A few weeks ago my brother and I were having a conversation about the meaning of life when I recalled a book I’d read back in college, and recommended it to him. About a week later I asked him if he’d read it and he told me he’d read it the day after I told him about it, and thought it was incredibly powerful. His response prompted me to re-read it so that I could again remember why I’d been so moved by it back in college, and understand why he’d found it so inspiring now. The book is called Man’s Search for Meaning, and it was written by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Auschwitz and Dachau Nazi deathcamp survivor.
In his book, Frankl gives a personal account of his own search for meaning amidst the horrors of the Nazi deathcamps. His wife and the rest of his entire family, with the exception of one sister, perished in the camps. Although I in no way can compare the gravity of losses he suffered with the loss one experiences when going through a divorce, I think his outlook can inform the importance and cultivation of one’s attitude– for Dr. Frankl and his comrades it was often the difference between death and survival.
What Frankl discovered was that having a reason to live came from finding something meaningful to live for, whether that meaning was one’s intention to write a book when the war was over or to see again the infant one sent into hiding before going into the camps. Out of his deathcamp experience Dr. Frankl developed a theory called logotherapy, which is founded on the belief that human nature is motivated by the search for a life purpose; logotherapy is the pursuit of that meaning for one’s life. In Frankl’s book as well as examining the elements of how a person searches for meaning, he dissects the idea that man is self-determining, and he posits that all men have within themselves the potentiality to behave as “swine or as saints”. Furthermore he maintains that the behavior that is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.
When families divorce and restructure, husbands, wives and lawyers are all met with a number of conditions. And at every step of the way they are also met with decisions. Unless and until control is ceded (most typically to the Court) how those decisions are made and actualized is within our control. It seems to me that helping people find meaning amidst personal and family turmoil is a constructive first step toward making intentional decisions, and one best done before constraints and conditions are thrust upon them.
