This is one of the best books I have every read and I think it falls in line with the books that have impacted me. I recently finished Man's search for meaning by Viktor Frankl and there are a lot of different emotions that fall in this book and it will take the reader through many highs and lows that it makes the story exceptional. In this book Victor Frankl takes the reader through his life in a concentration camp and how life was for the hostages during the war and all they had to go through to survive. There was a lot of things that he went through and how life was for the survivors of these concentration camps and how out of the loop they were when it came to their loved ones who were in different camps. They didn't know if their families were still alive or not.
Frankl through this was able to come up with the concept of Logotherapy which focuses on Man's search for meaning and what they do to get to that point. Some of the conditions Frankl and some of the other hostages at the camp went through was wearing the same shirts for half a year till they could no longer be seen as shirts and were not able to wash for days. They were also not able to clean their teeth and this led to a lot of the hostages committing suicide by attaching themselves to the wire fence that was around. There was hopelessness of the situation they were in and this is what led to constant suicide. One thing that is amazing about Frankl is that he made a promise to himself on the first day that he would never run into the wire.
To him there was little point in committing suicide because "Flattery defines man as a being that can get through anything". For the prisoners each day they made it through was a relief because they never knew if they would make it. If any of them looked sick and was unable to work, they would be taken away and gassed. They went through a lot from being beaten and being insulted as "pigs" on the daily. This was significant and due to the prisoners all being pulled together to sleep, Frankl heard a man next to him having a nightmare and screaming. Frankl wanted to wake him but realized "no dream no matter how horrible could be as horrible as the reality of the camp". This demonstrated the suffering they had to go through and the conditions.
Frankl who had being apart from his wife due to them being taken to different concentration camps had a day in which he looked in the sky and in the clouds and heard and saw her replying to him. His wife had turned 24 that day and he could do nothing but think of where she was in the world. To him, "Love is the ultimate and highest goal a man can aspire". He proclaimed that Salvation of a man is through love and love went far beyond the physical person of the beloved. Unfortunately Frankl found out that his wife had died at this moment after he was liberated but to him he would still have had the moment with her even if he knew she was dead at the time. Frankl in another chapter also displayed Humor as a way of self-preservation.
The thought of humor gave them the ability to rise above any situation only for a few seconds and he shared stories with some of his hostage friends about what they would be doing after they were liberated. This is when he realized "Everything could be taken from a man but one thing which is the right to choose once attitude in any given circumstance and to choose one's way". The suffering they went through to him had a deeper meaning and if there was a meaning in life there was also a meaning in suffering. To him external situations was an opportunity to give man the opportunity to grow spiritually and "it did not matter what we expected from life but what life expected from us". Another thing that kept Frankl and some of the other prisoners going is knowing that they each had a destiny to fulfill and no one should compare themselves. Everyone there at these camps had to find the why that kept them going.
An example was a scientist who had been working on a significant book and concepts he felt would change the world and knew no one else could finish it. That is what kept him going. This is the realization that "Human life under any circumstances never ceases to have a meaning and this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and death". After the prisoners were liberated Frankl noticed there was a lot of bitterness that was displayed after. A lot of them started treating people with violence to pay back others for what they dealt with and others were met with shrugs by the people's whose memory had kept them going. For them "No earthly happens could compensate for what they had to deal with at the camps".
After being released is when Victor Frankl came up with Logotherapy which focuses on the future and meaning of a person to fulfill their future. To him striving to find meaning is the primary motivational force for man. Man should "stop ourselves from asking the meaning of life but instead to think of ourselves as those being questioned by life daily and hourly". This was deep because I think a lot of the time we search around for meaning and are hard on ourselves for not being able to find it. A perfect example is a man Victor counseled who had lost his first wife and 6 children were gassed in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. The man talked about not thinking he would see his children in heaven because they were both innocent and he was a sinful man. Frankl was able to convince him on figuring that the meaning of his survival may have meant that it could be an opportunity for him to turn his life around and make him worthy of heaven. This opened the man's eyes to his true meaning. Frankl noted that Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be and what he will become in the next moment. Everyone has the freedom to change. There is a lot to learn from this book and I highly recommend it to everyone. Here's a link for anyone interested
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