Man's Search For Meaning

Celebrated Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, was born on March 26, 1905 and remains best-known for his uplifting 1946 psychological memoir “Man’s Search for Meaning”— a meditation on what the gruesome experience of Auschwitz taught him about the primary purpose of life: the quest for meaning.  His wife died in the camp and he endured the unimaginable but managed somehow to convey magical moments in the midst of pain and loss that speak to the heart. 

Where can you run to?

With whom can you take refuge?

To whom will you look?

What country shall you live in?

In what direction shall you go?

At what hour shall you find rest?

What will become of you in the end?

To what will you be faithful?

If you find the truth will you be obedient to it?

“Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, “I have nothing to expect from life any more.” What sort of answer can one give to that?

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. 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.”

Viktor Frankl

If the fire of the love of God is ignited in your heart

You would neither rest nor relax,

Nor be distracted or held back from divine nearness, sanctity and beauty.

Your longing soul would weep as one bereaved

Longing to determine the truth you would find no peace

Until, God lays bare the divine path before you.

“We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 

“The light shineth in the darkness.”

For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.”

Viktor Frankl

PS Words in itallics are paraphrased from the Baha'i Writings