Man's Search For Meaning - by Viktor E. Frankl

Very little can be argued against Frankl’s viewpoint as it comes validated from 3 years endured at the Auschwitz concentration camp. It’s what the entire first part of the book is about, with an emphasis on the psychological impact and, more importantly, the ways of psychological endurance.

Before this book, everything I’d read or seen related to the holocaust had been ultimately superficial. Even after reading Man’s Search For Meaning I realize there’s many layers to it that cannot ever be grasped by most single individuals in modern circumstances. We can only learn, reflect and loosely, clumsily connect dots.

The detailed retelling of camp life is a solid base for Frankl’s logotherapy theories. Even one of the most horrific situations that any person has endured, where all traits of personality, individuality, achievement, personal space, and even the most basic needs for survival, even after suffering the psychology of shared and individual loss, there’s still joy to be found by controlling what’s truly and always in our control: thoughts.

We’re an infinitely malleable entity if we so want it, if learn how to. On the one side, we’re limited by the capacities of our physical body. If we manage to avoid dying from a violation of a truly physical limitation, the other limit is —quite simply— our mind. The capacity to endure, after surpassing the hurdle of physical limitation, comes from how we react to circumstance, to context, to the environment, to the world around us.

What better proof of concept of this than the uncontrollably unjust and deeply inevitable WWII concentration camp life?