It’s a book about some of the talks that Viktor Frankl gave after surviving the concentration camps.
There’s a lot of wisdom related to how to find meaning in life in this book. There are even some insights on how to find meaning in death.
If you’ve read his other book, Man’s Search for Meaning, and found it valuable then you’ll enjoy this one as well.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 4/5
Mindset: 5/5
Some of My Highlights:
“‘They never forgot that life was a gift that the Nazi machine did not succeed in taking away from them.’ They were determined, after all the hells they had endured, to say ‘Yes!’ to life in spite of everything.”
“…Whatever our future may hold: We still want to say ‘yes’ to life, Because one day the time will come – Then we will be free!”
“Frankl asks us, shouldn’t we, living far more comfortably, be able to say “Yes” to life in spite of everything life brings us?”
“Propaganda, as we learned in my civic class, relies on not just lies and misinformation but also on distorted negative stereotypes, inflammatory terms, and other such tricks to manipulate people’s opinions and beliefs in the service of some ideological agenda.”
“The sighs are clear: shutting down opposition media, quashing dissident voices, and jailing journalists who dare to report something other than the prevailing party line.”
“In the face of death, for instance, there can still be an inner success, whether in maintaining a certain attitude or given the fulfillment of that person’s life’s meaning.”
“Rather than just seeking happiness, he proposed, we can seek a sense of purpose that life offers us.”
“He even posits that the more difficult, the more meaningful troubles and challenges can be. How we deal with the tough part of our lives, he observes, ‘shows who we are.'”
“The underlying motive for not-knowing, he points out, is to escape any sense of responsibility or guilt for those crimes.”
“‘Fate’ is what happens to us beyond our control. But we each are responsible for how we relate to those events.”
“An ancient myth tells us that the existence of the world is based on thirty-six truly just people being present in it at all times. Only thirty-six!”
“…as soon as we notice any pedagogical tendency in a role model, we become resentful; we human beings do not like to be lectured to like children.”
“Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; this the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us.”
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked – and behold, duty was joy.” – Rabindranath Tagore.
“Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty, and that we will later try to define more closely.”
“…we can fulfill the demands of existence not only as active agents but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful the great, the good.”
“We give life meaning not only through our actions but also through loving and, finally, through suffering.”
“So, how we deal with difficulties truly shows who we are, and that, too, can enable us to live meaningfully.”