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I read Man's Search for Meaning at 19 and rolled my eyes, reread it last month at 34 and now I get it
I had to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning back in college for a psych class and I honest to god thought it was overrated. I was 19, I underlined maybe 3 lines, and I sold it back to the campus bookstore for like $6. Fast forward to last month, I'm 34, my dad had a stroke in February and I was sitting in a hospital in Akron at 2am with nothing to do, so I grabbed the only book in my bag, which was a used copy I bought for $4 at a library sale. The part about the guy who walks into the cold barracks and finds one reason to keep going hit me completely different this time. I think back then I wanted the book to tell me the meaning of life, and now I just needed it to tell me how to get through a Tuesday. I finished it in two nights and then read the whole second half again. So yeah, I was wrong at 19 and I'm admitting it. What book did you hate in school that hit you hard later?
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green.jessica2d ago
I did the exact same thing with The Great Gatsby in 11th grade. Mrs. Patterson made us color code every green light reference and I thought it was the most boring book ever written. Wrote a whole essay about how Daisy was just a rich girl with no depth. Picked it up again at 31 after my best friend moved across the country and suddenly that last page about boats against the current wrecked me. Turns out the book was never about fancy parties or the 1920s, it was about wanting something so bad you can't see straight. I still have that color coded copy somewhere and I can't even look at it without laughing.
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