Recently we had some nasty weather – rain, sleet, ice-rain – and so I decided not to go out. I spent some time exploring my book shelves in order to discern which books were calling to me. I kept returning to one book shelf; there was a book calling to me but I was not able to clearly identify its voice. I had gathered up a stack of books and so I took these to my chair and added them to the ten books that already had a permanent home nearby. As I began to settle in I decided to return to the book shelf that I was still drawn to. As I looked more closely at each shelf I noticed a small book that was wedged between two larger volumes; I could barely see it. I reached for it and pulled out Viktor Frankl’s ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ I have had this particular book for fifty-eight years; it is well read and well worn. I cannot begin to put into words the impact that Frankl’s story has had on my life. It was about this time of the year in 1964; I was searching for meaning in my life and my therapist gifted me with this little book.
As I sat once again with Frankl’s words I decided to share some of his story with you, Gentle Reader. You might be familiar with his story, I have found that many folks have some sense of his story.
When he was thirty-seven years old, Viktor Frankl embarked upon a three year odyssey. Unlike Odysseus, Frankl’s odyssey took him into a living nightmare-world full of human cruelty, torture, starvation and privation; with death came relief. His journey began with a train ride. He was one of eighty crammed into a coach car; this car was one of many traveling from Vienna, Austria northeast and it was noted that more than 1500 folks were ‘passengers’ on this train. The train traveled at high speed for several days. Then early one morning, as the sun began to emerge over the horizon, the train slowed. They were approaching a station. As the train slowly came to a stop next to a platform the passengers in the coach saw a sign announcing their destination: ‘Auschwitz.’
Frankl recalled seeing rows and rows of gallows with corpses hanging from them, he noted: “I was horrified, but this was just as well, because step by step, we had to become accustomed to a terrible and immense horror.”
Frankl was thirty-seven and the year was 1942. The killing ground he entered was one of many that murdered more than six million of his fellow Jews. He would be one of the few – and I mean ‘few’ – who would survive. His body, mind and spirit suffered in ways that words cannot fully capture. He and his sister were the only members of his nuclear and extended family that survived the holocaust.
Viktor Frankl survived and he did more than that. He endured his ordeal and was also strengthened by a belief in our human capacity to search for and find meaning and purpose in life in spite of the greatest suffering. How could he, residing in this living nightmare, find a life worth preserving? How could he find ‘Meaning’?