After an extended break from blogging, I’m returning to wrap up a 4 part series that I’d started on Irvin Yalom’s 4 existential givens. In existential therapy, our primary focus is not on this or that symptom, nor on merely discovering the early roots of a particular distress. Rather, our aim is to assist people in encountering themselves at a more profound level, cultivating authenticity, responsibility, meaning, and awe. And there’s a lot to be said about how that impacts our resilience.
Frankl on suffering
Long before the world of psychology began studying resilience, the preventative medicine side of mental health, it was being observed in concentration camps during WWII by a man named Victor Frankl. Frankl let his captors know that he was a doctor and so ended up in the position of being somewhat protected while also being exposed to the worst levels of suffering taking place.
In his book ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ he recalls his time there. One of the interesting things that Frankl found was that the common thread among those who pulled through under even the most dire of circumstances, was a deep abiding sense of meaning. Decades of research since have confirmed what Frankl saw. Meaning is critical to our ability to endure hardship.
Cultivating meaning
Yalom and I disagree on the connection of meaning to life. Yalom would say that life is inherently meaningless and therefore we must create our own meaning. I could say that life is inherently meaningfull and that we both discover and create meaning in our lives. However you may land, there are ways that we can be intentional about cultivating a sense of meaning in our lives.
Awe requires taking our eyes off of ourselves and meaning requires that there be something bigger than ourselves. Meaning is found in the framework which holds life’s absurdities together. Many of us find it in our faith. Some find it in our connectedness and responsibility to others. All of us are capable of cultivating it, and we should.