My Vietnamese friend read Man’s Search for Meaning during the isolation months of Covid, alone in Germany — far from home and new to the country — and later recommended it to me. The book reminds me not to lose hope during this period, and learned my own lessons:

• From a spiritual point of view, unemployed employees face struggles similar to those of prisoners.
• No person and no destiny can be compared with another. No situation repeats itself, and each calls for a different response.
• Difficulties are a test of inner strength.
• Suffering is also a way to find meaning in life — “What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.”
• We can find meaning in life through experiences of goodness, truth, beauty, nature, culture, and love.

About the book: I thought the parts describing life in the Nazi concentration camps — the images of people waiting for death in the gas chambers or standing before open mass graves — were already painful enough to read.

But the last part of the book, when freedom finally came, was even more heartbreaking. It shows that although the prisoners were physically free, their spirits were not.

The meaning of life kept Viktor Frankl alive during his years in the concentration camps. Later, he found his life’s purpose in helping others discover the meaning of theirs.

“He who has a WHY to live for can bear almost any HOW.”
“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

Thank you.