THE SEARCH FOR MEANING
My best friend paid me a visit and gave me a book to read: Victor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and have spent considerable time considering it. Frankl’s words have generated an inner tension between who I am and who I am to become. I have implored God for comfort and clarity, and he’s been faithful. I’m still anxious, still stalked by fear of failure, despite God having brought me safely to the present (albeit kicking and screaming.) Making sense of where I've been and how God has been faithful amid my struggles, even as an Atheist, helps quell these nagging doubts. He’s always been there and sustained me in everything I’ve faced. There’s nothing to fear and an established precedent to faithfully receive anything he provides.
Additionally, it’s clear my focus must lie outside myself. My focus on transformation as self-actualization was wrong-headed. Genuine transformation can only be a product of self-transcendence. The more I lose myself in a moment, the more myself I become. With self-actualization, the focus on outcomes becomes a critical impediment to transformation. Frankl attributes this to hyper-intention. Runaway intention - the overwhelming desire to either produce or avoid an outcome produces an anticipatory anxiety that will inevitably stymie progress. Obsessing over outcomes focuses the mind inwardly on the self and reduces progress to a function of the ego. Self-transcendence is the only way to rise above such ego games.