Man's Search for Meaning

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

These are the words that I don't want to ever forget. This is the book and the story that I want to always bear in my mind because here I've read that concentration camps are the ultimate test for human psychology, which makes people into pigs or into saints. It's just unimaginable to read what these people had to go through on a daily basis.

The meaning of life, the question that a human being has been trying to answer for hundreds of years, as Viktor Frankl found out, becomes something that can save man's life in his toughest moments. He has seen people who were dying just because they had lost hope and, most importantly, meaning and reason to continue living. And also people who saved their life literally by having a purpose to endure suffering and to find meaning in the suffering itself.

Viktor wants us to understand that the meaning can be found even in suffering. Everything can be taken away from you but the willingness to find meaning and take responsibility for your life even in the most unimaginably cruel and unfair situations, where all you have left is your naked body and you find it hard to even identify yourself as an individual human being.

Just thinking about the problems that you think you have, and comparing those to the problems people had in concentration camps changes your perspective on many things.

When I'm dealing with my day to day problems, I wish I could always remember to imagine what it felt like to stand in front of a gas chamber knowing that your life was over for no reason at all. Or when I'm complaining about the food I eat, I wish to picture those people who ate a little piece of bread and a cup of watery soup once a day while doing lots of physical labor. And also facts of cannibalism in concentration camps.

Regular people, just like us, did things that they never thought was possible for them to do. Some became cannibals, some became saints.

So, in short, Viktor Frankl says that it's all about the meaning and purpose you find for your life. Live for something other than yourself. That was the way to get through one of the toughest sufferings that mankind has ever seen.