meaning in the midst of suffering

Last updated on: August 5, 2012 at 6:05 pm by David Hayward

meaning in the midst of suffering 2012-08-05T18:05:10-04:00 David Hayward

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Viktor Frankl, in his famous book Man’s Search For Meaning, shares about a time he was participating in a group therapy session, complied of a variety of people who were experiencing a variety of sufferings. As we know, Frankl’s primary interest in logotherapy, which he developed, was that it is meaning that gives one a reason to live. The human is not given a passion for life by simply self-actualizing, but by self-transcending. We need to reach into our deepest resource, which is our untapped potential, to live a life of joy, passion and meaning.

During this session, the meaningless of suffering arose. Frankl’s own life provides an example of how his life had meaning. When he was arrested and taken to a prison camp, he had a one out of twenty-eight chance of survival. That was the statistics. He had hidden in his coat the manuscript for his book he was writing. When this was confiscated, he lost all hope. Eventually, he realized that he simply must write this book, so he scribbled notes on anything he could find. It was his sense of mission to write this book that he believes kept him alive.

In this way, he didn’t find meaning in the suffering. but he found meaning in the midst of his suffering. The suffering itself didn’t have meaning that he could perceive. But he found a meaning for living while he endured unbearable suffering in such places as Auschwitz. He noted that it was those who had a reason to live that had a far better chance of survival. It wasn’t that they had a reason to suffer that they could understand, but that they had a reason to endure the suffering. You understand the difference.

So he gave a question in a story as an example to the therapy group. I quote:

The question was whether an ape that was being used to develop poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unanimously, the group replied that of course it would not; for with its limited intelligence it could not enter into the world of man, i.e., the only world in which its suffering would be understandable. Then I pushed forward with the following question: ‘And what about man? Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos? Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension possible, a world beyond man’s world; a world in which the question of an ultimate meaning of human suffering would find an answer?’

Please keep in mind that although Frankl believed in human spirituality, he was not religious. He believed in a transcendence that is within us all, and personal.

(Another spin on the story he used could be that this was written in a day when animal testing was common and acceptable practice. Now that we see it as unjust, what would this say about the suffering of that ape?)

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