Published by: Rider
Pages: 160
Date released: 06/05/2004
Date read: 04/03/2021
Man’s Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl’s story of his struggle for survival in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Today, this remarkable tribute to hope offers us an avenue to finding greater meaning and purpose in our own lives.
This book review is going to be slightly different to normal. I feel somewhat uncomfortable writing a review on a book that documents some of the worst atrocities in our history by someone who experienced it firsthand. I could mention that it’s not very long, that it’s a bit all over the place, but this is meaningless really. Instead, I am going to comment on what I think the book means and what it can do for its readers.
As bizarre as it may seem, I find books about the war and things like the holocaust always have a way of making my day brighter.
That’s not to say I enjoy reading about such heinous crimes. In fact, no matter how many books on the topic I read, I am never comfortable when reading them, and I think that’s a good thing. We should NEVER be comfortable with the things Frankl describes in this book.
But the reason I find them uplifting is to see the ability humans have to forgive and to grow. No matter what they want through, brought to the literal brink of death, they can find it in themselves to forgive, to move on, to find happiness, joy and love. And that instantly warms me. It’s important to find the meaning and the purpose in suffering, to choose not to let it break you (easier said than done I imagine).
As Frankl says, “everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of his human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
If people pushed to the very edge can see a brighter tomorrow, then I sure can.
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