Everlasting Learner Podcast - Man's Search for Meaning Book Promotion

Tristan Bile, host of the Everlasting Learner podcast, introduces the "Books You Should Know About" series with a recommendation for Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning." Frankl's autobiography and psychotherapy book delves into his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, where he discovered that those who believed in survival were the ones who made it. Frankl concludes that a quest for meaning drives humans even in the face of immense suffering. Bile shares an excerpt where Frankl reflects on the power of love and the importance of the spiritual being. Tune in next week for another book recommendation. Hello, friends. This is Tristan Bile, the host of the Everlasting Learner podcast. Today will be our first installment of the Books You Should Know About series, where I will tell you about books that are well worth taking the time to read. To kick off the series, I'm going to tell you about a very important book that was written by Viktor Frankl called Man's Search for Meaning. It is an autobiography and psychotherapy book about Viktor Frankl's horrific experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. From the experience, Frankl noted that the only ones who survived in the camps were the ones who believed in their survival. The ones that did not never made it. From this, Viktor Frankl concluded that the thing that drives a human forward, even through the most immense suffering, is one's quest for meaning. Frankl embodied his philosophy to the most extreme level, and I have an excerpt that I would like to share with you that I believe illuminates this. I will be sharing this excerpt now. We had arrived at our work site. Everybody rushed into a dark hut in the hope of getting a fairly decent tool. Each prisoner got a spade or a pickaxe. Soon, we had resumed the previous day's positions in the ditch. The frozen ground crackled under the point of the pickaxes, and sparks flew. The men were silent, their brains numb. My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind, I didn't even know if she was still alive. I knew only one thing, which I have learned well by now. Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance. I did not know whether my wife was alive, and I had no means of finding out. During all my prison life, there was no ongoing or incoming mail. But at that moment, it ceased to matter. There was no need for me to know. Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved. Had I known that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of her image, and that mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. Thank you for listening to this episode of the podcast, and tune in next week's episode for our new book.