Man’s Search For Meaning
Introduction
Man's Search for Meaning follows Viktor Frankl - an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor - through one of the darkest chapters in human history. And in my opinion is one of the most powerful books ever written.
Frankl was a practicing psychiatrist in Vienna when he and his family were taken by the Nazis and placed into concentration camps, including the infamous Auschwitz. He lost almost everything - his home, his freedom, his manuscripts, and most heartbreakingly, the people he loved most. His wife, his mother, and his brother all perished in the camps. And yet, it is within this unimaginable suffering that Frankl made one of the most remarkable observations of the twentieth century. That even when everything is stripped away - your possessions, your dignity, your loved ones - there remains one thing that can never be taken from you. The freedom to choose how you respond to any external factor placed upon you.
From this insight Logotherapy was born - a form of psychotherapy built on the belief that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power, but the search for meaning. That if a person can find meaning in their suffering, they can endure almost anything. As Frankl draws on the words of Nietzsche - "He who has a why to live, can bear almost any how."
The book is split into two parts. The first is his raw and deeply personal account of life inside the concentration camps. The second introduces Logotherapy as a framework, offering the reader a way to apply these hard won insights to their own life.
Woven throughout are profound observations about human nature, love, suffering, freedom, and purpose - the kind that stops you mid page and asks something of you. It is not a comfortable read, but I believe it is an important one.
Man's Search for Meaning is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. It is one of those rare books that has the ability to reframe everything and change your entire perspective on life. I see it as an omen from God that the universe placed this book in front of me in the immediate months following my wife's passing. It does not promise to remove your pain. It simply offers a way through the pain and inevitable suffering that entices the human experience.
Preface:
The preface of this text is written by Victor E. Frankl in Vienna of 1992. A Key takeaway I took from this preface was his ‘theory of success’
Frankl is candid about his intentions in writing the book. It was never conceived with fame or recognition in mind. In fact, he initially published it anonymously, with no name on the cover. His sole purpose was to convey a single, important truth to the reader - that under any circumstance, even the most unbearable of circumstances, a human being still holds the capacity to find meaning in their life. He believed that if this could be demonstrated within a setting as devastating as the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two, then perhaps it would gain some hearing in the wider world.
He then felt a deep sense of responsibility to document what he had lived through, and finished writing the book in 9 days, believing it may offer something to those who found themselves prone to despair. And then, in what he himself describes as both strange and remarkable - among the dozens of books he authored throughout his lifetime - it was precisely this one, the book he had intended to release without his name, the book written purely in service of others, that would go on to sell over 16 million copies worldwide with a gross sales of around 320 million dollars.
It is from this experience that Frankl formed one of his most memorable theories on success - that it cannot be chased. That the harder you pursue it, the further it moves from your reach. He writes:
"Don't aim at success - the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do, and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run - success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it."
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
It is a quietly radical idea. And perhaps one of the most honest things ever written about the nature of achievement.
Reading this, I could not help but think of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. A story about a shepherd named Santiago who leaves behind the familiar in search of his treasure.
When the book was first published, almost no one noticed it. In its first six months, it sold only two copies, both to the same person. By the end of the year, the publisher abandoned it entirely. Coelho was forty-one, desperate, and uncertain of what came next. Yet he never lost faith in the vision, because the book carried all of him. His heart. His soul.
In many ways, he was living the very story he had written: a man pursuing something unseen, guided only by belief, instinct, and the quiet pull of purpose. His real treasure was never fame, but his capacity to write, to translate the language of the soul onto paper.
So he kept knocking on doors until another publisher finally gave him a chance. Slowly, through word of mouth, the book began to spread. Three thousand copies became six thousand, then ten thousand. Months later, an American traveller discovered it in a small Brazilian bookstore and helped bring it to the United States. From there, it gathered momentum. Bill Clinton was photographed holding it. Then came Madonna, Will Smith, and countless others. Eventually, it remained on the The New York Times Best Seller list for more than three hundred weeks, was translated into over eighty languages, and is considered as one of the top 10 books of the twentieth century.
Coelho never knew the book would become a global success. He simply wanted to write from his soul. To tell the story of a man searching for meaning, because he believed that journey belongs to all of us. Like Viktor Frankl, he surrendered himself to something greater than recognition or success. He surrendered to the language of the heart.
Personal reflection:
Frankl's theory of success speaks directly to what many call the law of detachment. The idea that when you truly let go of outcomes, and release the need to control everything around you, you become less rigid, less fragile, and far more open to what life has to offer.
Stoicism echoes this perfectly. The ancient philosophers were clear - the only things within our control are our own thoughts and actions. Everything else is largely beyond our reach. So why exhaust yourself trying to wrestle with it? It is human nature, of course. But understanding this can save you an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering.
This idea is further reinforced by a concept many high performers swear by - immerse yourself in the process, and forget about the outcome.
I have my own version of this story.
In 2024, I was not selected in the Waikato NPC squad. It stung. I genuinely believed I was good enough to be there, and I still do. But rather than sulk, I buried myself in the work. I was first to every development training and last to leave. Before sessions I'd run my own passing drills. After everyone had gone home, I'd stay back and do my own running. I played some of the best rugby of my life for the Waikato development side - not because a contract was dangling in front of me, not because I was chasing a particular outcome, but because I simply loved the process of getting better.
Then, by what felt like pure chance - Earlier on in the year, a Wellington Rugby coach happened to be visiting Hamilton one weekend, caught one of my club games, and liked what he saw. He assumed I was tied to Waikato and moved on. But when my name didn't appear in their squad, and one of Wellington's halfbacks went down injured in Round 1, he picked up the phone.
Within a week, I had packed my bags and moved to Wellington on a two week contract. Two weeks became four. Four became a full season. We went on to win the New Zealand NPC Championship, and I earned a Super Rugby contract with the Hurricanes.
I could have quit. I could have decided the universe was telling me something and walked away. But without even fully realising it, I had been living Frankl's philosophy all along - head down, immersed in the craft, completely surrendered to whatever was meant to happen.
The lesson is simple.
Do the work. Commit fully. Then let go.
Success is not found in chasing a particular outcome. It is found in dedicating yourself to something greater than yourself. By living in devotion towards a higher cause, whatever reality comes into fruition as the by product is the reality meant for you.
Part one: Experiences in a concentration camp
This part does not claim to be an account of facts and events but of personal experiences from one of its survivors. In other words it aims to answer a simple question: How was life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner.
It is a raw account of life inside the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two - told not with rage or self pity, but with the quiet, observational precision of a man who was both living the nightmare and studying it at the same time. Frankl the prisoner and Frankl the psychiatrist existed simultaneously, and it is that dual perspective that makes this section of the book so interesting.
The Reality of Arrival
When prisoners first arrived at the camps - in Frankl's case, ultimately Auschwitz - they were met immediately with a process designed to strip them of everything. Their clothes, their possessions, their hair, and their names. You were no longer a person. You were a number. Frankl himself was tattooed with the number 119104. The dehumanisation was immediate and deliberate.
Upon arrival, prisoners faced the first and most terrifying ritual - the selection. An SS officer would briefly look each prisoner over and point them either left or right. One direction meant forced labour. The other meant the gas chamber. Frankl later discovered that on the day of his arrival, the vast majority of those who had travelled with him - including his pregnant wife - were sent directly to their deaths. Most prisoners had no idea what the selection even meant at that moment. The horror only revealed itself later.
The Three Phases of a Concentration Camp Prisoner
Frankl observed that prisoners moved through three distinct psychological phases during their time in the camps.
Phase One - The Shock of Arrival
The first phase was marked by shock and disbelief. Many prisoners arrived clinging to what Frankl calls a sense of delusive hope - a deeply human refusal to accept the reality of what was unfolding around them. The mind, in its own act of self preservation, struggled to process the scale of what it was seeing.
Interestingly, Frankl notes that one of the most common psychological responses in this phase was a dark, almost absurd sense of curiosity. Rather than breaking down completely, many prisoners found themselves observing their situation with a strange detachment - as though watching events unfold from a distance. This was the mind's first attempt to protect itself.
There was also what Frankl describes as "gallows humour" - crude, dark jokes shared between prisoners as a coping mechanism. A way of momentarily rising above the horror by laughing in its face. Small, but deeply human.
Phase Two - Apathy and Emotional Death
If Phase One was shock, Phase Two was the slow and devastating death of feeling.
After the initial horror had settled, prisoners entered a state of deep emotional numbness. Apathy became a survival mechanism. The things that would have caused an ordinary person profound distress - witnessing beatings, death, starvation, cruelty - began to lose their power to shock. Not because prisoners became cruel themselves, but because the psyche simply could not sustain that level of pain indefinitely. It shut down to survive.
Hunger was a constant, consuming obsession. Frankl describes how conversations among prisoners frequently drifted toward food - recipes exchanged, meals remembered, restaurants imagined. It was a way of mentally escaping the present moment, however briefly.
The longing for family was equally consuming. Frankl speaks movingly about how he would conjure the image of his wife during moments of extreme suffering - her face, her voice, her presence - and find in that image a source of strength that nothing in the physical world could provide. It is here that one of the book's most profound insights begins to take shape - that love is one of the deepest sources of meaning available to a human being, and that it transcends even the most brutal of physical circumstances. Love transcends even death.
There is a point in the text where Frankl and the other prisoners have to march from one location to another, through the cold morning and night, over large stones, and through large puddles. Without having anything to eat for days on end. The accompanying guards kept shouting at them and hitting them with their rifles if they fell out of line. It is through this process that he is comforted by thoughts of his wife and is comforted through his love for her. He writes:
"Occasionally, I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise. A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. "
- Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Prisoners in this phase also lost all sense of future. Time collapsed. The idea that life might one day be different felt not just unlikely, but almost incomprehensible. And it is this loss of a future - this inability to imagine anything beyond the present suffering - that Frankl identified as one of the most psychologically dangerous states a person could inhabit. Once man sees no meaning in his life, or no future destination that he can arrive at, his mind and body collapses into despair. No longer able to feel anything more, and not caring whether or not he dies.
Phase Three - Depersonalisation After Liberation
The third phase came after liberation, and it was in many ways the most quietly devastating of all.
Freedom, when it finally arrived, did not feel the way prisoners had imagined it would. After years of emotional numbness, many found they were unable to feel joy. They walked out of the gates and felt - nothing. Or at least, not what they expected. The feelings were there, buried somewhere beneath years of suppression, but they could not reach them. Frankl describes it as a kind of depersonalisation - a surreal disconnect between the event and the emotional response it should have produced.
Over time, the feelings did return - but often they arrived as bitterness and disillusionment. Many survivors returned home to find their families gone, their homes taken, and a world that had largely moved on. Some encountered indifference from those who had not lived it, and found that the suffering they had endured was met not with understanding, but with uncomfortable silence. The world outside the camps had no real framework for what these people had experienced.
Healing, Frankl observed, was slow. And for some, it never fully came.
The Central Learning - Meaning in Suffering
Woven through every phase, every observation, and every story in Part One is the question that would define Frankl's life's work - what keeps a person going when everything has been taken from them?
His answer, drawn from direct experience, was meaning.
He observed that the prisoners who survived - not just physically, but psychologically - were almost universally those who had found something to live for. A person waiting for them. A work left unfinished. A purpose not yet fulfilled. Those who lost their sense of meaning, he noted, deteriorated rapidly - giving up their food, refusing to rise in the morning, surrendering to the inevitable.
This led to one of the book's most enduring and important ideas - that suffering in itself is not the destroyer of a person. It is meaningless suffering that breaks them. Give a person a reason for their pain, and they can endure almost anything. In addition, Frankl mentions that to give a man mental courage within the camp he had to be shown something to look forward to in the future. He had to be reminded that life still waited for him, that a human being awaited his return. A human being that he loved or who loved him.
As Frankl draws on Nietzsche to express this phenomenon:
"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, cited by Viktor Frankl in Man's Search for Meaning
A Final Thought on Part One:
What makes Part One so extraordinary is the fact that through all of the suffering, Frankl refuses to be only a victim. He remained, an observer of the human spirit - cataloguing not just its capacity for cruelty, but its astonishing capacity for resilience, love, humour, and meaning.
He saw people stripped of absolutely everything, and still found within them something that could not be taken. Something interior. Something undefeatable.
And the 'something’ that Frankl observed ultimately led to his concept of ‘Logotherapy’. A tool, a framework, a guideline to help an individual overcome the inevitable suffering of living the human experience.
That, ultimately, is what Part One is about.
Part Two: Logotherapy in a nutshell
Logotherapy is a form of existential, meaning-centered psychotherapy developed by Viktor E. Frankl. Logos is a Greek word which denotes ‘meaning’.
It holds that the primary human motivation is the search for meaning, and that psychological distress often stems from a perceived absence of meaning. The therapy aims to help people discover, create, or reaffirm meaning in their lives - often through focusing on purpose, values, relationships, responsibilities, and attitudes toward unavoidable suffering. Techniques include existential analysis, and paradoxical intention.
This is echoed when Frankl states: “Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future”. And “Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life”
A statistical survey of 7,948 students at 48 different colleges was conducted by social scientists from John Hopkins University. Their preliminary report was part of a two-year study sponsored by the national institute of mental health. In the study they asked students what is very important too them, 16 percent answered “making a lot of money”; 78 percent said their first goal was “finding purpose and meaning to their lives”.
Frankl’s own experience
Viktor Frankl offers a compelling personal illustration of these ideas. He quotes Nietzsche again: “He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” In describing the Nazi concentration camps, Frankl notes that inmates who believed they had a future task to fulfill-and someone they loved to return to-were more likely to survive.
When Frankl himself was sent to Auschwitz, a manuscript he hoped to publish was confiscated. That loss strengthened his deep desire to rewrite the work. While ill with typhus in a Bavarian camp, he wrote notes on scraps of paper so he could reconstruct the manuscript in the small chance that he got through the camps alive and liberated. He believes this effort helped him avoid a collapse under the extreme strain. From these experiences, Frankl argues that mental health rests on a certain tension - the push between what one has achieved and what one still aims to accomplish. He treats this tension as a fundamental part of human nature and essential to well-being. Frankl states:
“We should not then be hesitant about challenging man with a potential meaning for him to fulfill. It is only thus that we evoke his will to meaning from its state of latency. I consider it a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs is equilibrium or as it is called in biology 'homeostasis', i.e a tensionless state. What a man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the struggling and striving for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. He needs a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
Powerful statement.
Personal reflection:
I agree with Dr Frankl’s findings here.
Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy shows that meaning arises through the purposeful striving in the face of tension. And a form of striving towards worthy goals in today's society is physical activity. E.g. You see the rise in social media and people engaging in physical activity - whether in run clubs, on Strava, or at the gym-the brain releases endorphins and dopamine when you workout, producing a mood elevation, and better mental health. A life lived without challenge - or a tensionless state characterized by poor nutrition, sedentary habits, and a lack of purposeful direction-tends to undermine well-being and mental health. And I've seen this time and time again, in my own life. People floating, not striving toward anything, unable to exert themselves in physical activity consistently, and becoming overweight. Of course there are the outlier cases where people living as such are happy, but cases of the latter have been my experience in life.
I've also read a few books on Stoicism recently. And something I came across was Stoicism’s concept of Ataraxia, which is the concept of living in a state of equilibrium or tranquility. Initially, I felt like Frankl’s idea of not living in equilibrium or homeostasis contradicts the concept of Attaraxia, but I re-read the concept.
Stoicism’s (Attaraxia) doesn’t discourage the art of striving towards a worthwhile goal, but instead it discourages being internally affected by the desired outcome that you want from this goal. Instead they insist on simply controlling what you can control, which are your own thoughts and actions, and letting the universe take care of the rest. An idea that the reward is in doing the thing, not in what you achieve.
The true magic is when both concepts are intertwined and balanced.
The two perspectives can complement one another. Which is to pursue a meaningful goal with commitment, while practicing acceptance of whatever emerges. By balancing logotherapy’s emphasis on striving with Stoic equanimity, we can live in tension-actively engaging in worthy pursuits, yet preserving inner equilibrium when outcomes are uncertain.
Strive towards a goal and let God, the universe, or whatever you believe in take care of the rest.
Personal Reflection:
A more personal reflection comes through my wife, Mereana. As I read Man’s Search for Meaning, trying to understand these ideas more deeply, I remember it felt like my head exploded by what I was reading. The similarities between Viktor Frankl - a Jewish psychiatrist enduring the unimaginable conditions of a concentration camp - and my Wife, a young woman from New Zealand facing terminal ovarian cancer, were mindblowing.
Two lives, separated by time, place, and circumstance. Yet somehow, connected by the same underlying experience.
It led me to a question I couldn’t ignore:
How can two people, living in completely different worlds, experience something so similar?
This question led me to my first idea around this topic. That suffering is universal.
It doesn’t discriminate by geography, era, or identity. To be human is to encounter suffering in some form. What differs however is not the presence of suffering, but the way we respond to it.
That is where meaning begins to take shape.
What stood out most to me - both in Frankl’s work and in Mereana’s life - was not just the suffering itself, but how they made sense of it. How they found something within it that allowed them to endure.
Frankl spoke of logotherapy - the idea that meaning can be found even in the harshest conditions, and that this meaning gives us the strength to carry on.
And when I looked at Mereana, I saw that same principle lived out in real time.
Although her story did not end the way we had hoped, what carried her through much of that journey came back to two simple, yet profound things: Love and the striving towards a worthy goal.
Love
A story
6th September, 2025
I had an NPC game in Napier against Hawke's Bay. Mereana had celebrated her twenty-first at Reggie's in Hamilton - a restaurant at Made, surrounded by the people she loved most. I couldn't make the dinner itself; the distance and the timing saw to that. But there was never any question of whether I would be there before the night was through.
I pulled in at around nine o'clock to Matamata from Napier.
When she saw me, her face lit up. That was enough. That single moment made eight hours of driving feel like nothing. I went inside, said hello to the family, took in the warmth of the room, and felt the weight of the day finally lift from my shoulders.
Then I hit the bed. I was absolutely knackered.
But before that, I gave her her gifts. I had spent a couple of weeks deliberating over them - longer than I'd care to admit. Her favourite colour was green. Chartreuse, specifically - and if you know, you know. So I had gone emerald. A gold necklace with an emerald pendant. Emerald diamond earrings. An emerald bracelet. She opened them one by one, put them on, and looked at me with a smile that said everything I needed to hear. The relief was real. She looked beautiful, as she always did. She was happy. I was happy.
Life was good.
As the night settled and the house grew quiet, we said goodnight to everyone and climbed into bed. The lights went low and the world outside fell away. Just the two of us, in the dark, arms around each other - the kind of stillness that only exists in those last unhurried minutes before sleep pulls you under. Soft conversation drifting between us, going nowhere in particular.
And then she whispered something I will never forget.
"Nui - if it wasn't for you, I don't think I could have gotten this far. You've gotten me through some of the toughest moments of my life. You've saved me. I love you."
I replied: “I love you too”.
I laid there in the silence that followed and let those words settle over me.
Much like Dr Frankl, whose thoughts of his wife - and the hope of returning to her - became one of the forces that carried him through the unimaginable conditions of the camps, it was in those moments that he arrived at a profound conviction: that love is the most powerful force in this world.
In a deeply personal way, I came to understand something similar that night. Mereana's love - and the love between us - had quietly become one of the forces carrying her forward. I had the privilege of witnessing it up close. Her love was never passive; it was active and enduring. It gave her reason to keep going, even when everything around her suggested she had none. And in return, what existed between us became something greater than either of us alone - my support, my belief, my encouragement, and the love we shared met hers in a way that helped her endure what should have been impossible to bear. It was never one-sided. It was something we held together.
That night made that truth undeniable.
It is something I will never forget.
The striving towards a worthy goal
This review has already drawn on Frankl's insights and supporting survey data to demonstrate that striving toward a meaningful goal can bring purpose to one's life and provide the resilience needed to endure suffering. Yet as I read this book, I witnessed that same truth embodied in Mereana herself.
The most immediate of her goals was, of course, to beat cancer and reach remission - a pursuit that was not only worthy, but deeply noble. I watched her transform her lifestyle with remarkable dedication: overhauling her diet through careful research, incorporating habits such as drinking fresh lemon squeezed into warm water each morning, consuming sea moss, and significantly reducing her intake of sugar and carbohydrates. She spent countless hours investigating treatment options and committed herself to daily exercise, knowing that physical strength would improve her response to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Each of these actions fell within her control, and each one was born from her unwavering determination to become free of cancer - a goal that kept her moving forward, a future she could see for herself with clarity and brightness.
Beyond that, another purpose began to take shape within her: a life devoted to service. She became deeply committed to advocating for women - particularly those navigating a cancer diagnosis - determined to be a voice for those who could not always speak for themselves and to push for meaningful improvements within the healthcare system, so that young women facing similar battles might be met with greater care and compassion.
It is this woman she became that made me fall even more in love with her. She grew into someone of extraordinary strength, courage, grace, and compassion - and I would go as far as to say she became, in the truest sense, perfect. Regardless of what followed, the truth at the heart of it all remains unchanged: her striving toward those worthwhile goals was the very epicentre of her strength and bravery.
I have never been more proud of another human being than I was of her.
Existential Vacuum
This is a concept Frankl states has become prominent in western youth. It belongs to humans who lack awareness of a meaning worth living for. They are haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves; they are caught in that situation which he calls the "existential Vacuum.”
Frankl states that it is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. And this exists itself as a state of boredom. With around 60 percent of American students experiencing a certain degree of existential vacuum. How did this come about ? Well he states that it is due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being.
What is the two fold loss ?
First, we lost some basic instincts that used to guide our actions. In ancient times, much of what people did came from simple, automatic needs: eat when you’re hungry, protect your family, find shelter, and follow patterns that kept a community going. Those instinctual pulls gave life a basic sense of footing. As humans became more self-aware and free, those automatic guides weakened. We’re no longer sure what we must do simply because it’s in our nature, and that old sense of security fades.
Second, we lost many traditions and external guides-religion, culture, and community rules-that told people how to live. When those traditions weaken, there’s less handed‑down wisdom about what counts as a good life. No tradition says exactly what you should do, and often no instinct tells you either. That creates a gap: you have to decide what matters for yourself, but you don’t have a pre-made answer to live by.
This combination-freedom without clear direction-produces the existential vacuum. Without a fixed script or instinct, life can feel empty, boring, or like you’re drifting. You might not even know what you truly want or value, and that can lead to anxiety, apathy, or a sense that nothing really matters.
So what is the answer, according to Frankl? Instead of waiting for security or tradition to return, he says we should actively create meaning for ourselves. Meaning isn’t found in comfort or status; it’s made through our choices, our relationships, the work we do, and how we respond to suffering.
There are three classic ways to find meaning:
Through work or achievement: doing something you care about and that helps others.
Through love and relationships: building caring connections with people.
Through attitude toward unavoidable suffering: choosing how you respond to pain or setback, turning hardship into growth or a chance to help others.
This idea is part of what Frankl calls logotherapy-the practice of helping people discover meaningful aims and align their actions with them. The core message is that the human drive isn’t just to seek pleasure or power; it’s to find meaning, even in tough times.
If you’re trying to apply this today, you could start by asking: What matters most to me? What kind of person do I want to be? Then look for concrete ways to act on those answers. Maybe it’s dedicating time to a school project that helps others, building a close circle of friends who support each other, or choosing to stand up for what you believe in, even when it’s hard.
In short, Frankl isn’t asking you to reject freedom or to crave old traditions. He’s inviting you to take responsibility for creating a meaningful life yourself-through your values, your relationships, your work, and your posture toward life’s inevitable difficulties. That’s how you fill the existential vacuum with something real and lasting.
The meaning of life
There isn’t one universal meaning of life that fits everyone. Meaning changes from person to person and even from moment to moment. So the real question isn’t “What’s life’s meaning in general?” but “What does life mean for me right now?”
Think about it like this: asking for the best possible move for life in general is like asking a grandmaster chess player for one best move for every situation. There isn’t one single best move-the right move depends on what’s happening in the moment.
Life poses questions with every situation you face. Your answer shows up in how you live and what you choose to do. To be truly alive, you take responsibility for your life- doing what you can, making good choices, and owning the consequences. That sense of responsibility is at the heart of logotherapy.
Thus Logotherapy sees responsibility or responsibleness as the very essence of human existence.
Through Frankl’s concept of logotherapy, we can discover the meaning of life in three ways: (1) by creating work or doing a deed; (2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and (3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. The first way is self-explanatory. The second way of finding meaning in life is by experiencing something - such as goodness, truth, and beauty - by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in their very uniqueness - by loving someone.
The meaning of love
Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of their personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless they love them. By their love they are enabled to see each other's essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, they are able to see the potential in the individual, which is not yet found.
The meaning of suffering
We must remember that we can find meaning in life even in hopeless situations and when fate cannot be changed. What matters is bearing witness to the uniquely human potential at its best: turning a personal tragedy into a triumph and transforming a difficult situation into a human achievement. Frankl says that when a situation can’t be changed, the challenge is to change ourselves.
Suffering bravely
There are situations in which one is cut off from the opportunity to do one’s work or to enjoy one’s life; but what can never be ruled out is the unavoidability of suffering.
In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has meaning up to the last moment, and it retains this meaning literally to the end. In other words, life’s meaning is an unconditional one, for it even includes the potential meaning of unavoidable suffering.
By choosing to suffer bravely an individual is able to turn their unavoidable suffering into human achievement. And ultimately, because of the courage and attitude towards their own predicament, a human being is able to transcend themselves by self-actualization into their highest potential self, thus creating a life of meaning. A life that positively impacts the lives of those who were fortunate enough to bear witness to their journey.
Personal reflection:
Reading this previous passage of writing on suffering bravely shifted something inside of me. I wasn’t reading from a distance; I was living it, beside Mereana.
Being so close to her journey, I came to see, not just in theory but in reality, what Viktor Frankl was saying. Mereana didn’t just endure her diagnosis; she met it-with courage, grace, and a quiet bravery that grew stronger over time. In facing what could not be changed, she rose above the limits placed in front of her-not physically, but emotionally and spiritually. She reached something higher: to lead with love, to live in love, to embody it.
Her fear of dying and the life she’d hoped for never disappeared, but she faced unavoidable suffering with a steadiness that humbles me. The person she became is almost beyond words. I witnessed a fulfilled humanity: she turned unimaginable pain into something meaningful, not just for herself but for others as well. Her openness, honesty, vulnerability, and willingness to be seen-both strong and vulnerable-reminded hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, of what truly matters: to be grateful, to love openly, to be kind, and to hold your loved ones close, because we never know how long we have.
I am incredibly proud of her. And even as I mourn, I am learning what genuine grief is and how it lives inside you and travels with you. Yet alongside that grief, she left me with a path forward: a way to live. Two ways of life I now live by.
Which is to walk with gratitude and to lead with love.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, this is probably the most powerful book I've ever read. What makes this book so powerful to me though, is the timeliness of this book coming into my vicinity. I see it as an Omen from God that this book come into my life in the immediate months following my wife’s passing. I had heard of this book a couple years back through someone online, however I never got around to it.
I was browsing a book store about a month ago in Grey Lynn, Auckland. Then I came across this book, it immediately popped out as I had heard of it before, and purchased it. To see the real life implications of this book, and how much I personally related to it, through experiencing Mereana's journey up close and intimate, also through personal experiences of my own, was shocking to say the least. But the practicality of it also, and real life implications is what truly impressed me. I now move through life, with a greater sense of clarity in terms of what I have recently experienced, but also a greater understanding of life and all of its adversities. Despite this, I know I'm still learning and still growing.
The main takeaways I drew from this book were these.
Firstly, the power of love. It is the strongest force in the world. Having someone to return to, someone you love deeply, can carry you through even the most unimaginable of times.
Secondly, striving towards a goal gives life meaning. Pursuing a cause or purpose greater than yourself is what drives a person forward through adversity. But do not become fixated on the outcome alone, because the real treasure usually lies in the person you become along the way.
And lastly, our final freedom. No matter how much life strips away from you, whether external or internal, it can never take away your freedom to choose how you respond. That freedom belongs to you alone.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who draws a connection
Thank you for reading.
References:
Man’s Search for Meaning
Frankl, V. E. (2004). Man’s search for meaning. Penguin Books.
