My search for meaning

I reread this classic book by Victor Frankl last year after 20 years and felt that the timelessness and prescience of the advice from this book is so relevant even today . 

Below are some of the key sentences from the book which will hopefully motivate you to read this book if you have not or enable you to relive the memories of reading this book.

The key sentences verbatim from my highlights of the book are below 

Don’t aim at success- the more you aim at it and make it a target ,the more you 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 personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or or as a byproduct of one’s  surrender to a person other than  oneself.  Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it .

I want you to listen to what your conscience  commands you to do and go on to  carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see  that in the long run- in the long run i say!– success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.

If someone now asked us of the truth of Doestoevski’s  statement that flatly defines man is a being who can get used to anything, we would reply “Yes, a man can get used to anything but don’t ask us how”

 An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour 

Victor Frankl when he is about to wake up a fellow prisoner who was having a nightmare felt this :

At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us , and to which I was about to recall him .

Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire.

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory .

Victor Frankl when thinking of his wife :

Love is very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being , his inner self. whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all,ceases somehow to be of importance.

 Humour was  another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self preservation. It is well known that humour, more than anything else in the human makeup, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation even if only for a few seconds .

 The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher,more spiritual things,and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men,let alone prisoners,possess it ?

Fundamentally,therefore,any man can , even under such circumstances,decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once “ There is only one thing that i dread:not to be worthy of my sufferings”

The way in which man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity even in the most difficult circumstances to add a deeper meaning to his life . It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish,Or in the bitter fight for self -reservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal . Here lies the chance for a man to make use of or forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him.And this decides whether he is worthy of his suffering or not.

Quoting Bismarck

Life is like being to the dentist. you always think the worst still to come and yet it is over already .

 Emotion which is suffering ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it. 

Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of a man-his courage and hope, or lack of them -and the state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

It does 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 are being questioned by life- daily and hourly. Our answer must consist,not in talk and  meditation, but in  right action and 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 from each individual . 

That which does not Kill Me Makes Me stronger (Nietzsche)

 What you have experienced, no power on Earth can take from you.

 Human life under any circumstances never ceases to have a meaning and this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying,  privation and death. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the  certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not  detract from its dignity and its meaning.

 No one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them .

Man’s search for meaning is  the primary motivation is life and not a secondary rationalisation of intellectual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve the significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.

 Man, however, is able to live  and even to die for the sake of his ideals and values!

There is nothing in the world, I venture to say that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one’s life.There is much wisdom the words of Nietzsche “  He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how “

 Mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to  accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become . Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore it is indispensable to mental well being. 

 What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile  goal,  a freely chosen task .

 Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands  fulfilment. There he cannot be replaced nor can his life be repeated .Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it .

 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.

 The  more one forgets himself by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love, the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself . What is called self actualization is not unattainable at all for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it ,the more he would miss it .  In other words self-actualization is possible only as a side effect of self-transcendence .

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate which cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.  When you are not able to change the situation, just think of an incurable disease such as an inoperable cancer. We are challenged to change ourselves .

It is one of the basic tenets of logotherapy that man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but  rather to see a  meaning in his life . That is why man is even ready to suffer ,on the condition to be sure that his suffering has a meaning .

People have enough to live by but nothing to live for , they have the means but no meaning.

The book ends with these prophetic words below 

 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 two-fold sense

 Since Auschwitz  we  know what man is capable of 

 And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake .