The Meaning of Life — Explained by a Holocaust Survivor
We don’t get to ask for it — life asks us
“If we take man as he is, we make him worse. But if we take man as he should be, we make him capable of becoming what he can be.”
In paraphrasing Goethe, Viktor Frankl just delivered a big lesson about what it means to be a good therapist to Canadian psychology students. The year is 1972.
Frankl is a neurology professor at the university of Vienna. He holds a PhD in philosophy, an M.D., and is a bestselling author and sought-after speaker.
30 years before, none of this seemed possible. On most days, it was more likely for Frankl to die than see another sunrise. Being Jewish, Frankl was deported to Theresienstadt in 1942, a concentration camp. He lost his father there. His mother and brother died in Auschwitz. His wife in another.
There is no combination of words that can paint a picture gruesome enough to convey what existing in a concentration camp must have felt like.
Frankl survived. Upon his return to Vienna, he dedicated the rest of his life to spreading a lesson he had learned during his darkest times: Humans can — and must — find meaning in their lives — even if it’s attached to suffering.
