Book Review: Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Welcome to a new quote I recently grabbed from a book, and what it has to say through my understanding.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

The book Man's Search for Meaning is one embedded in the walls of non-fiction not only because of the powerful message it passes across to the reader or any form of impression it might create, but for the simple reason of who the author is and what he lived through. The author of the book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl, was a psychiatrist and, most importantly, a survivor of the Holocaust.

A quick Google search will tell you:

The Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.

Check Wikipedia for more

This information has piqued my interest in the knowledge the author shares in his book. The highlighted quote When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves is a truth he came to realize while in the Nazi concentration camp. While under such harsh and unspeakable conditions where freedom, comfort, and survival were all taken away, he concluded that it is not about how bad the situation could get, but more about how he could respond to it. At this time, there was nothing much he could do except control his attitude and response, which were the only things within his reach.

I can only imagine what a tough place it would be to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Given the unspeakable genocide taking place at that time, it can be devastating to a person's soul, and hope at that time may seem vague or far-fetched. We cannot tell how one may react in a given situation until it happens, but the more I think about it, the more it all comes down to what is within your control. Worrying about things that are not within one's control is a recipe for stress. In my opinion, we have to focus on what we can do, more like the actual steps we can take that fall within our power.

The world is filled with people who want power simply to govern certain outcomes of people. We want to be in control of many things, especially when it involves our personal life, job, and relationships. We want to know how it plays out. Are we going to be okay in the end? Will things get better, and more like this? It is tempting to become obsessed with what lies at the end of the tunnel that we forget to focus on the journey. This is where the quote becomes effective. When the situation does not play out into our desired outcome, we are forced to focus on ourselves.

There is no harm in wanting to focus on yourself, at least your action is something that is within your control. How you respond in a given situation boils down to you, and things that involve you can only be decided by you. You do not have to wait until it gets pretty bad or the situation does not play out like you wanted before you decide to change course for yourself. Life will not always follow the script we have planned out for it, but how you respond to it depends solely on you.

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_{I am @samostically, a chess player and writer. I love to share the experience I have gained from different battles over the 64 squares and the knowledgeable insights from books I have read. But most importantly, I am a Midnight Owl and I founded the community Midnight Letters.}

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Thanks For Reading!