The Meaning of Life (Chapter 5): Where to find meaning

So, if you agree with the Existentialists that we live in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and “absurd” universe in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings’ actions and interpretations, then where are we to find this meaning?

Frankl says that are there are three kinds of values that can give meaning to your life:
•    The first kind of value is experiential.  Frankl describes an experiential value this way: “experiencing something – such as goodness, truth and beauty – by experiencing nature and culture or, last but not least, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness – by loving him.”  Judging from the quotations cited in the next chapter, loving another person is probably the most common example of finding meaning through an experiential value.  For me personally, meeting Anne and loving Anne, is what gave my life meaning.  Before I met her I was a basket case – anxious, penniless, drinking and smoking heavily, fat and out of shape, very unhappy.  I met her in the fall of 1966 and my life changed dramatically.  I can remember that time of my life as if it was yesterday.  I was suddenly more alive than I’d ever been before.  Everything seemed bright and new again.  I saw trees and clouds for the first time.  They looked so beautiful.  Strange that I had never noticed them before.  The starry night, snow falling softly, the feel of sunshine on my face, all these could now make my heart leap up.  Where had I been?  How could these magnificent experiences have failed to impress me till now?  I wrote poetry day and night.  I couldn’t help myself.  On Monday, January 30th, 1967, three days after our first date, I wrote:

I used to think the earth was just a sphere of soil
And the sun a molten mass of burning gas.

Then I met her.

Now I know the earth is but a carpet for her feet
And the sun comes up to wake her and bring her to me.

The trees were tall and leafy – useless pretty things to see
And the moon was just a mirror for the sun.

Then she came to me.
And now I know the trees are just umbrellas to keep the April rain from off her forehead
And the moon’s glow plays upon the softness of her face to
make me want to touch her cheek.

And life before I knew her was just an endless empty curse
And a woman was a pretty thing that wore a dress.

But now I love her

And life now seems a precious gift, a gift of time, a time to love
And a woman is a girl called Anne,
A fragile, tender, lovely child of God
Whose goodness broke upon me
Like an unexpected shower from the summer skies,
Whose tenderness o’erwhelmed me
Like a sudden gust of wind that catches breath and waters eyes.

In the “Acknowledgements” section of my Ph.D. dissertation I thanked my wife, Anne, “…who helped me make of the works of my every day not a reproach but a song.”
•    A second means of discovering meaning is through creative values, by “doing a deed,” as Frankl puts it.  This is the traditional existential idea of providing oneself with meaning by achievement or accomplishment.  Shakespeare and Mozart come to mind but you need not be a genius to find meaning in work.  Last night I saw a good example in the television coverage of environmentalists washing oil-soaked birds after a tanker spill in a nearby community.  As you will see among the quotations in the next chapter, many heroes and heroines in literature, e.g., Dorothea in Middlemarch and Levin in Anna Karenina, find meaning this way.
In the Globe and Mail last week I saw a perfect example of someone whose meaning in life stemmed from a “creative value”.  He is a 40-year-old Russian mathematician named Grigori Perelman.  I quote the story verbatim:
Reclusive genius poses problem for math award
By James Randerson, London
“He is probably the smartest person on the planet: an enigmatic and reclusive genius who shocked the academic world with his claim to have solved one of the hardest problems in math.  He is tipped to win a ‘math Nobel’ for his work on possible shapes of the universe.  But rumours are rife that the brilliant Russian mathematician will spurn the greatest accolade his peers can bestow.
Since Grigori (Grisha) Perelman revealed his solution in 2002 to a century-old math problem, it has been subjected to unparalleled scrutiny by the best academic minds.  But no one has been able to find a mistake and there is a growing consensus that he has cracked the problem.
So next Tuesday he is tipped to win a Fields Medal.  And upper echelons of the math world are buzzing with rumours that even if he is offered the award, he will not accept it.
He has refused a $1-million (U.S.) prize offered by a private math research institute that would be his if his work is proved correct.
The medals are open to mathematicians less than 40 years old at the beginning of the prize year.  Dr. Perelman turned 40 in June, making this the last year he can win.
He has also refused a major European math prize, supposedly on the grounds that he did not believe the committee awarding the prize was sufficiently qualified to judge his work.
“I just don’t see him turning up in a stretch limo with four overendowed women and waving his cheque in the air.  It’s not his style,” said Jeremy Gray, a math historian at the University of Oxford.
Little is known about Dr. Perelman, who refuses to talk to the news media.  He was born on June 16, 1966, and his prodigious talent led to his early enrolment at a St. Petersburg school specializing in advanced mathematics and physics.
After receiving his Ph.D. from the Saint-Petersburg State University he worked at the Steklov Institute of Mathematics before moving to the United States in the late 1980s to take posts at various universities.  He returned to Steklov 10 years ago to work on his proof of the universe’s shape.
The math world was set humming in 2002 by the first instalment of his groundbreaking work on the problem that was set out by the French mathematician and philosopher Jules Henri Poincaré in 1904.  The conjecture, which is difficult for most non-mathematicians even to understand, exercised some of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
“It’s a central problem in both math and physics because it seeks to understand what the shape of the universe can be,” said Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford University.  “It is very tricky to pin down.  A lot of people have announced false proofs of this thing.”  The obsession with the problem, shared by several great mathematicians, has been dubbed Poincaritis.
Even the way Dr. Perelman announced his proof, which took eight years to complete, was unusual.  Rather than publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, he posted three manuscripts in an on-line archive of math and physics papers.
“He placed the papers on the Web archive and basically said, ‘That’s it,’ ” said Nigel Hitchin, professor of mathematics at Oxford University.  The most recent of the papers fleshing out his proof runs 473 pages.
“If he were to win it and turn it down it would be slightly insulting,” Prof. Du Sautoy said.
But it seems unlikely that Dr. Perelman, who recently relinquished his academic position, will care much about offending his peers.
“He has sort of alienated himself from the math community,” Prof. Du Sautoy added.  “He has become disillusioned with mathematics, which is quite sad.  He’s not interested in money.  The big prize for him is proving his theorem.”
Although this is a perfect example of a creative value providing meaning in a person’s life, it is a rather unusual and rare example.  More common examples of a creative value as the meaning in a person’s life would be rearing a child as the meaning in a mother’s life or training for and running in a marathon as the meaning in a young athlete’s life.
These first two “values” of Frankl (love and work) put me in mind of Freud’s answer to the question: What should a normal person should be able to do well? Freud is reported to have said: “Lieben und arbeiten” (to love and to work).
•    Most important, according to Frankl, is the third avenue: attitudinal values.  “Facing a fate we cannot change, we are called upon to make the best of it by rising above ourselves and growing beyond ourselves, in a word by changing ourselves.  And this equally holds for the three components of the ‘tragic triad’ – pain, guilt and death – inasmuch as we may turn suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; derive from guilt the opportunity to change for the better; and see in life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.”
Attitudinal values include such virtues as compassion, bravery or a good sense of humor.  Frankl gives the following example:

A few years after World War II a doctor examined a Jewish woman who wore a bracelet made of baby teeth mounted in gold.  “A beautiful bracelet,” the doctor remarked.  “Yes,” the woman answered, “this tooth belonged to Miriam, this one to Esther, and this one to Samuel….”  She mentioned the names of her daughters and sons according to age.  “Nine children,” she added, “and all of them were taken to the gas chambers.”  Shocked, the doctor asked: “How can you live with such a bracelet?”  Quietly, the Jewish woman replied: “I am now in charge of an orphanage in Israel.”

It is this woman’s attitude toward her suffering that makes her life meaningful.  Again, this is a rather dramatic and unusual example.  A more common example would be an errant father who atones for the way he neglected his children by becoming a supportive and loving grandfather to their children.

Frankl makes it sound like a person’s meaning in life comes from one of these three sources.  Why can’t one’s meaning in life derive from more than one value?  In fact, I often find it difficult, when I hear stories of the meaning in people’s lives, to decide whether that meaning is “experiential”, “creative” or “attitudinal”.  The Jewish woman, with the tooth bracelet, for example.  Is her meaning “attitudinal” or “creative”?  Surely her work in the Israeli orphanage constitutes “doing a deed”, to use Frankl’s phrase, and is therefore a creative value.  I would argue that most “experiential” and “attitudinal” values lead to “doing good” and that these acts, lovingly performed, become another meaning – a “creative” meaning.