Man’s Search for Meaning
I recently finished the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl and I now see why this book is recommended so often. Guests recommend it on many podcasts, and I had been looking forward to reading it for quite a while. It didn’t disappoint. The book is about Frankl’s experience during the holocaust and what he went through at multiple concentration camps. It’s not written as a recalling of the facts, but rather an analysis of the psychological toll the experience had on the prisoners and what it took to make it out. It’s an amazing eye-opening story and his theories obviously hold water because he survived and wrote this book. Here are some of the lessons I learnt from this book.
Viktor Frankl was a neurologist and a psychiatrist, and he developed Logotherapy. The basic premise of Logotherapy is that the primary motivational force of an individual is to find meaning in life. The idea is that life has meaning under all circumstances, and this includes the miserable ones. We have one main motivation for living and it’s our will to find meaning in life. We need to be made aware of the fact that we have the freedom to find meaning in what we do and experience. Even in situations that seem to result in unchangeable suffering, we are in control of how we perceive it.
We can add deeper meaning to anything and it doesn’t matter how others perceive it. In Frankl’s circumstances, he lost his first manuscript about Logotherapy when he first went to the concentration camps. It was taken off him and it hadn’t been published yet. This was one of his driving forces, that, and seeing his wife again. He believed in Logotherapy and so many instances throughout his suffering proved him right. The prisoners were kept in such poor conditions surviving on barely any food. If they weren’t looking forward to something bigger than themselves and a purpose they had to achieve outside of the camp, the prisoners tended to perish. Most of the time it happened around landmark days like Christmas. Many prisoners believed that they would be saved by Christmas, that was their end, and when it didn’t happen, they gave up all hope. Being so weak, this small loss of hope usually resulted in death.
Frankl refers to the quote by Nietzsche, “He knows the ‘why’ for his existence and will be able to bear almost any ‘how’”, a few times in his book and he swears by it. You’ve got to believe in your ‘why’ wholeheartedly and you can achieve almost anything. It’s crazy to think about what these men and women went through and how they were able to survive. In our current time, we don’t have to face hardships nearly as tough. This tends to make us complacent and comfortable with not having a ‘why’. That North Star guides us with determination and resilience. I’d say most people don’t have a ‘why’ and haven’t even given it a second thought.
Frankl speaks about his experiences with some of his patients and one stood out. A man grieving his wife came to see him and didn’t know what to do. He had severe depression from his wife passing away two years ago. He asked the man how his wife would have felt if he was the one who had passed away first. He told Frankl that it would have been terrible for her and that she would have suffered. Frankl went on to tell him that she had been spared of this suffering and it was him who had spared her. This was all done for the price of surviving and mourning her. This changed the patient’s perspective completely; he had now given meaning to his suffering. That simple change in the way he views the exact same tragedy can end his depression. This story helped explain logotherapy to me and understand that the stories we tell ourselves are so important. In a measured and motivational kind of way, not in a delusional way.
This book really got me thinking about my ‘why’ and whether I had one. I don’t think I do, and I plan to work on it for the next few weeks. If Frankl based his whole life on this type of psychology and having a why was the key to happiness, then why not sit down and think about it for a bit? I feel like a ‘why’ is a bit different to your goals. Goals are great, but they seem to be accomplishable in a shorter time frame than our whole life. That’s what I think a ‘why’ is, it’s a lifelong purpose something to work towards with. It may not be unachievable, but if it is achieved, we will have to find another. It’s a combination of our values, how we perceive the things that happen to us and our goals. Perceiving things in a positive light or a learning experience can help us move on from them and not stand in our own way. I know it’s easier said than done and people have had to deal with some difficult challenges, but the way you perceive it can be the difference between moving forward and standing still.
Logotherapy has really got me thinking and I plan to do a bit more digging. Frankl was adamant that we need to realise that we can change our present circumstances and I’ll just leave you with a quote from him.
“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.”