Book Review: "Man's Search for Meaning"

I received a book entitled "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl, as a graduation present and I finally finished reading it a few days ago.

WOW! This is one of those books that will seriously change your life, or at least your perspective. Utterly inspired. This is definitely going on my "favorite books" list. I highly recommend it, and just to tease you into reading it yourself, here are some of my favorite excerpts:

"Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it." (from the forward by Harold S. Kushner)

"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior."

"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. The 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."

"Love goes 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."

"As the inner life of the prisoner tended to become more intense, he also experienced the beauty of art and nature as never before. Under their influence he sometimes even forgot his own frightful circumstances."

"Humor was another of the soul's weapons in the fight for self-preservation."

"No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same."

"Nietzsche's words, 'He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how'..."

"Human kindness can be found in all groups even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn."

"...there are two races of men in this world, but only these two - the 'race' of the decent man and the 'race' of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of 'pure race'..."

"The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the wonderful feeling that, after all he has suffered, there is nothing he need fear any more - except his God."

"A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of his life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease."

"...something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation."

"Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself." (also "...happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.")

"...we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

Seriously people, READ IT. It is worth your time, I promise!

xoxo,

     Rebecca