Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

"The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it."

It's crazy to think, that in surviving four different Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl was still able to find meaning in his life and in his suffering. Man's Search for Meaning, first published in 1946, is brief and poignant. How did Frankl survive the camps is not the real question. How did he find meaning in his suffering is more to the point. 

Frankl serves up depravity from a detached point of view, and offers sympathy and grace equally to those who did not survive, and to those that became monsters to survive. In so doing, he offers a better way, a hope for ourselves when all else seems lost:

“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.”

I've been on a huge "Choose Joy" kick lately, all the while understanding that choosing joy may be easy when you live a life of privilege. But here, Frankl suggests that joy is even available for those who do not have all the benefits of a gifted life. And that even death with dignity is a meaning unto itself.

5/5 Stars.