This book was one of the toughest books I’ve ever read. It is about a psychiatrist’s horrific experience in Nazi death camps. When I envisioned what he had gone through, I literally felt sick to my stomach. I wondered what I would’ve done in his place.
Would I have had the will to live? How could I go on if I feel like the suffering will never end?
This post is not a book summary. I just want to share a few notable quotes that caught my attention and add my views on it.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
You either learn to adapt or give up…there’s really no other option.
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
We all need that purpose or ‘why’ to keep going. Your ‘why’ may differ from mine. But without a reason, there’s no meaning. Without meaning, there’s no point. What gives your life meaning?
“So live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
If you had another chance to go back, what would you do differently? Reflecting as if we were living for the second time may in turn cause us to think twice before making rash decisions.
“Thus it can be seen that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension, the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish, or the gap between what one is and what one should become.”
This is actually so interesting. I’m not sure if it’s true but it is very thought-provoking. How do you feel when your reality doesn’t match what you had imagined it to be?
“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.”
I’m not sure about this. It’s easier said than done. For instance, if a person were to lose their ability to see, could they really stay positive and respond well? In my opinion, when you lose something, it’s way more traumatizing than gaining something. Depending on how severe the situation is, I don’t know if it’s possible to control how you feel. This may highly depend on the person as well. People have different levels of tolerance.
Anyhow, hopefully you guys found this post interesting. I don’t want to make it too long since each of these quotes require deep thinking. Shout out to Chris for recommending this book to me. I rarely read nowadays. It requires too much focus and thinking.
Grow with me 