Man’s Search for Meaning - Part One
In the pursuit of discovering your purpose in life, the best place to start is with the work of Viktor Frankl. A Holocaust survivor, psychotherapist and creator of Logotherapy, Frankl’s work lays the foundation for understanding life’s purpose and meaning. Having survived the worst conditions imaginable as he made his way through multiple concentration camps in Nazi Germany, Frankl miraculously held on to his life through self-determinism and creating meaning wherever life took him.
His seminal book Man’s Search For Meaning has sold millions of copies worldwide and is my favorite book of all time, that I read frequently. His perspectives, lessons and wisdom always provide me with a profound sense of gratitude and helps me to recontextualize my life. If he can survive the Holocaust, I can surely survive and thrive in whatever life throws at me.
The first half of his book focuses on the experience of the Holocaust, the second half is about his work in Logotherapy and psychology in general. I cannot do justice to his experiences, and to get the full perspective, you should read this book. However, I can extract the distinct knowledge and lessons regarding the topic of purpose and meaning in life through Frankl’s perspective and expertise.
Meaning in Life
Frankl shares that a Big question in psychology and philosophy revolves around what is the underlying motivation for humans to live in this world. Sigmund Freud believed that human’s underlying force for existence is the fundamental quest for pleasure. Alfred Adler taught that it is the quest for power that provides us with our existential motivations. Frankl, however, states that it is in fact a quest for meaning which provides the underlying motivation for humans. One can argue that a quest for pleasure and a quest for power are expressions of an underlying quest for meaning.
Frankl shares that there are 3 main ways in which a person finds meaning in life: through work, through love and through courage during hard times. Additionally, he states that spiritual freedom is the only thing that cannot be removed from a person and is what ultimately makes life meaningful and purposeful. Spiritual freedom is fueled by living into a future goal and by understanding that it is not what a person expects from life, but what life expects from a person that can create meaning and purpose through any set of circumstances.
Meaning through Work
Discovering meaning through work is rather self-explanatory…You find work that makes you feel alive, driven and as though you are aligned to something greater than yourself. Finding meaning/purpose through work is tremendously fulfilling, however, attaching self-worth to the success of work is a trap, easy to fall into. Frankl explains the trap, “success, like happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” If you focus your attention on being successful, or on being happy, both will forever elude you. You will live a life in constant pursuit of something you will never find. Success and happiness can only happen as a by product, and from your dedication to a cause or to another person. To avoid the trap, Frankl advises to “listen to what your consciousness commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge” and only in the long run will success follow you because you had forgotten to think of it. In other words, you cannot chase purpose through work, you must authentically dedicate yourself to a cause/work greater than yourself, and success/purpose will follow you if you don’t focus on it.
In practical terms, if you focus on finding work that will make you seem successful in the eyes of the world, or fulfill some external need to feel successful, you may experience a lack of meaning and a sense of emptiness in your work. We see this all the time, someone who has a big job, makes lots of money, but appears dead inside. Rather, focusing our attention on finding work that is aligned with what our consciousness commands, and doing our best at that work will almost guarantee long term success. The difference is that you will feel as though you are doing something meaningful and important. It’s simply a shift in perspective.
Meaning through Love
Finding meaning through love sounds like it’s right out of a corny movie or book, but to be honest, it’s a profound experience that can reshape your entire experience of life. Frankl survived some of the worst experiences in the concentration camps by thinking about his wife, and feeling his love for her provided him with strength to keep going in the darkest of times. He shares that love is the ultimate and highest goal to which anyone can aspire. “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in their spiritual being, their inner self.” Surrendering yourself to someone other than yourself through genuine love is a direct path to find and create purpose in life. In caring for someone who needs you, or creating a life through love with a partner. Additionally, love for your child can propel you into discovering a profound purpose in life, beyond any kind of love for a partner or parent.
Meaning through Suffering (Courage during hard times)
Hard times and suffering in life is unavoidable. Some of us were born into horrible circumstances, some of us only experience hardships towards the end of life, but regardless, we will all go through hell at one point or another. Importantly, suffering, like anything else is only temporary. Suffering can fill the human soul and conscious mind like a gas filling an empty room. Regardless of the quantity – small or large – the gas will fill the room completely and evenly. The “size” of the suffering is completely relative, it will always fill you up completely. Forces and circumstances beyond your control can take away everything you possess, except for your freedom to choose how you will respond. You can’t control the external forces that will cause suffering in your life, but you can always control how you will feel and do about it. Having courage in hard times of suffering creates a strong sense of purpose and meaning to your life.
It is often exceptionally difficult external situations that provide the opportunities to grow spiritually. Suffering can generate meaning and purpose to life in how we choose to handle the suffering. We can go through hard times with resentment, anger, and being a victim, or we can choose to be resilient, present and focused on what we can control. Simply surviving hard times and overcoming suffering provides you with a deep purpose and meaning to your life. Simply living becomes meaning.
In no way is suffering necessary to discover meaning in life, in fact to suffer unnecessarily is masochistic rather than heroic. However, often in life we are faced with unavoidable suffering. Therefore, finding meaning in suffering may cause your suffering to lose its power over you, and you may be willing to experience the suffering as it is not for nothing. Too often we lose sight of the opportunity to grow from suffering, to be proud and ennobled from our experience rather than to be degraded and defeated. Not as martyrs, but as spiritual beings who are growing into our own power.
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Through work, love and courage in difficult times, we can discover purpose and meaning in life. These three expressions of purpose and present everywhere we look, and can transcend time and space. Sometimes in life, we experience all three vividly, other times we have to dig deep to find the purpose and meaning in what we are experiencing. Whether a job we hate, or a relationship that has us question our life, we can discover purpose and meaning in what we are going through. We have the power to choose how we take on what life gives us. Which brings us to Spiritual Freedom.
Spiritual Freedom
According to Frankl, Spiritual Freedom is the only thing that can never be removed from a person, and is what gives life meaning and purpose. Although spiritual freedom exists in everyone, it is a force that is sometimes not developed and easily accessible. Frankl shares that you can develop your Spiritual Freedom through understanding your prior conditioning, through setting future goals and through an inverse method. He states that Spiritual Freedom is powerful, and without responsibility is inherently useless and risky. Much like a flame, uncontrolled threatens to destroy, but controlled is an indispensable tool. One can only benefit from freedom through responsibility. As such, your life depends not on your conditions, but on your choices about your conditions. Let’s break this down:
Pan-Determinism (Conditioning)
A predominant theory exists that humans are nothing but products of their conditioning – biological, psychological and sociological. While a tremendous amount of evidence exists that supports this theory (a great place to start is Robert Sapolsky’s Determined), Frankl believes that it is not painting the full picture of what makes up a human being. Yes, we are products of our conditioning, and continue to be conditioned by our environment and experience, but something else exists within us that gives us the ability to choose and react to given circumstances.
Of course, one could argue that Frankl was conditioned to believe in Spiritual Freedom, and conditioned to think that he has a choice in the stand he took towards his circumstances. And that other inmates didn’t have this kind of conditioning. The argument is that conditioning is present at every level of the psyche, turtles all the way down…But is it really?
He shares that there is a great risk in teaching the theory of a person’s “nothingbutness,” that a person is nothing but the result of biological, psychological and sociological conditioning, and the product of heredity and environment. This view risks people believing that they are simply pawns in life and victims of outer influences or genetic circumstances and ultimately denies that a person has inherent freedom. Not a freedom from conditions, but a freedom to take a stand towards the conditions. Such that you are a self-determining entity, who decides what your existence will be now and in the next moment.
In his book Frankl shares many stories of heroism during the darkest moments of concentration camp life, how one can “preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, or independence of mind” through all sorts of oppression and torture. He shares there were always choices to make, every moment of every day, that determine whether or not he would or would not submit to the oppressive powers that were attempting to rob him of his inner freedom, dignity and sense of self. “The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone.”
Spiritual Freedom Through A Future Goal
Having an “ultimate goal in life”, in other words, a life purpose, that is separate from your present circumstances can fuel your spiritual freedom. Often in camp life Frankl would see other prisoners look to the past for consolation, “they preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless.” Keeping your mind and attention in the past completely blinds you from the opportunities to make something positive out of your present circumstances, and it takes you away from growth and how much life is left to live.
Frankl uses his own personal example of forcing his thoughts to seeing himself standing at the front of a pleasant lecture room, in front of an attentive audience who listened to him deliver a lecture on the psychology of the concentration camp. As a result, his present experiences became objective and seen from a scientific perspective. He succeeded in rising above the situation and sufferings, “observing them as if they were already in the past.” Belief in the future thus provided him and others with a spiritual hold, any attempt to “restore a man’s inner strength in camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.” Without a future goal, one saw no more sense in life, “no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.”
What I love about his story is the ability to transform your current experience into a future opportunity. He is seeing how he can teach about what he is going through in the future, and thus his experience becomes something meaningful to him. We can take on this approach and recontextualize our negative experiences into future opportunities to develop our spiritual freedom and to choose how to stand against circumstances.
Spiritual Freedom through the Inverse Method
This method may be the most powerful of them all. Frankl’s approach to the question: “What is the meaning of life” is that “it does not matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.” Inverting this perspective has us realize that we are questioned by life itself. Perhaps our pursuit of purpose and meaning in life is senseless, when we can look at life and see what is being asked of us in any moment which will immediately give us our meaning and purpose. Life means “taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the task which it constantly sets for each individual.” The answer to life’s questioning can not be found in thought and meditation, but only through action and conduct.
From this method, it’s impossible to define the meaning of life in a vague general sweeping way. The meaning of life is uniquely relative to each person and to each moment, life and it’s meaning is very real and concrete. You may be required to shape your own fate in life by action. Sometimes the situation calls for contemplation and evaluation. Other times, you must accept fate, to bear your cross. The importance of realizing that even in moments when it feels like you have nothing to expect from life, perhaps life was still expecting something from you, something in the future is expected of you, and survival is essential.
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Viktor Frankl teaches us that meaning is not something we find by chasing success or avoiding pain—it’s something we create through how we engage with life. Whether through purposeful work, deep love, or courage in suffering, we are always capable of choosing our response. At the heart of this choice lies our spiritual freedom—the power to shape our experience, no matter the circumstances. In embracing this freedom, we unlock a life of purpose, resilience, and profound meaning.