Man’s Search for Meaning (Lockdown progress report for March 26, 2020)

Total words today: 1,124
Manuscript total: 4,366

I’ve been re-reading Viktor E. Frankl’s seminal work, Man’s Search for Meaning. My progress has been slow; I read a page or two or five each night, which is why I’m only about two-thirds through despite reading it since early February. I think it has some things to teach us during this current crazy time.

30-second summary if you’re not familiar with it

Frankl was an Austrian psychotherapist who survived Auschwitz during the Second World War. After the war, he developed his own school of psychotherapy called logotherapy. Whereas Freud said what primarily drove human behavior is repressed desire, and Jung said the primary driver was the unconscious mind, Frankl claimed that humans are unique in that they must have (or find) a purpose behind their life. Psychological distress, according to Frankl, comes primarily from either not having a clear purpose for living or working at cross-purposes to our personal purpose.

Humans can survive almost any WHAT or HOW, he said, so long as they have a WHY.

He applied this to his own experience within the concentration camps. According to Frankl, what mattered most to an inmate’s survival wasn’t how young they were or healthy they were, it was whether or not they had a purpose to keep pushing forward.

What’s your why?

A global pandemic with a 1-2 percent fatality rate is certainly not as intense as living through the Holocaust, so let’s first think about that. Yes, these times are strange, chaotic, and anxiety-producing, but let’s start with the perspective that everything could be far, far worse.

But at a time like this, when we are forced out of our normal routines, have many of our normal distractions taken away, and almost cannot avoid a degree of introspection, maybe it’s still useful to take Frankl’s advice and ask, What purpose am I living for?

Asking this, I think, is probably even more useful than fresh air and sunlight for keeping us healthy right now, both mentally and physically.

My own answer

I’m going to sound trite. Sorry. But it’s still true. More than anything else, I just want to use my life to benefit others, whether that’s as a writer, a teacher, a lover, a daughter, a friend. I want to help, in little ways and in big ways. There’s a quote I keep coming back to from my Buddhist days that sums it up nicely: “Whether those who encounter me generate faith or anger, may it always be the cause of their fulfilling all their wishes.” That’s from a text called Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by an ancient Indian master named Shantideva. 🙂