Man’s Search For Meaning

Books Everyone Should Read At Least Once In Their Lifetime: #1

Man’s Search of Meaning illustrates the extraordinary mental and physical strength of human beings under extreme conditions. Besides explaining the countless punishments and tortures people endured in the concentration camps, this book remarks how those who had a strong positive attitude toward this misery were able to survive the human atrocities that happened in the World War II, which was thanks to having a meaning in life (and a lot of luck).

The book is divided into two parts, the first part explains the three phases that prisoners went through from the moment they entered the concentration camp until they were liberated. These phases were: (1) shock, (2) apathy and indifference (3) feeling of emptiness.

The first phase corresponds to the shocking experience when they arrived at the concentration camps and contemplated the unjustified and brutal punishments by the SS and Kapos.
The second phase describes how the prisoners progressively got accustomed to the pain, injustice, and contemplation of death by those who surrounded them. This made the prisoners emotionally dead, which served as a defense mechanism to resist and not lose the conviction that they will be freed someday.
The third phase is the sudden depersonalization experienced by the prisoners due to the inability to assimilate their drastic change from being prisoners to be free. What made this even more traumatic for them was to face the reality that most of what they had and most of what they had been dreaming to do once they were liberated (work, share with their significant one) was no longer there, everything was gone.

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

The second part of the book consists of the therapy developed by Victor Frankl named “Logotherapy”. The Logotherapy compared itself from psychoanalysis, which the main difference between these therapies is that psychoanalysis focuses on the past of the patient while Logotherapy focuses on the future of the human being that has the goal to find the meaning of life.

The author states that the will of meaning can be found through (1) creating work, (2) experience someone (love), and (3) the attitude toward suffering. Even though the first two are explained, it is on the third, how to find meaning in life through suffering, where Victor Frank puts more emphasis. He shows through multiple stories how even in the worst conditions, mentally and physically, a human being can find meaning in life by turning suffering into a human achievement.

Regardless of the path where one’s could find the meaning of life, he states that it can only be found through “tension”, which it’s defined as the gap between what we are and what we want to become. Otherwise, being tensionless could translate into experiencing an “existential vacuum” due to the lack of goals established in life. Even worst, we could fool ourselves into thinking that the will of power or will of pleasure — like being rich or traveling — translates into having a will of meaning. This can bring a consequence that has been coined as the “Sunday Neurosis”, which describes the depression experienced when people become aware of the void created within themselves due to the lack of goals and content in their life.

Therefore, the reason why I consider the timing for reading this book couldn’t have been more adequate since it has made me understand things from a different perspective, helping me have a better attitude about the global COVID-19 situation. This time in solitude, due to the quarantine, has taught me countless things, which if I have to pick the main learnings would be (1) to not take for granted many of the things life offer that continuously goes unperceived due to our hectic routine (2) to empathize more with people and don’t judge how they are facing this unprecedented situation since none of us are truly aware of the problems a person might be going through.

On the last note, this book has encouraged me to rethink not what I expect from life, but rather what life expects from me, making me realize the strength and endurance of the human being under extreme circumstances, which of course by no means I intend to compare this quarantine with what prisoners experienced at Auschwitz, but that has been useful for me in those moments when I have felt stressed, disappointed or sad during this quarantine.
Thus, making me take the best of any given situation.
That’s what matters and that’s what we should all be aiming for.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl