man's search for meaning, by viktor frankl

This is a timeless classic. It’s a short and powerful read, so I highly recommend reading the book itself (and not my notes). In it, Viktor Frankl recounts his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps. His psychotherapeutic method – which involves identifying a purpose in life and deeply imagining that outcome – has become a well-studied branch of science. 

I disagree with many of the points that Frankl makes but here are my raw notes:

• The great task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three sources for meaning: in work, in love, and in courage in difficult times.
• Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.
• If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be.
• The way a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails gives him ample opportunity to add a deeper meaning to his life.
• The tendency to look into the past to help make the present – with all its horrors – less real is to overlook the opportunities to make something of the present.
• The prisoner who had lost faith in the future was doomed. With his loss in belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Reminds me of a less well-thought-out version of the Stockdale Paradox.
• The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day, and from hour to hour. What matters therefore is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment. Agree that it differs from man to man and in practice, from day to day. But I also think meaning is derived from long-term commitments, and should not move around as frequently as Frankl suggests.
• Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfilment.
• According to logotherapy, we can discover the meaning of life in 3 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.
• Human potential at its best allows for 1) turning suffering into human achievement, 2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better, and 3) deriving from life's transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
• We cannot understand a film without understanding each of the individual components / scenes – isn't it the same with life? Doesn't the final meaning of life reveal itself only at the end, and doesn't this final meaning depend on whether or not the potential meaning of each single situation has been actualised to the best of your knowledge and belief?