If it is finitely meaningful
to seek True Happiness for oneself,
it is infinitely meaningful
to seek True Happiness for all.— Stonepeace
I once had two world-weary people sitting opposite me — as chance would have it, at the same time — a man and a woman. Both had stated, in complete agreement, word for word, that their own lives were meaningless, that they ‘no longer expected anything of life’… It soon emerged, however, that, conversely, something was waiting for each of them: for the man, a scientific work that was unfinished, and for the woman, a child who was living abroad, far away and out of reach. At this point, it would be helpful… [to have] a conceptual turn…, after which the question can no longer be: ‘What can I expect from life?’ but can only be: ‘What does life expect of me?’ What task in life is waiting for me? …
[I]t is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us — we are the ones who are questioned! We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential ‘life questions’. Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to — of being responsible towards — life… The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realise the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.
[Note: Yet, there also should be an ultimate answer for the question of ‘What is the overall and thus ultimate meaning of life?’ This ultimate answer should make all the other answers from moment to moment aligned, to make sense, with them all serving it. What greater answer can there be, than ‘To guide one and all to True Happiness, that is substantial and lasting’?]
Viktor E. Frankl
Yes to Life in Spite of Everything
