Man’s Search for Meaning
On Tuesday this week I was inspired to find a book. I went to the library, searched for the phrase “Meaning,” and the result I found was a book by Victor Frankl entitled Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was a psychotherapist before he was sent to a concentration camp during World War II, and his book reflects on the way that people coped (or didn’t cope) in their situations. The question he aims to answer in his book is “How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?”
I could write pages upon pages worth of interpretations and expansions on quotes and points that Frankl makes, but here I’m going to focus on suffering.
It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes.
It is clear from this that Frankl makes some assumptions about the cause of direction in one’s life – it is to some extent guided by external forces that we cannot control. The portions that we can control are our reactions to these forces that push us in one direction or another. Specifically, living is finding ourselves in these situations. To transcend beyond simply living, to actually surviving or thriving, is to find a meaning our suffering.
He sums this up in two very powerful and empowering lines:
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
In a greater sense, the main thing at the very being of our existence, the one thing that is intrinsic to our being as humans, is that we can choose our attitudes in whatever circumstances we either find ourselves, or have gotten ourselves into. And these choices of our attitude are the primary way in which we assign meaning to the events of our life.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity – even under the most difficult circumstances – to add a deeper meaning to his life.
It is not a new idea, I do not believe, to imagine that the most telling situations in one’s life are the ones involving great circumstances, great suffering, or facing our own mortality. These are the situations when we feel most that we absolutely must make decisions, and because of the external (and possibly internal) pressure we are under while making these decisions, they provide a very good aggregate picture of us, something we might call our character. So while these situations provide us an opportunity to add (or perhaps more appropriately realize) meaning to our lives, through our choices they also show what meaning we have already subscribed to.
So what do you think? How telling are the choices we make while suffering, or in extreme circumstances? Are those not indicative because of the severity of the situation, or are they the most telling?
A Guide to Staying Real
Jonathan at the Illuminated mind has written a very thought-provoking post on personal authenticity, which is (in far too few words) the matching up of your thoughts and actions to your true inner self, the basic nature of your being.
I think most people can agree that in our society, we judge and value people to a large extent on their perceived importance, the car they drive, the clothes they wear and the other things they own — not for who we truly are.
Jonathan argues that the source of this lack of authenticity is what he calls “The Domestication of Humans.” When we are born, we are – for a while – the very definition of authentic. We think about things, but we are not restricted to the symbols (words) that our society and our language gives to us. If you have ever read the book 1984 by George Orwell, you are probably familiar with the concept that the words we have available to describe and think about our world can limit the breadth of thought we have.
As we grow up, however, we are taught rights and wrongs. Instead of continuing to make our own judgements of right and wrong based on our experiences, and experiencing our life directly as it is, we begin to have judgements about things. This is tied into the concept of mindfulness – we lose mindfulness as we become more judgmental of our world, and stop experiencing it directly as it is. Instead of being authentic to our own experience, we apply filters and judgements.
Jonathan has some tips for being more authentic. I do not agree with his first point, which is “Reject the idea that you can’t be consistently happy.” This seems to me to be very un-authentic. I believe that part of being alive is experiencing things that make you happy and things that do not. And rejecting the idea that you can’t be consistently happy seems to me to be rejecting the full experience of sadness when you have it. It is this rejection or denial of fully accepting your experience that is unhealthy in the first place.
Jonathan’s other points are pretty good, though. Live based on your own values, do not live for the approval of others, reject popularity as your scale of personal value, etc.
Irena Sendler
I was recently forwarded an e-mail about a woman named Irena Sendler who saved thousands of childrens’ lives during World War II. She posed as a plumber, and smuggled over 2,500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto by hiding them in boxes and suitcases.
In 1943, Irena was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and sentenced to death. She managed to bribe German guards on the way to her execution, and was left in nearby woods, bloody and with broken arms and legs. She remained in hiding until the end of the war.
After the war was over, she continued her work by retrieving her hidden records and attempting to reunite children with their parents. Many had been killed.
In 2007, Irena Sendler was considered for a Nobel Prize. However, she did not receive the 2007 award. It was instead granted to Al Gore for his slide show on global warming.
This just goes to show how in our world, some of the greatest goods go unrecognized. However, recognition is not what Irena sacrificed for, and it should not be our end goal either. She was selfless, and I can only strive to be a fraction of the person that Irena was.
Procrastination, Willpower and Intrinsic Motivation
All of us have experienced that surprisingly strong force when you just don’t feel like doing something, that nasty thing we call procrastination.
Cal Newport at Study Hacks wrote a good article a while ago that sheds some insight on why we procrastinate. It’s worth a read not only because it’s a great article, but also because it incorporates Self-Determination Theory as part of the explanation.
The Science of Procrastination Revisted: Researchers Rethink Willpower
Two Hemispheres
If you haven’t heard of TED, it is a website full of talks given by inspirational people from all over. It may sound a little cheesy, but it’s really a great site to sit down and waste some time at (though once you begin, I think that time could hardly be considered wasted).
I watched a 20-minute or so talk given by Jill Bolte Taylor called ‘My stroke of insight.’ In this, she explains experiencing a blod clot in her left hemisphere, and what insight this shed on her experience.
This talk was thought-provoking for me, both because she communicates so well the power of her experience, but also because she raises some interesting points in the end.
One of those points is the choice we make in each moment of who we are. She identifies two modes of existence (we could posit this was influenced by her neurological persuasion): functioning in the left hemisphere, and functioning in the right hemisphere.
One idea I drew from this was the idea that experiencing the right hemisphere is somewhat akin to Csíkszentmihályi’s Flow; the idea that you can almost become ‘part of’ an activity that is intrinsically motivated, to the point where you aren’t conscious of doing the activity, you’re just a part of the experience of that activity. I can think of some personal examples of this happening, but of course only you can truly do this idea justice, as different activities in different scenarios affect people in very different ways.
Another point that hit me during Jill’s talk was how clear it is that we each have the ability to cause change in the world around us – we are not subjected beings being pushed around by the ebb and flow of life’s tides. Instead, we have the ability to push ourselves in directions that we desire.
I really suggest that everyone take the 20 minutes to sit and watch Jill recount her experience, and post your interpretations in the comments.
