25th June 2024
One of the most life-changing books I have ever read is Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
The book is a chronicle by Viktor Frankl of his experiences as a German Nazi concentration camp inmate during World War II.
In this book, Frankl describes his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then repeatedly imagining that outcome.
The central theme of Frankl’s book is ‘survival.’
Although he witnessed and experienced horror, the book focuses less on the details of his own experience and more on how his time under Nazi rule showed him the human ability to survive and endure against all odds.
As Frankl wrote, he saw the lowest parts of humanity while in the camps.
He saw fellow prisoners promoted to be in-camp guards turning on their fellow prisoners. He watched as they beat their lifeless, malnourished campmates. He watched sadistic guards treating them as if they were lower than animals.
But he also saw human tenacity and individuals rising up like saints above it all.
The part that impacted me the most from the book was this:” When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves…
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.”
Life isn’t easy.
And unlike, what we imagine in both scenarios of triumphs and disasters, life isn’t supposed to move in a straight line of happiness and smiles, or sadness and pain.
It’s not supposed to stay the same, just like you’re not supposed to stay the same.
Life is evolving and changing. It is a constant surge of ups and downs, twists and turns, and as Rudyard Kipling said,
“…triumphs and disasters.”
And in each of these “triumphs & diasasters”, we have the power to choose our attitude – how we will react to the victories and challenges that life will invariably throw at us.
Choose wisely & stay blessed forever.