Viktor Frankl and Me

Viktor Frankl never ceases to amaze me.  He gets in my brain and tells me what I should have known all along. 

I’ll give you this (from Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, where Frankl is sharing a letter sent to him by an American medical student):  “All around me here in the U.S. I see young people my age who are desperately groping for a meaning to their existence.  One of my best friends died as a result of his search.  I know now that if her were here now I could help him, thanks to your book, but he is not.  His death, however, will always serve to pull me toward all people who are in distress.  I think this is most powerful motivation anyone can have.  I have found a meaning (despite my deep sorrow and guilt) in my friend’s life and death.  If I can be strong enough to fulfill my responsibility, his death will not have been in vain.  I want more than anything to prevent this tragedy from happening to others.”

In this passage, I recognize the reason I teach high school.  Not only did I see a handful of friends die when I was young (drunk driving accidents, overdoses, suicide), I myself experienced a kind of death in adolescence.  After high school, I wasn’t all that happy, and I sought happiness in places where it could never be found permanently.  Frankl’s explanation of the “existential vacuum”, in which people try to fill a void with supplements to happiness, is a perfect analogy for the feelings of meaninglessness that people feel.  We want to find meaning.  Everyone does.  Some of us, more than others, feel a void.  I felt it.  I still feel it.  What I want to do with my life is help other people stop trying to fill a bottomless pit and just find happiness.  MY problem is that I help other people while neglecting my own personal needs.  Even so, I would not change that purpose in life for anything.  I just need to keep reminding myself of Dr. Frankl:  he survived a series of concentration camps in which all of his family died.  He maintained a positive attitude, because there was nothing else to do.  If you want to help other people, you can’t wallow in circumstance.  Life is. 

We are all human, and the events which take place in our lives happen.  Whether by fate or purposeful decision-making, we are who we have made ourselves to be.  That doesn’t mean we can’t change, but it does mean that being stuck in the past is absolutely useless.  We can’t transcend the past, but we can impact the future. 

Frankl wrote that “all freedom has a ‘from what’ and a ‘to what’”.  Just like Margaret Atwood wrote in The Handmaid’s Tale, people have “freedom to” and “freedom from”.  Problems in existential thought happen when we can’t decide which freedom is more important.  People in the United States certainly have “freedom to” (at least most of the time), so then they are faced with the crisis of:  now what?  If I have all this freedom, shouldn’t I be doing something with it?  Shouldn’t there be a bigger purpose?  What is it?!  And the crisis ensues …  People who struggle with the meaning of life seem to self-administer psychotherapy, via drinking, drugs, cutting, promiscuity, or simply guilting themselves out of happiness. 

I love that I have a job in which I can help people identify and (possibly) avoid the sucking vacuum of meaninglessness.  I will teach them my subject area, and (hopefully) in the process, teach them about life itself.  I may not be a doctor of psychology, but I can certainly pass on my friend Viktor’s wisdom.

Maya Angelou died today, and she once said:  “If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude.”  You see?  English and psychology and life all merge.  School is not useless, no matter what the haters think.  We might not realize it until much, much later, but the things we encounter in our youth have a lasting impact.  My youth almost killed me, and yet here I am.  That’s a good enough reason as any to help others find meaning in life before it’s too late.