Searching for Meaning

In Victor Fankl's popular and compelling work-Man's Search for Meaning he describes how mankind's ultimate search is not for pleasure but meaning. We want a reason to be happy; pleasure, he says, must be a byproduct because it is destroyed once it is sought.

Through his many personal experiences in various concentration camps Frankl attests to the truth of Nietzsche's quote: "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How" It was always the prisoners who had a why who survived or who had the courage to walk upright into gas chambers. The prisoners who chose to indulge in cigarettes instead of trading them for food, however, were always close to self-inflicted death.

The meaning Frankl describes is not one universal truth for mankind, but rather, can be found in work, a relationship, or the attitude one takes toward unavoidable suffering. The final meaning of life if comprehended at all before death, will be depend upon the individual's appraisal of the meaning in each individual situation.

I will admit that not having to seek out the meaning of life as a whole and only being concerned with giving meaning to each day to day situation might be a relief, but I don't know if I am capable of knowing how to attribute meaning to individual circumstances without at least a shadowy glimpse of the meaning of life as a whole in the present. I appreciate and agree with Frankl's assessment of attitude being the deciding factor of one's outlook on life, but I feel incapable to having an attitude that testifies to a meaning I am not sure exists.

I am a sorry existentialist I suppose, unable to create meaning without any basis in reality.