“Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.”
So said neurologist and psychiatist Victor Frankl. This sentiment touches the flickering core of me. The search for meaning is pivotal to my human experience. It’s what drives me forward. It’s what drives the human experience forward. This search for a visceral POINT to life is what dragged us from the primordial soup to the top of the food chain. We’d be amoeba without it. Or cud-chewing cows. I love this clip from 1972 of Frankl discussing the importance of this search. I found it on TED this morning.
Frankl’s raw enthusiasm makes me smile. And get a bit teary. He’s all love and is so light.
And I like his flight analogy, and this idea of crabbing…whereby a plane has to head north of it’s destination when there’s a side-wind pushing it south. Extrapolated out: to land where your truth is, you have to aim high, as winds will send you backwards. You have to be an idealist to wind up a realist. If we take humans as they should be, they can then become what they can be.
So often I’ve tried to water down my search, fearful that I’m penetrating too far.