The Creation of the Meaning of Life

Viktor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning, describes his experience of victimization within an Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. This essay serves to relay the author's relation to the four major existential grounds (body, time, others, and the world) during his hardship, and present a concise rendition of the end-point of his own personal search for meaning.

Frankl remembers being shaved and stripped to his literal "naked existence", his last remaining material link to his former life. The inmates suffered a depersonalization in regards to their physical anatomy being viewed as the self, leading to a detachment, which rendered the body as any other object. Frankl describes the pain, not of his body, but of the injustice of being struck for no reason by a guard. He recounts, "We looked like skeletons disguised with skin and rags, we could watch our bodies begin to devour themselves." The choice to speak from a third person view lends insight to the reader regarding the withdrawal from bodily identification.

Time became a strange experience for the inmates. "In camp, a small time unit, a day, for example, filled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very quickly... How paradoxical was our time-experience!" The prisoners were drawn to the present, with the past being an unreachable dream and the future a bleak nothingness, forever remaining a receding horizon.

Of others, many became desensitized. Once perished, others were nothing more but a source of bartering, trading a worn out pair of shoes for a less worn out pair of shoes. Bodies were disposed of without emotional attachment. Others no longer consisted of another "subject", but became complete objects. Blunted emotions led to mistreatment even among inmate and inmate.

The world, during imprisonment, was eventually only considered in terms of degrees of suffering. How hard or small the bed, how cold the snow and tight the shoes, and other such ruminations were the only directly relevant issues in such a perpetual present.

After release, anhedonia held its grip. In the face of depersonalization and derealization, even the beauty of flowers could not entice them. The world which they once knew remained a dream they could only hope to grasp, now not through time, but through the cloud of no-pleasure. The time spent in the camp became a traumatic nightmare to be relived. Others could not imagine, let alone comprehend the immense suffering inflicted upon the inmates. Many became bitter when the unaffected others continued to live their lives without regard or honor for those returning from the camps. Their own bodies healed, but remained vehicles through which they could interact and continue to endure suffering in the world.

Frankl's answer to the question of the meaning of life is one each individual must create. Regardless of the external conditions, the choice of disposition remains. "...Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Frankl also agrees with Nietzsche that "he who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." Those who did not hold hope for the future, or perseverance for a loved one or God, perished. Choosing to live and not be consumed with hopelessness was crucial for survival in the camps. This choice is what creates the possibility of a meaning to life, and this meaning is also a choice. This is existentialism.

For more discussions on existential issues, such as life's purpose, please visit Jared B. Hobbs at his blog Meditations and become a Scholar of Consciousness!