A Priceless Book

 It’s hard for me to qualify the impact of reading this book. Since reading it for the first time three years ago, the compounding effect Man\’s Search for Meaning has had on my choices, love, empathy, and gratitude is tremendous.  This book is definitely in my must-read category.

Viktor Frankl is a Holocaust survivor and pioneering psychotherapist. In the book, Frankl describes how he willed to live despite losing his family and being imprisoned by people that did not value human dignity, trying to reduce him to a number.

There is no substitute for reading the book itself but hopefully, these notes give you all the more reason to read it.

\”Man can get used to anything, but don\’t ask us how\”- Dostoevsky

\”There are things that must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose.”-Gotthold Lessing

Don\’t let man judge your life, when they have little idea of it.

A fellow survivor was screaming from nightmares, decided not to wake him, because nothing could be worse than the reality of the camp

Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. The salvation of man is through love and in love. Love goes beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in its spiritual being.

Humor can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation

In a world which no longer valued human dignity, how could the prisoner not hold his own character in doubt.

Everything can be taken away from man, but the last of human freedoms remains, the ability to choose your own way

Every day, every hour, every minute, we make decisions that determine whether or not we submit to these powers that rob us of our very self.

\”There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings” – Dostoevsky

meaning in life = meaning in suffering

Worthy of sufferings, you rise above them, you step closer to real self

\”He who has a why to live can bear almost any how” – Nietzsche

Life means taking responsibility to find the answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks it constantly sets for each individual.

You are unique and alone in the universe in your suffering and purpose.

Existential, two meanings, meaning of existence itself and striving to find meaning in personal experience

Man doesn\’t really want a tensionless state(check your definition of happiness) but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal

Forced intention makes impossible what one forcibly wishes

Pleasure is a side effect and is destroyed to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself