During these weird times in which we are living, we think things and feel things which may not be normal. There are so many issues in life which can trouble us. There are issues in our country and around the world which seem so large, it easily leaves us with a feeling of helplessness. Even for those who might claim to be optimists, life sometimes is a challenge. It is easy to talk about hope, but sometimes hope is harder to do than other times.
In the face of all this, I decided to return to a book that I find profound. I picked off my shelf Victor Frankl’s classic, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl was Jewish and an Austrian citizen. He spent considerable time in the Nazi concentration camps when he was in his 30s. He had every reason to expect to die, as did so many millions of his Jewish sisters and brothers. But he did not. The war ended and Frankl emerged and had a long career as a psychiatrist. He died in 1997. He published his book originally in German in 1946.
The book recounts his experience in the concentration camp. And it offers a glimpse into the soul of a man who was wrestling with big problems and the fact that those problems were likely so severe, they would cost him his life. He was forced to ask the deepest questions about life and whether it had any meaning.
It is probably obvious there are many more nuggets of wisdom than can be mentioned here. So let me begin by lifting up an incident that occurs fairly early in the book. In a story of a forced march to the day’s work, Frankl and a fellow prisoner wondered about their wives, who were in a different concentration camp. They hoped their wives were faring better than they were.
In that moment, Frankl shares this experience. He tells us “…for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers.” (37) It may strike us as odd that in the middle of a cold morning march to a miserable day of slavish work, Frankl would entertain a thought about the profundities of life. In effect, he became a philosopher in that experience. In effect, he tells us he understands.
Basically, he reveals that he has found the secret to life---as he understands life. It is as if he is given the key to meaning. He has an answer to the big “Why?” of life. What’s the point? He knows. This is what he knows: “The truth---that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire.” Love! That’s the secret. That is the deepest truth. I don’t know whether you are surprised or not surprised at all. But that’s it: Love.
Love is the highest and ultimate goal in life. Interestingly, he says that we can aspire to know and practice love. Or we can settle for a multitude of other, lesser things in life. We can catalogue these lesser things: material riches, fame, and the list can go on. We can aspire to have these and many of us probably have been successful in getting our fair share of them. They can be good, often fulfilling and all that. But according to Frankl, they are not ultimate.
To achieve a lesser goal finally will leave us a little unsatisfied. They will not quite do the trick. No doubt, we will always feel like we have missed out---just a bit. I can think of how much time and effort I have spent chasing things that were important to me---but not ultimately important. Maybe this was not a waste of time and effort. But it can only be legitimate if it drives me toward that which is ultimately the most important: Love.
Listen further to Frankl’s words. He says in that instant, “I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and meaning thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.” Human salvation comes through love and in love. That is simple, but Lord knows, it is not easy. As I understand it, this conviction squares with how the New Testament tells us that God is love. So in that sense, I am not surprised. Sometimes I feel like it is so simple, it can’t quite be the ultimate---THE big deal. But it is.
Frankly tells us more. He says that “Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds it deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self.” (38) Ultimately, it was about more than even his wife. Love turns out to be the secret---the key---to the deepest meaning in our spiritual being. It is core to our inner self. There is nothing deeper, nothing more profound.
One last line from Frankl helps us see how to live in our own times. Insightfully, he knows that “This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past.” (39) Because we are not prisoners in a concentration camp does not matter. We can be prisoners of our own times---our own situations. We can experience emptiness, desolation and poverty of spirit.
There is an antidote to this. We can love. We can allow ourselves to be loved. Nobody is unlovable. That is good news. That is the best news. That is news that will save us!
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