A girl's search for meaning

This Week’s Winner

Francine Alessandra O. Vito, 23, is a non-practicing registered nurse, currently based in Iloilo City and working as a professional sales representative in a pharmaceutical company. A few years ago, she wanted to embark on a quest to find her meaning in life and planned a six month-long post-graduation sabbatical in the boondocks. She now finds meaning in her faith, her family, and in the belief that she should not expect so much from the world; rather, she should contribute to it.

MANILA, Philippines - If you think your life is one big meaningless disaster, full of suffering and misery, think again. We are blessed in more ways than one, though we do not always seem to know this.

We are blessed — we have warm food on the table, clothes on our back, and shoes on our feet. We are free to go anywhere we please. We are free to express ourselves, and to worship any god we choose. We do not live in fear of having our security and lives threatened by armed men suddenly taking over our home, or much worse, an enemy missile attack. The last one may sound extreme, and not a frequently occurring event in our current world, but just a little less than a century ago, our great-grandparents and fellow human beings on the other side of the world had to live through all that and more.

For our generation, World War II is a distant event in the past that seems to hold no immediate meaning to us although it is forever immortalized in the history of the world. It is something we first become acquainted with through firsthand accounts from our grandparents, a war movie, or perhaps though Civics class in grade school. We all know how bad it was (okay, bad is an understatement), how it tore apart families, took so many lives, including innocent ones; how it traumatized people, and how it showed the atrocities that man was capable of committing.

I have always wondered, if WWII was so terrible, why don’t we all just forget that it happened and move on with our lives? My question, along with so many others about life, was answered three years ago in 157 pages by a man named Viktor Frankl.

For anybody who has taken a Psych 101 class, I am sure you have encountered this name and maybe wrote it on a test booklet for your midterm exam. He was a Viennese psychiatrist and founder of the so-called Third School of Psychotherapy, logotherapy. I hope you didn’t forget who he was, though I did, but I’m glad I was able to rediscover him. I went through a crisis in my life where I felt like an inmate trapped in the prison of BS Nursing and was trying to figure out what to do with my life. I had just graduated at the time and I felt like I was stuck in limbo. I remember feeling so depressed, I literally didn’t have the urge to eat, get dressed, or sleep. I was anhedonic, or incapable of feeling joy, and though this is shameful to admit, there was a time I bordered on suicidal. I was in an “existential vacuum,”as Frankl would put it. Life had no meaning for me.

I was searching for my purpose; particularly, for written affirmation of what I had to do. I had a few ideas, but I wanted concrete answers, and I hit the bookshelves to find it. In the past I didn’t believe that anything other than the Bible could hold the answers to life. But at the time I was desperate, and this book changed that belief. On the outside, it’s nothing special — a small book with an unassuming cover, and a title that was very direct to the point, Man’s Search for Meaning. I immediately paid for it.

I got home and locked myself in my room (my mom and I were constantly in a war of our own at the time) for the next few hours reading it. To say that I was deeply moved just does not cut it. This is one of the very few books (the other two being the Bible and Gibran’s The Prophet), which I earmark and underline, and seriously take into consideration the lessons offered.

Man’s Search for Meaning is divided into three parts, the first of which chronicles Dr. Frankl’s experiences in Nazi concentration camps. It was my first time to read about it, and the horrors and sorrows that humans experienced in order to survive were heart-wrenching. Being a camp inmate not only wore them down physically, but emotionally and psychologically as well. Imagine Frankl, a respected psychiatrist, being stripped not only of his possessions, loved ones, and dignity, but also of his humanity. He and so many others were treated like animals, merely reduced to numbers, and the Nazi soldiers simply referred to them by their codes. And if today, we reserve the term “extermination” for pests and insects, during that time, people who looked sickly and useless were literally exterminated. They were looked upon not as men, but as machines that had to work in order to survive. Their value was directly proportional to the work they could contribute. And after toiling through extreme weather conditions all day, the only form of nourishment they received was a bowl of thin soup. Getting a small piece of meat, or a sliver of bread or butter was already a luxury to them.

The way Frankl writes his memoirs in this part of the book is compelling in such a way that you are drawn into his story — you would reflect with him, cry and sympathize. The way he tells it, it’s almost like I was there too. It is well written and not at all difficult to read. What amazes me most is that there never seems to be a hint of bitterness in his words. He had no resentment at all, towards the Nazis or God, for the misfortunes he had to deal with. He is keen at observing people and events happening around him, and he was able to produce something out of what he saw. This was how he formulated his theories on logotherapy.

The second part, “Logotherapy in a Nutshell,” discusses the school of psychotherapy that Frankl pioneered. What sets this school of thought apart from the ones before it is that it is founded upon the belief that the search for meaning in life is the primary driving force of humans, while other psychotherapists believed that man’s primary motivation in life is either pleasure (Freud’s) or power (Adler’s). While they are probably true to some extent, it is comforting to know that Frankl has so much faith in the human race; he believes that our will to live stems from a higher purpose, and not merely dictated by defense mechanisms, primal urges, or desire for power.

He says that there is no one concrete meaning in life — in fact, it is transitory and always changing. It differs for everyone, too. You can, however, discover life’s meaning in three ways: creating a work or doing a deed, experiencing something or encountering someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering. At one point in his camp life, Frankl meets two men who wanted to end their lives, for they saw no further meaning in it. But he told them to look at not what they expected out of life, but what life expected out of them! One had a child who was waiting for him in another country, while the other was a scientist with unfinished works. He says that “a man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the ‘why’ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’” This struck me. Did I even think of my parents or my family if ever I went on with my selfish (and really stupid) life decisions?

The “Case for a Tragic Optimism” is the third and final part of the book. It may sound like a name of a rock album, but it is anything but. He defines “tragic optimism” as the ability to remain positive even in the event of the “tragic triad”: guilt, pain, and death. Frankl is not saying that we should seek suffering in order for us to be fulfilled (that’s masochism); rather, if we are confronted with unavoidable tragedies in life, we must face it with acceptance and positivity, and try to derive meaning from it.

Now I know why we still keep the memory of the holocaust alive — to remind us of what man is truly capable of (both good and bad), and of what is at stake; and to leave us with valuable lessons that is not only helpful for those who have been physical locked up, but are in other kinds of “prisons.” If someone could survive the horrors and the rigorous work one has to go through in a concentration camp, then surely I can live with doing menial chores every day and experiencing a couple of bad days every now and then. I can honestly say that this book has a great impact on my life, and on how I handle problems and suffering today. I have become less of a pain to the people around me, and I strive to be a person who can make other people’s lives better.

So, no, this book will not tell you exactly what you should do or where you should go in order to be happy. It will not tell you that happiness can be achieved only if you will be able to travel the world, gain a million pesos, amass hectares upon hectares of land, or govern a country. Nor will it contain concrete answers as to what your specific purpose in life should be. But what this book offers is so much more — aside from the chockfull of quotable quotes to ponder on and to share with all of your friends on Facebook or Twitter; it offers insight and a new perspective on life.

It made me realize how beautiful life really is and how confusions, problems, and rejections are just small trade-offs for this great blessing of being human, of being able to have choices and to make decisions. It made me realize how blessed we are, because everything from our physical to psychological needs can be easily met. It made me realize that I should not to be single-minded in my search for a purpose or calling in this world, but to respond to each situation and role that comes my way. I now constantly work at being a good daughter to my Father in heaven and to the parents I have here on earth. It made me realize that suffering is not bad, especially if it serves a higher purpose. And most of all, it made me realize that we humans are resilient, and have the potential to rise above the worst of circumstances without being poisoned by bitterness, and emerge a victor — just like Dr. Frankl has.