I have a fond love for books, especially those that make me feel like I’m becoming a better person for having read them. Books that can give me a new perspective on life or help me understand what my purpose is are always something I gravitate towards. When difficult situations arise in life, I turn to books. The written concepts of wise people are what gets me through things. Some books are written by teachers. Some are written by doctors. Some preachers. Some books are inspiring tales of those who have beat the odds and lived to tell about it. I particularly focus on the books written by psychologists when I need to remind myself of the mind’s power to create our existence and rebuild an optimistic approach. The most recent book that I have added to my list of “Books that have changed my life” is Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. There is a reason why this book has been published in dozens of languages and sold tens of millions of copies. He wrote it in only 9 days and yet the knowledge it carries with it will help the lives of millions for centuries to come.
It’s difficult to describe in a simple blog the enormous impact this book has had on my mind and nothing I could say would give it the justice that an individual reading it from cover to cover could gain from it. I read it in less than 2 days. It was that good. Here are a few things I high-lighted from the book, just to give you an idea on how Frankl thinks:
"The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance."
"What is to give light must endure burning."
"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."
"Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time."
"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."
"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation."
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that 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."
"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."
"I do not forget any good deed done to me & I do not carry a grudge for a bad one."
"Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance."
"A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions."
“The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us."
"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering."
"Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of..."
"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how."
"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, although these are things which cannot inspire envy.'
I almost want to read this book again even though I just finished it yesterday...
