Frankl and the question «why»: meaning is not found but created

My book is called «Why?». And there was a man for whom this same question was not a theme but a condition of survival — Viktor Frankl. A psychiatrist who passed through a concentration camp and then wrote «Man’s Search for Meaning». His central thought sounds simple and terrible: he who has a «why» can bear almost any «how».

I sign under this entirely. Strength, the ability to take a blow, the will to go on — none of it comes from nowhere. All of it is an answer to the question «for the sake of what». Without an answer, the first strong wind breaks a person. With an answer, he passes through what should have broken him.

What Frankl saw

Frankl argued with his century — literally: some said a person is driven by pleasure, others by power. Frankl said a person is driven by meaning. Where there is meaning, the rest follows; where there is none, neither pleasure nor power saves — an emptiness comes that he called the existential vacuum.

And he showed that meaning is not a luxury of the well-fed. It is needed most where things are worst. But here I want to be very precise, because the theme is easy to spoil. Frankl found meaning in suffering that he did not choose and in no way deserved. That is not at all the same as saying «suffering is useful» or «pain educates». No one deserves pain, for anything. And no one has the right to decide whose life may be taken and whose may not. The conclusion from Frankl is not «seek pain», but «have a why». These are different things, and they must not be confused.

Where his model is not complete for me

Frankl taught one to find meaning — to accept what cannot be changed. That is priceless where it truly cannot be changed. But I am not a prisoner, I am an artist, and my model begins at a different point. Meaning is not only found — it is created. Not with clenched teeth under the inevitable, but out of a state in which one wants to create. And that «why» is built not from pain but from its opposite: from knowledge, from the image, from what gives birth to love inside. I believe in a world where the revision of values comes not through physical force and not through suffering as a lesson, but through what a person has seen, understood and loved — so that the wish to take, to hurt, to humiliate simply stops bringing him any reward. Society, I think, should strive exactly for this: for there to be less pain, not for meaning to be found in it after the fact.

This is not a correction of Frankl. It fell to him to endure the unendurable, and he gave people a support. To me fell a different time and a different instrument — the canvas. So my map is a different one.

What this means for you

Honestly, with no promises: a painting will not give you the meaning of life and will not replace that work. Meaning cannot be hung on a wall with the question then closed.

But a painting can ask the question. A good work on the wall is a quiet, daily «why» that keeps you from falling asleep on autopilot. Not an answer — a reminder that the answer is owed by you. And I suggest you gather it not out of pain, but out of what is dear to you.

And still

Frankl carried his «why» out of a place where everything else had been taken, and by it he saved himself and thousands after him. To speak of meaning below that bar is shameful.

So I will ask plainly, as he would have: for the sake of what did you get up this morning? If there is no answer, no painting will grant it. But perhaps the right work on the wall will silently repeat this question to you every day — until you answer. With your life, not with words. And, I hope, out of love, not out of pain.

The work in question — «Strength — Attention to Light and Dark» →

— Evgeny Fleysher