There is a course marked out for each person, leading to the meaning of his or her life. That you don’t know what the meaning of your life is and don’t know the unique potential of your existence here on earth only means that the primary task is to find your way. You proceed by responding to the demands of each day. (The Doctor and the Soul, p. 54-56)
I agree. At the same time, something about this troubles me. If the task quality of life has therapeutic value, as Frankl has asserted, then the tasks themselves have to be deemed valuable. If we feel a particular action is worthwhile and accomplishes something good in the world, we don’t have to see how it accomplishes our entire life’s purpose. We will still feel good about doing it.
Yet, even if the tasks themselves are deemed valuable, the search for one’s way in life is fraught with tension. There is tension between the way things are and the way they ought to be, between the middle and the end of the process. There is nothing wrong in this, and it spurs us on to actions through which we can realize our goals.
However, the therapeutic value of tasks performed in the moment and most of all the therapeutic task of “finding one’s way” is lost if one cannot sense a purpose to the pursuit itself, to the process of searching.
It is not always easy to find value in the process. If I have a goal in mind, something I want to accomplish and I cannot see how I will accomplish it, I am not satisfied knowing that my primary task is to search for my way. What helps the most, in my experience, is when I can manage to muster the humility of knowing that I don’t know.
I don’t know whether the goal I thought I was aiming for is really the goal I’m supposed to be reaching, and if it is the right goal, I don’t know how I’m supposed to get there. There are many ways to a destination. Maybe the way I’m going is not the right way for me to get there.