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February 12, 2006
He Who Has A Why To Live Can Bear With Almost Any How
Was chatting with ZY on MSN the other day and we ended up talking about Nietzche briefly. Not that I'm familiar with his work, but I'll always remember one of his famous quotes:
He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how
I took out my journal because I recalled taking some short notes when I was exploring Vicktor Frankl's logotherapy which has everything to do with existentialism and man's search for meaning in life.
The entry was made on October 18, 2000...
Central theme of existentialism To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying.
How buddhist...
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
A great way of life. (If you find this statement fluffy and academic, read Viktor Frankl's Man Search For Meaning for starters. This is someone who survived the Holocaust to found logotherapy. This is someone who's been there, done that. So he wasn't talking through his ass.)
I was having drinks with Elvin, Libing and Lina last Saturday at Balaclava. Libing was back from Beijing for Chinese New Year. We had to sit outside because the waiter wouldn't allow me to enter in my Havainna flip flops. After they finished bitching about my inappropriate attire (whatever), and we finished updating each other on our sex life (a very very very very brief dialogue), we talked about what it meant to be happy.
Anyway I'm getting long-winded. What I wanted to say is...of course there are people who don't spend a lot of time thinking about what really make them happy. So it's kinda like ignorance rather than bliss (that's why ignorance is bliss). But we must also recognize that there are people who are already living the life that makes them happy, whether they are conscious of it or not. And the fact that they are not frustrated with their current state doesn't necessarily mean that they don't know what they're missing out.
For those of us who are grappling with issues such as Who am I? What do I exist in the world to do?, we sometimes try to make ourselves feel better by assuming that people who are not frustrated and discontented with life are people who are simply leading their life aimlessly. That may not be necessarily true. The fact that they are not frustrated may suggest that they are already very comfortable with who they are and are already feeling connected to the universe. That's why they don't think about such existential issues as much as others do. It's like the air that we breathe in. We won't notice it unless we're deprived of it.
Posted by loganw at February 12, 2006 09:01 AM
