(Wo)man's Search for Meaning in a time of grief
March 13th 2008 01:26
He has wonderful hands. My father. He is a cartoonist, and can draw wonderlands. They are big, strong hands and somehow make you feel like they can hold anything. Holding his hand in mine, as a little girl, I believed he knew all the answers to life’s questions.
'When one door closes another one opens,’ he told me, and I clasped this insight as if it were a unique kernel of knowledge only he knew, that he had chosen to impart to me.
‘Always stand up for what you believe.’
‘Not everyone is entitled to an opinion – everyone is entitled to an informed opinion.’
‘Be your own boss.’
‘Let God rule the world.’
No matter what curved balls life threw me, I knew I could always ask my dad and he’d give me something to clutch to. He’d make it all make sense.
Adulthood gives with the one hand and takes with the other. Like Blake’s songs of experience, maturity sheds us of the illusions of innocence. We perceive that our parents are flawed. One of the most painful realizations of adulthood for me, was the understanding that my father did not have special insight into life, and that, as much as everyone else, he too was grappling for meaning.
A fortnight ago, a childhood friend of mine lost her eight year old son in a car accident.
At my age, death is not so much a novelty as it is an acknowledged inevitability – certainly I accept that my parents will die, that I will die too someday. But the death of this little boy, identical in age to my own son, was like a golf club to the belly of my soul.
For days afterwards, I found everything meaningless. The laundry. The mortgage. Exercise. Nutrition. I cannot tell you how much I missed my father’s big hands in those days. I just wanted him to hold them and tell me, ‘it was his time,’ ‘he is in a better place,’ ‘his soul’s purpose is fulfilled.’ But all that verbiage sounded like spiritual propaganda. I felt like I was being suckered into a divine advertising campaign. The truth was there was nothing anyone could say that would make it make it make sense.
Sometime during this haze of fresh grief, I realized that there are only two choices in life: either
1. life has no meaning – in which case, what is the point of anything? Why did I have children? Why do I fold the laundry, teach my kids right from wrong, give to charity, say no to drugs, update my Orble blog, care about AIDS in Africa or how many whales are being killed? OR
2. life does have meaning. It must have. And I have to figure out what it is.
In this way I found myself reading Viktor Fankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning first published in Austria in 1946. Frankl was a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor - I figured if anyone had anything to offer about life’s meaning, it would be someone who had seen and endured his fair share of suffering. Frankl lost his mother, brother and wife in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and yet, founded an entire psychotherapy based on the notion that life is ultimately meaningful and worth preserving under all circumstances.
In the first half of the book Frankl tells starkly of his experiences as prisoner number 119 104 digging and laying tracks for railway lines in Auschwitz. During his time there, he observed that people who were future-oriented – who had ‘something to live for’, outside of themselves, were the ones who were able to keep going through the most inhuman conditions, whether it was a loved one they hoped was still alive, or a task they had felt they had not yet completed – in Frankl’s case, it was his book, his life’s work, that he knew he had to rewrite and give to the world. Frankl often quoted Nietzche, who said, ‘He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.’
Frankl’s philosophy, known as logotherapy (from the Greek ‘logos’, which means ‘meaning’) is based on these beliefs:
1. Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
2. Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
3. We have freedom to find meaning in what we do and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.
Unlike other therapies, which rehash one’s history so we can make peace with the unhappy childhood’s we all had in varying degrees of dysfunctional family, logotherapy is entirely future-oriented. Logotherapy places the responsibility on each of us to interpret our lives and to work out what the meaning in each situation is. We are each responsible to find the potential meaning in our lives.
The way Frankl explains it, there is no one answer to the question: what is the meaning of life? That is like asking ‘what’s the best chess move?’ It depends on the board at the time. Frankl believed that each situation in life represents a challenge to each of us as individuals, and it is up to us to figure out what life is asking of us in that given moment.
In his own words:
‘The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters therefore is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.’ (Man’s Search for Meaning.)
But – and this is what truly resonates with me – ‘’being human always points.. to something or someone , other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself,’ (Man’s Search for Meaning). So while the meaning of life always changes, it never ceases to be. Life continually throws up a new set of circumstances for us to interpret and to which to give meaning.
‘For the human being gives meaning to his or her own life and existence by trying to fulfil something in which he or she sees value.’ (Man's Search for Meaning)
Whether we find meaning through daily domestic devotions to our family, completing the Six Foot Track, getting together with friends over a bottle of red wine, collecting antiques, reading books, fighting for causes, traveling, writing blogs, or walking the dog, Frankl believed we each have not only the emotional muscle but the responsibility to infuse our lives with meaning. And when we are faced with an unchangeable fate – such as losing a child or being diagnosed with a terminal illness – the final freedom we have, is in choosing our attitude to our suffering.
When I spoke to my friend, she said quietly, ‘I have to be strong for my daughter.’ And in those few impossibly brave words she chose her attitude to her loss.
Frankl’s book is not the comfort of my father’s big hand holding mine, when just a few fatherly words seemed enough to contain all the pain and contradictions of life, making it simple, almost bearable. But it is enough to help me muddle through my vicarious grief, giving me the chance to animate today with a kind of hopeful curiosity: how can I locate the meaning in this moment?
www.joannefedler.com
'When one door closes another one opens,’ he told me, and I clasped this insight as if it were a unique kernel of knowledge only he knew, that he had chosen to impart to me.
‘Always stand up for what you believe.’
‘Not everyone is entitled to an opinion – everyone is entitled to an informed opinion.’
‘Let God rule the world.’
No matter what curved balls life threw me, I knew I could always ask my dad and he’d give me something to clutch to. He’d make it all make sense.
Adulthood gives with the one hand and takes with the other. Like Blake’s songs of experience, maturity sheds us of the illusions of innocence. We perceive that our parents are flawed. One of the most painful realizations of adulthood for me, was the understanding that my father did not have special insight into life, and that, as much as everyone else, he too was grappling for meaning.
A fortnight ago, a childhood friend of mine lost her eight year old son in a car accident.
At my age, death is not so much a novelty as it is an acknowledged inevitability – certainly I accept that my parents will die, that I will die too someday. But the death of this little boy, identical in age to my own son, was like a golf club to the belly of my soul.
For days afterwards, I found everything meaningless. The laundry. The mortgage. Exercise. Nutrition. I cannot tell you how much I missed my father’s big hands in those days. I just wanted him to hold them and tell me, ‘it was his time,’ ‘he is in a better place,’ ‘his soul’s purpose is fulfilled.’ But all that verbiage sounded like spiritual propaganda. I felt like I was being suckered into a divine advertising campaign. The truth was there was nothing anyone could say that would make it make it make sense.
Sometime during this haze of fresh grief, I realized that there are only two choices in life: either
1. life has no meaning – in which case, what is the point of anything? Why did I have children? Why do I fold the laundry, teach my kids right from wrong, give to charity, say no to drugs, update my Orble blog, care about AIDS in Africa or how many whales are being killed? OR
2. life does have meaning. It must have. And I have to figure out what it is.
In this way I found myself reading Viktor Fankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning first published in Austria in 1946. Frankl was a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor - I figured if anyone had anything to offer about life’s meaning, it would be someone who had seen and endured his fair share of suffering. Frankl lost his mother, brother and wife in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and yet, founded an entire psychotherapy based on the notion that life is ultimately meaningful and worth preserving under all circumstances.
In the first half of the book Frankl tells starkly of his experiences as prisoner number 119 104 digging and laying tracks for railway lines in Auschwitz. During his time there, he observed that people who were future-oriented – who had ‘something to live for’, outside of themselves, were the ones who were able to keep going through the most inhuman conditions, whether it was a loved one they hoped was still alive, or a task they had felt they had not yet completed – in Frankl’s case, it was his book, his life’s work, that he knew he had to rewrite and give to the world. Frankl often quoted Nietzche, who said, ‘He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.’
Frankl’s philosophy, known as logotherapy (from the Greek ‘logos’, which means ‘meaning’) is based on these beliefs:
1. Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.
2. Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.
3. We have freedom to find meaning in what we do and what we experience, or at least in the stand we take when faced with a situation of unchangeable suffering.
Unlike other therapies, which rehash one’s history so we can make peace with the unhappy childhood’s we all had in varying degrees of dysfunctional family, logotherapy is entirely future-oriented. Logotherapy places the responsibility on each of us to interpret our lives and to work out what the meaning in each situation is. We are each responsible to find the potential meaning in our lives.
The way Frankl explains it, there is no one answer to the question: what is the meaning of life? That is like asking ‘what’s the best chess move?’ It depends on the board at the time. Frankl believed that each situation in life represents a challenge to each of us as individuals, and it is up to us to figure out what life is asking of us in that given moment.
In his own words:
‘The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters therefore is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment.’ (Man’s Search for Meaning.)
But – and this is what truly resonates with me – ‘’being human always points.. to something or someone , other than oneself – be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself,’ (Man’s Search for Meaning). So while the meaning of life always changes, it never ceases to be. Life continually throws up a new set of circumstances for us to interpret and to which to give meaning.
‘For the human being gives meaning to his or her own life and existence by trying to fulfil something in which he or she sees value.’ (Man's Search for Meaning)
Whether we find meaning through daily domestic devotions to our family, completing the Six Foot Track, getting together with friends over a bottle of red wine, collecting antiques, reading books, fighting for causes, traveling, writing blogs, or walking the dog, Frankl believed we each have not only the emotional muscle but the responsibility to infuse our lives with meaning. And when we are faced with an unchangeable fate – such as losing a child or being diagnosed with a terminal illness – the final freedom we have, is in choosing our attitude to our suffering.
When I spoke to my friend, she said quietly, ‘I have to be strong for my daughter.’ And in those few impossibly brave words she chose her attitude to her loss.
Frankl’s book is not the comfort of my father’s big hand holding mine, when just a few fatherly words seemed enough to contain all the pain and contradictions of life, making it simple, almost bearable. But it is enough to help me muddle through my vicarious grief, giving me the chance to animate today with a kind of hopeful curiosity: how can I locate the meaning in this moment?
www.joannefedler.com
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Comment by Jill Browne
Skip On Over
London Travel
England Travel
Canada Travel
Calgary Travel
First, sympathy to your friend, you and all affected by this waste and loss.
Your discussion of meaning and Frankl is right on the mark.
Comment by Michaelie
Flick Wit
I have read some Frankl - I think it would be worth me reading more.
Michaelie
Comment by Miswanderlust
Killer Beats
Ramble On
Hipnotherapy
I am so sorry to hear of your friend's loss. Death of a child is so difficult to comprehend. Children are not supposed to die...Parents expect to see their children grow and mature. Ultimately, parents expect to die and leave their children behind...This is the natural course of life events, the life cycle continuing as it should. The loss of a child is the loss of innocence, the death of the most vulnerable and dependent. The death of a child signifies the loss of the future, of hopes and dreams.
I can relate to the meaningness of ordinary tasks during this time. I know that during a dark time I looked to Frankl's work to help. Man's search For Meaning is hands down one of my all time favorite books. I have given numerous copies of this masterpiece as gifts.
Thank you for the reminder and it's message of hope.
Mis
Comment by Joanne Fedler
Secret Writers Business
Thanks for visiting.
Jo