Man’s Search For Meaning
Book Title: Man’s Search For Meaning: the classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust
Author: Viktor E. Frankl
My Rating (* have a look at my rating scale here): 5/5
Quest for happiness
We are all in the quest for happiness, the ultimate desire of all of the humankind is to be happy. We search this elusive goal everywhere, in work, in family, in money, in fame, in power and in success. Alas! Elusive it is! Nowhere to be found. In this quest for happiness, one question we often ask is what is the meaning of my life? What is the purpose? What is my ‘ikigai’?
Man’s Search For Meaning
In the foreword of this book, written by Harold S. Kushner, an American rabbi, author and lecturer said “Typically if a book has one passage, one idea with the power to change a person’s life, that alone justifies reading and re-reading it and finding room for it in on one’s shelves. This book has several such passages.”
Viktor E. Frankl wrote Man’s search for meaning in 1945, that too within 9 days. This book was his purpose, his meaning, his ikigai. What was true then, is true now as well. We all are in search of meaning or purpose of life. What Viktor Frankl says is that the true potential of the man is hidden and one must realize it, holding on to the optimism in spite of the “tragic triad” of pain, guilt and death. He says “To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and this freedom is restricted. It is not the freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand towards the conditions.” “Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant”. “Man is capable of changing the world for better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.”
Here is a clip of a Ted talk by Viktor Frankl. Isn’t it similar to that Swami Vivekananda said a 100 years earlier that “Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy – by one or more or all of these-and be free.”
About Man’s Search for Meaning:
This book is divided in two parts: Part I on “Experiences in a concentration camp” is about the experience of Viktor Frankl in German Nazi camps, what he suffered, what he felt, what he lost and what he gained. He gained an amazing strength to survive and what he attributes to is a ‘meaning of life’. He quotes Nietzsche “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. Frankl realized that life is not primarily a quest for pleasure (Sigmund Freud) or a quest for power (Alfred Adler) but a quest for meaning. The great task for any person is finding meaning in his/her life. Frankl saw three possible source for meaning: i. Work ii. Love iii. Suffering
Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possessed except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you. This is what constitutes the 2nd part of this book, the final take home message in terms of “Logotherapy”. ‘Logos’- meaning- logotherapy- focuses on the meaning of human existence as well as on man’s search for such meaning. This striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.
Coming back to the ‘tragic optimism’ that defiant power of human spirit, through which one is and remain, optimistic in spite of tragic triad of pain, guilt and death.
Quote-unquote
“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best. So, let us be alert-alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what a man is capable of,
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”
