Man's search for meaning

Read an article on same in Psychology today and based on Balu's recommendation read this book subsequently. An excellent read after a long time. Timing is also correct and dealing with the same dilemma of whats in life? meaning? bla bla bla... The reading helped in clarifying some doubts. The author has narrated his survival story and the observations he made while taken as prisoner in concentration camp during World War II. The Later part of the book focuses more on the Logo-therapy as such which is based on premise of driving force through meaning in life for humans.

Some quotes from the book:
1. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge.


2.If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

3.Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

4.It seems to me that there is nothing which would stimulate a man's sense of responsibleness more than this maxim, which invites him to imagine first that the present is past and, second, that the past may yet be changed and amended. Such a precept confronts him with life's finiteness as well as the finality of what he makes out of both his life and himself.

5.we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways:
(a) by creating a work or doing a deed;
(b) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and
(c) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

6.the perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation.

7.today's society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual's value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler's program, that is to say, "mercy" killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer.