There aren’t many things in life that bring me to tears—my closest friends know this fact. I have sat through heartbreaking movies, read tragic stories, even faced quiet personal losses, but for some reason, the tears don’t usually come. It’s just hard for me to cry. But Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning broke that wall. Not with drama or sentiment, but with something much deeper: truth. The honest, raw, dignified truth.

There are books you read, and then there are books that read you. They sit quietly in your hands while slowly turning the pages of your soul. Frankl’s book is exactly that. It doesn’t just tell a story—it sees you. It meets you in your quiet despair, your unanswered questions, your restless search for meaning, and then it speaks—gently, bravely, and truthfully.

It was a chilly evening in December 2022. I was traveling from Islamabad to Lahore, and the train was completely booked. I didn’t even have a seat. I found a small spot near the washroom gate, right next to the bogie door, and sat there with my small backpack and the one thing that mattered most on that journey: a book. That book was Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I opened it just to pass the time. But the moment I started reading, the world around me began to blur. The noise of the train, the cold metal under me, even the discomfort of sitting by the door—all of it disappeared. The five-hour journey passed in what felt like minutes.

During that quiet ride, with the cold wind brushing past and strangers around me lost in their own little worlds, I found myself slipping into a story that began to speak to me. It felt like the book was quietly sitting beside me, holding up a mirror to the darkest chapters of human history and the things we try to forget, but desperately need to remember.

Frankl, a neurologist and psychiatrist, was also a Holocaust survivor. He didn’t write this book to shock or to preach. He wrote it to understand. To understand why some people survived the Nazi concentration camps, while others gave up. And his conclusion is hauntingly beautiful:
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how’.”

The book is divided into two parts. The first is a raw, firsthand account of life in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. The second introduces Frankl’s psychological theory, logotherapy, which centers on the belief that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power, but meaning.

Frankl describes entering the camp with only a manuscript of his life’s work stitched inside his coat. In the concentration camp, Viktor Frankl’s manuscript was confiscated. In a moment, his academic life was reduced to ash. Yet something within him remained untouched: the will to find purpose in suffering.

He writes about how the people in those camps—ordinary men, women, and even teenagers—were pushed to the very edge of human endurance. They faced unbearable hunger, freezing cold, violence beyond imagination, and the terrifying closeness of death, day after day. But what stayed with me most was this: according to Frankl, it wasn’t the physically strongest who made it through—but those who managed to hold on to even a tiny flicker of inner strength. Those who found meaning, even in the darkest places.

He writes of one fellow prisoner who had a dream and believed with all his heart that they would be liberated by March 30. That date became his lifeline. But when the day came and went, and they were still imprisoned, something inside him broke. He lost all hope—and not long after, he died. Frankl writes that it wasn’t infection that killed him, but hopelessness. That part of the book stayed with me for a long time. It made me realize hope isn’t just a feeling we hold onto for comfort. Sometimes, it’s the very thing that keeps us alive.

There was one line in the book that hit me so deeply, I had to pause and just breathe. It felt like the words had reached straight into my chest and pulled something raw and real to the surface:
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Life is not about what we expect from it, but what it expects from us. Even in the camps, he found meaning—in comforting a fellow prisoner, in remembering his wife’s smile, in imagining himself lecturing after the war about the psychology of suffering. He tells a story of walking through the snow in torn shoes, half-starved, and imagining himself speaking to his future students. That vision gave him strength to take the next step. In a place designed to erase identities, he clung to meaning like oxygen.

We, in our world of minor disappointments and endless distractions, complain of burnout, boredom, and emptiness. Yet Frankl reminds us:
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
That quote still stays with me, especially in those moments when I’m endlessly scrolling through social media or going through the motions of a day that feels a bit too routine. We live in a world that offers so much comfort, yet often leaves us feeling lost. We have freedom, but not always a sense of purpose. And without that, even the most comfortable life can feel strangely empty.

In the second part of the book, Frankl shifts from storytelling to reflection. He writes about the role of a psychiatrist and introduces us to logotherapy, a school of thought he founded. Unlike Freud, who believed that pleasure is the primary human drive, or Adler, who emphasized power, Frankl argues that our deepest motivation is the search for meaning.

Logotherapy is based on one powerful idea: that life always has meaning—even in the hardest times—and it’s up to us to find it. He also writes about patients who were depressed, anxious, or even suicidal—not because they were weak, but because they hadn’t yet found their why. He didn’t ask, “What do you want from life?” Instead, he flipped the question:
“What is life asking of you?”
And that shift in perspective is simple, but powerful. Frankl believed it could spark a sense of purpose strong enough to help someone survive even their darkest moments.

Frankl never romanticizes suffering. He says clearly that suffering is not necessary to find meaning—but if suffering is unavoidable, we can still choose how to face it. Man’s Search for Meaning is not an easy read—not because it is difficult to understand, but because it reveals truths we try hard to ignore: that life will hurt, but our response is our responsibility. That we can’t always choose our pain, but we can always choose our perspective.

If you are going through something—or simply seeking to understand what makes life worth living—read this book. And then ask yourself the question Frankl leaves us with:
“What is life asking of me, right now?”

Khushal Das
khushaldasparmar@gmail.com