Book Review Saturdays: Man's Search For Meaning
There are a lot of books that people say change their lives, but they're lying. They're not lying to you, they're lying to themselves. Most all really good books on self-improvement lead the reader to believe that their lives have been changed drastically for the better, that's why they're well-read books in the first place.
What's more unusual is when you're able to look at a book you've read 10, 20 years later and feel the same way. Not only feel the same way, but be able to point to multiple examples in the intervening years where the things you found in the book paid-off in your day-to-day life.
"Man's Search For Meaning" is one of these books for me. It didn't change my life as much as it made me understand the way we all think about our lives is at heart the same: we create narratives that we live inside of. Man's most primal drive is the drive to find meaning in life.
Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist and a Jew. He lived in the 1940s and was sent to the concentration camps. There he saw thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people, come to grips with the worst kind of existence we can imagine.
What is the meaning of life? Well, says Frankl, you're asking the question the wrong way. You are looking at life from the inside, asking what it is about. But we all are just tiny specks, the barest of gnats in existence. Life is universal and forever. It's not us that are asking life what its meaning is, it's _life_, looking down on us, that's asking us, "What's your meaning". And we answer that question everyday with the decisions we make, even if they're only decisions about how to feel about the surroundings we're in.
It was a hugely-popular book, and it began the change in my life from child to something more closely approaching an adult. It did this by putting life itself in the proper context so that I could figure out what I was really put here for.
From Space-X to a new inside-out Wenkel engine for DoD, it's been an amazing week for inventors.
Hey @bdkoepke , @dmrq70 , @fforfun , @MikeDwyer , @stevenMsmith , @AgileJazz , @XxWolfBanexX , @HappyDawn , @katamen , @SmileSyndicate , @DanielBMarkham
I've moved!
Locals is turning off their free accounts and I've decided that I'd rather go back to maintaining my own site than sign up for any more "free" services that end up changing the conditions of service later.
The new site is just like this one, only no "locals" in the name. It's https://danielbmarkham.com
Please give it a shot, and please let me know if you have any problems signing up. I think I have the configuration down but you guys will be the first 100 or so to sign up, so there'll probably be some snags.
Daniel
danielbmarkham.com
Hey @ShiroiKami , @osio , @btbytes , @QrzZDE2e , @jslezak , @gtramontina , @planti , @kavalau , @NzDan , @dadsfsadf
I've moved!
Locals is turning off their free accounts and I've decided that I'd rather go back to maintaining my own site than sign up for any more "free" services that end up changing the conditions of service later.
The new site is just like this one, only no "locals" in the name. It's https://danielbmarkham.com
Please give it a shot, and please let me know if you have any problems signing up. I think I have the configuration down but you guys will be the first 100 or so to sign up, so there'll probably be some snags.
Daniel
danielbmarkham.com
Hey @markthien , @vikdutt , @mavenllc , @Dauugavpiils , @rmonaghan , @Vic8888 , @GeorgiaLogCabin , @godfrey , @yumaikas
I've moved!
Locals is turning off their free accounts and I've decided that I'd rather go back to maintaining my own site than sign up for any more "free" services that end up changing the conditions of service later.
The new site is just like this one, only no "locals" in the name. It's https://danielbmarkham.com
Please give it a shot, and please let me know if you have any problems signing up. I think I have the configuration down but you guys will be the first 100 or so to sign up, so there'll probably be some snags.
Daniel
danielbmarkham.com
