The Meaning of Life

All of us are either in pursuit of, or living out our version of, the meaning of life. For some of us, there is religion. For others the search for meaning itself, is the meaning. And still others see no meaning, they just live because they see no point in dying either.

Truely being able to know the meaning of life is considered subjective by some, an objective by others. Some of us feel that there is a specific non-changing meaning to life, even if it eludes us. Others of us feel that the meaning changes from person to person; that our specific interactions and knowledge redefine the meaning in some way for each of us.

Regardless of the meaning, I'm confident that most of us don't think we've found it yet. We may think we are on the right track, but we don't feel that we have a full understanding and appreciation for where that track ends.

I was recently reading a book by a Psychiatrist who was a prisoner in Auschwitz (Man's Search for Meaning - Dr. Viktor E. Frankl), which I highly recommend to anyone that has the ability to read. The first half of the book is about his experiences in several concentration camps over a three year period, including Auschwitz. The second half of the book is about a form of therapy he developed, or at least helped develop, called Logotherapy. In a nutshell, the main part of Logotherapy is to analyze a persons goals, and what they live for. It is not so much concerned with the past and crazy psychotherapeutic theories. It does consider that past, because as we all know, that shapes who we are. But it recognizes that the problem we all face is meaning, and without meaning, our psychological attitudes become bruised. I would recommend the book to all, it is a short and fast read, yet amazingly insightful.

Anyway, the reason I mention the book is there was a story that especially got me to thinking. Frankl was talking about some form of monkey that continually has blood drawn via a painful puncture several times a day. The research is to cure some disease such as cancer, unfortunately I do not remember what disease. But the point was that while the monkey's suffering will lead to the saving of many lives some day (maybe even thousands), the monkey is not capable of understading this. Therefore that "meaning" of his/her life is unknown to him/her, and can never be known. In much the same way, it is possible that we are unable to understand the meaning our lives hold.

However, I have come up with an interesting sub-meaning. The reason the monkey cannot understand his/her great importance is because of a lack of knowledge. One can debate over the technicalities of this statement, but whether due to a lack of physiological mechanisms, or a lack of experience, the point is that knowledge is why the monkey does not understand. Given that idea, one can say that if the monkey where to gain knowledge, through whatever mechanism, he/she might someday understand just how much of an impact he/she has had on the human race.

In the same line of thinking, I began to understand why the human mind is continually chaning our goals. As we acquire more information we begin to understand that certain existing goals are not important, while other non-existing goals are important. So we are continually changing what our goals are in order to pursue that which is really important. Stated another way, we are continually changing the distance between the person we are, and the person we want to be. That concept, known as self-actualization is one of the main drives of the human race. We have some ideal of what we want to do, we picture how to do it, and then we make that picture a reality.

My father taught me this concept early on in relation to basketball. I was having trouble with foul shots at the time, so he gave me a mini-lesson in self-actualization. He told me to sit before the game, and picture myself on the court. See myself going through the various movements, and see the ball going through the hoop. Seems life a pretty simple idea, and in fact it is. But that does not mean it is not powerful. After a couple games of trying the technique, I got to the point where I often made 2 out of 2 foul shots, and usally made at least 1. Previously, I usually didn't make either one.

Thinking of that story, I began to realize that we are all in a continual race to self-actualize. We have developed morals, values, and beliefs that we are trying to follow. We all make mistakes, but some things we finally master. Sometimes the triumphs are small, sometimes they are large. The key is that we are continually trying to stick to these "rules" for ourselves.

I believe that this attempt to become the person we want to be is, at the very least, a sub-meaning of life. We continually attempt to follow our rules, and we continually alter our rules to make them more correct. All the while we are striving to become the person we want to be, a person that does the right thing ALL the time. While we may say that is not possible, deep down we know it is. And that is what all of us are striving to do. Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, id doesn't matter; we are all attempting to follow our beliefs. And since those beliefs are ever changing, so are we. But there may come a day, when we catch up to our beliefs; a day of self-actualization. And when that day comes, we will know that our lives have not been for nothing. We will know that we have found, at the very least, part of the meaning of our life.