Viktor Frankl: The prophet of meaning

What will it take before you realize what your life is about? Will it have to entail being pushed, kicked and tortured by soldiers in a concentration camp? For one man, this was the case.

The place was the cold, dark and dismal Nazi concentration camp. The time – well, nobody really cared about the time. Nobody knew how much time he had in his hands – would he be gassed, shot or tormented to death that day or the next? Time was not on their side and the prisoners in the concentration camp knew it all too well. But in the midst of the dreariness that pervaded the camp, there was a man who proclaimed, "The salvation of man is through love and in love." This man was Dr. Victor Frankl.

When he entered the concentration camp, Dr. Frankl knew that his life was about to change drastically. He was stripped of everything he had – worldly possessions, the companionship of his wife and, yes, even his dignity and name. His name was replaced by a number, which was what the apathetic guards would call him all thoughout his stay in the concentration camp. Now, this number had the power to direct his fate. Everyday life in the concentration camp was dreadful in every sense of the word. With no warm clothes to ward off the biting cold, it wasn’t rare to hear of prisoners freezing to death. They lived in subhuman conditions and wore tattered clothes. Day in and day out, they subsisted on nothing but a miserable bowl of cold soup, which could contain a few peas if the prisoner got lucky.

There were only two places where the prisoners could be brought to: The work area or the gas chamber. And there was only one rule: Those who looked weak would be gassed while those who looked rather fit would be thrown into the salt mines to work till they literally dropped dead. This was why Dr. Frankl made it a point to look young and fit every day by shaving his beard with a piece of broken glass. As everyone became weaker and weaker – physically and morally – with each passing day, Dr. Frankl remained strong in spirit.

He clung on to the only thing he had left – the will to live. He was living proof of the words of the great philosopher Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how."

This saw him through his dark days in the concentration camp until he was finally released to become a free man again – and yes, to write books. One of them, which I never tire reading again and again, is A Man’s Search for Meaning.

I came to know about Dr. Frankl during a discussion in one of my Philosophy classes sometime last year. Having studied the philosophies of Plato, Descartes, Frohm, Nietzsche, etc., I was struck by Viktor Frankl’s philosophy.

I still remember the title of the hand-out we used for that discussion: "Viktor Frankl: The Prophet of Meaning." Indeed, he is. From him, I learned that the best way to deal with any kind of situation was to find meaning in it. More specifically, one must find the "meaning of suffering." He explained further by citing an example. There was this general practitioner (GP) who sought his advice because he was suffering from serious depression. It turned out that this patient had not gotten over his wife’s death two years ago.

While trying to imagine himself in the shoes of his patient, Dr. Frankl proceeded to ask the GP, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?"

"Oh," the man quickly replied, "for her this could have been terrible; how she would have suffered!"

Dr. Frankl then told the man, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering – to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her."

The man was said to have been silenced by Dr. Frankl’s wise words and left Dr. Frankl’s office with peace in his heart.

Dr. Frankl thus explained that suffering is no longer seen as suffering the moment one realizes the reason for it. Hence, it is one’s attitude towards an unchangeable fate that enables him/her to find meaning in suffering.

People, including me, end up with beclouded judgment and are reduced to jelly when caught in a dilemma. It’s as if they’re stuck in a situation and there seems to be no way out. I believe, however, that men of steel such as Dr. Viktor Frankl would have seen things differently. He would have just grinned and made use of the opportunity to discover something new about himself or a new meaning for himself.

Dr. Frankl’s words will forever be etched in my mind, nay, my soul. He changed the way I looked at the not-so-pleasant experiences in my everyday life. Suddenly, my life took on another dimension. The meaning of life does not fade; it only increases over time and with each day’s experiences. Thus, Dr. Frankl came up with this imperative for all, young and old, "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."

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