Man’s Search for Meaning
The salvation of man is through love and in love. — Viktor Frankl
One of the most influential books of the twentieth century, told by a concentration camp survivor, Man’s Search Meaning has two parts: first to explain the experiences of camp life and second to draw on that experience as the basis of a new purpose driven psychology method — Logotherapy.
In 1944, the Nazis transported Victor Frankl, a doctor and psychologist, along with as many others they could cram into a train from Vienna to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, a guard looked Frankl over and sent him to the right side, which meant laying railroad track and digging water main tunnels in the snow as opposed to the left side which meant the gas chamber.
This book does not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences, experience which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments. In other words it will try to answer this question: how was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?
More than once, death just misses Frankl. Understanding the randomness of fate, Frankl resolved to accept whatever assignment was given to him. Once he kept his name on a list of prisoners to be sent to a rest camp, often a death sentence, but it turned out to be a true rest and the camp he left had a famine where the prisoners turned to cannibalism. Upon liberation, the newly freed survivors piled into two trucks, however, Frankl had to stay behind to act as doctor. The passengers in those trucks were taken to huts for the night and then huts were the burnt to the ground with the freed survivors inside.
Lesson: have courage to accept the things you can’t control.
The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action..Man can preserve vestiges of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.
Too often we make excuses for failures — not having a choice, not enough time, other people’s actions or capriciousness. Frankl’s makes that look immature. For him and the other survivors, finding that inner life, making that choice to live for something, to look to the future was instrumental in surviving. Those men who didn’t have something to live for, often gave up and didn’t make it through.
Lesson: No matter what your situation, you control what you think, how you respond, and your own state of mind. Nobody except you has control of your mind.
The Motivational Base Code
As Tony Robbins would say: nothing has any meaning except the meaning that you attach to it. Or Dale Carnegie would say: you are the source of your own happiness. But Frankl’s book has more credibility because of the adversity he overcame.
The Latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the finish, and a goal to reach. A man who could not see the end of his “provisional existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal. He ceased living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. Therefore the whole structure of his inner life changed.
You have to live for something or someone. It doesn’t matter what is. Too many people today have nothing to live for and they fall for anything. They fall for addiction, for sloth, to be used by someone.
Lesson: To have a healthy mental life, an inner life, you must have a goal that’s how you live for a meaning.
We need 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 task which it constantly sets for each individual.
You can only answer life by the actions your own life. Talk is cheap. A little less talk and a lot more action.
Lesson: life happens everyday in our actions.
In Nietzsche’s words: He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Simon Sinek’s TED Talk and book on starting with “Why” draws from Frankl or Nietzsche.
Once the prisoners determined that they had a why — whether it was to return to loved one or to finish a great work they started, they could bear their time in camps. Besides the malnutrition and unsanitary living spaces, the prisoners didn’t know when they’d be free. The prisoners had to hope that one day their liberation would come. It came too late for too many.
Lesson: You don’t have to live with that unknown, so improve your goals by setting a due date.
Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a secondary rationalization.
We are all on a journey. The will to meaning is as plausible an explanation for motivation as the will to power or any of its stand-ins. We should seek meaning over pleasure. Its almost unthinkable to suggest that man should seek pleasure first to Holocaust survivor who spent the next half century extrapolating the meaning of his suffering, his life, into a new psychological method.
Lesson: live your life for a purpose, your why.
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather a striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal.
No one ever drowned in sweat. No pressure no diamonds. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Paste in here your motivational quote of the day.
Lesson: We only grow when we move out of our comfort zone.
Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answer for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
Each one of us is the captain of our own ship. It’s our duty to take control and sail our ship towards its goal, navigating through the unavoidable suffering and setbacks we’ll surely encounter.
Lesson: you owe it to yourself to take responsibility for your life.
The true meaning of life is discovered in the world rather than within his own psyche.
When Frankl returned to his home city of Vienna, he found his wife who’d been pregnant when she was taken to a different camp had died. His parents and brother died in the camps too. Only his sister survived and she emigrated to Australia.
Frankl found a way to say yes in spite of everything. Despite everything, Frankl stayed in Soviet Vienna — perhaps out of call to serve its people as he’d done before the war.
Lesson: we find our meaning and our salvation by our action, by helping others.
We discover the meaning of life in three ways — by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.
Frankl’s revelation on the power love came to him during a challenging forced labor assignment. In the middle of the savagery, apathy, cold and disease, he found himself vividly communicating with his wife. He didn’t know where she was or if she was still alive. He found a way not only to cope, but a meaning to live for.
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.
Afterword
Man’s Search for Meaning ends with an afterword recounting a student’s interaction with Frankl. The student concluded:
The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.
Yes that’s exactly right. Frankl’s work is as life changing as it is life affirming.
Lesson: It’s more important than ever to read and share his message.
I’m amazed how Frankl found such love while oppressed by such evil, such profound hope and motivation in the face of such apathy and despair. It’s difficult to write anything after his words, which resound with truth and conviction. I’m thankful that I’ve read this book and hope more people will. Life consists not in the general, the abstract, or en masse, but in each individual, in their specific actions towards finding meaning and love. One reader at a time.
There are only two types of people decent and indecent.
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