This one was a long-awaited read for me. I had come across this book back some years ago when I was going through the self-development category in a bookstore. The name of the author “Viktor E. Frankl” was all that I could remember about this book. But as it happened, once again, I made my way back to this book (or, maybe, this book made its way toward me). After my first momentarily brief encounter with the book at some forgotten bookstore, it was only after this one guest lecture during our Training that the speaker mentioned this book. In fact, the session was mostly centered on this book because the speaker has had a similar experience in his life. Of course, unlike the one, Frankl had in the concentration camps. And that’s when the book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl rang a bell in my mind and that’s how we met (I mean, the book and me).
Only after reading this book that I realized how much I have missed about life and its meaning from a totally different yet simplest possible perspective that the author has put in the book. This article is just a humble and innocent attempt to present what I could grasp from the book and found worth sharing with the world.
About the Author:
Prof. Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, born in 1905, spent three years in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps during World War II.
Reviewing “Man’s Search for Meaning”
The book is divided into three parts. The first part is built around the author’s Experiences in the Concentration Camps. The second part is focused on Logotherapy which was pioneered by the author. The concluding part is a postscript that presents the Case for Tragic Optimism. The first part constitutes the significant part of the book and is the base for the successive parts.
Hitler’s concentration camps from World War II are self-explanatory. However, the author, being one of the few prisoners who survived the camps, presents in his book a firsthand account of what life used to be for the prisoners in the camps, the fates of the inmates, and most importantly the psychological reactions of the inmates.
For the Camp Administration, the prisoners in the concentration camp were nothing but just numbers. The name, the profession, past lives… none mattered. If someone died, it was just a number. If someone had to be sent to the gas chamber, again the prisoner was just a number. As a matter of fact, the author was Number 119,104.
As a psychotherapist (or logotherapist), he analyzed, through observations and experiences that the inmates in the camp generally used to go through three phases of mental reactions, viz.
a. Initial admission to the camp: Shock
b. Getting used to the camp routine: Relative Apathy
c. Release and Liberation
The author talks about his own personal experiences as well as others regarding the first phase. He and the other 1500 prisoners were brought to the camp on an overloaded train. The train stopped just where they wouldn’t even want to be at the end of the world, the place they dreaded the most—Auschwitz because the name itself was known for all that was horrible: gas chambers, crematoriums, and massacre. Immediately on their arrival, their fates were to be decided—will they live to see another day or will they be sent to the gas chamber right away? And their fates were then and there determined by the simple waving of the finger of the SS officer in either direction, Left or Right. The significance of the finger game was later known that it defined their existence or non-existence. Almost 90% of the 1500 who arrived at Auschwitz that fateful day was sent to the left. They could be later seen as the cloud forming up from the chimney a few hundred years off. The author made it into his existence.
What would happen next? What was in the store for them? For instance, when they were sent for the shower, skin naked, they didn’t know if they would come out alive, for they always doubted if the real water dripped from the water sprays.
In such adverse and harsh conditions in the camps, the thought of suicide would dawn upon nearly everyone, and the camp provided enough opportunities for doing so. Take, for example, running through the wire—touching the electrically charged barbed-wire fence.
Coming to the second phase—the phase of relative apathy, the prisoner achieved a kind of emotional death. What the prisoner used to feel or experience on the first few weeks of their arrival at the camp, later they got used to it—the scenes of torture, beatings, screams, and even the death of fellow inmates. Feelings were blunted. No pity, no horror, no disgust… just nothing. Sick inmates and corpses couldn’t move them. Corpses were dragged carelessly on the floor like a bag of potatoes.
Such emotional death was necessary for the inmates to survive the condition. This insensibility worked as a protective shell—the necessary mechanism of self-defense. Getting out alive was all that mattered. A person thought of himself only, his existence being descended to the level of animal life, the survival instinct.
It’s worth understanding the psychological states and reactions that the author has illustrated in the book which is not only a matter of academic interest but can serve as a simple guide to the life of a person. The author had set a rule for his life. He learned to let fate take its course. Once, he volunteered to go with the sick inmates to the “rest camp”, which everyone thought was destined to be a gas chamber. But he decided to go anyway, even when his well-wisher offered to amend the list. As it turned out, lucky for the author, they were actually taken to the rest camp. No gas chambers. And shortly after he left, famine surged in the previous camp. Cannibalism broke out. Pieces of flesh were missing from the corpses.
This aforementioned account is related by the author to the story of Death in Tehran. The story goes as follows:
A rich and mighty Persian once walked into his garden with one of his servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening. The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse. On returning to his house the master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,” said Death.
The lesson of the Story
The lesson of the story: we cannot escape our fate. We will inevitably meet it even when we are trying to avoid it. We are our own worst enemies sometimes. The decisions we make for our future are part of our fate.
Making choices in life and taking initiative whatsoever is one of the most difficult tasks for anyone. In the concentration camps, some decisions meant either life or death. However, the author’s experience of camp life shows that man does have a choice of action. Even in the most adverse conditions, one can have independence of mind. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. This is one of the most overlooked powers of the mind, the ignorance of which leads to psychological and mental decay of the person in an adverse situation.
Finding Meaning in Suffering
People try to avoid suffering in life. They tend to feel sorry for themselves. This is especially true for those who don’t have resources at their disposal. Society has learned to admire material wealth and happiness. And those who cannot afford such lifestyles feel sorry for themselves. Unhappiness is one thing. They feel unhappy for their unhappiness.
“But even in suffering, one can find meaning. Life and Suffering are co-existent. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete. Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.” Frankl writes.
After all, suffering isn’t that bad. It is a blessing in disguise. But the question is: Are you worthy of your suffering? Dostoevski once said, “There is one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my suffering”.
Therefore, you got to have faith in yourself and your future to make it through your life—no matter your circumstances. Nietzsche put it simply as “he who has why to live for can bear with almost how”. Give yourself a why—a goal, for your life. The how of your existence will make its way. But if you see no more sense in life and see no point in carrying on, you will soon be lost. An anonymous person once said to me: Live a BIGGER life… Not the lonnngggger one”. True.
Life and Expectations
Most of us ask ourselves this question: What can we expect from our life? This question is fallacious. We need to make fundamental changes in our attitude. It doesn’t really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. What is the responsibility of our existence and its continuance in this universe? You have a responsibility toward someone who is waiting for you—your parents, relatives, lover, or even some pet. Or you have unfinished work to do. This a great message from the author to all those potential suicide fanatics.
Life is a B!tch. It hardly goes your way. But if you are still alive and reading this post, CONGRATULATION!!! You have a reason for existence. You have hope. You haven’t given up. I know you have gone through a lot in your life and a lot more is yet to come. Whatever you’ve gone through, the pain and pleasure, the sufferings and celebrations, all these can be and will be an asset for you in the future. As Nietzsche said: “[that] what doesn’t kill me, makes me [more] stronger”. (No… it wasn’t by METALLICA. Sorry to break it to you.) What you have experienced so far in your life, no power on earth can take from you. Live and cherish your life.
So what’s the Ultimate Meaning of Life?
There’s no one specific answer. It’s like asking Lionel Messi or Christiano Ronaldo what the best trick in football is. It is unique for every individual, and even for an individual, the life of meaning differs from situation to situation, day to day, and hour to hour… like for the prisoners of concentration camps.
When you find meaning in life, you find meaning in suffering. But that doesn’t mean that suffering is necessary. If it is avoidable, the meaningful thing to do is to remove it from the equation. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
Ask yourself: How do you see your life from your deathbed? Do you see meaning in it? Have you lived it to the fullest? Even if you are wealthy, full of financial success and social prestige but when looking back at it from your deathbed if you cannot see what all that was for… it may not have been worth everything. But, in spite of your suffering, if you see meaning in your life… well, there you go, Winner.
You change the calendar every year. From the pessimistic POV, it’s like your calendar of life is thinning out with every passing moment. But if you truly want to find meaning in life, live your life in a way that you can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness you have had in your life. You tear out the page from the calendar that you have lived through, scribble the notes worthy of remembrance and stack it with the well-cherished pile of your life’s experiences.
And what will be your choice when you grow old if you are given the option to be young again? Do you find a reason to envy your younger self, feeling nostalgic over your lost youth? While the youth may have yet uncovered possibilities for him in the future, isn’t it better to have the realities of your past rather than just the fantasies and possibilities of youth?
Final Words
Finally, I would like to conclude with this line from the book:
Live as if you were living already for the second time, and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. It means that first, the present is past, and second, the past may yet be changed to be what you are meant to be. It’s like a Time Machine, I guess. Just a thought!
I’d seriously recommend that you read this short but deep book “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl. You won’t regret it.
Drop your meaningful comments below!
