Man’s Search for Meaning
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
Man's Search for Meaning
Everyone knows the quote but not the book where it came from. Frankl gives his account of living within concentration camps. He reflects on his encounters with those who lived or died and identified a distinctive orientation to life, “hope”. He says suffering is universal, but the ways people cope with suffering and persevere are what make humanity “strong”. To identify with a mission or “telos” can let you live longer.
I don’t know what to make of it. Finding yourself and what you believe in is good. Aligning yourself with a path is good as well. What if you can’t? What if your future is systematically foreclosed? Continuously reinventing yourself to avoid “depression” can quickly get “schizophrenic”. In fact, Frankl’s diagnosis of schizophrenia can occur from practicing “Logotherapy”. You can find “beauty in the struggle” only so many times1.
A tangential quote I found while reviewing Logotherapy:
“Our current mental-hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy”
Edith Weisskopf-Joelson
Frankl’s response to my pessimism is as follows: “As long as there is suffering there is hope”. I understand the point Frankl is going for; It’s a depressing point. “You can accept unhappiness”. The ability to affirm any circumstance is what Frankl calls the “last of human freedoms”2.