The Meaning of Life

Everyone needs to have meaning in life—a reason to get out of bed. As a generally optimistic person this comes fairly easy to me. But the times that I feel that I have no meaning or purpose, I get a small glimmer of what it is like to be depressed and otherwise in wonder of what the meaning of life is.
I have just completed reading Viktor E. Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning”. I have wanted to read it for years after hearing it quoted from on many occasions. I finally bought it while killing time at the UVSC bookstore while waiting around for Lindsey’s Miss UVSC practice. It was a great bargain for $6.99.
Viktor tells the story of his experience while in the concentration camps during the Holocaust. As a psychotherapist he states that “it is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task”.
He also quotes Nietzsche, “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. This could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic efforts.”
‘Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.’ Therefore, tasks give purpose, and purpose gives us a will to live and get out of bed the next day.
Sometimes this will is from just looking forward to the next meal, or a craving for something. It often comes to me as I look toward the weekend, or a special event. Thus, we need to place items in our lives that we can look forward to: a trip in the future, a get together with friends or loved ones, or a chance to sit down and read a book or do something that we enjoy.
Latter day saints have a built in goal to look forward to and that is eternal life to be spent with loved ones in a celestial world with a promise of a painless existence with a perfected body. On a whole, we should be optimistic with this hope at all times, but after a big event, I tend to get that let down feeling. I’ve accomplished something, completed a trip, finished up a major project and now what. I can lie in bed and feel lazy and wonder what I should get up and do. I’m glad that this feeling doesn’t come around too often. May we always find meaning and purpose in life.