I've been putting off writing this for nearly three months now because anything I write about this book will do it injustice. You simply must read it yourself. Usually, I take notes sparingly when I read, often just writing down a couple interesting passages and my thoughts on them. But once I got to the end of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, I had 8 pages of notes, quotes, and reflections. I'll share just a few of them here.
The book is split into two halves. In the first half, Frankl describes his experience as a victim of the Nazi concentration camps. In the second half, he outlines his meaning-based approach to therapy known as logotherapy. Frankl states that in life, most people find meaning through 1. their work and 2. their loving relationships. Inside a concentration camp, both of these things are stripped from a man, and he quickly begins to lose hope. Frankl observes that prisoners die not because of the brutal conditions of the camp, but because these brutal conditions made them lose the will to live. It is not the strongest or most physically fit inmate who survives, but the man with the mental fortitude and the ability to wield the one thing that can never be taken away from him: your attitude to the situation. To quote Nietzsche, "he who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
Frankl compares human suffering to a gaseous substance since it "fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little." Every individual is presented with a unique set of sufferings that only he himself can bear the burden of. This is where meaning can be derived from life—even from the barracks of a concentration camp, to hold one's head high, to see things in a humorous light, to remain brave, dignified, and unselfish… to be worthy of your sufferings.
Why does this book deserve a 9.8/10 rating? In my previous school term (January to April), one of the things keeping me going was the prospect of being able to somewhat relax over the summer. I was looking forward to dedicating more time to hobbies and intellectual pursuits of topics that piqued my interest in recent months. But as it turns out, working, commuting, and taking an online course (ECON101) meant not much spare time at all. I then became increasingly anxious about what life post-graduation would look like. If a 9-to-5 sucks up so much of your time, will I have to wait until retirement to truly "enjoy" life? Throughout May, as this reality that fell way short of my expectations began to set in, I found myself in a very bad mental place. For the first time in a very long time, I cried on several consecutive nights. This book helped me focus on the present, step up to the challenge, and take things one day at a time. It did not change the fact that these past four months have undoubtedly been the hardest of my life thus far, but it did change the attitude that I had, the actions I took, and thus the things I accomplished.
First of all, it's wild to think that at the time, I thought co-op 1 was the hardest 4 months of my life 😆.
Second, I strongly believe that reading Man's Search was a turning point not just over that co-op term, but for my life as a whole. My mindset before reading this book was: "work hard now so you can enjoy life later". Any suffering you endure now is for the good of your future self. Turns out, that's quite a tall order for your current self.
Man's Search radically changed the way I think about suffering. Frankl shows that even in a concentration camp where you have literally nothing but suffering, you can still derive meaning for your current self. To be clear, I am NOT trying to compare uWaterloo to Auschwitz when I say this, but in recent years, there have been periods of time, mostly during school, when I also felt like I had nothing but suffering. During those times, I reminded myself that every time I smile instead of frown, laugh instead of cry, stay calm instead of get angry, help instead of gatekeep, and try to remain the best version of myself no matter the situation, I become a little more worthy of my sufferings. I don't always succeed at this, but thanks to this book, I always try my best.
The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest. What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy.