What is the purpose of my life? What is the meaning of all this? These questions echo the current societal condition, predominantly in our Western lifestyle, in which our lives seem to revolve around working a meaningless job to earn money so we can buy stuff as a means to dull our sense of meaninglessness. During times of globalization, secularization, and relative peace, we’re less likely to find meaning in being part of a tribe, religious community, or defending our countries and loved ones against neighboring enemies. Everything has become so dull, so pointless, that we engage in rampant consumerism and distraction just not to feel a deep-seated sense of purposelessness that plagues our existence. And before we know it, nihilism kicks in, and we begin to ask ourselves: What’s the point? Why keep going?
We cannot compare the circumstances of the modern-day person with those who lived in the concentration camps during the Second World War. But oddly enough, we walk around with similar existential questions and have similar reasons for giving up on life altogether: the lack of purpose, hopelessness, meaninglessness, the same old trap of the ‘existential vacuum.’
These profound questions, which seem to resonate so deeply with our contemporary lives, were explored by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Frankl’s work, based on his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps, provides a beacon of insight into the human condition and the pursuit of meaning, even in the bleakest of circumstances.
