"Man's Search for Meaning" and Related Thoughts

This book is powerful and has the potential to be life changing. I found myself moved by Victor Frankl’s story and inspired by the messages conveyed in the novel.

I get the feeling that this is the kind of book that takes a while to fully absorb - and I can easily see myself reading this book 2-3 times more over the course of a lifetime. Frankl’s messages are timeless, and even as a college student, I found themes and messaging which could be cross-applied to my life today.

Experiences in a Concentration Camp

The most inspirational quote referenced in the book to me was one by Nietzsche

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

This quote underpins so much of Frankl’s story - and can be traced back as the single core reason how he was able to maintain his sense of hope and optimism. Frankl takes us along as he navigates life in the camp: the life and death game of finding favorable foreman during daily work hours, the debate over the best way to consume the meager rations they were afforded, and the randomness and nonchalant way in which guards determined who lived and who died.

The book holds little back - displaying the most primal of human desires for self-preservation, life, and breath. There are scenes in the book which brought me to tears - and ones which made me gasp at the seemingly limitless cruelty on display. But throughout all of that, there was a sense of the robustness of the human spirit - the will to live was like that of an undying candle in a vast thunderstorm of hate, cruelty, and despair.

One particularly jarring scene in the novel was when Frankl described the working conditions as linemen. Frankl talks about how his feet would often be so swollen with edema that the only way he could fit his too-small-shoes on would be to leave them unlaced with no socks. In this condition he was forced to trudge in the snow - his swollen feet interfacing with the frigid snow for hours on end.

Over and again men slipped and those following behind stumbled on top of them… One of the guards took action and worked over the men with the butt of his rifle to make them get up quickly.

Throughout Frankl’s suffering, he remained cognizant of the fact that while he could not control what happened to him, he could control how he responded to the situation. (You might also like to read an article I wrote on Stoicism)

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.

Man’s Search for Meaning

The crux of the book’s argument is that the purpose in life is the striving toward finding one’s meaning. From what I got, Frankl broadly breaks down meaning into a few life avenues.

• Love, relationships. Caring for another person. Being needed by someone else - making an impact in someone else’s life is just about the most concrete meaning you will be able to derive from life.
• Work. The devotion to a meaningful project or endeavor which can’t be completed without you.
• Courage and the response to suffering. The way in which we respond to suffering.

Frankl believes that (just like in a movie or film), the final meaning of life only reveals itself in the final moments before death.

This final meaning, too, depend[s] on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualized to the best of the respective individual’s knowledge and belief.

Hearing words like this remind me of a quote my high school civics teacher introduced me to

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. — Søren Kierkegaard.

Even though the final, true meaning of life will only reveal itself to you in your final moments, that by no means implies one should wait to pursue any of the avenues listed above in the present. Love wholesomely, work on interesting projects, and have the courage to face life’s challenges and suffering.

Suffering

If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Frankl views suffering as a byproduct to life. Suffering itself can have meaning, and he writes how it is the way in which we carry a burden, not the burden itself which defines us - and can ultimately give us meaning.

The courage to suffer. The courage to suffer bravely and press on nonetheless, fulfilling the expectations that life laid out for him. That is meaningful living.

Fruitful Tension

This novel got me thinking about the relationship between our short term vs. our long term desires. In contrast to the slow burn of long term (learning of an instrument or craft) pursuits, short term desires have the “promise” of quick satisfaction (drugs, procrastination, Netflix, etc). This has led me to believe that man seeks out these quicker term “outs” of pleasure when he no longer believes in a long term vision or meaning. Frankl describes this as “fruitful tension”, the tension which arises from the inadequacy of the present and the possibilities of the future.

“Man does not need homeostasis at any cost, but rather a sound amount of tension such as that which is aroused by the demand quality inherent in the meaning to human existence. Like iron filings in a magnetic field, man’s life is put in order through his orientation toward meaning. Thereby a field of tension is established between what man is and what he ought to do. In this field existential dynamics is operating. By this dynamics man is pulled rather than pushed. “(Psychotherapy and Existentialism, Frankl p. 21)

Speaking metaphorically, fulfillment of these short term pleasures obfuscates your magnetic field and prevents your symbolic iron filings from pointing in the direction of your meaning. The message I think is clear: learn to enjoy the slow burn of long term pursuits.

Envy the Old

Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

Another message I’m going to take away, is Frankl’s take on growing old. Part of the allure of youth is the seemingly endless possibilities and optionality (Read this article I wrote previously on childhood optionality). Certainly when you’re young, so much of your identity and sense of security lies in what you plan to accomplish or do, not on what you’ve done already. Dreams are cheap, and part of youthhood is the fantasization of everything you hope to do when you’re older. However, as you age, one by one, the dreams you had as a child seem to drop like flies. The experiences of the real world teach you valuable lessons - and you see the dreams of your youth clash with the inadequacy of where you see yourself now.

However, Frankl has a different take on things - believing that experiences are in many ways more valuable than possibilities. For, experiences are solid, real events and machinations in the past. Nothing can change them - they are relics of a life well lived.