Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

 I have returned to this book multiple times over my lifetime, having first read it when I was a teenager back in the sixties. Today, as human beings slaughter people in the Ukraine, I felt the need for it once again. It is often hard to see beyond the horrific headlines which relentlessly record the cruelties we humans inflict upon other living beings and the destruction we wreak upon our Environment as we pursue our goals in life. I awaken in the predawn in my comfortable home, my mind filling with the anguish I feel everyday as reality again intrudes with its evidence of horrific suffering. My propensity to despair does not accomplish anything but feed my ever present depression. Frankl offers his readers, a pathway to responding to this anguish reminding his readers that our freedom to make choices even under the unbelievable suffering Holocaust survivors endured is the freedom we can never relinquish. What choices can I make today that might propel my anguish into meaningful actions to make our World a better place?