Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same.Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved.Only in this way can one explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy make-up often seemed to survive camp life better than did those of a robust nature. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less.Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one’s own life and that of the other fellow. Apathy…was a necessary mechanism of self-defense.Apathy, the blunting of the emotions and the feeling that one could not care any more, were the symptoms arising during the second stage of the prisoner’s psychological reactions, and which eventually made him insensitive to daily and hourly beatings.An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.We, too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad. In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute.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.

Don’t aim at success-the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.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. In Courage: We give meaning to suffering by the way in which we respond to it.įorces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.The great task for any person is to find meaning is his or her life.Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.But I pick and choose ideas to include at my discretion. The following book summary is a collection of my notes and highlights taken straight from the book. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost but everything irrevocably stored.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. We should not ask, “What is the meaning of Life?” It is Life that poses the problem and asks the question of us.The more one forgets himself-by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love-the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.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.Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life.Viktor Frankl passed through the darkest depths of human’s capacity for evil, and yet he didn’t emerge angry, resentful, or nihilistic, but rather encouraged, optimistic, and hopeful by what he described as man’s ultimate freedom and responsibility in life-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. According to Frankl, man can find meaning in his work, in his love for another, and in the courage required to endure suffering. In this autobiographical bestseller, Viktor Frankl recounts his experiences surviving the Holocaust and describes how it shaped his understanding whereby man finds meaning for his life.

Des book meaning