Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, or a quest for power, but a quest for meaning.
This book is one of the classic psychiatric texts available to the readers. It is a timeless formula for survival. It is written by a prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl, in which he has vividly mentioned all the experiences that both he and others in Auschwitz concentration camp coped (or didn’t) with. A gem of a dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems. The greatly valuable life lessons are the biggest takeaways of this book.
The author keeps reiterating the fact that we always have a choice in our lives. He goes on to emphasize that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. What we become is the result of an inner decision, and not only the external influences around us. Frankl came to believe that man’s deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. Like so many German and East European Jews, Frankl was cast into the Nazi network of concentration and extermination camps. But his account in this book is less about his travails, what he suffered and lost, than it is about the sources of his strength to survive.
There are many valuable life lessons
in this book which can be actually life-changing for the readers. Here, I am
presenting some of the important lessons from the book-
Lesson 1
Victor keeps reiterating these words-“He who has a Why to live for… can bear
almost any How.” If you have found the purpose of your life, which is apparently different for
different person, you’ll find the ways to fulfill that purpose or achieve that
goal.
Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, or a quest for power, but a quest for meaning. The great task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. So, find the meaning in your life. Life holds a potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable ones. Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering.
Lesson 2
Sometimes it happens that people
undergo the phase of life where they are in an existential vacuum. There is this feeling of the total and ultimate meaninglessness of their lives.
They lack the awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the
experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves. No instinct
tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do;
sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes
to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him
to do (totalitarianism).
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?” There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life.
Existential vacuum in extreme cases also results in suicides. Most of the times, people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. This meaninglessness eventually leads to cases of suicides. Well, an individual’s impulse to take his life would have been overcome had he been aware of some meaning and purpose worth living for.
There is a solution to this problem-“who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.”
Lesson 3
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. There are always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offers the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determines whether you will or will not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determines whether or not you will become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become moulded into the form of the typical inmate.
Only the men who allow their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fall victim to the external influences. When in distress try to force your thoughts to turn to another subject. By this method you will succeed in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment. Those who lose faith in the future—his future gets doomed. With the loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. So, it’s all about attitude. Change the way how you see things, and you’ll do great.
Lesson 4
The man, whose self-esteem had always
depended on the respect of others, is emotionally destroyed. We are never left
with nothing as long as we retain the freedom to choose how we will respond.
Lesson 5
“Don’t aim at success—the more you
aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be
pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect
of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of
one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the
same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.
Lesson 6
The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little.
Lesson 7
What you have experienced, no power
on earth can take from you. Not only our experiences, but all we have done,
whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is
not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also
a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. Human life, under any
circumstances, never ceases to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning
of life includes suffering and dying, privation and death.
It was in the nature of this
sacrifice that it should appear to be pointless in the normal world, the world
of material success. But in reality our sacrifice did have a meaning.
Lesson 8
The meaning of life always changes,
but that it never ceases to be.
We can discover this meaning in life
in three different ways:
(1) by the way of achievement or accomplishment
(2) by experiencing something-such as goodness, truth and beauty—by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness—by loving him.; and
(3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering-We may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. We can challenge human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. At times, we need to change our attitude toward the unalterable fate.
Man’s main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. However, in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. Meaning is possible even in spite of suffering, provided the suffering is unavoidable. If it were avoidable, however, the meaningful thing to do would be to remove its cause, be it psychological, biological or political. To suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic.
What we need to understand is that suffering is unavoidable. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end.
Lesson 9
The meaning of love. Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
Lesson 10
The transitoriness of our existence in no way makes it meaningless. But
it does constitute our responsibleness; for everything hinges upon our realizing
the essentially transitory possibilities. Man constantly makes his choice
concerning the mass of present potentialities; which of these will be condemned
to non being and which will be actualized?
At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be
the monument of his existence. The
transitoriness of our lives is a reminder that challenges us to make the most
of every moment of our lives. The irreversibility of our lives should motivate
us grab every opportunity to act on all the potentialities to fulfil a meaning
in our lives.
Lesson 11
We need to amend the saying “The wish is father to the thought” to “The fear is mother of the event.” The author has mentioned few psychological concepts in the book…So, I’ll explain each concept in brief.
Hyper-reflection-is also pathogenic. Don't live constantly with the
fearful expectation of the toll which your traumatic experience would someday
take. This anticipatory anxiety results in incapacitating the person towards
attainment of goals.
Solution- Paradoxical Intention- you are invited to intend, even if only for a moment, precisely
that which you fear. This helps in resolving deliberately the issue of
anticipatory anxiety. This procedure consists of a reversal of the person's
attitude, inasmuch as his fear is replaced by a paradoxical wish. By this
treatment, the wind is taken out of the sails of the anxiety. It lends itself
as a useful tool in treating obsessive-compulsive and phobic conditions,
especially in cases with underlying anticipatory anxiety.
Lesson 12
One should remain optimistic in spite of the "tragic triad" of human life-(1) pain; (2) guilt; and (3) death. Say yes to life in spite of
everything. Life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those
which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to
creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or
constructive. In other words, what matters is to make the best of any given
situation.
Lesson 13
Optimism…optimism is not anything to be commanded or ordered. One cannot even force oneself to be optimistic indiscriminately, against all odds, against all hope, exactly the way happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason, e.g., you have to tell him a joke. In no way is it possible to evoke real laughter by urging him, or having him urge himself, to laugh. Doing so would be the same as urging people posed in front of a camera to say “cheese,” only to find that in the finished photographs their faces are frozen in artificial smiles.
Lesson 14
There is no reason to pity old people.
Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old people have no
opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that.
Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past- the
potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the
values they have realized- and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets
from the past.
Lesson 15
How does a human being go about finding meaning? “All we can do is study the lives of people who seem to have found their answers to the questions of what ultimately human life is about as against those who have not.” Conscience can act as a prompter which, if need be, indicates the direction in which we have to move in a given life situation. In order to carry out such a task, conscience must apply a measuring stick to the situation one is confronted with, and this situation has to be evaluated in the light of a set of criteria, in the light of a hierarchy of values. These values, however, cannot be espoused and adopted by us on a conscious level—they are something that we are.
That's all guys. I would strongly recommend the readers out there to spare some time and read this wisdom rich book. It will possibly change the way you see life. It's going to be of great help to add meaning to your life.
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