I want to take a different approach to writing this, i want to outline what the idea is and then what my takeaway is from that idea.
Life has meaning even in extreme situations
Victor Frankl dives deep into this idea of how a human can have meaning even in the most dire of situations, and how man can choose how you feel about certain things when life can get really hard. My takeaway from this is no matter how hard things get or whatever your going through, we might not have extreme control or any control at all over it, its really important to have a purpose beyond the situation, like a future goal, a task, or even something that you want to achieve, which might make the situation a bit more tolerable in the current moment.
The collapse of the why
In the book victor introduces us to idea of a “will to meaning” which means that most people suffer not from a lack of comfort but from a lack of “Why”. When the why collapses people start to feel empty, depressed, and other such feelings. The author calls it “existential vaccum”. My takeaway from this idea is to achieve something special you do not need motivation, all you need is a strong why. The answer to the question of what to pursue in life comes from the why. Its a very common reason as to why you see a lot of the people go through a large portion of their lives without any purpose and then reach their late 30s and realize that they do not have a strong why to their. Mid-life crisis and its very idea has its foundations in the lack of why.
Three main ways we find meaning
The author says there are three major sources of meaning.
By creating or doing something.
By experiencing something or encountering someone
By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering
Between the three i think the one that speaks to me the most is the creating or doing something. The ability to express my creativity is one of the most thrilling experiences. I am an engineer by profression, so coding and playing around with computers is what i do for a living. Being able to learn, understand an deep dive into concepts is what brings me the most meaning. So thats my takeaway from this idea.
Tragic optimism
The last idea that i wanted to touch upon, is no matter what youre going through having an attitude of learning and believeing that its going to be all right is the foundation of the idea of tragic optimism. For example doing something wrong can teach you about not repeating that thing again. Understanding that this present moment of hardships is just a learning opportunity for the future.
Loved the write up! Was hoping you could dive deeper in each.