Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ was my father’s oft-quoted book when I was growing up. He would narrate how the author mentally survived the harrowing Nazi concentration camps and found meaning in his suffering which made his life worthwhile even though his life was hardly certain or fair.
I recently got a chance to read this book – though short, it is quite impactful. His life’s work reduced to ‘shit’, the fate of his family uncertain, suffering daily from physical and mental blows, barely getting anything to eat, hardly getting any space to sit, sleep or crawl, doing hard, menial chores in the frigid cold with barely any clothes on his reduced to skin-and-bones body, with only 1 in 20 chance of survival – Viktor Frankl had indeed suffered a lot. Even though, he was reduced to the basest of human conditions, he never let himself be reduced to basest of emotions. While he had no control over his plight, he chose to react better, he chose to suffer better.
Logotherapy is practical psychiatry. Instead of a “pursuit of happiness”, it asks us to pursue “meaning” in life. And it’s not a lofty, woozy, ten-thousand feet high, abstract “meaning of life” that he is asking us to search for – but the everyday kind – what are we striving for or whom do we love enough in life – that we find meaning in the act or experience that makes living worthwhile. Happiness would be the by-product when we find meaning to our life. And sometimes, when our luck turns rotten – which it would, Logotherapy asks us to find the meaning in our suffering and not to give up.
Hard book to live up to. But I have seen people (including my 80+ old uncle) who have something to look forward to in life – some goal to achieve, person to love or experience to seek. Life is a struggle, but it would be worthwhile if it had a meaning.
Alienman 