their lives. Frankl himself kept living with the memory of his wife, even though he did not know if she was still alive. He wrote that he talked to her every day. Her memory provided meaning to his existence.
At a later section, Frankl notes that people can derive meaning from three things: (I) from doing good work, (II) appreciation and love, (III) and facing a fate he cannot change.
We had to teach the despairing men that, it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life-daily and hourly.
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning
Why read Man’s Search For Meaning?
In the preface to the 1984 edition, Frankl wrote, “I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair”. Our day-to-day living seems pale in comparison to the horrors that people went through. And yet how easy is it to fall into, as Thoreau writes, lives of quiet desperation. But maybe we feel this way because we assume life owes us something.
How can you use this information?
You are responsible for many things. Carry the biggest burden you can. Be kind and useful.
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First Published: June 1, 2019 11:38 AM
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