The Meaning of Life According to Victor E. Frankl

The Meaning of Life According to Victor E. Frankl

The meaning of life, defined by Victor E. Frankl, is the will to find your meaning in life. It is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. He believes that if you are approached with the question of “what is the meaning of my life” or in this case, “life is meaningless,” then you should reverse the question to that person asking the question. For example: What are you bringing to me? What are you as an individual contributing to this life? This forces the person in question to take a look at themselves and to ultimately be responsible. Frankl says that if you are a responsible member of society than the meaning of life transcends from yourself rather from your own psyche. He also says that if we for some reason cannot find meaning within ourselves it has to be from some outside source. This is referred to as service. And an example of this is love. Victor Frankl describes three ways in which we can discover the meaning of life; Creating work-doing a deed, experiencing something-someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

There are several reasons why a person could be feeling that their life is meaningless or has no meaning. According to Victor Frankl these reasons could be existential frustration, existential vacuum, and the meaning of suffering. Frankl breaks down the meaning of existential frustration as so, it can be referred to as existence itself – the specifically mode of being, the meaning of existence, and striving to find concrete meaning in personal existence, which is the will to meaning. Existence itself, in simpler terms is just existing and the human mode itself. The meaning of existence is the question in which we often ask ourselves; Why are we here? When we strive to find concrete meaning in personal existence, we are looking for the personal meaning for existence. Basically what Frankl is saying is that when we are dealing wit the existential frustration we are looking for given meaning that isn’t there. (There is no meaning). On the other hand there is the existential vacuum, which is when you cannot find meaning in your life. Frankl says that the existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in the state of boredom.

It’s when you feel that you have no structure in your life, no one telli...

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... both sides if an issue, because there are usually two sides to every story. But by looking at Frankl and examining what he has to say about the meaning of life, suffering, love, frustration, boredom, tension, etc, I have rally gained a lot of knowledge that almost is common sense. If you sit and take the time to read the material through thoroughly you can see exactly where he is coming from. He’ll take a difficult situation, such as suffering, and turn it completely around. As far as suffering goes I try to do the same thing, in a way. When Mark Felice died last October it crushed me. But I tried to look at the positive side and say well, his suffering is over and he was here to teach us how to live to be stronger and better people. Through our suffering, over the loss of his life, we ended his suffering. This is kind of what Frankl does, he turns things around and makes you view things from a different perspective. I like his way of thinking because it’s not always something that I would think of off the top of my head. Overall, I enjoyed the book although it was difficult at times to read, but I think I gained knowledge from it and see different ways to look at things now.