Frankl and the meaning of life. Viktor Frankl on the meaning of human life Psychologist Frankl on the meaning of life

The absence of meaning gives rise to a state in a person that Frankl calls an existential vacuum. It is the existential vacuum, according to Frankl’s observations, supported by numerous clinical studies, that is the reason that gives rise on a large scale to specific “noogenic neuroses” that have spread in post-war period in the countries of Western and Eastern Europe and on an even larger scale in the United States, although some varieties of such neuroses (for example, “unemployment neurosis”) have been described even earlier. A necessary condition for mental health is a certain level of tension that arises between a person, on the one hand, and the objective meaning localized in the external world, which he has to realize, on the other hand.

* The above allows us to formulate the main thesis of the doctrine of the desire for meaning: a person strives to find meaning and feels frustration or a vacuum if this desire remains unrealized.

* The correct formulation of the question, however, according to Frankl, is not the question about the meaning of life in general, but the question about the specific meaning of life for a given individual at a given moment. "Put the question in general view- it’s like asking the world chess champion: “Tell me, maestro, what is the best move?” "The question of how a person finds his meaning is key to the practice of logotherapy. Frankl never tires of emphasizing that meanings are not invented, not " Subconscious God." Frankl defines conscience as a sense organ, as an intuitive ability to find the only meaning hidden in every situation. Conscience helps a person to find even a meaning that may contradict established values, when these values no longer meet rapidly changing situations. That’s right, According to Frankl, new values are emerging: “A unique meaning today is a universal value tomorrow.”

* In the very process of discerning meaning, Frankl does not see anything that cannot be reduced to the general psychological laws of human cognition. In the most general form, Frankl characterizes the cognition of meaning as something between the “aha-experience” of Karl Bühler and the perception of gestalt according to Max Wertheimer. The specific tasks and limitations of logotherapy follow from the patterns of a person’s finding of meaning. No one, including a logotherapist, can give us the only meaning that we can find in our life, in our situation. However, logotherapy aims to empower clients to see the full range of potential meanings that any situation may contain. “All we can do is be open to meaning, consciously try to see all the possible meanings that a situation presents to us, and then choose the one that, as far as our limited knowledge allows us to judge, we believe to be the true meaning of the situation.”

* However, finding meaning is half the battle; it still needs to be implemented. Man is responsible for realizing the unique meaning of his life. The realization of meaning is not a simple process and is far from happening automatically once the meaning is found. Frankl characterizes the desire generated by meaning, in contrast to the drive generated by needs, as something that requires the individual to constantly decide whether he wants to implement it in a given situation or not. The realization of meaning is an imperative necessity for a person due to the finiteness, limitation and irreversibility of a person’s existence in the world, the impossibility of postponing something for later, the uniqueness of the opportunities that each specific situation presents to a person. By realizing the meaning of his life, a person thereby realizes himself; so-called self-actualization is only a by-product of the realization of meaning. Nevertheless, a person never knows until the very last moment whether he has truly succeeded in realizing the meaning of his life.

* Since the desire to realize the unique meaning of one’s life makes each person a unique personality, Frankl also talks about the meaning of a person’s very personality, his individuality. The meaning of the human personality is always connected with society; in its orientation towards society, the meaning of the individual transcends itself. Conversely, the meaning of society is in turn constituted by the existence of individuals.

* It remains for us to characterize only one more concept introduced by Frankl, namely the concept of supersense. We are talking about the meaning of that whole, in the light of which human life acquires meaning, that is, about the meaning of the Universe, about the meaning of being, about the meaning of history. This meaning is transcendental to human existence, so it is impossible to give any answer to the question about the supermeaning. Frankl emphasizes that this does not imply the meaninglessness or absurdity of existence, which man supposedly has to put up with. A person has to put up with something else - with the impossibility of grasping existence as a whole, with the impossibility of cognizing its super-meaning. Naturally, supermeaning is realized independently of the lives of individual individuals. Thus, “... history in which supermeaning is realized occurs either through my actions or in spite of my inaction.” Speaking about supermeaning, one cannot ignore the question of Frankl’s understanding of religion. On the one hand, God takes pride of place in theory, and religious faith - in the practice of logotherapy. On the other hand, as correctly noted in G. Gutman’s preface to one of Frankl’s books, he uses the concept of religion in such a broad sense that it includes agnosticism and even atheism. Concluding our consideration of the doctrine of the meaning of life in Frankl’s theory, let us repeat the main the thesis of this teaching: human life cannot lose meaning under any circumstances; the meaning of life can always be found.

* The main thesis of Frankl's third teaching - the doctrine of free will - states that a person is free to find and realize the meaning of life, even if his freedom is noticeably limited by objective circumstances. Recognizing the obvious determinism of human behavior, Frankl denies its pan-determinism. “Necessity and freedom are not localized at the same level; freedom rises and is built on top of any necessity.” Frankl talks about human freedom in relation to his drives, to heredity and to factors and circumstances of the external environment.

* Freedom in relation to inclinations is manifested in the ability to say “no” to them, accept or reject them. Even when a person acts under the influence of an immediate need, he allows it to determine his behavior and retains the freedom not to allow it. The situation is similar when it comes to the determination of human behavior by values or moral norms - a person allows or does not allow himself to be determined by them. Freedom in relation to heredity is treating it as material, the ability of a free spirit to build from this material what it needs.

* Frankl characterizes the organism as an instrument, as a means that a person uses to realize his goals. A similar relationship exists between personality and character, which also does not in itself determine behavior. On the contrary, depending on the personality, character can undergo changes or remain unchanged. Human freedom in relation to external circumstances, although not unlimited, exists, expressed in the ability to take one position or another in relation to them. Thus, the very influence of circumstances on a person is mediated by the person’s position in relation to them.

* A person is free due to the fact that his behavior is determined primarily by values and meanings, localized in the noetic dimension and not experiencing determining influences from the factors discussed above. “Man is more than a psyche: man is a spirit.” Finally, an important question in the doctrine of free will is the question of why a person has freedom. IN different jobs Frankl offers divergent formulations, but their common meaning is the freedom to take responsibility for one’s destiny, the freedom to listen to one’s conscience and make decisions about one’s destiny. It is the freedom to change, the freedom from being exactly this way, and the freedom to become different. Frankl defines man as a being who constantly decides what he will be in the next moment. Freedom is not what he has, but what he is. “A person decides for himself; any decision is a decision for himself, and a decision for himself is always the formation of himself.” Making such a decision is an act of not only freedom, but also responsibility. Freedom devoid of responsibility degenerates into arbitrariness. This responsibility is associated with the burden of a person choosing which opportunities hidden in the world and in himself deserve to be realized and which do not. This is a person’s responsibility for the authenticity of his being, for correctly finding and realizing the meaning of his life. In essence, this is a person’s responsibility for his life. ©

Viktor Emil Frankl (26 March 1905 – 2 September 1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist, psychologist and neurologist, a former prisoner of a Nazi concentration camp. Known as the creator of logotherapy - a method of existential psychoanalysis, which became the basis of the Third Vienna School of Psychotherapy.

There is no situation in the world that does not contain a core of meaning. But it’s not enough to fill life with meaning; you need to perceive it as a mission, realizing your responsibility for the final result. Victor Frankl

In his youth, when deciding whether to become a cartoonist or a psychotherapist, Viktor Frankl said to himself: “As a cartoonist, I will be able to notice human weaknesses and shortcomings, and as a psychotherapist, I will be able to see behind today’s weaknesses opportunities for overcoming them.” Letters coming from different countries, with the words “Dr. Frankl, your books changed my whole life” became the best confirmation that he made the right choice.

In my youth, like many others, I was tormented by the question: who needs my life? I looked for answers everywhere, but mostly books helped: Richard Bach, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse... They did not give recipes, but posed new questions, but it was even interesting. And when my father brought Viktor Frankl’s newly published book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” I felt like a thirsty traveler who suddenly saw a spring gushing out of the ground. The word meaning was for me then a sign of recognition; meaning was talked about a lot in classrooms, in the kitchen, under the starry sky...

I read the book in one night and, having closed the last page, I already knew that I would return to it more than once. And I still come back, trying to understand the person who wrote it, based on his own experience, because he realized that it was impossible to explain the meaning of life to anyone else.

You can know yourself only by acting, not by thinking. Goethe

Viktor Frankl... Who was he? Professor of neurology, professional psychotherapist? A climber who conquered mountain peaks? A pilot who made his first solo flight at age 67? A composer whose music is featured on popular TV shows? A concentration camp prisoner who survived inhumane conditions against all odds? A kind genius whose books help cure boredom and bustle? All this and much more. But above all, a person who knew how to discern in everyone the good that, perhaps, sleeps for the time being. Look at it and wake it up...

Viktor Frankl was born in 1905 in Vienna, his childhood and youth fell on the difficult years of the First World War, economic crises and psychological instability. Together with them, the boy’s need to find his place in the world grew. As a thirteen-year-old teenager, having heard from a teacher that life is ultimately nothing more than a process of oxidation, Frankl could not stand it and jumped up with the question: “What then is the meaning of life?” Trying to find some balancing principle that underlies the entire Universe, he school years filled several notebooks, giving them a loud title: “We and the Universe.” All this time, struggling with despair and misunderstanding, Frankl developed an immunity against nihilism.

Perhaps someone will think that he was destined to become a psychotherapist, because just at that time Freud’s school was actively developing in Vienna and a little later the school of individual psychotherapy of his opponent Adler appeared. Perhaps, but Frankl did not stop with their ideas, he continued to search.

Viktor Frankl in his youth.

In 1928, trying to prevent suicide among students, he opened a youth counseling center in Vienna and, together with like-minded people, defeated this problem: for the first time in many years, the number of suicides among young people began to decline. Frankl received his medical degree in 1930 and continued to work in the field of clinical psychiatry. He wanted people who came to him to begin to realize that they were free to change something in the world for the better and to change themselves for the better if necessary.

When you think about such people, you involuntarily ask yourself the question: can I do this? I can follow the rules that Frankl developed for himself:

Treat the smallest matters with the same attention as the largest. And do the biggest things as calmly as the smallest ones.
Try to do everything as quickly as possible, and not at the last moment.
Do all the unpleasant things first, and only then the pleasant ones.

It seems simple, but... The second point especially suffered, and I always found an excuse for myself. This was probably what distinguished him from Frankl, because if he failed to adhere to the rules, he could go for several days without talking to himself.

Often in his work, Frankl used the method of paradoxical intention, which he himself developed. The essence of the method is this: instead of running away from unpleasant feelings and situations associated with them, you need to meet them halfway. To get rid of a symptom, you need to form a paradoxical intention, that is, the desire to do something opposite to what you need to get rid of, and it is advisable to do this in a humorous form. Laughter allows you to look at yourself and your problems from the outside and gain control over yourself. Frankl mastered this method well and encouraged his followers to do the same; he gave examples from his own and their practice in his book. The results are truly impressive, but what kind of sense of humor does one have to have to suggest that a patient suffering from hand tremors organize a trembling competition, and even encourage him to shake faster and harder! Or instruct a patient suffering from insomnia to stay awake all night. And you need to be very brave so as not to shy away from the patient’s remark: “Doctor, I always thought that I was abnormal, but it seems to me that you are too,” and calmly answer: “You see, sometimes it gives me pleasure to be abnormal.”

The only peak of man is man. Paracelsus

But the most important thing in the work of a psychotherapist is not techniques and techniques. Frankl was ready to answer phone calls at any time of the day, look for different explanations, and always tried to discern the person behind the clinical case. He believed that the picture of an illness is just a cartoon, a shadow of a person, and one can be a psychiatrist only for the sake of the human in the patient and for the sake of the spiritual in the person. Many of Frankl’s patients admitted that what kept them from irreparable actions was their gratitude to the person who was ready to listen to them even at three in the morning and knew how to see the good in them that they themselves had long ceased to believe.

Second World War prevented the publication of his first manuscript, “Healing the Soul,” with the basics of logotherapy, treatment through the search for the meaning of life. At this time, Frankl was the head of the neurological department of the Jewish Hospital in Vienna. He could emigrate to the USA, but he understood that then he would leave his elderly parents to the mercy of fate and would not be able to help them in any way. He also knew that he, a Jew, would have almost no chance of survival... Frankl decided to ask heaven for advice. The first thing he saw when he came home was a piece of marble with one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor your father and your mother and you will abide on earth.” In the depths of his soul, he had already made the decision to stay, and the commandment only helped him realize this. He continued to work for another two years, since the Gestapo officer, on whom Frankl’s fate depended, was his patient. But in 1942, together with his parents and wife, he ended up in a concentration camp. His sacrifice made sense. Both Frankl’s mother and father died, although in a concentration camp, but in his arms. And the doctrine of meaning has been tested in four camps, proving its right to exist.

Viktor Frankl with his wife.

In the concentration camp, Frankl organized a psychological assistance service for prisoners, learned about those who had lost the purpose and meaning of life, and tried to help them... He saw how the mysterious “stubbornness of the spirit” allowed people to remain free even in a concentration camp and not depend on the conditions in which they hit. “Here in the camp there were people who always had a kind word to support a comrade, they were ready to share the last piece of bread. Of course, they were few in number - these people who chose for themselves the opportunity to preserve their humanity, but they set an example for others, and this example caused a chain reaction.”

It was not those who were stronger who withstood inhuman conditions, but those who had something to live for. After the war, Frankl wrote: “As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am well aware to what extent a person depends on biological, psychological and social conditions, but, in addition, I am also a survivor of four concentration camps - and therefore am a witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying the most difficult conditions imaginable.”

Frankl also had something to live for, because he kept the manuscript of the book with the first version of the doctrine of meaning and made sure that it survived, and when this failed, he hoped to restore it. In the typhus barracks of the concentration camp, he was able to ward off attacks of fever, use excitement and intellectual enthusiasm in order to recreate his treatise, - For 16 delirious nights, Frankl wrote brief shorthand notes on tiny scraps of paper in the dark.

If we accept people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as if they are what they should be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming. Goethe

His inner life continued, he imagined how after the war he would talk about everything he had experienced, mentally communicated with his wife - this helped him not to break down. “I realized that love penetrates far beyond the essence of a loved one, allowing the soul to break away from the existence of a prisoner... More and more I experienced the feeling that my wife was present here, that she was with me, that I could touch her - take her hands in mine,” Frankl wrote. He saw his wife in a bird, sitting on the ground next to him, her face was brighter than the rays of the setting sun, and no one in those minutes could convince him that this was not so. Sometimes the heart is wiser than the mind, Frankl believed. And sometimes it’s smarter not to be too smart...

The fact that Frankl managed to survive was probably a bit of an accident. He was transferred from camp to camp, he ended up on the death list, worked with infectious patients, tried to escape... But if not for the “stubbornness of the spirit,” the ability to hear fate and the voice of conscience, no accident would have helped him.

After the war, returning to Vienna, Frankl came to his friend Paul Polog and told him about the death of his parents, brother and wife. He couldn’t help but cry: “When something like this happens to someone, when a person is subjected to such trials, then it all must have some meaning. I have a feeling that something awaits me, that I am destined for something.” No one could understand him better than his old friend, because Frankl himself had to cope with the crisis. “Suffering has meaning only if it changes me for the better,” he wrote. And, like no one else, you understood that any medications that help numb the pain of loss and forget those you loved will not help. But around Frankl he saw people who were also experiencing the same pain, who were confused, lonely and also in need of help, and he found meaning again: “The meaning of my life is to help others find meaning in their lives.”

Frankl described his experiences and experiences in the book “Psychologist in a Concentration Camp,” which was published shortly after the war. He wanted to publish it anonymously, not thinking that anyone would be interested in it, and only his friends convinced him to put his name on it. It was this work that became the most famous.

Viktor Frankl at a lecture.

In 1946, Viktor Frankl became director of the Vienna Neurological Clinic, in 1947 he began teaching at the University of Vienna, writing several books one after another. His Man's Search for Meaning has been translated into 24 languages. Since the 1960s, he has traveled a lot around the world and feels that in these relatively peaceful times, the problem of the meaning of life has become even more pressing. In the post-war world, more dynamic, more developed and rich, people gained more opportunities and prospects, but began to lose the meaning of life.

Frankl called his psychotherapy the pinnacle because he saw human soul heights to strive for. And he said that a person must be helped to find the courage to live spiritually, to remind him that he has a spirit. “Despite our faith in the human potential of man, we must not close our eyes to the fact that humane people are ... a minority,” Frankl wrote. “But that’s why each of us feels challenged to join this minority.” A man is somewhat like an airplane, he joked. An airplane can travel on the ground, but to prove that it is an airplane, it must take to the air. It’s the same with us: if we stay on the ground, no one will guess that we can fly.

When Frankl was asked to say what the meaning of life is, he smiled. After all, there is no universal, only correct answer to this question. Each person and each moment has its own, unique meaning. “There is no situation in the world that does not contain a core of meaning,” Frankl believed. “But it’s not enough to fill life with meaning; you have to perceive it as a mission, realizing your responsibility for the final result.”

In September 1942, Viktor Frankl, the famous Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist, was arrested and, along with his wife and parents, sent to a Nazi prison. concentration camp. When the camp was liberated three years later, most of the doctor's relatives had died, including his pregnant wife. However, he - prisoner number 119104 - survived. Viktor Frankl wrote a book about his life in a concentration camp, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” which instantly became a bestseller in 9 days. Reflecting on the fate of the prisoners, the author came to the conclusion that the difference between those who survived and those who did not was one thing - the desire for Meaning.

According to Viktor Frankl's observations of concentration camp prisoners, people who managed to find meaning even under the most horrific circumstances were much more resilient than others. “Everything can be taken away from a person except one thing,” Frankl wrote in his famous book, “the last of human freedoms is the ability to independently choose how to relate to certain circumstances.”

In Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl describes an example of two prisoners who exhibited suicidal behavior. Like many others in the camp, these men lost hope and stopped seeing meaning in life. “In both cases, it was important to let them know that there was still something waiting for them in life, that they had a future.” For one man, this was such a ray of hope. youngest child, who was then living abroad. For another - a scientist - this role was played by a series of books that he had to complete. Frankl wrote: “This uniqueness and exclusivity, which distinguishes each individual and gives meaning to his existence, has as much to do with creativity as it does with human love. When it turns out that it is impossible to replace one person with another, a person’s responsibility for his existence and its continuation is fully revealed. A person who realizes his responsibility to another human being who is passionately waiting for him, or to an unfinished work, will no longer be able to throw his life away. He knows the “why” of his life, and will be able to bear almost any “how”.

It seems that today the ideas presented in Frankl's work - the emphasis on meaning, the significance of suffering and responsibility not only to oneself, but to something greater - are at odds with the principles of modernity, when people are more interested in personal happiness than in the search for meaning. The author notes: “In the eyes of Europeans important characteristic American culture is an imperative: again and again it is ordered and prescribed to “be happy.” But happiness cannot be an object of striving, of pursuit; it must be the result of something else. You need to have a reason to “be happy.”

According to Gallup, having purpose and meaning in life increases well-being and life satisfaction, improves mental and physical health, increases stamina and self-confidence, and reduces the likelihood of depression. And a person who is solely in search of happiness turns out to feel less happy. Frankl also notes this when he says that “the search for happiness interferes with happiness itself.”

During a psychological study, 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 answered the question of whether there was meaning and/or happiness in their lives. Based on data obtained from respondents - their level of stress, their financial capabilities and the presence of children - the scientists came to the conclusion that a meaningful life and a happy life overlap to a certain extent, but are essentially very different. Happy life, said psychological researchers, is associated with the ability to take, while a meaningful life is associated with the ability to give.

“Happiness without meaning characterizes a rather superficial, self-centered, even selfish life, in which everything goes well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficulties are avoided.”

“Happiness without meaning characterizes a rather superficial, self-centered, even selfish life, in which everything goes well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficulties are tried to be avoided,” the authors of the article write. Psychologists say that happiness is nothing more than the satisfaction of desire. An elementary example: you feel happy after satisfying your hunger. In other words, people become happy when they get what they want. But not only people are capable of such feelings - animals also have needs and desires, and having satisfied them, they equally feel happy.

What distinguishes people from animals is not the search for happiness, but the pursuit of meaning - an exclusive feature of man. This was concluded by Roy Baumeister, who co-wrote with John Tierney Willpower: Rediscovering greatest power person." Martin Seligman, another well-known psychological scientist of our day, described a meaningful life as “using your strengths and talents for the benefit of something greater than your ego. For example, finding meaning in life is associated with simple acts such as buying gifts for other people or caring for children. People who have high level meaningfulness of life, they often continue to search for meaning, even realizing that this will be detrimental to their happiness. “We take care of other people and devote ourselves to them. This brings meaning to our lives, but does not necessarily make us happy,” Baumeister concludes.

Returning to the life of the Jewish psychotherapist, it is important to recount an episode that occurred before his imprisonment in a concentration camp. An episode that defines the difference between finding meaning and finding happiness in life. Frankl was a successful psychologist with an international reputation. As a 16-year-old boy, he entered into correspondence with Sigmund Freud and received admiring comments from the great scientist. While in medical school, he not only founded a center for the prevention of suicide among adolescents, but also began developing logotherapy, his own method in clinical psychology aimed at overcoming depression through the search for personal meaning in life.

By 1941, Viktor Frankl's theories were already known to the world community; he worked as the head of neurological department in the Vienna Rothschild Hospital, where, risking his own life and career, he makes false diagnoses of mentally ill patients in order to save them from euthanasia under the Nazi program. That same year, a famous doctor makes a decision that changes his entire life.

Having reached certain career heights and realizing the danger of the Nazi regime, Frankl requested a visa to America and received it in 1941. At that time, the Nazis had already begun sending Jews to concentration camps, taking the elderly first. On the one hand, Franul understood that he would not have to wait long for the moment when his parents’ house would be raided. He also understood that once this happened, he would have to go to prison with them to help them cope with the horrors of camp life. On the other hand, he had recently become a husband himself, and a fresh American visa tempted him with the opportunity to be safe and calmly continue his successfully started career. Viktor Frankl decided to neglect personal goals in order to stay with his family and help them, and later other prisoners in the concentration camp.

The truth extracted by the Jewish doctor from the unimaginable suffering through which he had to go through in prison is still relevant today: “Man’s existence is always directed towards something or someone other than himself - be it a meaning to be realized, or another person to meet. The more a person forgets himself - giving himself to the service of an important cause or the love of another human being - the more human he is and the more self-actualized he is.”

Baumeister and his colleagues would agree that the search for meaning is the only thing that makes a person human. By setting aside our selfish desires and dedicating ourselves to others, we not only show humanity, but also realize that a good life is about something more than the pursuit of simple happiness.

Despite the fact that the question “about the meaning of life” in a decent society is considered a little naive and indicates that the person asking it is somewhat divorced from reality, at least suffers from “youthful maximalism”, despite all these very respected considerations - the meaning of life still interests us all

And no matter how brave and invigorated people are, and no matter how much they pretend to be stupid ordinary people who lately are only interested in the prices of furniture in Ikea, you cannot escape from yourself and your human nature... It is precisely the painful, unresolved question of the meaning of life gives rise to depression in people - regardless of their material wealth, richness of leisure time and level of education.

We are all human, and everyone faces this classic question in all its existential growth.

On the way to finding answers, we face myths and misconceptions - everything is like in a real fairy tale. One of these myths and misconceptions: “ - one for everyone and for all time" You just have to find it, like “Koshcheev’s death”, like solving an algebra problem - and the A (princess) is in your pocket. Thinking like this is the biggest mistake.

There was such a person in the world - Viktor Frankl (you've probably heard about him more than once), who understood everything about the meaning of life. I am sure that this man’s reasoning should be known to everyone. Do you know why? Not just because I think they are amazingly brilliant. And also because I would not advise any of you and me to go through the life path of Viktor Frankl, so that everyone personally comes to similar thoughts. I don't want a World War. No concentration camp for any of the readers. In order to comprehend the wisdom of life, there are books. They need to be read precisely for the purpose of not comprehending the same wisdom, only behind barbed wire, on a diet consisting mainly of gruel...

So, what is the meaning of life?

A person is born and gets a chance. What kind of chance is this? A chance to win back your most intimate personal meaning from fate.

Like this. Meaning- he is only YOURS! And he wins back from fate!

Thanks to what, what weapon can we win our personal, blood meaning from fate?

Thanks to the presence, again, of our own internal life position, our own personal life attitude.

Frankl highlighted this crusade behind the personal meaning of life THREE PILLAR ROADS. This:

Experiencing the beauty of the world,
Creation,
and these same ones - Personal life attitudes.

What is the main thing here, of these three points, do you think?

Here’s what Frankl thought about it: “Experiencing beauty and Creating is relatively easy. In the same way a person endures the blows of fate and overcomes the incipient despair, his special achievement is contained.”

This means that the main thing is to have personal life attitudes... How exactly does this weapon work, paving the way for us to comprehend the meaning of life? How does it help? We'll deal with this in our turn. Now let’s translate the “complex term” into simple language.

Let's not say "the meaning of life." This expression is painfully hackneyed - it means almost nothing and does not evoke a response in the soul. Instead of " meaning of life " we will talk " Live meaningfully." Do you see how everything started to sparkle with colors? It’s a different calico, and a lot of things immediately become clearer...

What does it mean to “live meaningfully”?

To live meaningfully is to fulfill the task in front of you. It's that simple...

You just need to understand it properly. Sometimes, for example, our task is to simply relax at the moment, To do nothing, listen to music or concentrate on preparing pizza that no one needs, so that you can then give it to your stunned neighbors, lying that today is your angel’s day...

Well, other times the “task before us” is to do a certain job... Or to provide help to a person who needs it...

Living meaningfully means finding everything that is most valuable in a situation and trying to promote it, realize it, drink it to the dregs.

We are talking about the value that will be considered at the moment as the highest.

I remember the story of how at camp we were fooling around around the fire, playing transvestites in a show. The largest boys were chosen to play the role of “transvestites”, who, even in pitch darkness, could not be confused with girls. Music was playing, an “erotic dance” was going on, the outfits and makeup we had carefully invented shone on our “stars” in the light of the kerosene fire show... And now our finalist, basking in the rays of everyone’s attention and admiration to the music of Dalida, suddenly squints his eyes to the side and sees how the dry grass (well, yes, we are a bunch of idiots) began to burn like a carpet, still slowly, but already approaching the tents. .....

And ten minutes later, with well-burnt hands and feet (he trampled the grass as he was - barefoot, throwing junk on the low flame with his feet) and a half-burnt dress in his paws, he sat, puffing, on a log bench and greedily drank vodka from a flask - never smoking and non-drinking athlete-tourist...

Spectators could extinguish the grass fire - there were plenty of them. But this MEANINGFULLY LIVING person probably thought that then it was HIS task. And indeed, the audience was too drunk and frivolous in mass to so quickly put out the fire of the show, which had gotten out of control.

Meaning is always what we have to do IN THE MOMENT.

The meaning of life is always an OFFER and at the same time a REQUIREMENT of the present moment.

But life does not always throw up such extreme situations. How to find meaning where there is no need for the Ministry of Emergency Situations? Where everything seems quiet and more or less smooth? Here is what Frankl writes about this:

“Meaning cannot be imposed, borrowed or given. No one can dictate to another what he should see his meaning in. Neither a boss to a subordinate, nor a parent to a child, nor a doctor to a patient. Meaning cannot be given or prescribed - it must be found, discovered, RECOGNIZED.”

Meaning is the task for which I am now needed, necessary. It is I who, through my actions, am able to transform the good that lies hidden in the situation. opportunity V reality.

Remember the song:

“I have to do this.
This is my destiny.
If not me, then who, who?
Who else if not me?

Pure creation already begins here; creativity is one of Frankl’s three roads.

Meaning always beckons, pulls, attracts a person and at the same time demands something from him... But if we give the right answer to the demand of the moment Then

“another piece of life is woven into the fabric of our personality” (W. Frankl)

Now, probably, it is already clear to everyone that there is no single meaning of life for everyone and at all times, this is not the answer to the problem at the end of the textbook.

The meaning of “for all time”, we are unlikely to comprehend it, unless this is an error that has crept into the reasoning. Yes, this is most likely a mistake.

The meaning is not only not common to all people... it cannot remain the same even for one person throughout his entire life. After all, life is changeable. Everything flows, everything changes, and you cannot enter the same water twice. Life constantly puts us in different conditions. Sometimes you need to intervene in a fight, and sometimes you need to not interfere in it. Sometimes you need to steal, and sometimes you need to not take someone else’s property even if you are dying of hunger.

The meaning of life is the specific meaning of a specific situation, the “demand of the moment.” And this demand is addressed to a specific person.

Changeable and flowing like water, life every day and every hour presents us with new meanings, and every person on the planet has his own meaning. Every meaning is a flash of dharma * “here and now”.

Like dharma, meaning changes from situation to situation and from person to person, like dharma it is omnipresent.

There are no situations where there is no flash of dharma. There are no situations when life suddenly stops giving us meaningful opportunities.

Every person, at every moment of his life, has one or another task that life has prepared for him.

When we catch a bird by the tail...

When we do what we thought was RIGHT IN A GIVEN SITUATION, we take the most valuable thing from this situation. This way we create the best conditions for subsequent situations. This is how we create “good karma” for ourselves and the world.

“Stone by stone, checking the accuracy of the masonry with a plumb line, we build a house. Step by step we walk the Path. The direction, the course will be determined by our main organ of perception, the internal compass - conscience" (Frankl)

The feeling of “what is right” does not depend at all on knowledge and Reason. We have all been given such an “organ” that knows what we must do in each situation in order to preserve and develop the good that it contains. This “gut feeling” paves the way for us to a full-blooded life.

Even if we do not feel complete satisfaction from what we have done, joy and peace lie in the knowledge that NOTHING COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER,

Frankl warned: intelligence is not a help in choosing the right decisions. It even does harm. How? The fact is that the tendency to analyze is often used by us as an “excuse” in order to drown out the voice of conscience, in order to silence what a person feels inside himself. Rationalization is a cunning man who, shocking us with his weighty arguments, forces us to go off the right path. It is we who have to pay for our mistakes, not our intellect. Who has seen how the intellect suffers? The soul always suffers...

Therefore, the meaning of a life situation is comprehended not through conscious reflection, but intuitively, spontaneously.

Any person, regardless of age and level of intelligence, is capable of making decisions.

This is worth remembering for parents who, through their overprotectiveness, prevent their children from making decisions in accordance with their conscience. If you forbade your son to warm up a kitten or puppy when he was eight years old, then do not be surprised that your adult son will leave his children and you in your turn. After all, you forbade him to empathize with the suffering of others and help the weak? So he carries out your program, so live on your own as best you can. Go and put yourself back in the trash heap from which you brought yourself.

Viktor Frankl never tired of repeating that the question of the meaning of life needs to be turned 180 0 long ago. It is not a person who asks life “What is your meaning?”, but life itself asks a person questions every day. A person is the one from whom life asks.

We are born into an imperfect world. But its main value and joy is that it presents us with “meaningful possibilities.”

What is the difference between "Live" and "Exist"?

To exist means to be the one to whom the question was asked.

To live is to give an answer to the question that was asked.

*Dharma 1. - term of Indian religion and philosophy. Used to denote moral duty, the duties of a person, or more generally the path of piety. In the Indian historical and philosophical context, the term “dharma” has always personified correct behavior in life in accordance with universal laws.
Dharma 2. - a phenomenon, then an indivisible component of existence. The elementary “brick” of consciousness and the world. Dharmas are instantaneous, continuously appearing and disappearing, and their excitement forms the person (or other creature) who perceives the world. The nature of dharma is incomprehensible.

Elena Nazarenko

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