Man's Search for Meaning

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

I've never felt this unsure about writing a review for a book. I'd go so far as to say that this book is like Bible, it doesn't warrant a review. It's beyond that. I'd rather try to write a testimonial here. For once, I thought of just posting all the beautiful lines from the book verbatim. I think I've dog-eared almost every page of this book. For it had so many things I'd want to go back to over & over again!

In his memoir, the author and psychiatrist, Victor E. Frankl, narrates his own experience from the Nazi death camps and talks about man's endless pursuit for finding a meaning in life & the role of sufferings in that pursuit. He beautifully asserts that suffering is inevitable but what's more important is to be worthy of those sufferings. The all-too-common adage that it depends on a person how they choose to respond to their suffering isn't something that this book harps on about. Rather it ventures into the idea that it's the meaning behind your suffering that empowers you to respond to your sufferings in a certain way. Hence it becomes imperative that you look for that meaning, whether in life or in suffering. That meaning would ultimately make you worthy of your sufferings. 

Having said that, he strongly urges not to be hard on oneself and not to discount all that one has achieved or experienced or suffered through in the past in one's life. In Frankl's own words " Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind". I read and re-read this sentence. And I let it seep into my core like the comforting warmth of a sunshine.

A good one-third of the book is dedicated to the tenets of Logotherapy that proposes that man's main concern is not to gain pleasure or to avoid pain but rather to see a meaning in his life. As long as there's a meaning to his suffering, man is ready to suffer. 

Man's Search for Meaning is unpretentious and honest. I find philosophy captivating to the brain and soothing to the mind at the same time. And mental health is as important to me as brushing my teeth every morning. No amount of probing into this topic is ever enough. And I think there are very few books on mental health & philosophy that a layman reader(is that a term?) finds easy to warm up to. Frankl puts across his experiences and his thoughts plainly yet simply enough to kindle your psyche. 

With that, I give it 5 shimmering stars! I'm sure I'm going to re-read all the dog-eared pages regularly and I hope you find it as gratifying a read as I did! With that, I move on to my next read "The Midnight Library". I'd like to leave you with one last thought from Frankl that, I hope, you'd cherish as much as I did: 

"So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if  you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"

Until next time. Happy reading! :)