" He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." With these words, Nietzsche summarized how effective the knowledge of meaning is in human life.
The concept of meaning occupies a very important place in our lives. In such a period of time, talking about meaning is more meaningful than ever. "So what is this meaning? The subject of meaning is one of the concepts that we therapists are also very interested in and emphasized. For me, the most influential book I have read on this subject is the famous Psychiatrist Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. In the book, the author conveys his experiences of pain in concentration camps, his experiences by observing the people there, with the information provided by his psychiatry and psychology studies. "People who cling to life with meaning have survived in these camps," he says in his book. But most of those who stopped resisting and hoping, who saw themselves as helpless, wretched beings in the grip of the devices, died, did not resist, lost their lives. As an answer to this question, "The people who always saw a light at the end of the tunnel, connected to life with hope and a sense of meaning, survived here.
How can we provide a sense of meaning? It is impossible to explain this question in a single sentence. Because the meaning differs from person to person, day by day. It is impossible to reach this understanding by looking at the lives of others and applying their strategies. It can be found by the person himself. Only then does it gain a significance that saturates its own system of meaning. Logotherapy, which works on this field in psychotherapy schools, focuses on the search for meaning of the person and they say that we can discover the meaning of life in three different ways. The first of these is to create a work or to do a job. The second is living something or interacting with a person; In other words, meaning can be found not only in work but also in love, and lastly, the most important thing is to make sense out of pain. They express that those who do not feel helpless because of their unhappiness, but take pride in their pain and see it as an opportunity, can find meaning in life.
We cannot say that everyone who can add a sense of meaning to his life is happy, but we can say that people without a sense of meaning will be unhappy. People who come to therapy often express that they have a meaning gap, are tired of life and cannot find anything to live for. They complain that this is an end to life, then all these efforts are out of place. However, the fact that our existence is temporary cannot make our lives meaningless.
Says in an example in the book. A person who thinks that life is temporary and is pessimistic is like the person who watches with fear and sadness that the wall calendar, which he tears out a page every day, gets thinner with each passing day. On the other hand, a person who effectively fulfills his / her responsibilities in his life is like the person who takes a leaf out of the calendar every day, but keeps them carefully with the previous ones after taking a few days of note behind them. He can contemplate the richness, life to the fullest, with pride and joy in these notes. It doesn't matter if he realizes that he's getting old. He is not jealous of the young people he sees, but instead thinks of the following; Instead of possibilities, there are not only the work done and the love experienced, but also the realities of my past, including the brave suffering. Even if these pains do not arouse jealousy, they are the things I am most proud of in my life. As in the example, logotherapy is activist, not pessimistic. They concentrate on the potentials within the human being and express that the main occupation of man is not to enjoy pleasure or to avoid pain, but to find a meaning in his life.
To sum up, we can say that the feeling of meaninglessness is not a neurosis is a disease, but a proof of being human. If you too want to have a wider perspective on life, to get to know your experiences and the world you live in better and more, you can apply to a specialist for psychotherapy support.