Of Viktor Frankl’s three principles, the “will to meaning” is the hardest one to wrap our heads around. An action word seems to be missing. We would expect something like, “will to find meaning” or perhaps “will to realize meaning.” However, the point expressed by this principle is not action but motivation.
We have a primal will and orientation towards meaning. And since meaning is something we can find “out there” in the world, the search for meaning points us in an outward direction. Thus, we can reword “will to meaning” as “motivation towards meaning.” We are essentially meaning-focused, not self-focused.
For as long as I can remember I have always been a seeker of meaning. This is why I suffered through school. The frontal teaching style wasn’t meaningful for me.
What was missing was the glue – connecting the dots between opposing perspectives, between intellect and emotion, between theory and practice. Most of all, I wanted to have a goal or a question that interested me, that I would be motivated to seek an answer to.
Then in tenth grade a wonderful thing happened. Our geometry teacher Mr. Engelhart said: “I’m giving you a different kind of assignment. You’re not going to answer the questions by using the theorems. You’re going to figure out the theorems!”
For once in my life I wasn’t memorizing and spitting back. I was figuring something out. I had a goal that motivated me, and I delved into the process with abandon.
At the time I was eating up books like How Children Fail by John Holt. I firmly believed that every child wants to learn, and their curiosity gets squashed in school. This learning experience was different. I cannot recall another school experience like it. Initially I was interested in figuring out the theorem, but the more I immersed myself in it, the more enjoyable the whole process was, with discovery after discovery after discovery.
It felt holy, and I didn’t want to spoil the sheer thrill of the experience by getting a measly grade, as if that’s what this delightful experience was all for. So I told the teacher, “Please don’t give me a grade on my report card for this class.” He didn’t let me down. If I remember correctly I had something like A, A, A, A, one B, one C (history, which was a boring class), and Geometry – blank.
Like any learning process, personal growth is also a process of discovery. You’re trying to figure out your life. How can you find the strengths you need? What has your experience taught you? Here too, you’re motivated towards what you find meaningful, towards seeking an answer to a question, your question.
The direction is critical. We are primarily motivated outward, not inward. We’re motivated to find a purpose, to find meaningful goals worth striving for. We are not primarily interested in gratification of needs. As a child absorbed in play forgets himself, we want to be absorbed in something else, whether that means loving another person or being involved in furthering a cause or ideal. We are self-transcending creatures, and self-actualization is only a by-product of becoming who we are in the process of being involved in something other than “self.”
When you are encountering something other than self, you are engaged in a dialogue. Although your goal might start out as wanting to solve a specific problem, you are “questioned” (challenged) by life, and life waits expectantly for an answer from you. In the process of seeking a meaningful response to life’s questions you discover things about yourself along the way. (“Hey, I didn’t know I could explain myself without being aggressive and without being apologetic either, but with calm, quiet conviction…”)
Frankl calls the will to meaning a true manifestation of man’s humanness and also a reliable criterion of mental health. (p. 84) Why? Because having a will shows you’re not an automaton, a need-meeting machine. As Frankl says, if a person is “nothing but” defense mechanisms and reaction formations” is life really worth living? Isn’t suicide and depression understandable? “Who is justified in demanding that I improve or expecting that I change? There is no need for apologies; there are plenty of excuses…I am neither free nor responsible. So there is no reason why I should not continue living out the aggressive impulses about which I can do nothing anyway. (p. 104-105) Frankl then concludes, “From all this it should be clear that we are in dire need of a rehumanization of psychotherapy…” A machine or an animal is purely self-centered; a person is response-able – free, and capable of responding to questions in the context of a relationship “with.”
The discovery of meaning is part of a “gestalt” perspective, where you perceive the whole picture of what is going on for other people and for yourself and interpret it in terms of a meaningful whole, and you flow with the questions as they come. You don’t have to see the big picture of what your entire life is about in order to sense what this one moment is about. You need only ask, “For what purpose am I here right now?” That is enough.