Man's Search for Meaning (Part 2)

It’s in this context that Man’s Search for Meaning offers a completely different perspective. When people are under adverse condition, their life under threat, their daily activities more as for sustaining than living out any meaning of existence, they persevere. They live on. Their will to survive flourishes. Yes it is difficult to understand. Born in each man is a will to survive and to live. It’s this will that keeps human beings as a group to continue their existence on earth.

Surely there still is the strong and the weak. Some are blessed with a stronger will to live, and they live on regardless of how unfavorable their surroundings are. How this will is sustained I’m not so sure. It can be just an animal instinct. Or more likely it’s love, legacy, and hope.

Love is well known to be a driving force for life. Viktor Frankl described his longing to see his wife made him want to stay alive. It is sad that while he was struggling to survive with the flimsy hope that he would live with his wife together one day, she was already dead. But reality does not matter. So long as a man’s love for someone stays afloat, he will strive to live on. “Nothing could touch the strength of my love, my thoughts, and the image of my beloved,” he said. We’ve heard stories like a prisoner serving long prison term not losing his resolve because there was a young family he hoped one day would reunite with. Or a person trapped in debris for several days after an earthquake, without food or water, not knowing her chance of survival, did not give up simply because of the thoughts of her family. Love provides a man’s life with meaning. “Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.” How beautiful!

Legacy is something one leave to this world. This is most of the time closely related to a person’s achievement. Viktor Frankl mentioned several times his desire to finish his academic writings in psychology and publish them as a book. Once he even risked his life hiding his work from SS guards. People may argue “if you can preserve your life, you can always finish your work later.” But this is actually easier said than done. When one is faced with a situation that what he sees as precious is going to be taken away, there is really an urge to protect it at the cost of his own well being or even his own life. This ”precious something” is not necessarily material thing. In our society a lot of people work extremely hard. Other people may comment that they work for money that they don’t really need (as they are already wealthy.) The truth is they work for their psychological need of leaving a legacy. This is similar to the phenomenon that many elder men take sex enhancement drugs, even at the risk of their life, not for sexual pleasure but to prove their potency. (I may be a bit off track here.) Legacy is the second component that fulfills life with meaning.

The final piece of the puzzle is hope. Hope of something better to come in the future strengthen one’s will to survive. How hope stays with a person under a difficult situation yet leaves another person under a similar situation is anybody’s guess. No one knows the answer for sure. Is it something to do with a person’s personality and character traits? Or is it due to a person’s experience during his growing up? Or is it more to do with a person’s mental strength coming from his ancestors’ genes, or religious belief, or encouragement from friends? Viktor Frankl had not explicitly mentioned hope as a key factor of his survival through the concentration camp. Nevertheless he hinted in different occasions the importance of focusing on the positive side of this ordeal. The prisoners’ thankfulness for the smallest of mercies, the image of his wife, their ability to look at life in a humorous way - all are evidence of hope at work here.

Love, legacy and hope – these are the three cornerstones of man’s meaning of existence!