Man’s Search For Meaning

Ever wondered the bitterness a Holocaust survivor would harbour towards life? How life was so unfair to them? To go through what they went through for no fault of theirs but simply by virtue of who they were born as?

Viktor E Fankl takes us on a journey through the terrifying concentration camps of prisoners stripped naked of all their precious possession(s) and shaved completely. Everything taken away from them, even the last thing they could hold on to, their name, which was also exchanged for a number, often tattooed on their skin (119,104 was Frankl’s number). The concentration camps were death sentence in many ways where, if one did not die of starvation, the rigorous manual labour/torture was there to take care of that or, ultimately, the gas chambers. What did Frankl see and experience in the camps to write this book and conclude that man can find meaning even in the harshest circumstances of life, as he aptly writes it:

In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen

Below are my major takeaways from the book:

1. He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how

Quoting Nietzsche “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how”, Frankl talks of giving a why (an aim) to the prisoners to bear the (horrible) how of their existence. Often prisoners in the concentration camps were doomed because they had lost faith in the future – their future. And this happened when one could not see any future goal resulting in retrospective thoughts creeping in – “Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.” Frankl, rightfully sums it up with:

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed 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 fulfil the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual

Frankl further argues that – “… it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way” because it – “…differ from man to man, and from moment to moment”. Every individual is unique and have their own path in life to pursue and cannot be compared with others. 

“Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny

Sometimes life may bring us to situations that may require us to shape our destiny by the action(s) we take at that time, sometimes we may be required to accept the fate, which Frankl calls as it as – “…to bear the cross.”. For those struggling with the thought “I have nothing to expect from life anymore”, the antidote is to make them realise that – “…life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them”.

2. The Salvation Of Man Is Through Love And In Love

Salvation came in different forms to the prisoners in the camp. For some, it was the future of seeing their children or reuniting with their loved ones, for others it was their years of research work that needed to be completed. Frankl recounts how one icy cold morning as the prisoners were being marched to work, one prisoner marching next to him whispered: “If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.” For Frankl, it was primarily the love for his wife, Tilly Grosser (separated from him) in which he found his salvation (though he also talks of his work that was taken from him in the camp).

Below are some of the passages of Frankl’s thoughts of his wife and they are melancholically heart warming.

But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imaging it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

The blissfulness Frankl found in the memories of his wife was despite knowing not if she was still alive.

I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I would still have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying.

On the second night in Auschwitz, Frankl was again reminded of his young wife who was also in another (unknown) camp in a rather sombre manner.

Suddenly there was a silence and into the night a violin sang a desperately sad tango, an unusual tune not spoiled by frequent playing. The violin wept and a part of me wept with it, for on that same day someone had a twenty-fourth birthday. That someone lay in another part of the Auschwitz camp, possibly only a few hundred or a thousand yards away, and yet completely out of reach. That someone was my wife.

Those nostalgic memories, helpless as it may be, gave Frankl the realisation that:

The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved

3. The Will To Choose

Frankl questions about human liberty: whether a man is conditioned and unavoidably influenced by his environmental surroundings? Or does he still have a choice of action in the face of circumstances such as the concentration camps? In an answer to his question, he saw prisoners acting out in a certain manner, in defiance of the circumstances against them (such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and physical and mental stresses) that suggested a result of an inner decision of choice.

We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms–to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

We may never be in a situation like the concentration camp (hopefully), but we always have choices to make every day and every hour of our life. Each life choices presents an opportunity for us to make decisions that will determine whether we submit to the external factors or exercise our inner freedom of choice. In so doing, one will find themselves worthy of their sufferings that makes life meaningful and purposeful. As the Russian philosopher Fyodor Dostoyevsky puts it “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings”.

4. Take Time To Enjoy The Little Things Of Life

From a shameless self-proclaimed sunset lover, the mention of the prisoners enjoying the sunset really got my attention. Frankl narrates how the prisoners would draw the attention of each other to the view of a nice sunset through the Bavarian words. Even in the midst of all the hardship where all glimmer of hope for life faded, the prisoners still managed to stop and enjoy a fleeting moment to appreciate nature.

One evening, when we were already resting on the floor of our hut, dead tired, soup bowls in hand, a fellow prisoner rushed in and asked us to run out to the assembly grounds and see the wonderful sunset. Standing outside we saw sinister clouds glowing in the west and the whole sky alive with clouds of ever-changing shapes and colors, from steel blue to blood red. The desolate grey mud huts provided a sharp contrast, while the puddles on the muddy ground reflected the glowing sky. Then, after minutes of moving silence, one prisoner said to another, “How beautiful the world could be!”

Reading through the description, I was among them watching the same sunset (Sigh!).

This is a good reminder that we too (in much better times) need to pause from our busy lives to: enjoy momentarily the nature (sunrise/sunset/cloudy skies); immerse yourself to your favourite song playing nearby; the innocence of a baby smiling at you; take notice to admire a flower blossoming…etc. Take your pick, I am sure there will be something for  you to relish the moment, though brief as it may be.

5. Conclusion

Frankl summarises that the meaning in life can be discovered in three different ways:

• Creating or Doing a work: the way of achievement or accomplishment
• Experiencing something or encountering someone: this can be achieved by experience nature, culture or experiencing another human being
• Attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering: Meaning in suffering is possible only when we are confronted with a hopeless situation, a fate that cannot be changed. The keyword is unavoidable suffering, otherwise to suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic, cautions Frankl.

The short review here would not justify the magnitude of a book like this, one has to read it thoroughly to grasp the wholeness of the book. If you are interested to read further, you can buy it from BookDepository or Amazon and also read what many others have to say on Goodreads.