Tag: Suffering

Freedom = Courage (Now + Here)

When it comes to psychology – people consider Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as the de facto rock-stars of the field of psychology. One unnoticed person whose findings deserve equal attention rather more attention was Alfred Adler. He introduced the Individual Psychology to the world which is relevant still today and is way more sophisticated to solve the “so called” troubles of our life. Individual psychology makes a successful attempt to reach to the roots of our suffering and allows us to become truly free.
Alfred Adler’s philosophy is beautifully explained in Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga’s book “The Courage To Be Disliked”. It talks about the feedback loop of self-acceptance, confidence in others and contribution to others to live a real and fulfilled life. The great thing about individual psychology is that it urges us to break the notion of causality and thereby determinism to come out of the painful, suffering inducing cycles of life & death, cause & effect. It shows us that we live in the universe with infinite possibilities and one needs courage to break the logic of determinism to truly appreciate themselves and the infinite possibilities universe has to offer. Individual psychology given by Alfred Adler thus asks us to bear the courage to lose the false-comfort given by causality – predictability and decide our life on our own terms fearlessly and with freedom. It teaches how one can be completely involved in everything but not attached to them at the same time.

On the book – The Courage to be disliked

‘The world is simple, and life is too.’

I have a question for you,

– How is life treating you right now?

Everyone knows that the responses to this question are diverse and dynamic. The answers obviously will be subjective and so it is normal to expect huge variety.

But you know what, deep down everyone (mostly the adults) know the most frequent type of the answer to this simple question. There is innate predictability about what the answer could be.

Life is not treating me fair

Life has become too complicated for me, life is suffering, there is no hope, why can’t I have a single moment of happiness to savor for some time? why do bad things happen to only me? what have I done wrong to someone that ‘everyone’ has turned against me? what should I do – now that I have not achieved what I was supposed to achieve in spite of putting all honest efforts? why is ‘everyone’ – the society always against me when all I have for others is good will?

Deep down we have this undeclared, unexpressed notion that something wrong happened to me which I didn’t deserve. I tried so hard but couldn’t achieve that thing. Trust me every one of us is an expert of hiding these unsettling feelings, overlooking them to move ahead. But it is important to understand that unknowingly they become part of who we are. When we truly and honestly would start inspecting ourselves, we will find these feelings being the reason for the bitterness we carry inside. That is why life is suffering for most of us, being free then is out of the question. First let me be happy for now!

Psychology has always been on the quest of resolving the model of how our mind works. A bigger portion of psychology directly or indirectly works towards understanding how we see happiness and suffering. Because, end goal of how we feel, how we think, how we decide, how we interact, how our personality is created is emerged from either a happy event or sad event which affect why our psyche is in a certain way.

When it comes to psychology – people consider Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung as the de facto rock-stars of the field of psychology. One unnoticed person whose findings deserve equal attention rather more attention was Alfred Adler. He introduced the Individual Psychology (Individualpsychologie) to the world which is relevant still today and is way more sophisticated to solve the “so called” troubles of our life. Individual psychology makes a successful attempt to reach to the roots of our suffering and allows us to become truly free.

I appreciated this in deeper sense when I came across a book called “The courage to be disliked”. A single book can change your life. Although I have been changed many times before, I couldn’t help but overstate the importance of this special book. 

This is my attempt to reorganize the ideas from the book to instantly simplify the core ideas. So, the next discussion may spoil the book for you. (Although it’s not a story book having a climax at the end but the ideas are written in a conversational – dialogue format so, you peel out one layer at a time to reach to the core ideas of individual psychology.)    

I am actually spoiling the whole book and my writing on the same heron with these few sentences:

The whole thing boils down how you honor this current moment and not let it be influenced by the fear of past and the anxiety of the future. This complete dedication to the current moment is only possible if you honor yourself first, because only you can experience how this current moment will turn out for you. The moment you start to respect this moment here and now – you will be free.

If you have the ability to love, love yourself first

Carl Jung

Now that I have already explained what life ultimately boils down to, it will be important to understand why these sentences hold some gravitas. So, thanks for continuing with me hereon.

Deny trauma – Deny the comfort of causality

The core of individual psychology is the rejection of the causality. Our complete understanding of ourselves and the world we live in is based on the notion of cause and effect. It does immediately feel silly to reject that exact notion thereby making individual psychology illogical.

You will appreciate that not everything in whole can completely be justified or predicted with complete precision using the logic of cause and effect. There will always be some information that cannot be completely known for the given system (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principal points in the same direction). Our mind always makes decision, assumptions based on the current information, experiences we have till date and every one know that it is impossible to have all the information and all experiences that are there in the world for a person to understand his/her own existence.

So, in simple words – ‘who we are’ goes beyond the logic of cause and effect. You can be free once you break the chains of cause and effect. In the universe filled with infinite possibilities, there will always be something wrong and illogical, totally disconnected justification to the things happening to you and around you. It will be an injustice if you let that illogical justification define your whole upcoming life.

When we say that I became a person like this because something happened to me in past where I learned my lesson and changed myself into something else, we are just trying to convince ourselves to do things in certain way so that we will have less resistance to get things done in our ways. That is exactly where problems start emerging.

We crave for causality because it grants value to past; because it taught us some valuable outcomes and same causality can help us to predict what would happen in future. We always crave for certainty. But all of us know this by experience that we are rarely good at predicting our future. This furthermore unsettles the mind.

So, trauma is the pre-side-effect of causality (the post-side-effect of causality is the anxiety of the uncertainty of the future). We carry our traumas as badges to flaunt because these traumas feel very personal thus exclusive. The ways in which we carve out our personality from these traumatic experiences gives us a sense of special-ness. These bad experiences, traumas are a big part of our personality maybe due to a survival mechanism implying ‘I should be able to cope up with similar thing if they happen to me in future.’

See, the point is that if we stick to our traumas and fixate our personality on the same, we will never be able to explore the concepts that had better potential to improve our personality (and probably not be traumatic, bitter). We will be stuck in that loop of experiences related to that causality. Given that there are infinite possibilities, there is fair chance than we can be even better than what we were and what happened to us in the past. We are just better at finding reasons to justify our current position because we know we are comfortable here.        

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.

It might seem that when we are rejecting causality, we are choosing a non-nonsensical path. In reality, we are just avoiding the ways in which we are always fooling ourselves to remain in comfort of predictability. Using the excuse of causality, we are actually ‘inventing’ non-real reasons which hide the realest reality we can actually live.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

Richard P. Feynman

Once you deny this causality which you think made you who you are, you will immediately see who you really are. You will leave that burden behind. You will accept yourself for who you are. You will see that you can instantly detach yourselves from your past and your future too. The untapped possibilities open up.

This is self-acceptance in individual psychology.

Once you see how important you yourself are to live your own life, you will say –

“Before past and future let me at least appreciate my own current moment”.

That is now and here. Once you come to the terms with yourself you will realize how everyone is just like you even though we are separated by many aspects of life. Then you will appreciate how others have their own current moments to live and experience in their own ways.

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems – others have their own current moments to experience in their own ways

It is fundamentally impossible for a person to live life completely alone, and it is only in social contexts that the person becomes an ‘individual’.

Nobody can deny the fact that our surroundings make us who we are. Our baselines are our surroundings. A human being is the most basic unit of any society. Our understanding and awareness of self is impossible without a response from surrounding. How would you understand who you are if you never received any reaction, feedback from your surrounding? – It will be a delusional existence. You would have had an idea of who you are but would have been far from what is real.

Thus, when you start seeing that your surrounding will always be interacting with you, you will be able to see every reaction – feedback from surrounding especially people can never be completely cut off. This again feels senseless. If you are born alone, leave this world alone then why couldn’t me being alone throughout my existence be more justified? It is because we never had any sense of absoluteness right from our birth and this sense of absoluteness always remains un-achieved, it is just an ideal condition we are always trying to reach. Our core understandings are only possible with the relativeness, comparison of baselines.

That is exactly why even when you are trying to live your life alone, that ‘loneliness’ itself cannot be justified if there is no understanding of what being ‘together’ means. So, there will always be something connecting you to your surroundings. That is where relationship comes in picture. You cannot run away from interpersonal relationship. You will be surrounded by people (or at least what made them you even when you are sitting lonely).    

So, when you are appreciating your current moment, it is natural that others will be respecting their current moments. This understanding will make you appreciate the importance of everyone’s being.

This will make the world around you seem less hostile. You will be filled with kindness for others.

So, you must first accept yourself first otherwise you will not come out of the hideous cycle of comfort of predictability, once you accept yourself to remain in now and here you start seeing here and now of others. You start valuing their here and now. That is why you start allowing people to be who they are, you stop expecting from others. You stop expecting your recognition from others, you stop pleasing people for your own good in the end.

Now that you are free from the burden and pursuit of desirable and predictable, anticipated feedback from surrounding you become tolerant of criticism and even dislike from others. That is truly when you are free. I want to focus on my now and here and nobody can stop me from experiencing that. Then you see this as the basic requirement for others too. This is exactly here the person becomes tolerant towards others. People start putting confidence in each other to create that safe space – the real safe space. People start respecting each other’s boundaries because they themselves have understood that they have their own limitations. This creates the sense of camaraderie – society.   

It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship.

This is confidence in others in individual psychology.

Discard other people’s tasks – reject the desire for recognition and accept that you being disliked is not in your hands

When you are appreciating your own now and here to its fullest, you will notice how important it is to reject all other distractions to honor this moment. You will limit these distractions to focus more on this moment. This is where you will see that even though we are molded by our society we have limitations and so do the others. So, it is better if one sets boundaries.

Setting such boundaries helps everyone to focus on their ‘now and here’ in deeper and richer ways.     

If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?

When one develops this understanding, they will clearly see what lies immediately in their own control and what not. If you are busy in trying to control what cannot be controlled by you, how would you have enough resources to appreciate your ‘here and now’? That why it is important to not focus on what you can’t control. Those will be someone else’s to control, that is not you task. That is exactly why you cannot pressurize people to do things in your ways. People can have their own reasons, limitations to not do things in your ways. It has to come from their side.

Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intention will only lead to an intense reaction.

Building on this understanding, you will start appreciating how doing what you love and not expecting anything in return is more than enough. You did what you love. Whether to appreciate it and recognize it, praise it is in other’s control not yours. Now that you have accepted yourself, you do it for yourself, then you won’t crave for attention from others, then you don’t crave for superiority, dominance. You come on level to level with your surroundings. You appreciate that whatever one wants to become that journey has to be completed by only them. Then you appreciate how we are trying to please others to get things done in our way when they were never in our control. You let go of the things which you cannot control and start focusing on what you can. That is why it is normal that some people (who were trying to get things done from you in their ways) will dislike you for not doing them in their own ways. This shows that you are honoring your ‘now and here’   

The cost of freedom in interpersonal relationship is that one is disliked by other people

Once you understand that it’s normal to be disliked, rather that indicates that we are doing our own thing you will appreciate what it really means to be genuinely be appreciated by society. Then you will feel like transferring this feeling to others too. Now that you have experienced this feeling for yourself, you would genuinely want others to feel that to. The things then you will do for others will have no intent of return because you very well know that returning favor is other people’s task.

If one’s means for gaining a feeling of contribution turns out to be ‘being recognised by others’, in the long run, one will have no choice but to walk through life in accordance with other people’s wishes.

The feeling and act of contribution has to be selfless and this selflessness is possible only when you are valuing your ‘now and here’. If you still are not valuing your ‘now and here’, it is very easy for you to get swayed by the likes of others and then you will end up in pleasing others and whether others will be pleased by what you did for that recognition is not in your control. This means the most probable fate is misery.

So, self-acceptance builds courage to do it in your way whether others like it or not. This detachment from opinions of others pushes you to do the things which were impossible before – what else is freedom them?  Then you understand the value of self-acceptance. You will then have the selfless feeling to let others experience and understand this. This selfless act for others will feed back into your sense of own being. This will support your feeling of self-acceptance. Once you close this feed-back loop, you will see what others are missing. You will help others in the real way. This will create the sense of belonging for you which further creates the real sense of meaning in life.

 This is contribution to others in individual psychology.

Where the center of the world is – there is no absolute cause and effect – there is no such thing as the first start and the last end

If you are ‘the center of the world’, you will have no thoughts whatsoever regarding commitment to the community; because everyone else is ‘someone who will do something for me’, and there is no need for you to do things yourself.  But you are not the center of the universe and neither am I.

Adler’s individual psychology thus focuses on a feedback loop of three key things:

One – Self-acceptance – you are who you are ‘now and here’, not what made you who you are

Once you accept yourself you give yourself better chances to live an earnest life 

Two – Confidence in others – now that you have appreciated how valuable, irreplaceable and incomparable living in ‘now and here’ is, you let people do their own thing because they have their own ‘now and here’. You put confidence in others, you do it not because you want something in return because returning the favor is in their control. This builds the real sense of community, belonging, safe space.

Three – Contribution to others – Once you start believing in people just like the person you are you appreciate what it means to be felt accepted. You try to support this feeling by contributing back to your safe space. You want it to be done by yourself because you now know that contributing back is in your control – your task. This further crystallizes your sense of self-acceptance.

Now that you have appreciated what it means to become truly free, it is normal to reject the false sense of superiority, false sense of being special. Every moment becomes same to you. This does not mean that you become numb to sadness or happiness. It just means that you appreciate that this too shall pass, all I have to live and experience is ‘now’. You lose the idea of a goal to be achieved and accept the real goal, the real target is to become the process.

Life goes on

For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself.

Although our existence is bound by birth and death, cause and effect. The reality filled with infinite possibilities does not follow that logic and we fail to notice that difference. Just to make the sense of the infinite possibilities we resort to certain assumptions, prejudices, reasons, past events, future expectations. We never question them with complete honesty because questioning them will bring existential crisis. We all know that our foundations really are not pure or absolute. Once you accept this you will see that it is very easy and important to accept who you are now. This further induces kindness for others. This creates the community. This is called Holism in individual psychology.

You must appreciate how causality brings in determinism in our lives. This determinism is kind of responsible for the lack of freedom in our lives. When we are suffering it is this exact determinism imparted by causality that builds helplessness. One must carry the courage to break out of this determinism. The courage is necessary because we never want to let go the comfort of predictability which determinism offers.

We resort to certain version of our life story when we are completely aware that we can totally change our life story. We are always taking the support of ‘I am like this because this happened to me’. This is how everyone’s story is. There are very few people who have dared to say – ‘I have gone through this for long but not anymore.’ This requires for you to appreciate yourselves first, when you accept who you are you move on to the path of improvement whereas when you are trying to act according to the like of people around you, you are actually proving the point that you don’t like the version that you are that is why you are ready to become the one which people would like and tragedy of this path is that the task of being liked by others is not in your control.

That is why whining about why we didn’t reach there would never help us to reach there or even embark on journey in that direction. We are hesitating to make our own move.

As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere, and will only pass our days one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period.

Be real, not a hypocrite

People want to like themselves. They want to feel that they have worth. In order to feel that, they want a feeling of contribution that tells them ‘I am of use to someone’. And they seek recognition from others as an easy means for gaining that feeling of contribution.

The main reason Adler’s individual psychology didn’t receive enough attention is because it feels completely self-contradicting and hypocritical on surface level.

You will find these seeming contradictions everywhere in Adler’s ideas. It will say that we are social animals and are defined by society but in next moment it will say that you need to have the courage to be disliked by the people around you.

One time it says that you should not interfere in other people’s tasks and next time it says that you need to have a feeling of contribution for the same people.

One time it will say that you have to sever the relationships where others are not realizing their own tasks and making life difficult for you and on the other hand it will say that you should be unconditionally confident in others endlessly.

One time it will say that you should completely focus on yourselves and then it will say that you are part of a bigger family, bigger universe and you will be happy when you contribute to this bigger community to create a sense of belonging.

If I am being disliked then how the hell would I be happy?!?

If you inspect each of these seemingly contradicting ideas you will find one simple fact – the fact that we are walking living paradoxes and in spite of that we demand sense and logic about who we are.

The sense of self or individual cannot be appreciated well if you never know what it means to be surrounded by people. And there is always some interchange happening between individuals which makes it a society. We often see society as a group which is everything minus ‘I’. We fail to recognize that if I fix myself in certain way the others around me will fix themselves in response to that way and then most of the individuals who constitute the society will fix themselves in certain way. Means even a single person can effectively change the society.

What people actually miss when they come across the ideas put forth by Alfred Adler is the possibility that we can truly reject causality. I would call this unawareness the curse for the humanity. Our sense of ‘being’ inherently originates from some non-absolute attributes, relative references that we have to accept them as the ultimate truth right from our birth to make the sense out of all these infinite possibilities.

We are so entangled in the suffering and happiness waving between the life and death that we ignore that we are born, dead and again reborn every moment. The trick that causality plays in our life is that it tries to preserve the previous step to justify our current stage thereby freezing our present. Whereas what we should do is to just be in now and here which needs courage because there is no guaranteed layout, map to guide you. You have to walk your path all by yourself.

What people fail to notice is that the comfort of predictability is just in this moment but this sense of comfort has no control over future rather it intensifies the pain due to the randomness of the unpredictable future.

The secret to happy life is to be involved in everything and still not be attached to them.

Losing the ‘Grip’ on Escapism

Escapism creates a void in our perception of reality so that new ideas, creative ideas would populate this void for living life with a new perspective, new approach. The healthy escapism is the most important tool, a therapy for many successful creative people our world has ever seen. Once this escapism takes extreme side it may lead to addiction, procrastination and delusion. Freud’s ‘desire to destruction’ and René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire help us to understand escapism in better ways to face the reality head on.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one

Albert Einstein

It is very interesting when we start questioning how we understand, feel and interpret the reality. The reality in which we live in has infinitely many facets which we experience through equally diverse emotions. We as human beings are hardwired for seeking happiness, happiness creates the environment to nurture, grow and multiply. Bear in mind that only growing and multiplying is not enough to guaranty the survival of our species. Adaptation is one aspect to ensure the sustenance over the course of time. Adaptation means getting exposed to adversities, sadness, imperfections of reality to create the strong enough coping mechanisms. What would happen if are continuously in the phase of seeking pleasure and turning our faces away from the challenges of the reality? How we justify our own death (figurative) by our own hands when we submit ourselves to such dark pleasures, addictions, dark temptations in spite of knowing that they are harming us? There is just one perfect song to point us towards such emotions.  The song is called “Grip” by Seeb and Bastille.

The song was written by Espen Berg, Dan Smith, Thomas Eriksen, Mark Crew, Simen Eriksrud and Joakim Haukaas.

Album art for Grip by Seeb, Bastille

Grip – The Lyrics

As the night time leads into the day
And tomorrow spills across the sky
While the sun's a harsh reminder why
We are feeling barely human

The overall emotions this person is experiencing are the emotions of distaste and hatred towards the things which are inevitable. He knows already that it is going to be day after this night, the sun will rise up and he will have to face the day helplessly. The “harsh reminder” here highlights that the person doesn’t want to face the day, the reality, the responsibility and wants to escape to the night where he was someone better than human – someone invincible.

 ‘Tomorrow spills’ shows that the thing/s which this person was trying to postpone, avoid has finally come. The spilling action shows the unwanted eventuality. The things which the person is trying to avoid are the sufferings and problems which for this person are mocking him for his humanistic limitations.  

This rise of the day is a reminder of his humanly limitations and the sufferings which never end. The person is well aware of the sufferings and hence is cursing the Sun for reminding him about his limitations as a human being. The transition of night into a sunny day is also a metaphor for the veil falling down. The veil of enjoyment which was masking the suffering, imperfections, sorrows, problems of the reality.

I really loved the word play to show how the person hates the day which never comes – ‘tomorrow’. It kind of points towards the ‘procrastination’ to avoid the pain of imperfections and the pain, the suffering accompanying with the life itself.

We don't know what's good for us
'Cause if we did, we might not do it
Who knows where our limits lie?
We won't discover 'til we push it

These lines explain the expression “Ignorance is a bliss” in the most perfect way. The person wants to ignore the things which are good because deep down he knows that they come with hardships. That is exactly why he says that even if he knew what is really good for him, he won’t do it; he knows doing the right is always the most difficult path. It’s like running away from the reality and reject it because it is full of pain, problems, unsettling consequences and imperfect.

The next lines show that the person is not completely delusional and detached from the reality. He knows that being a human being with unlimited capacity in the world of infinite possibilities, he can do anything and succeed at it. He is aware of the fact that he just has to expand his boundary to make impossible things possible. This is the moment when you will appreciate that the person expressing his feelings here is aware of everything that is right and wrong. It’s just that he just wants to be happy and maintain that state by rejecting the painful reality.    

I should just walk away, walk away
But it grips me, it grips me
But I should call it a day
And make my way
Oh, it grips me
'Cause the devil's got my arms
And it pulls me back into the dark
But I should just walk away
Walk away, oh it grips me
Cause the devil's got my arms

The person knows that he should completely let go of the things which are deviating his life from reality but now he has found one pity excuse. The person thinks that it is difficult to lose the hold of joyous, illusive but pleasurable darkness. He is ready to ‘call it a day’ get over with this pleasurable but illusive, dreamy life but somehow his mind has found an excuse of the devil which holds him back. It shows how addictive the dreamy, pleasurable alternate reality which is far from the ‘real’ reality, the life his mind has created which is full of pleasure, happiness and he is whatever he wants to be in this dreamy world. Grip of the Devil is just an excuse for him to tell others that he is not solely responsible to stay in this ‘unreal’ illusive life, this shows his lack of accountability. He is blaming the devil for him not facing the reality and taking charge of the course of his life.   

We got drunk on this unholy wine
To deliver us from our old minds
A promise of a better time
'Til we're feeling barely human

Wine in Christianity is a symbol of abundance, enlightenment, celebration, and blessings of the God. The ‘unholiness’ of the wine shows the overuse of this abundance which points to the addiction. Addiction is the worst use of the means preferred to gain pleasure. That is why the holy wine once intended for enlightenment becomes unholy when exploited and overused unnecessarily. The promise of better time is the reflection of what a person suffering from addiction feels, he tries to repeat the act to extract the pleasure – a short lived one. This short-lived pleasure makes him feel something better than human. Once the effect starts to fade out and the person regain the consciousness of weakness of human nature, he again resorts to this short-lived pleasure to regain the better humanly experience.

These are the exact emotions an addictive person goes through – this could be any addiction.

I would rather forget
And wash my memory clean
Oh, I would rather forget
And wash my memory clean

The person knows what mess he is in and the escape is also difficult. He just wants to remove all the traces of what he really is and surrender to the world of the devil.  (‘Cause the devil’s got his arms). He is helpless and just want to reject the painful reality while remaining into dark but pleasurable devil’s night. It an intentional submission the “dark side” to avert the pain of reality brightened with the Sun.

Escapism – Sadness, pain, procrastination and addiction

Escapism lies as the core theme of this song. We humans are pleasure-seeking animals. Remaining in joyful conditions promotes safety, continuation of the species from the evolutionary point of view. That is why we are hardwired to escape from adverse, life threatening, sadness inducing, fear inducing events. Fortunately, we are rarely exposed to wild animals and life-threatening situations as our primal ancestors did. But this instinct has not left us completely. Any event which simulates sadness, fear, great challenge – our response is somewhat still primitive. But as the technology as progressed so much, our ways to escape the hardships of the real, imperfect life have evolved drastically.

Please understand that escapism is not a bad word. But once it shifts to extreme use, abuse then addiction takes over and the person starts hating reality and submits to dreamy, delusional world created by him or someone else.

Reading, writing, painting, doing some happiness inducing activities/ tasks are simple examples of a “healthy escapism”. Such escapism creates a void in our perception of reality so that new ideas, creative ideas would populate this void for living life with a new perspective, new approach. The healthy escapism is the most important tool, a therapy for many successful creative people our world has ever seen.

Now coming to the other (dark) side of escapism – it’s a highway to addiction and constant search for dopamine hits. Deep down we know how we are all addicted to something. It’s just matter of who is affected by them in worse ways. Social media, their algorithms, the culture of overconsumption, the capitalistic urge to prioritize wants for getting social approval, submission to addiction to escape the problems are the real-life challenges that we are facing today due to the technology.  Technology is meant to provide an exoskeleton, an augmentation to improve our lifestyle but this same exoskeleton is weakening our muscles thereby crippling us. (The crippling of our minds.)

Escapism is not a new phenomenon, rather is has an age-old history only the ways in which we try to escape the reality have changed over the course of the time. Creating an alternate reality was always one way to alleviate the painful effects of reality. But, the tools that we have today are more potent and can immediately lead to the state of addiction.

You will see in the lyrics of the song the that the person is well aware of what wrong choices he is making, that it is not good to submit to the devil and the night but now he is so addicted to this alternate reality that he has started hating the reality and don’t want to experience it.

Such is also the way of procrastination. We try to delay the activities knowing that the had to be done anyways but won’t yield the perfect, beautiful results that you want. Procrastination thus creates an illusion of safety until the threat becomes imminent. Procrastination is also healthy unto certain limits to create a space of new approaches but if your fear of creation, action is preventing yourself to postpone their impact on reality thereby residing yourself into your dreamy world then such alternate reality is useless.

Reality is painful – but that is not the only thing it is!

We escape from reality so that we can come back to fight the reality with better tools and ideas not to completely run away from it because in the end reality will catch up with us with far gruesome, dreadful face and consequences.

We are highly prone to our conscious submission to the alternate reality because it creates a potent illusion of safety and comfort. This is because we think that living a fulfilled life means living a life of happiness, whereas upon close inspection you will appreciate that life has never given itself to either sides of the existence – neither good nor bad. Life keeps oscillating between these two and creation, destruction, growth, adaptation happens in between those waves. Buddhism talks about the roots of suffering in attachment. We humans are highly susceptible to immediate attachment to any living or non-living things (which are the parts of reality). Our attachment to such things then leads to the fear of their loss and thereby loss of familiarity and comfort which projects the ultimate fate of the reality as imperfect, painful and hostile one. Once we let of such attachments, we can have a full control on the escapism in our lives.

Once we start to see happiness as a process instead of a stage, we will truly appreciate the beauty in the prima facie unsettling imperfection of reality – this is the same real life, the reality where we actually exist and can truly contribute to affect our and other lives in better ways. It is not that painful as we have thought in our minds.

Also, even when you have achieved that only goal in your life, that full happiness, in the end you will again be miserable because you are going to be clueless about what comes next, what to do next!

I think confrontation is the opposite of the escapism because of the same reasons. Instead of the escaping from unsettling reality for short time again and again, and it catching up with us in the end, why not face it in first place and be done with it! This requires the attitude of rejecting the ultimate purpose of life attributed to the search for happiness. The reality is neither happy nor sad.   

Sigmund Freud – Beyond Pleasure and Desire to Destruction

Sigmund Freud in his early developments of psychanalysis was the strong proponent of the ideas of human beings as the pleasure-seeking animals. Freud actively promoted his ideas of psychology based on the thought that our actions are always intended to maximize pleasure, procreation, and preservation and avoiding pain. He called this force as “Eros”

Freud’s early ideas hence are always pointing towards that continuous search for pleasure (Lustprinzip). But once the world war started Freud went under immense emotional pressure as his two sons were soldiers in war, he also saw soldiers residing to traumatic war experiences. In coming years, Freud lost his beloved daughter to Spanish flue. Here he felt really miserable, guilty and painful that he is able to survive while his daughter died.   

This is where Freud brought in the idea that humans also have a death drive, destruction (Thanatos) where doing nothing helps to cope up with the intense sadness of the reality. This idea was introduced by Sabina Nikolayevna Spielrein – one of the first female psychoanalysts. Under extreme pressure humans may chose to do nothing as doing anything will end in pain.

So, Freud evolved his idea of human psyche as an interplay between the urge to live and urge to die.

The person in the song submitting to the dark, harrowing addictive pleasures shows this same urge to destruction even though he knows that they are not good. We are ready to submit ourselves to darker illusions because of this same desire to die, to destruct ourselves because sometimes reality feels more brutal than death.

When one is exposed to unknown events in life, the urge to pleasure will seek excitement, adventure and adrenaline, dopamine, knowledge from it while for same life event the urge to destruction will resort to confusion, danger, fear and submission to familiar, warm and comfortable environments.

Freud received huge criticism for these ideas too. Freud also mentioned that this death could also be figurative – as the complete distaste towards everything in life and becoming inanimate – a living dead body.

The idea of clearing memory in the end of the song shows this side of desire to destruction to me.

Important thing to come out of these ideas is to appreciate that life never favored any side – good or bad. Life is always multifaceted. There is always something good in bad and bad in something good. Good and bad always coexist.       

Mimetic Desire – Responsibility and accountability

René Girard a French philosopher of social science pointed towards a very innate pattern in human thinking which is called as “Mimetic Desire” in philosophy of social science. He pointed out that even though we may think that our drives are totally created from inside and we are the sole, absolute creator of such desires (like calling ourselves God, the Creator) these are mere effect of our surrounding, they are not created from something absolute. We are always sorting people, things around us to create a place where we say that “we belong”. This helps us to create and justify our identity. The moment someone creates and points towards something as problematic, unsettling then rest of the people also use it as a “scapegoat” to put the blame of anything bad, wrong happening with them.   

We as human beings and social animals are always looking for something to blame which creates an object to blame for difficulties in our life. This grows faster when it happens in group.

According to the ideas of Mimetic Desire given by René Girard, people make scapegoats when the truth, the reality makes them uncomfortable – the reality they don’t want to acknowledge. They desperately lookout for things, groups, people to put blame and make this illusion their reality where they find comfort. People do this because they somehow want to release their anger, tension.

The creation of devil is the same thought. The person in this song is well aware of the truth of reality but as his desires are to always seek pleasure in any possible ways, he finds a scapegoat of “the grip of the devil” to justify his addiction and bad actions. Religious, political beliefs have many examples of such scapegoats.

Responsibility and accountability are very important aspects when we are talking of such ideas. That is why it is very important to rethink our ideas when we are trying to justify them with something delusional.

Conclusion

The key idea to tackle extreme escapism is to accept the imperfect nature of reality. The reality may be fearsome, difficult and unsettling but it is also hopeful, happy and comfortable. Your actions in reality will bring you closer to good experiences rather than submitting to unreal, delusional short acts of pleasure. It’s not the grip of the devil that is holding you in the night, it is you yourself who contain this devil inside who is holding you back. Let your angel overpower your devil to bring you back into the reality. May you grow with every pain inflicted upon you to make you even stronger than you were before. May the creation provide you the physical and especially mental adaptability to handle and appreciate the reality – the only real place where you truly exist.     

Official video shows the transitory phase of a teenage boy who is trying multiple ways to gain pleasure thereby moving away from the awkwardness of reality to become “cool”. But once the balance of pleasurable acts tips to the wrong side, he submits to the pleasurable but dark and devilish side of his personality. This is where he submits himself to the devil.

The video intricately shows the fragile nature of adolescence and the high impact of the choices made in this phase which could have lifelong effect of the personality.   

There a also one lyrical video for this song where you will see fruit butchering (I don’t know why but the producers have made it look very tempting!)

Also, the credit goes to SeeB for adding their iconic style of falsettos to make the listeners feel the grip of the devil in a fantastic way.

The creators of “Grip” Seeb and Dan Smith from Bastille

The song video

Lyrical “fruity and juicy” video

Listen on spotify

Appreciation For the Flow of Life

We, the population of billions round the globe are always trying to create our own version perfect life. What is perfect is purely subjective and thereby has infinite interpretations but there is something very fundamental – common which flows through all of us. It can help us to find the real perfect life. Wim Wender’s masterpiece “Perfect Days” shows how we can appreciate the inherent imperfections that life has and how to appreciate the life and the consciousness to experience it in better ways.

Wim Wender’s Masterpiece – Perfect Days

Seeing life through the lens of practical optimism

What Is a Perfect Life?

The answer is very personal and subjective. Someone (rather most of us) wants to retire with huge corpus, someone wants true love, someone wants their dream job in that dream company, someone wants to travel the whole world, someone wants to follow their passion, someone wants to create something, someone wants the ultimate power/ strength, someone just wants happiness, someone wants knowledge of everything, someone just want their neighbor to turn down that noisy speaker, someone wants to spend time with their loved ones, someone just wants to be left alone, someone wants a fixed routine where there is predictability , someone wants surprises every day, someone just want to lay down in the bed for the whole day, someone wants to eat whatever they want (without gaining weight!), someone wants a healthy body, someone wants to remain young forever. Billions of people and their infinite definitions of perfect life!

In short, even though we have our associations of a perfect life with certain objects, things, qualities, people in life, the common thing about them is that we want them in the way we desire.

So, a perfect life for anyone is a life on their own terms, things would happen in the way they want.

Is your life perfect? I am sure that there are very few people (rather gods, saints, sages, divine people) who would agree that they have perfect life.

Wim Wender’s Perfect Days Movie

From Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

This Japanese masterpiece led by Kōji Yakusho as Hirayama-san is the perfect depiction of how we try to define our life as a perfect life in our own ways. The personalities, the characters, their choices, and the life they have is designed, intertwined in the narrative in such subtle ways that the whole movie could be discussed as a philosophy of life and the time will fall short. And even after that you would think that it is just a documentation of a normal life of a public toilet cleaner.

Even though the movie is multifaceted like life and can be discussed in greater depths, I will try to touch on the core and simple idea of the perfection in life in the forthcoming discussion.

The discussion will make more sense if you have watched the movie before, this is not a movie synopsis. Even though there will be spoilers ahead, the movie is all about how it made you feel, rather than what you knew about it. (Which is also why movies/ stories are so important, they make us feel that part in us which we never knew we had already)

The discussion will be driven by the major noticeable events in Hirayama-san’s life. 

What We See From Surface? – A Life of Complete Failure

The (Mundane) Routine and the (most) Disgusting Job

Hirayama-san works as a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo. There is nothing else to describe anything exciting about this job! He travels from location to location to clean the toilets where you will see the interaction between Hirayama-san and the people around him in such ‘workplaces’ as belittling, demeaning. It’s a job that no one appreciates. 

When we understand that Hirayama-san lives alone, you will find this routine more boring, mundane; being a toilet cleaner adds another weirdness to it. It’s a low paying, thankless job where you will never get recognized for the job you do.

There comes a moment when his junior, his subordinate – Takashi resigns from his job without giving any notice and Hirayama-san has to cover all his locations that day. It’s a disgusting low paying job with possible non-rewarding overwork.        

Low on Money

Money-wise Hirayama-san looks like a person with below average necessities and below average job to fulfill them. Even though he is not poor, he is not hopelessly broke; it is just a very basic life lived on basic income. But you will see that his life is just on the edge of poverty the day when he pays his junior – Takashi to go on a date with his love interest – Aya-chan. As Hirayama-san pays Takashi all the amount he has and when his car stops in the middle of the road due to low gas, he has to sell his cassette to get some money to reach home. On the same evening he eats the cup noodles as he has no money. He stays in the low lying, cheap house, the only coffee he drinks is the regular vending machine coffee.

Failed Relationships

Hirayama-san is a loner. There is nothing exciting about his life from the relationships point of view. No wife, no children, no one to take care of him if something goes wrong. There is a moment when we realize that his father suffering from dementia is in nursing home and he never pays him a visit. Hirayama-san also doesn’t go well with his sister – Kieko. There is certain disagreement (probably the toilet cleaning job) between him and his sister which is why his niece – Niko is prohibited to meet him.

There comes a moment when Hirayama-san sees his (supposedly) love interest – the owner of the restaurant – Mama hugging some man affectionately. Hirayama-san is not shown openly in love with Mama but the interactions between them show that they have some deep connection, deep affection for each other. Hirayama-san’s heart gets broken when he sees that there is already a man in her life. Heartbroken Hirayama-san buys beer and cigarettes that day to numb that pain.

If you go by the standard definition of a perfect life – Hirayama-san’s life is not perfect. It is not even a good life per say.

What is the Reality? – A Life filled with Richness in Every Experience
The Discipline and The Dedication

You will notice that Hirayama-san is a very diligent and disciplined person who cleans the public toilets in Tokyo. Even though he is a toilet cleaner he has a discipline and routine like an army general. Whatever may happen he always sticks to his routine, even on holidays. His van is equipped with every possible cleaning equipment to make sure that he does his job with perfection. There is same level of dedication for every cleaning job he does. He is never ashamed of the job he is doing.

You will appreciate this more when Takashi asks him that even if the toilet is getting cleaned now it will eventually get dirty. You must note that this is the same discipline why Takashi respects Hirayama-san and considers him dependable (although Takashi himself is reluctant to remain in that job)

From Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

But, imagine if no one cleans the toilet regularly, how dirty will it get. Same is about life. Pardon my analogy of toilet with life but even though seemingly full of randomness our life needs a routine diligence, a routine discipline to take care of our overall health – mental, physical and/or materialistic. These seemingly small, insignificant routines decide our habits and these habits eventually decide who we are – especially when the times are difficult. Our responses to random, unplanned, unfavorable events in life are completely dependent on the how we react to routines. Our habits are the baselines to decide the reaction to unfavorable events.

You must appreciate that even when there are many sad moments in Hirayama-san’s life he always sticks to his routine. This ‘boring’ routine ensures the mental peace that even though many things in life are going wrong there are certain things which have gone perfectly in the given day.

You know what they say, “If you want to change the world, start by making your bed.”

That is why routine is very important psychologically, it is like a subconscious support system to tell our brain that at least some things are going well.   

The Hobbies

Even when Hirayama-san is continuously busy in his toilet cleaning job, he is always in sync with his surroundings. He has that eye of a professional photographer where he is always trying to capture a perfect moment of light and shadows and reflections around him. His job is not preventing him from pursuing his passion.

What this shows is that one must have access to certain intangible experiences which are present all around us to have a healthy living.

So, an ideal hobby is the activity which is accessible to us in any form to elevate our perspective about the world we live in. If listening to music is your hobby, even when you lose your music player, or you have to lose your cassettes (like when Hirayama-sells his cassette for gas) the music in you cannot be sold, you can still reminisce that tune and hum to it.

Even when you have the cheap, outdated camera you can still appreciate the picturesque beauty of nature and the interplay of things in it with your eyes and creativity.    

Hirayama-san’s cassette collection is not an outdated relic, rather it is shown as a valuable classic item. It is wonderful because our hobbies provide this unfair advantage through their intangible nature to outweigh the tangible, materialistic possession. (it’s like as seemingly nonsensical painting made from paints and canvas worth some hundred bucks becomes invaluable because how it touches that intangible aspect of your life.)

Hobbies thus are a powerful tool to bring real wealth in life – this wealth can also create materialistic advantages if used in proper ways. (Some people turn their passions into a career)

Please note that hobbies are not always meant to bring in some materialistic benefit. In Hirayama-san’s case collecting saplings, watering plants is just for his mental satisfaction, it also shows his caring – nurturing side. Some hobbies, most hobbies are meant to carve out your best version. This best version can take care of everything materialistic and non-materialistic.   

Hobbies also help you to create a deep meaningful relationship with the people from different walks of life. You will see young Aya-chan’s appreciation for Hirayama-san on his taste in music. His niece truly values her uncle for making her aware about photography, reading and music, the restaurant owner Mama appreciates his intelligence for his reading habit.

Hobbies provide an access to the pleasures – priceless pleasures which are difficult to trade with anything that is materialistic in nature. Habits make you passionate about something, anything. We are human beings because we are passionate.

Routines bring in that predictability, certainty and thereby comfort in difficult times whereas hobbies ensure that we are always open to appreciate the beauty in novelty, randomness when our routines become mundane. 

Meaningful Connections – Loneliness vs Solitude

A relationship can be predetermined or could be in our hand. And both are equally important in life.

Even though Hirayama-san does not go well with his sister he knows that their worlds are totally different. It does not become a reason to envy his sister. (His sister is shown having a car with Chauffeur) He also teaches his niece about the closeness of relationships despite having differences very well.

Hirayama-san is depicted as lonely person but there are many relationships which are an integral part of his life. The restaurant owner – Mama who is always appreciating him for his intellectual ways despite knowing that he is a toilet cleaner, his deep connection with his niece who hasn’t met him for many years (he almost finds it difficult to recognize her when they first meet)

You must appreciate that despite being a complete introvert, a lonesome person – Hirayama is very effective in establishing immediate and intimate connections with unknown people. Being an introvert does not mean that the person is shy, it just means that they are highly selective and they mean it when they do or say it. (hence, this is one of the most consistent depiction of introverts in movies.)

You will see Hirayama-san immediately comforting the lost boy in garden (even though the boy’s mom treats him badly indirectly), playing tic-tac-toe with some unknown person, recognizing the homeless person whenever he appears, having good relations with the caretaker of the garden where his has his routine work time lunch, the bookshop lady appreciating him for his taste while selecting the books, he is also able to bring calmness to the cancer diagnosed Tomoyama – the ex-husband of Mama –  the restaurant lady.

This shows that you can remain as a single existent person and still you won’t miss life. You will not miss life because you are at peace with who you are and what you want to do with your life, otherwise this same single existent person is engulfed into loneliness. 

Hints of Stoicism

There are many instances in the character of Hirayama-san where you will find the principles of stoicism. Stoicism appreciates the order of nature and not resisting that order. One must be flexible to appreciate the ebb and the flow of the life which is the core of stoicism. If it is in the nature of the given thing, it will eventually happen, how you respond to such things is the only thing in your control.

Conclusion

As the life is multifaceted so is the interpretation of the movie perfect days, but I will try to highlight certain important takeaways.

A River will eventually end into the vast sea, but that doesn’t stop it from flowing

From Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

When Hirayama-san is talking to Niko about the difference in his and his sister’s world, he gives Niko a life lesson. This simple message has become the popular highlight of the movies all over.

Next time is next time. Now is now.

But this statement comes from the following discussion where Niko is trying to find her place in the world of her uncle and her mother.

The world is made up of many worlds. Some are connected some are not.

And the analogy of river and the sea/ocean is used to justify this scene.

So, even though our lives, our worlds are sometimes connected and sometimes not they are eventually meant to end into the vastness of the overall one existence thereby losing their own identity. But that should also not bring in the fear for the end of our distinct existence. Because even when the destiny of the river is to meet the ocean in the end that does not stop it from flowing.

That is exactly why Hirayama-san tells Niko that you will eventually find the world where you belong and maybe you will have you own isolated world but that should not remain your concern, your concern should be – “are you living in the current moment?” that is where you belong.  

If you keep on justifying your life based on how and where it started from and how and where it will end you will miss many precious things, unnoticed and underrated things, moments, people in current reality which would have made your life actually beautiful.  

Instead of fearing for the end in the future, let us first appreciate the current moment.

One Suffering is equal to many sufferings and many sufferings combined is one suffering

The discussions that happened between the ex-husband of Mama called Tomoyama and Hirayama-san is the most unnoticed message of the movie I would say. Actually, the movie is filled with so many messages that this is normal.

Tomoyama tells Hirayama that he regrets that the terminal cancer he has will prohibit him to live the life to the fullest. There were so many things Tomoyama wanted to know but won’t be able to know only because of this cancer. He also feels sorry that he left Mama and come to realize her worth only when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s like only when the life is getting snatched away from us is then we start appreciating life of others especially the people we loved.

The doubt Tomoyama presents to Hirayama hence is very symbolic here.

Tomoyama - Shadows...
           Do they get darker when they overlap?
From Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

I think the gist of whole narrative of the movie lies in this moment, where they both find out that even when the shadows overlap the darkness remains the same!

Do you see what is happening here? It is like ‘even the darkest clouds have silver lining’ – type message that is portrayed here.

The shadows represent the suffering in our life.

You will feel sad when you have a problem in your life, you will be sad on the same level when you are having multiple sufferings/ problems. I have a proof for this.

You cry on one problem as the biggest problem of your life and then you see another person having practically bigger problem than yours which pushes you to think that yours was nothing given to the suffering that person has right now. It is all about how we define abundance, how we define satisfaction where the life itself is infinitely abundant like the light.  Any single shadow of suffering or many shadows of suffering will create same darkness when they overlap but the light of life is far brighter than that.

And where there is light of life there will be shadows of suffering.  

So, this works both ways,

When you have one suffering it will affect only this current moment. If you remain in this moment, you can certainly work over it. 

And when there are many sufferings combined together, they too can affect only this current moment. If you act on the current moment then only can you pass to the next one. It’s one moment at a time. That’s how you live. There will always be many problems, shadows while we live but to live is the highest privilege, the light of our existence.

This is why the movie ends with the term:

KOMOREBI – the shimmering of light and shadows that is created by the leaves swaying in the wind. It only exists once, at that moment.

From Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

Whatever big problem/suffering, whatever big victory/ happiness/ fulfillment/ satisfaction there is, they both exist only in that moment. You just have to pass through them all the time and appreciate the life granted to you.

This too shall pass.

Nobody can steal from you how you experience life

When we say that many sufferings and one suffering actually impact our lives similarly, we are allowing infinite possibilities, infinite perspectives to take action which are far more positive than these tiny, petty problems.

The problems seem big than the infinite possibilities because we try to limit our lives to remain in our defined ways, our own set standards which we create by comparing ours with the lives of others.

We try to fit the aspects of life on some measuring scales defined by this materialistic society where many beautiful dimensions of life are lost forever.

That is why you must try to create the places, moments, people, habits of your own choices which are not soiled, stained by the comparisons with other lives. Try to connect you moments with something intangible using your hobbies, routines, relationships. You will lose things associated with them but you will never lose how they made you feel. You can share that, amplify that with others but nobody can steal it from you, because you were the originator of that experience.      

Any type of Life and the consciousness of it being granted to us is a privilege

We are always trying to justify our pain as the bigger pain than others and glorify our own best experiences over the experiences of the others but we keep on forgetting that it is the same life flowing through all of us.

A perfect life is a life of appreciation for the privilege of getting a passage through life and its awareness instead of valuing the materialistic privileges like money, fame, career, relationships, lifestyles, possessions.

The life is a spectrum not a side.

We will always have many reasons to cry about our lives over other people’s seemingly better lives but believe me only one reason is enough to justify the grandeur of the life that is granted to you and through you. The so-called imperfections assigned by us to our own life look really petty in front of the infinite possibilities that the same life has to offer.

That is exactly why, appreciation of what good life has offered and the courage to deal with what bad there is in the life is important. Appreciating the imperfections of life is the perfect life. You live it through moments one by one thereby creating your perfect days.   

Cover image from Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

The Existence – Why? How? And What?

Logotherapy is not intended only to search for the purpose of life. It justifies and dignifies the human life for its capabilities to remain in the ebb and flow of existence which is the only real thing amongst the infinite yet unrealized possibilities in the universe.

Part 2 – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity

“Was du erlebst, kann dir kein Gott mehr rauben.”

(No god can rob you of what you experience.)

Robert Hamerling

Answers from Logotherapy

In the Part 1 of the post, we tried to touch some ideas like – “three schools of psychology”, Freudian “will to pleasure”, Adlerian “will to power”, Viktor Frankl’s “will to meaning” as in Logotherapy, “existential vacuum”, “Noö-dynamics”, “determinism according to Logotherapy”, “Freedom according to Logotherapy” and “the responsibility that comes with the freedom”

In summary, Viktor Frankl a holocaust survivor, psychiatrist by profession witnessed and experienced the extremes of the human psyche leading to the creation of the concrete foundations of Logotherapy. According to logotherapy, it is the meaning, the purpose – which makes a man to survive through any situations in life, especially the worst ones. When there were not chances to become powerful, when there were no means to gain pleasure even then people chose to go through the hardships/ sufferings – they chose life. Not only to survival but even upon the realization of death, people accepted that death in same way one would have accepted the life. They had something inside them which made sense out of the sufferings, pain, life and even death. This “sense” was the purpose they had identified for themselves to serve. This purpose, this meaning to their own life justified the sufferings they endured which created the hope for their survival and justification to the death for the people who accepted it with dignity.  

Noö-genic neurosis is that existential blockage rather vacuum where a person’s mind itself is unsettled because it has no justification, no sense, no meaning behind the activities, decisions to live through the life. Upon realization of the real freedom, a person (and not the conditions, the objects around him) can determine his fate even in worst conditions; the person can still have that “optimal behavior”. This realization of freedom is possible because human psyche seeks for the sense of the things, the meaning, the purpose.  This freedom also calls for the sense of responsibility because human life practically has limited span, is perishable which brings that urgency to achieve the best possible outcome, the optimal outcome out of the only life one has. Responsibility brings the best out of the freedom one has; without the sense of responsibility, freedom degenerates into arbitrariness, a diffused state where the outcomes of the event have no significant impact. In simple words, freedom with responsibility gives focused and optimal outcomes whereas freedom without responsibility (still) gives results but are diffused as there is no intent to achieve anything.  

Why? Why does the life bear “a meaning”, “a purpose”?

Upon understanding what actually lies under the human psyche and the human life (i.e., the purpose, the meaning), it becomes apparent to ask the same existential question – Why does life seek for meaning only as there can be other uncountable possibilities, uncountable factors which drive the psyche, the life, the existence? Why nothing in the world – the universe but meaning only?

Viktor Frankl has excellently given the theoretical and practical proofs for the importance of meaning in a person’s life. Theoretically proof – if a person is always driven by pleasures and power then why there are examples where people chose sacrifice, where people died for their honor, where people stood fearlessly for their morals, where people rose against something really powerful, where people accepted the hardships even when there was no guarantee for them to end? These are not the exceptional cases in a human behavior. Rather when human beings are stretched to their extremes these behaviors are more common. So, unlike the pleasure and power the awareness, the urge to find the meaning is not just a secondary drive of the human life. The urge to the meaning, the purpose will always be present even in the absence of pleasure and power.

Practically Viktor Frankl presents a study to prove his point here. 89% people from a French public opinion poll and 78% of the people in an American students’ statistical survey indicated that people want “something to live for”, “finding a purpose and meaning to the life”.

I think, it is the omnipotent nature of the infinite possibilities which the real freedom grants to every person. Out of those infinite possibilities very few become realized to reality from where the freedom loses its ideal nature. Then the superposition of realized possibilities create the “real” reality which has been brought from chaos, an inconceivable, an un-understandable situation to a familiar, slightly better predictable state. This better predictable, the one “out of which some sense can be made” state is the fundamental state required for the human life to thrive upon. This urgency for predictability, for sense, for meaning, for purpose is solely because of the limited nature of the realization of life we have.

(The word predictability is not used here to imply that man wishes for everything to happen according to his wishes, rather the predictability is used in the sense for how a person will always know how he will react to the events presented to him even when they are not predictable.)

Does that mean that if a person becomes immortal, will the urge for purpose – the will to meaning ceases to exist? That is where responsibility comes into picture which Viktor Frankl has posed while defining freedom’s role in human life. Only with responsibility can the freedom be brought to the realization to possibilities out of the infinite unrealized possibilities.

In single sentence I think, a single realized possibility is more powerful than the infinite unrealized possibilities. The extraction of this power is only possible if the there is freedom with a responsibility. That is why the life exists; it exists to create the realized possibilities out of the infinite unrealized possibilities (which the universe holds or whatever ultimate there is can generate).   

How? How one discovers the purpose

The profoundness of Frankl’s logotherapy is not just about the depth of the ideas and the practicality of the experimental results. He also explained how one gains this meaning, which are as follows:

Ways to discover Meaning of Life-

  1. Creating a work or doing a deed
  2. By experiencing something or encountering someone
  3. By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

1. Creating a work or doing a deed

It is very similar to figuring out what you actually love doing and how you can also benefit others (obviously including you) in the process. (Some call it following your passion, answering your inner calling to create something that you and others value)

2. By experiencing something or encountering someone – Power of love

“The second way of finding a meaning in life is by 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.”

Viktor Frankl

The meaning of Love itself became very “meaningful” to me when I understood what the logotherapy stands for. Before stumbling upon the ideas of Viktor Frankl on “the meaning”- for me love was a selfish idea to gain pleasure, to have that comfort for ourselves. Something which goes like this:

“We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It’s our own concept – our own selves – that we love.”

Fernando Pessoa

Love is very selfish idea if we go by this statement. For me here, Pessoa meant that love emerges from inside, hence it is very “egoic” It gives us pleasure to love someone, to do everything to make them happy which ultimately will make us happy, thereby becoming selfish in the end. But then my perspectives changed. (I haven’t studied and understood the premise and the intentions behind the Pessoa’s comment on love here, which can be reserved for discussion somewhere else.)

Upon going through the ideas on Logotherapy, we become aware that there are examples where lovers (not the romantic ones only) have crossed the limits of life for other people or other things, where (again) pleasure and power were not guaranteed.

Love thus becomes a medium to realize the possibilities of the life experiences. If we are so obsessed to find the meaning of our life, then it equally becomes very meaningful to have someone who understands the same urge for meaning in you too. This love is not just a person-to-person possibility, it can also be for things and experiences.

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value: rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.” 

C S Lewis

This is the reason you will always see why almost all the events, experiences, art forms, philosophies, cultures, religions and whatnot are immediately linked to the concept of love. It’s on a whim where things not making sense are illogically explained by love, it is innate fact in everyone which logotherapy makes apparent.

3. By the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering

The third way one can realize the worth of life is by going through sufferings. Sufferings stretch a person to his extremes where there are clear boundaries between the existences of life and death. The urgency to make the existence of some worth becomes eminent here. The meaning discovered in such situations pushes the person to bring even the hopeless situations to his benefit by developing an attitude of optimism. The inability to change the situations makes the person change himself to bring the best out of the situation. It the way in which the person finds the meaning to his suffering.

“Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.” 

Viktor Frankl

It is also important to understand that if suffering gives the person meaning for the life that also does not mean that everyone has to suffer to find the meaning in his own life. Viktor Frankl was very clear in these terms. Hence, he clarified the earlier two ways to find the meaning in life. The ideas communicated by Viktor Frankl are very similar to the ideas in stoicism which also discusses about focusing on things which you can control.

What? What is life according to the logotherapy?

The logotherapy explains that life is all about the tragedies, in Viktor’s words the tragic triad of three things namely pain, Guilt and Death. Why tragedies are considered to represent life is important here.  It is very easy for life to exist when these three things (pain, guilt, death) are not there, but the life still remains existent rather becomes more meaningful in the presence of the same hostile aspects. Logotherapy thus discusses that even in such hostile conditions, one can find the meaning, one can have the “optimal behavior” by following ways in the words of Viktor himself as follows:   

  1. Pain – Turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment.
  2. Guilt – Deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for better.
  3. Death – deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.

1. Pain

Logotherapy made a successful attempt to justify what is the real nature of pleasure and pain. It established a fact that life is not just a set of tragic events of sadness for someone and a series full of happiness for others. Life is about how we as a person create meaning out of our sufferings, even when they are not in control. This is the real victory over those sufferings. Logotherapy actually balanced the concepts of happiness and sadness which both are the inseparable aspects of every life. One of them is always favored (happiness) but the realization of meaning makes the least favorable yet existent (sadness) a reality. This is very effective when people are sad even in their pursuits of happiness. They expect that doing one specific thing will bring them happiness, make them feel accomplished. After doing that thing, achieving that thing they again become clueless and sad that it was not what they expected.  

“Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. A human being is not in the pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.”

Viktor Frankl

When people get overwhelmed upon the realization that happiness is not consistent for their whole life the existential vacuum peaks in and again this meaninglessness becomes dominant. Frankl effectively established that this forced urge to become happy is one of the major reasons for the depression, aggression and addiction in the newer generations.

2. Guilt

Frankl here gives one of his professional experiences with the convicted criminals- the guilty people of the society.  According to his ideas from personal experiences which are really powerful- every crime cannot be traced back to single point event, single person, single cause, single behavior. If it is impossible to pinpoint and press conviction on such singular aspects, then how can a person be considered completely guilty for the crime. For such human beings rather every person feeling guilty about something life is about rising above it. Even though Viktor’s examples are based on criminal and convicted human beings, it will be an understatement that they are not applicable to everyone of us. Every one of us considers themselves guilty for at least one thing, one mistake in their life. Finding the purpose, the meaning can help us to rise above this guilt with the feeling of responsibility. What a powerful thought!

Humanness in everyone is one important aspect of logotherapy. Rising above guilt through realization of meaning reflects that. It made the psychology more humanitarian rather that a mechanistic interaction between humans and their drives.

3. Death

We have already discussed that the perishable nature of life creates the urgency to meaning. The sense of death brings in the responsibility to optimally live the only life one has is an important aspect of every human life rather every life. 

“The opportunities to act properly, the potentialities to fulfill a meaning, are affected by the irreversibility of our lives.”

Viktor Frankl

This is where I think we can understand what actually lies under the existence of life. Our existence as a conscious life is destined to create the realities from the infinite possibilities that universe has. We are the means to bring the intangible possibilities into the reality through our lives which makes every life meaningful. Every life is meaningful and hence deserves dignity. It is dignified because by its mere existence it has successfully created the realities out of the unrealized and intangible possibilities. Our existence itself makes us dignified of the life we have even if it may not be useful for others.    

“An incurably psychotic individual may lose his usefulness but yet retain the dignity of a human being.”

Viktor Frankl

This is also the moment where Viktor has highlighted on creating real possibilities in present rather than dwindling on to past and future. Past is more important because it is where the reality existed, it is where the meaning of actions from the present are justified.

The Super-meaning – why does the meaning exist?

“What is demanded of man in not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms. Logos is deeper than logic.”

Viktor Frankl

It is also very important to understand that Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy is not just about finding the sense to the life, the meaning the purpose of the life. It also makes one important argument about the limitations of human understandings. When we will go on asking “why?” to the answers of every “why?”, we will end up into some abstract idea of meaning which won’t even make sense to our existence. (And again, the same spiral of existential vacuum will start thereby rendering the question useless itself) even though there are some things which are beyond your understandings that also does not mean that your meaning should always justify unknowns, rather it is paradoxical. If the purpose of life is to create the realities from the intangible, unrealized infinite possibilities then it is very important to understand that the meaning need not to be some abstract meaning in order to justify every possibility in the universe. Logotherapy thus becomes very powerful to create a practical, real picture and purpose of human life. Logotherapy thus justifies and dignifies the human life for its capabilities to be there even in the ebb and flow of existence which is the only real thing amongst the infinite yet unrealized possibilities.

For more, read Part 1 of this blog post- Answering the questions on existence of “the existence” – Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy for Humanity – Part 1

  • Featured Image – Jewish Museum Berlin