WP4 | Man’s Search for Meaning, But How?
After reading Olivia’s WP2, a website on different philosophical schools on the meaning of life, I went to her recommended reading section and found Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, a memoir on his experience in Auswitch concentration camp and a brief introduction of his own school of psychotherapy — logotherapy.
I would recommend everyone to read this book, especially for college upperclassmen, the young people who’re about to go into society and might be wondering the meaning of their life. Logotherapy emphasizes searching for a purpose of life, which sounds empty, but the author gave a very concrete and practical interpretation of the concept, bringing it down to earth.
This summer, I’ve almost come to terms with my previously conflicting thoughts: life might be meaningless, but I gotta attend the practicals and live the hell out of it. I used to think of “searching for meaning” a very cheesy goal and sought to confirm and accept the meaninglessness. But this book helped me understand that my actions are good — be practical, but that doesn’t have to be juxtaposed with the meaninglessness of life. Instead, me responding to the world is actually a better interpretation of “searching for meaning”. Logotherapy emphasizes “responsibleness”, that is, “man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” (109) When seeing life as a series of tasks waiting for me to complete, I feel a bigger sense of purpose; I know where to set my foot.
In the past, when I viewed life as a vastness to which I need to raise the questions and then answer them myself, I suddenly lost the direction. Picture the kind of spinning movie shot where the camera revolves around the character, round and round. It’s like me as an art student, whenever I have a ton of time to myself during a break, I don’t know what project to do. Sometimes it gets better when I force myself to come up and write down a goal. But my most productive time is during the school year when I’m given a set prompt for a specific project. Say I’m earthly. Say I’m mundane. I’m not a saint after all — I need a sense of direction and practicality in life to gain peace of mind. I honestly don’t believe the floating-in-the-air kind of “searching for meaning”. Feel free to write poems, but you still need paper produced in a factory, or even, a Macbook designed in California and made in Shenzhen, China. Feel free to wander off in the wild, but you still need a jacket and a tent bought from The North Face.
But I don’t think by “responsibleness” Frankl means passive reaction. We’re presented with life’s questions to answer, but how we answer these questions is up to us, and this ability to choose is not a small variable. When I’m presented with a prompt for my classes, I can still make artworks that express myself and serves my goal. A task or question is just a place to start. How we proceed with it and what comes out of it is in our hands.
What I believe and do hasn’t changed essentially, it’s just the perspective and naming. Man’s Search for Meaning helped me redefined my ideology on practicality, and has made my belief system more self-consistent and self-contained.
However, I found some arguments in the book confusing and not easy to implement in my own life. Frankl wrote that a way of finding meaning in life is to experience something, for example, love, and he emphasizes romantic love by talking about the traditional psychological analysis of sex. “No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.” (111) For the previous generation, the key to finding meaning might be to realize the importance of love.
However, I think for contemporary youths, the predicament might be that we know the importance of love, but there’s no one to love. The environment makes it hard for us to realize the wish to love.
I remember a Chinese scholar said in an interview, “Can you imagine nowadays young people need their parents to introduce potential partners to them? Back in our times, it was not imaginable. You get on a bus and you might meet someone.” Those words made me think a lot. We are used to believing that young people nowadays have more control and possibilities for their own lives. Yes, they can love more bravely, but what are the choices and chances?
I’m not just talking about romantic love, friendships and relationships with neighbors, too. When’s the last time you talked to the person next door? You might not even know whether they’re a guy or a girl. They might have been in the same class with you for a whole semester. When’s the last time you made a new friend not through business nor social media? For modern human beings, the people they’re most familiar with are their close family and the people on the internet who are thousands of miles away from them and whom they never met. Every individual’s loneliness makes up millions of people’s revelry.
The sad thing is, no individual can change this virtual revelry. You can walk out of your apartment yourself, but others are still going to stay in and text for the whole night with that guy they just met on Tinder.
We know and we want to love, we wish for meaning; but tell me, how?
