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Synopsis of Man's Search for Meaning

By Viktor E. Frankl

Page XIV: Don't aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensure, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.

Page 108: What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

Page 111: Thus far we have shown that the meaning of life always changes, but that is never ceases to be. According to logotherapy, we can discover this meaning in life in three different ways:

  1. by creating a work or doing a deed
  2. by experiencing something or encountering someone
  3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

page 115: The question which beset me was, "Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance — as whether one escapes or not — ultimately would not be worth living at all."