AUTHOR: VIKTOR FRANKL NON-FICTION
RATING:
8 out of 10
Frankl’s life story, outlook on life and how to live it is inspiring and remarkable on every level. Although I (or anyone incarcerated) could NEVER begin to compare my experience to that of a concentration camp… there are common mental, psychological and social hierarchies at place in both situations that deeply resonated with me. Highly Recommend.
THEMES
SUFFERING | PURPOSE | HAPPINESS | LOVE | INCARCERATION | HOPE | PSYCHOLOGY | SOCIOLOGY
KNOWLEDGE FROM THE PAGE
“He who has a “why” to live for can bear almost any “how” – Nietzsche
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankle saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.
Forces beyond our control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to a given situation. We cannot control what happens in our lives, but we can always control what we feel and do about what happens to us.
We should not aim at success… the more we aim at it and make it a target, the more we are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than ourselves or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
The salvation of all of us is through love and in love. We can grow to understand how we who have nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for brief moments, in the contemplation of our beloved.
No one should judge unless he/she asks themselves in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation they might have done the same.
Our self worth and identity is a fragile foundation to rest our happiness on. The majority of prisoners suffer from a kind of inferiority complex. We all had once been or had identified ourselves as a “somebody” in one arena or another. Now, we are treated like complete non-entities. The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more “spiritual” things , and cannot be shaken by prison life. But how many “free” people, let alone prisoners, possess this higher belief in themselves? Without consciously thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded. But the prisoner who deliberately made an effort to rise above his/her circumstance… persevered.
Every single thing can be taken from us besides 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.
Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete. The way in which we accept our fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which we take up our responsibilities in life, gives us ample opportunity… even under the most difficult circumstances… to add a deeper meaning to our life.
In prison, the outside life, that is, as much as we could see of it, appears to us almost as it might have to a dead man who looked at it from another world. Personal note – Many times throughout the pre-trial and sentencing process, I described the feeling as if I had died and was watching my loved ones go through this experience from outside my body. Extremely strange dynamic took place in these horribly unique circumstances
It is a peculiarity of us that we can only live by looking to the future, and this is our salvation in the most difficult moments of our existence, although we sometimes have to force our minds to the task.
Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
A person who becomes conscious of the responsibility he/she bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him/her, will never be able to throw their life away. They know the “why” for their existence and will be able to bear almost any “how”.
The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing. It is a question of the attitude one takes toward life’s challenges and opportunities, both large and small. A positive attitude enables a person to endure suffering and disappointment as well as enhance enjoyment and satisfaction.
“As the day of his liberation eventually came, when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a nightmare. The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more.”
And lastly, Frankl was once asked to express in one sentence the meaning of his own life…
“The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs”.