Exploring the transformative power of choice, purpose of life's challenges

I'LL be honest - when I first picked up The Will to Meaning, I thought I'd made a mistake.

- Viktor E. Frankl

Coming off of warm, accessible reads by the likes of Melinda French Gates or Roxie Nafousi, diving into Viktor Frankl’s world felt like being thrown into the deep end.

Heavy terms. Dense ideas. Name-drops like Freud, Jung, and Adler in every other sentence. I had to reread paragraphs. More than once.

But I kept going. Something told me this wasn’t a book you read — it was a book you wrestled with. And slowly, quietly, it began to unfold.

The first few chapters were tough. Frankl is writing not just as a psychiatrist but as someone who’ survived unthinkable trauma - the Holocaust and lived to find meaning in it. He doesn’t spoon-feed you, his ideas; he expects you to meet him halfway. And that’s exactly what I had to do.

However, somewhere along the way, technical language gave way to something deeply personal. Frankl wasn't trying to impress — he was trying to equip us. He was saying, life will hurt. You will suffer. But that doesn’t mean it has to be meaningless.