Life asks you the question

A lesson from “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl

We have at our disposal a massive volume of literature that promises to help us build a better life: from habit formation, focus tips and ‘life hacking’. Blogs, magazine and books. We also have a new set of tools to quantify ourselves. We can examine and work on our lives as a project.

We keep a diaries, track sleep, measure steps, log food and record workouts.

Without diminishing the good advice and the excellent tools that are available,is there something bigger that we are missing? Should we step back and ask ourselves for what purpose or meaning are we striving to improve?

In 1946 Viktor Frankl offered his reflections on the meaning of life:

One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

Frankl was a holocaust survivor and a psychologist, best known for his two-part book “Man’s Search for Meaning”. The first part deals with his experience in Auschwitz, the second is an outline of Logotherapy, a psychotherapeutic method he developed based on existential analysis.

Logotherapy deals with the “will to meaning” as a counter to the “will to power” (Nietzsche) or the “will to pleasure” (Freud).

Each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life it, but rather he must recognise that is is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, Logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.

Frankl writes that there are there three basic ways we can derive meaning in our lives. 1) The act of creation. 2) Encounters and experience. 3) Our attitude and reaction in the face of inevitable suffering.

Creation

The “creation of a work or doing a deed” is the most obvious of the ways to add meaning to your life. Whether it be in art, literature, or business — the act of creation and building can be significant.

It’s not that we should strive for meaning and that the creation of a work will help us get there, but rather a focus on the deed itself will in turn add meaning. If we aim for meaning as a target then we often miss.

Experience

The second way to meaning that Frankl advocates is the discovery and experience of the world and people around us.

Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself — be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.

He also reflected on love as the ultimate experience, arising from thinking about his wife during a winter march in a Nazi concentration camp:

The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved

Our experiences and encounters can give our lives meaning, as do the relationships we develop along the way. Research has shown that people who favour experiences over the acquisition of material goods are happier in the long run.

Attitude

Frankl, like many other philosophers, believes that suffering is inevitable. For Frankl, to suffer is not a requirement of a meaningful life, but when suffering arises it is our reaction that can give us meaning.

We must never forget that way may also find meaning in life when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation — …we are challenged to change ourselves.

It is our response-ability that give us meaning. Life asks us the question, and we choose how to respond.