Man's Search For Meaning (1946) | Viktor Frankl

This was written by Viktor Frankl back in 1946.

 I had been seeing it listed in book recommendations from a couple thought leaders. I chanced upon a copy of it at one of what seemed like family-owned bookstores in Quezon city. 


 Here, Victor Frankl, narrates his experiences and observations in a concentration camp during World War Two, and how he notices how some men strive over seemingly-awful circumstances. He is also the founder of  Logotheraphy. While Freud concerned a will to pleasure as a root of human motivation and Adler a will to power, Frankl postulated a will to meaning.

 A couple notable snippets in the book

We who lived in 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.

 ...

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 right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

  ...
Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you have acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now.
...
Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have the reason to "be happy". Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically 

 ...
In an oversimplifying vein, people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.

 ... 
As Logotherapy teaches, there are three avenues on which one arrives at meaning in life. The first is by creating a work or by doing a deed. The second is by experiencing something or encountering someone. The third is facing a fate he cannot change; that he may rise above himself, that he may grow beyond himself, and by doing so change himself. 

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