Man's Search For Meaning

I just finished reading Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Hands down one of the top five life changing books I've ever read. If ever there was a time in my life that I needed affirmation of what my life is, this was the time. I feel utterly humbled and inspired to become something better that I ever imagined I could be. It is my responsibility as a human being.

In honor of this lovely book, I thought I'd share some of my favorite, most poignant (to me) exerpts.

"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you."

"...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 answers to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

"But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer. Only a few realized that."

"He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how"."

"Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it."

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked."

"...being human always points, and is directed to something, or someone, other than oneself - be it a meaning to fulfill or a human being to encounter. The more one forgets oneself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."

"In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."

"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."

"To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity."

"...the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best."

"...man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."