Man's Search for Meaning

So Blindness didn’t go anywhere with me, it got to a point I started ignoring the book in hopes that I would still finish it – God knows how! So the logical part of my brain concluded that I was done and promptly returned it to the library before the irrational side had a chance to protest.

Recently I’ve been keeping a few books on hold, so since the next one had arrived it made parting with Blindness easier.  Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl is a book that details his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live.

In moments of torture, Dr. Frankl describes how he found the zeal to hang on to living with experiences that we otherwise don’t pay much heed to and how they helped him see love is the quintessential force in this universe.

An example of Frankl's idea of finding meaning in the midst of extreme suffering is found in his account of an experience he had while working in the harsh conditions of the Auschwitz concentration camp:

“... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "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."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining 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.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. 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. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way  – an honorable way  – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...."

Undoubtedly, it is a hard book to read but it is teaching me a lot about how to approach life and how lucky are we to have found love. The one thing that resonated with me is his attitude of choice. He says we have a choice at every stage in life – we may not have a choice about what happens to us but we do have a choice about how we act once something happens. We can choose to accept it and work with it or fight it and be miserable.

Dr. Frankl’s primary purpose in life was to help others find theirs. "We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by creating a work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."