Man's search for meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Excerpts from the book

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying.

Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, can not be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself.

The salvation of a man is through love and in love.

Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his 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.

"Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."

Man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

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.

It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom - that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while  a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life can not be complete.

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross , gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.

Everywhere man is confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something through his own suffering.

A man who could not see the end of his "provisional existence" was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life.

It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist. Regarding our "provisional existence" as unreal was in itself an important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life; everything in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often it is just such an exceptionally difficult external situation which gives man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to love in the past. Life for such people become meaningless.

Life is like being at the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet it is over already.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique  task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even is suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears towards a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how".

That which is does not kill me makes me stronger.

What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.

During psychoanalysis, the patient must lie down on a couch and tell you things which sometimes are very disagreeable to tell.

In logotherapy the patient may remain sitting erect but he must hear things which sometimes are very disagreeable to hear.

Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives.

It can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become. Such a tension is inherent in the human being and therefore is indispensable to mental wellbeing.

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.

The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human is and the more he actualizes himself.

Self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways:

1. by creating a work or doing a deed;
2. by experiencing something or encouraging someone; and
   
3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

The theory that man is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditions, or the product of heredity and environment.

Man is capable of changing the world for the better if possible, and of changing himself for the better if necessary.

Like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.

Tragic optimism, that is an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always allows for: 

1. turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment;
2. deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and
3. deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

The priority stays with creatively changing the situation that causes us to suffer. But the superiority goes to the "know-how to suffer," if need be.

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

But everything great is just as difficult to realize as it is rare to find.