What is the meaning of life?

What is the point of suffering? How are we supposed to hold onto who we are when things are rough? How do you help someone having a hard time?

There are several base reactions to these things. Religion. Philosophy. Be Stoic. Fall apart. Blame ourselves. Blame someone else. Pretend it isn’t happening.

This last one, the pretend option, is the one we can often default to in relation to our own suffering. Its shadow, when we see other people’s suffering, is to tell them what to do, implying that My words of wisdom will solve all your woes.

Being the recipient of this type of advice is irritating, fully irritating. The person who believes that they know how your woes can be fixed is the person who knows nothing about you. They haven’t stopped thinking in their own grandiose ways to notice that your situation is different, your personality unique, and that really what you want from someone else when times are tough is kindness and love.

I only ask others what the meaning of life is when:

1. I know they will answer forty-two;
2. I feel like being entertained; or
3. It is someone I trust and am having an edifying, mutually satisfying conversation with.

I also look to people who have suffered. What do they say the meaning of life is?

Viktor E. Frankl, a psychologist who survived the Holocaust, is someone I find wise and insightful. I have written about Man’s Search for Meaning before HERE and am now reading a collection of speeches he gave in the months after he was released from a concentration camp.

Yes to Life in Spite of Everything is a fascinating read. Here is a man who has suffered beyond description, escaping death while others did not, thinking about what makes life meaningful. This is what he says:

…the question can no longer be: ‘What can I expect from life?’ but can now only be: ‘What does life expect of me?’ What task in life is waiting for me?

p. 38

The meaning of life is not what life can give us, or will do for us, but how we are responding to the life we have. He goes on to tell a story about a man who was a prisoner on a ship that caught fire. He was released from his shackles and saved ten people from dying. As a result, he was pardoned from his crimes. Frankl reminds us:

…none of us knows what is waiting for us, what big moment, what unique opportunity for acting in an exceptional way, just like the rescue of ten people by that black man aboard the Leviathan.

p. 39

Frankl argues that it is the question itself we must consider, rather than what the question is asking. To ask ‘What is the meaning of life?’ is to ask a question that exists in the theological, the philosophical, and the arena of prayer and thought. It is a passive question.

Let’s take a religious answer as an example. If Jesus is the answer and bringing glory to God the thing that must be done, how is this distilled into the everyday? How does this apply to my friend dealing with loss, that other friend facing divorce, and, harder still, that parent facing their child’s suicide?

For some, it brings great comfort. But usually, it comforts those who are already established in this type of thought. For those not established or those given to thinking and thinking and thinking, the comfort is fleeting. There is still no meaning for the abuse I suffered as a child. I do not know where Jesus was or how it glorified God.

Returning now to Frankl’s perspective, one I find edifying and applicable, it is the question itself that is weak. A weak question brings a weak answer. Rather than asking life what its meaning is, we should, instead, be allowing life to ask us ‘what meaning will we make?’. Frankl explains:

The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realise the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.

p.39

The big question, ‘Does life have meaning?’, is in fact a series of small questions, ‘What meaning do I bring to this moment, with this person, in this situation?’

To feel that life is meaningless, something we all feel at different times, is to forget that life is active. It is alive. To be lived. No matter who we are, we are the ones facing the late train, the rude student, the unhappy friend, the sick parent, the messy house, the comfy couch. These are all real things. In and of themselves, they are situations, not meaning. We make the meaning.

The train is late due to incompetence. The rude student, a horrible person. The unhappy friend, lazy. The sick parent, inconvenient. The messy house, everyone else’s fault. The comfy couch, our only comfort.

Or perhaps the late train allows us to slow down. The rude student an opportunity to recognise unmet needs. The unhappy friend someone to take out for coffee. The sick parent a chance to return a little of the care they gave to us. The messy house a sign of busy lives. And the comfy couch one of many comforts in our lives.

The meaning is entirely up to us.

Does that stop me from feeling low or overwhelmed? No. But it helps. Frankl comforts us with this reminder:

In his particular environment in life, every single human being is irreplaceable and inimitable, and that is true for everyone. The tasks that his life imposes are only for him, and only he is required to fulfil them. And the life of a person who has not completely filled out his (relatively) larger life circle, remains more unfulfilled than that of a person who truly meets the tasks he finds in his more closely drawn circle. In his specific environment this tailor’s assistant can achieve more, and, in the the things he does and the things he leaves undone he can lead a more meaningful life than the person he envies, if that person is not aware of his greater responsibility in life and does not do justice to it.

p. 41

This doesn’t dismiss the comfort of religion and philosophy. Rather, it distills the theological and philosophical into the practical. Few of us will be well known or hold celebrity status. Few of us will win a Nobel Prize or make a world-changing discovery. Yet all of us make the world better asking ‘What does life require of me here, in this situation, with this person, in this place?’

The answer is more than you imagine.

It requires you to tell the truth, be kind, and seek the most meaningful outcome possible. Sometimes it is to smile at a child. Sometimes it is to stand your ground and require more of someone. You aren’t a doormat, but neither are you the knower of all things.