by Victor Frankl

Discussion Prompt by Seth Loh

An Overture: 

Wallace: Sons of Scotland, I am William Wallace.

Young soldier: William Wallace is 7 feet tall.

Wallace: Yes, I’ve heard. Kills men by the hundreds, and if he were here he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse. I AM William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What would you do without freedom? Will you fight?

Veteran soldier: Fight? Against that? No, we will run; and we will live.

Wallace: Aye, fight and you may die. Run and you’ll live — at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom!!!

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl was a first for “Ink n Stone” in that it was our first time tackling a piece of non-fiction. This novelty proved to be an invaluable experience as the balance between narrative and psychological treatise forces contemplation of the most important questions about life’s purpose. As he recounts his observations and experiences in the Nazi concentration camps, we too wonder how we would respond, and how anyone could have endured. Ask yourselves, if everything were stripped away: comfort, security, dignity, loved ones…what reason would remain for you to keep living?

Through his observations, he noticed a surprising theme about those who were able to keep living in such extreme cases of suffering. It wasn’t the physically strong who survived, but rather those who held onto profound meaning in life. According to Frankl, suffering is relative and inevitable, and therefore the answer lies in finding meaning in one’s suffering. His treatise concludes that life, then, is not about the will to pleasure, or the will to power, but the will to meaning. 

Everything can be taken from a man except one thing…his inner freedom: his freedom to choose how he will respond to his circumstances. What distinctly makes us human then is that “Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.”

If that’s true, and meaning can exist even in suffering, then what does that reveal about the lives we live in comfort? His storychallenges us to remember what gives our own lives purpose. In a culture consumed with comfort and distraction, Frankl insists that fulfillment comes not from avoiding hardship, but from choosing to respond to it with courage, responsibility, and love. Perhaps that’s the enduring goodness of his work: that it forces us to ask ourselves not simply how we would fare in dire circumstances, but whether our lives possess the kind of meaning capable of sustaining us when suffering inevitably comes. 

We may not be in a physical battle in this current moment (beautiful sunset, gorgeous temperature, friends around us) but the question remains. What will we do with our inner freedom? In this moment, may we relish in the joy of our brotherhood, this time of fellowship, and raise a glass to the exploration of man’s search of meaning. L’ Chaim!