How Hard is it to Finish This Book? (Man’s Search For Meaning) by Viktor E. Frankl

Chapter I: My Reading Journey

I spent quite a lot of time with this book, and many other books also became my saviors while reading this one. The first chapter tells the story of Viktor's life in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. This is what makes this book quite heavy to read, in my opinion.

In the first chapter, we are immediately confronted with Viktor's experiences that led him to the concentration camp. This opening immediately drew me into the horror he experienced during World War II. In total, it took me more than three months to finish the first chapter of this book.

There are many paragraphs in the first chapter that describe the horrors of the war itself. How the Nazi soldiers tortured prisoners of war is clearly depicted in each paragraph. Paragraph after paragraph often made my heart tremble as I imagined what it was like to be a prisoner at that time.

While reading chapter 1, my head also felt quite dizzy when I imagined how the prisoners lived their lives, how they endured endless despair while in the concentration camp. Personally, chapter 1 was the most difficult chapter to read in this book.

After finishing chapter 1, continuing on to chapter 2 felt easier and it was easier to understand the train of thought in

Chapter II: Learning to Understand

Entering this process of understanding is what makes this book one of the most difficult books to read because it requires a deep understanding of each chapter (even though there are only two chapters), but the process of understanding it must be done one page at a time. This is because each page is quite heavy and full of clearly depicted horror.

As one sentence on page 119 in Chapter 1 says, “suffering is an inseparable part of human life” I paused for a moment and tried to digest all of this. If we want to categorize it, suffering is indeed inseparable from human life, and one way to deal with it is to reframe our own thoughts to be more meaningful and positive.

So, my way of understanding this book is to reflect on the life I am currently living, word by word. It's like a Friday sermon, but through a book and a narrative that can be held.

Chapter III: Lessons and Reflections

There are three main points that made me reflect on this book, namely, the first one mentioned that in Latin, Finis has two meanings, namely, the end or completion, and can be interpreted as a goal that has been successfully achieved or that the goal is complete, either because it was successful or because it failed.

Moving on to the second point of reflection, in my opinion, is from the sentence, “Because tears are the greatest witness to human courage”. We as humans are sometimes unaware that the tears that fall are a part of sincerity and courage. Stigma and stereotypes in society view tears as a form of weakness and helplessness of an individual when facing a downturn in their life.

The last point I want to share with you is a reflective statement that I still hold dear today: “Are you happy today?”

Try saying it out loud?