A Quote by Viktor E. Frankl
Man's search for meaning is the chief motivation of his life.
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Man's search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a "secondary rationalization" of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.
Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story - a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.
But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The way of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning--the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life--a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.
The span of a man's life - that is nothing. But what a man makes of that span - that is something. A man must make his own meaning for life. Meaning is not automatically given to life.
What is [the role of money] in the search for meaning? Is our relationship to it one of the chief factors that keeps us in our prison, or could it also be a tool for breaking out, for awakening to a life filled with intensity of purpose?
If he wants meaning-the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life-a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain.
There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his powers.
When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wises man. 'O, great sage,' he says, 'tell me the meaning of life.' The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, 'Do you have any other questions, my son?' Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, 'You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?'
The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Sometimes the best course in the search for the meaning of life is to busy yourself until you forget that you don't know the meaning of life
A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning. Meaning has not to be discovered; it has to be created. You will find meaning only if you create it. It is not lying there somewhere behind the bushes, so you can go and you search a little bit and find it. It is not there like a rock that you will find. It is a poetry to be composed, it is a song to be sung, it is a dance to be danced.
I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And along the way, lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.
Search for meaning, eat, sleep. Search for meaning, eat, sleep. Die, search for meaning, search for meaning, search for meaning.
The question of meaning goes all the way down: if human life as a whole is meaningless, so is everything that occurs or belongs within it. Since that's not a thought it is easy to live with, there is good reason to search for life's meaning.
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