REFLECTION FINDING MEANING IN LIFE

WRITER: RICHARD T. BOSSHARDT, M.D., FACS

At the end of each year, I always try to reflect to see what lessons can be gleaned from the past year and how they can be applied as I move forward into the new year. A recent survey asked older adults what things about their lives they would change. One of the most common responses was to reflect more. I agree and see this as a way of living life more intentionally rather than being carried along by the stream of circumstances and events that define everyday life.

If you were to ask people, “What is the most important need of human beings?” you may receive any number of reasonable answers. Some might suggest obvious physical needs like food, water, air, or even sex. Others of a more philosophical bent might answer with love, freedom, security, hope, laughter, or companionship. I believe the single most important thing people need — not just to survive but also to thrive — is meaning or purpose in their lives. People need to know their lives count.

One of the most depressing, hopeless, miserable, and altogether destructiveto-the-human-spirit environments that ever existed was in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps during World War II. It is hard to imagine any place on earth where surviving, much less thriving, would be more difficult.

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist of Jewish descent. In 1944, he and his wife were transferred from the Jewish ghetto where they had been sent in 1942 to concentration camps — he to a slave labor camp affiliated with Dachau and she to Auschwitz where she perished. The American Army liberated him in 1945. Of all his relatives, only he and a sister survived the war.

Despite his horrific circumstances, he was still able to observe life in the camps from the objective perspective of a psychiatrist. He noted that those who were most likely to survive the camps were the ones who found meaning even under those unimaginable circumstances. He concluded that finding meaning or purpose made it possible to endure and even thrive in the most awful, dehumanizing situations. The result of his experience was his landmark book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he developed what became the school of psychotherapy called logotherapy.

Logotherapy is based on the premise that striving to find meaning in one’s life is the “primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans.” Without meaning, life becomes a series of daily activities without any overarching purpose.

This brings me to the main point: what gives life meaning? I think it boils down to our worldview. Everybody has one. Even not having a worldview could be considered a worldview of its own. Our worldview forms the basis of how we live our lives, imbues every decision with meaning and purpose — or not — and influences our every thought and action.

There are two basic, competing foundational worldviews: the natural and the supernatural. The former holds that everything in the universe, including us, is the result of time and undirected physical forces acting on matter. Everything can be distilled to chemical reactions and/or forces acting according to immutable laws of nature. There is no purpose or meaning to our existence, no thought or planning as to how we came to be, and no particular reason for why we are here. In this worldview, meaning is whatever we make it out to be since there is no source outside of ourselves and/or the physical universe to give meaning to our existence. It makes it easy for us to give meaning to something, but that meaning is relative and only exists so long as the circumstances exist. For example, if our children give our life its meaning, what happens if we don’t have children or they predecease us? Does that void our meaning? You can see the dilemma.

The other view is the supernatural one. This holds that there is another plane of existence distinct from the natural world we see and experience around us every day. Its existence is expressed in many ways. The

“intelligent design” movement holds the view that the universe is the product of an intelligent designer, the nature of which is not specified. The Star Wars series called it “The Force.” Some just call it God. Many people — and I include myself — have had life experiences where it seems we came in contact with this “supernatural” aspect of life in some hard to define but very real way. What all of these different interpretations of the supernatural have in common is they provide for a source of meaning that does not depend on us. If our lives have meaning, it is because this designer, force, or God has given it to us.

I like the idea that my life has meaning regardless of what I do for a living, who loves me, how much good I do, or what other people think. Life is more than a popularity contest or race to accumulate the most friends, money, possessions, or power. Every human life is dignified and important. The idea that we matter simply because we exist — no matter how menial or mundane our lives may be — is very comforting.

Not all supernatural worldviews are the same. Mine happens to be a worldview based on Judeo-Christian beliefs and values. As such, the Christmas season, for me, becomes a special time infused with a wonderful sense of meaning. If the intelligent designer, force, or God of the universe saw in mankind something of such value that He (here I bow to convention and refer to such a being as male) lived among us for a while, then anything and everything we do — from the simplest act to the most momentous decisions we make — becomes infused with eternal significance.

Therefore, as we close out 2013 and embark in a new adventure in 2014, it is my hope and prayer that you will find meaning in every aspect of your life, and as Eric Liddell did, feel God’s pleasure. Happy New Year!