“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, 1963, p. 104.

The Search for Meaningfulness and Purpose: Is it really that important to find meaning in our lives?

Everyone experiences times of joyfulness and times of sadness, and even suffering, during this journey we call our life. Times when we ask why bad things happen to good people. It is those times that lead us to ask why we feel depressed, hurt, worried and hopeless. If we consider that what we learn and experience living through interactions with other people and the environment as well as the effects of our genetic blueprint, our lives resemble a woven tapestry. Like a tapestry, there is the “viewing side” and the back side of the tapestry, where loose and knotted threads show where the weaving stopped and started, perhaps changes were made in the design, and even where mistakes were made and corrected. The point here is that tapestries are generally a “work in progress” and the larger the tapestry, the longer it takes to complete it. The weaver needs to work from the back side, but also needs to keep checking the front side to be sure it is faithful to the intended pattern design.

Accepting that we all L.U.I., Living Under the Influence, helps to remind us that there are many influences we live under, many of which can cause us to not only lose our way on life’s journey, but our sense of purpose and meaningfulness in life. Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), was a neurologist who spent 3 years in Nazi concentration camps in Germany. His wife, father, mother and brother were killed by the Nazis. Watching who did and did not survive, he discovered that the people who had Hope, or who had projects to complete, or had great faith, tended to have better chances of survival compared to those who had lost all hope. One of his favorite metaphors was the “existential vacuum”. What he meant by this was that we all desire to have meaning in our lives, and if we lose that sense of purpose, meaninglessness is like a hole, an emptiness in our lives. When we have this “hole” in our lives, we sense the emptiness and want to fill it in with something. In the broad sense of life today, it is very easy to lose our sense of individuality and identity, leading to loneliness: Frankl’s existential vacuum. If we don’t find our life’s purpose and meaning, we Live Under the Influence of unhealthy thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Seeking professional help during these times can help a person find one’s intrinsic purpose in life and start the process of renewal. By stopping to evaluate the pattern on the front of the tapestry, the weaver can choose to make the necessary changes and not lose the tapestry’s meaning.