“Among the things that seem to deprive human life of meaning is not only suffering, but also dying. I never tire of repeating that the only truly transitory aspects of human life are its potentialities. But at the moment they are realized, they become realities; they are preserved and handed over to the past, where they are saved and protected from transience. For in the past nothing is irretrievably lost; everything is preserved forever…
…I would say that having been is the surest kind of being.
Logotherapy, in view of the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activist. To express this viewpoint figuratively, we may say: the pessimist resembles a person who watches with fear and sadness how the wall calendar from which he tears off one sheet every day grows thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, the person who actively tackles the problems of life is like one who removes each successive sheet from his calendar and carefully files it away with the previous ones, after jotting down a few notes about the day on its back. He can reflect with pride and joy on the whole wealth recorded in these notes, on the whole life fully lived. What does it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Is there any reason for him to envy the young people he meets, or to accumulate nostalgia for his own vanished youth? What grounds does he have to envy a young person? For the possibilities the young person has, for the future that awaits him?
‘No, thank you,’ he thinks. ‘Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past – not only the reality of work done and love lived, but also of sufferings bravely borne. Even these sufferings are what I am most proud of, although they cannot arouse envy.’”
— Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
According to the founder of logotherapy, in order for such aging to take place – and for us not to look with regret and sadness at passing youth – it is necessary to remain daily connected to the will to meaning and to realize it tirelessly in our lives. Then even the greatest suffering will one day turn into invaluable capital for a fully lived life – perhaps the most precious of all.
Practically, this means to reflect on lived experience in order to distill its essence and meaning.
