On Suffering and Meaning

“He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how” – Nietzshe



I just read Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. It is a gift given me by my mom several years back and I’ve just gotten to reading it (by no lack of appreciation for the gift). Viktor Frankl is a psychologist who survived four Nazi concentration camps and developed a new form of psychoanalysis called Logotherapy.

The largest part of the book describes his time in the camps and his psychological analysis of the situation and the men he lived around. It’s unlike any account I’ve read or heard or watched. The main idea of the book is, “How can someone find meaning, even in the absolutely degrading conditions of concentration camps?” No, let me restate this. Even in the most hopeless situation, man has meaning.

It turns out that, according to Frankl, it is exactly this hopelessness, or suffering, that gives us meaning. For this is the task Life has given us to fulfill.

He quotes a conversation he had with his daughter when she asked, “Why do we speak of the good Lord?” Frankl responded, “Some weeks ago, you were suffering from the measles, and then the good Lord sent you full recovery.” Yet, this did not satisfy the little girl. She replied, “Well, but please, Daddy, don’t forget: in the first place, he had sent me the measles.”

Life has no single, general meaning, but our meaning in life changes as our tasks change, which happens daily, and even hourly. As the girl was handed the measels, her task, i.e. her meaning in life, became to outlast the measels. She lived to the task Life gave her and the measles went away.

Frankl narrates accounts such as this throughout his recollection of the concentration camps, when men, himself included, came down with Typhus and had a decision that Typhus was their end or Typhus was the suffering Life gave them – it was up to him to live up to the challenge. The challenge to us in our times of suffering is to creatively change the situation from one of pity and self-doubt to accomplishment and personal triumph.

He continues that there never ceases to be meaning. Our meaning in life is not what we expect to gain out of life, but what life expects from us. The tasks, the challenges that are handed to us, these are why we are here. And so from a long, thought-out discussion in Existential thought, that is, 1) existence, 2) the meaning of existence, 3) and striving to find concrete meaning in our personal existence, Frankl concludes that, although meaning changes constantly, the essence of our lives is to create something or do a deed, to love and to suffer.

Fyodor Dostoyevski is quoted in the book as saying, “There is one thing I dread; not to be worthy of my suffering.” So we are challenged to see suffering as our meaning in life and to overcome.

The idea of suffering is far different in Europe than in the United States where someone suffering “is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading – he is not only unhappy, but also ashamed of being unhappy.” The idea that we should always be happy is unrealistic. And whereas we should not celebrate our own suffering, we ought to take pride in that we do suffer and that we triumph over our suffering.

Edith Weisskopf-Joelson stated that “our current … philosophy stresses that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment.” She continues, saying that this mentality could account for “the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy.” This is to say that those who are unhappy become more unhappy because people say they should be happy. The idea in Frankl’s book, an idea I share, is that we are not necessarily meant to be happy, but productive, and triumph over suffering.

However, Frankl also states that suffering has no merit when it is unnecessary. “But let me make it perfectly clear that in no way is suffering necessary to find meaning. I only insist that meaning is possible in spite of suffering – provided, certainly, that the suffering is unavoidable.” So, we will suffer and we do suffer, but it should never be by our own doing.

The entire book is about the mind and how heavily our minds play into our suffering and getting beyond our suffering. Frankl shared account after account of men in the camps who struggled and struggled and then noticeably gave up – that is, they ignored threats and warnings and didn’t get out of their bunk to march and work all day, but instead, dealt with the blows and humiliation, for they felt there was nothing left to live for – no meaning left in their lives. Two days later, they died.

Our meaningfulness in life can be seen two ways: 1) Our value in dignity, 2) Our value in usefulness. Frankl asserts that if our value is based on usefulness, the men at Auschwitz would have no meaning whatsoever. Our value is based on our dignity and our ability to accept our suffering and conquer it, or, out last it.

In this regard, he continues to say that, for old people, “instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past.” By this, they can celebrate the love they felt, the accomplishments they’ve made, and the suffering they’ve overcome.

In stating that these aforementioned ideas are not pessimistic, but “activistic,” Frankl illustrates the idea in this way: “The pessimist resembles a man who observes with fear and sadness that his wall calendar, from which he daily tears a sheet, grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest."

No, the idea that we suffer is not pessimistic. It is activistic. It is acknowledging suffering and struggle and living to our fullest potential in spite of challenges. “It does not really matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.” We must live up to our tasks. We will always have meaning, as we always have tasks, but are we worthy of the tasks we’re given?

"For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement" - Viktor E. Frankl

Sunday Morning Dragonfly