“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl is one of the most moving books I’ve ever read.It’s a book written in 1946 by an Austrian concentration camp survivor named Viktor Frankl. He is Prisoner Number 119,104.
For people undergoing so much suffering and pain, Frankl's story might ignite a flicker of hope and become a source of inspiration and strength as he shares his experiences in the concentration camp and how he survived the inhumane conditions and successfully kept his sanity intact.
If you’ve watched any Holocaust film, you’ll know how inhumane the conditions are. Prisoners are barely fed – just a piece of bread and watery soup for the entire day considering they do hard labor outdoors like laying railroad tracks or digging a tunnel under extremely cold temperature and without sufficient winter clothing!
They have to work non-stop or they will be whipped, punished or killed. If their feet are blistered, they can’t limp. They can’t look pale either because once the Nazis see them unfit for work, they will be sent to the gas chambers. To look healthy, they shave using a piece of broken glass and sometimes, they even have to trade their bread for the day just to be able to shave!
At night, about 9 people share a small bunk (approximately 6 1/2 to 8 ft!) and they sleep on top of another sharing only 2 blankets. And they wore the same shirt for 6 months until it’s no longer recognizable as a piece of clothing.
During winter, for several days, they were unable to wash – even just wash their hands from mud and soil after working - because the water-pipes are frozen.
Add to these physical unbearable conditions are - verbal abuse, death threats they get hourly and daily, and the mental torture of not knowing whatever happened to their family members.
A lot of prisoners as Frankl shared considered suicide and some did take their lives. The most popular method was running and touching the electrically-charged barbed wire fence.
So what did Frankl have to say about surviving and overcoming the impossible? First, Frankl believes that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. Second, what allows one to endure any condition is having a Why to live for so you could bear the How.
For some, the why could be the prospect of spending your life with someone, looking for a cure for a disease, or even work. He cites that he knows a lot of successful businessmen who became depressed after retirement because they had nothing to do. It was work which gave meaning to their lives.
Frankl identified 3 possible sources for meaning:
1. In work (doing something significant)
2. In love (caring for another person)
3. In courage (during difficult times)
Among these 3, what kept Frankl alive and sane? While in the concentration camp, he preoccupied his mind with thoughts of his wife and the prospect of seeing her again (even if he wasn’t sure she was still alive). He also had an aspiration that when he would be free someday that he would share his lessons from the concentration camp. And he did! As of the time of Frank'l’s death in 1997, his book sold over 10 million copies already and was translated in 24 languages.
Anyway, the most important takeaway from Frankl is on preserving one’s human dignity. He emphasized that forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing - your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
He further elaborates that if your self-esteem depended on the respect of others, you would be emotionally destroyed if that respect is stripped. But if we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond, no one can strip us off anything. As Frankl puts it - Spiritual freedom - which cannot be taken away - is what makes life meaningful and purposeful.
