Table of Contents | Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist who was imprisoned by the Germans during World War Two. This experience in a concentration camp altered the shape of his life and thought forever. From the moment he was thrust into that situation survival became the primary concern. He began to search for some way to get through the years he would be in prison. He watched all the others as they sought to manage the same awesome task. Since he was trained as a psychiatrist he noted that most prisoners were collapsing under the pressure of those awful conditions and dying. However, a few were not and he made it a point to get to know these few and to delve into their secret. A common thread began to emerge. He learned that each person who was managing to survive had something to live for. The shape of their concerns varied. Frankl, for example, had aspired to be an author and he was in the middle of his first manuscript when he had beeen arrested. The drive to live and finish that book was his reason to survive. When he returned to Vienna, he began formulating an understanding of human personality that differed from what his mentors like Freud and Adler had said. They had posited things like "the will to pleasure" or "the will to power" as the fundamental and deepest drives in human nature. But what Frankl had observed in the prison camp turned him in another direction. He concluded that "the will to meaning" was the most basic drive. What we need most in life is some sense of meaning. He agreed with Nietzsche that "the person who has a why to live for can endure almost any how." The presence of some purpose or meaning in a given circumstance is the very thing that evokes the strength "to keep on keeping on." Without meaning life has a way of falling apart into all kinds of illnesses and even death. If Frankl is right then this practical question looms over us. "How do we get in touch with meaning so as to incorporate it into our lives?" I have lost the source of these suggestions but they are profoundly accurate and basic to Frankl's view. One way is to develop a keen sense of those realities that exist outside of our experience. That which is around us has the power to bless and nourish us. The aphorism that urges us to "stop and smell the roses" has a healing and energizing effect if we will just pause and look beyond the immediate horizon of our being for the fragrances. Another avenue to meaning is creative and intentional activity. If we will choose one possibility among the many options that are available to us and follow through to completion that option then genuine satisfaction and meaning can be ours. The third pathway to meaning is endurance. If we will just resolve that no circumstance has the power to overcome then this capacity to keep on keeping on with dignity will keep us from blowing up in bitterness or giving down in despair. In the face of that which is utterly unalterable and when there is no way to be creative in that which is before us then enduring can bestow a sense of meaning to one's life. The example of Jesus can help. In the last hours of his life he yearned to share a meal with his disciples. In that circumstance he did two things that are so simple and so familiar that we overlook them. He took the bread and then the cup and blessed them and gave thanks for them. Then he shared them with those who were with him. He did what Frankl suggests. By "experiencing what was around him" and "doing something intentional," he "endured" unflinchingly what was ahead. Such steps can empower a person and enable a person to get on with a life of meaning. Moreover, if meaning is an essential part of being human then enabling people to arrive at such a discovery is part of the portfolio of a church! Tell me what you think. Since writing this perspective on meaning I have come across Bill Moyers' report of a televised conversation he had with Joseph Campbell as part of a project on the Power of Myth. Campbell said that the guiding idea of his work was to see what myths had in common or "a constant requirement...for a centering in terms of deep principles." Then Moyers said, "You are talking about a search for the meaning of life." But Campbell exclaimed, "No! I am talking about the experience of being alive! People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning in life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is the experience of being alive so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." I read this to mean some kind of compatibility or resonance between our physical needs and reality. This isn't anything more than the "will to pleasure," with a dash of ecstasy thrown in as flavoring, as I interpret what he said. Epicurus didn't convince me. Campbell isn't succeeding either. But, because I have such a genuine respect for Campbell's work I knew that I had to think again about this question of the source of meaning. Who is right -- Freud or Adler or Frankl or Campbell? I still side with Frankl but there is reason to give the other perspectives their due. I understand Campbell's assertion to mean that the "will to pleasure" or "the rapture of being alive" is the heart of the human experience. I doubt that he or Freud can defend that view successfully in a world where there is so much human suffering and misery. It's a view that is more hopeful than realistic. Welcome to contend for it's share in the marketplace of ideas that shape us. Yet, not convincing. The darker side of human nature is rejected. Or, at minimum, ignored. The presence of meaning in a given circumstance is the very thing that evokes the strength to live with zest. Without meaning life has a way of falling into chaos. (BobSueSand@aol.com).
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