Living a Meaningful Life
Will you end up regretting the past?
Last week, I wrote a birthday post for my wife on Instagram. It was her 39th birthday (the last year I can legally post her age online) and I’d been thinking about a passage I read in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
In his book, Frankl tells the story of how he survived a Nazi concentration camp. (The perfect content for a romantic birthday post, right?) Throughout his story, Frankl explores why some of his fellow prisoners gave up when faced with immense suffering, and why others choose to persevere. In Frankl’s opinion, those who found meaning in their pain pressed forward, while those who didn’t slowly withered away and died.1 Frankl later applied these observations to his work as a psychologist, where he helped all sorts of people find purpose in life.
The part I quoted in Priscilla’s birthday post comes from a section where Frankl describes two ways of growing old. One person—a pessimistic one—looks at the pages on the wall calendar slowly disappearing, and grows despondent. Where has time gone! My life is slipping away!
The optimistic person, however, finds satisfaction in the shrinking of time:
[T]he person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these notes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest.2
I went on to say this in my post:
As time goes on, and the years pass, I do sometimes lament moments long disappeared. And yet, I know I have a partner I’m building a meaningful life with. As each year passes, Pris and I can pull down that calendar sheet together and reflect on the challenges, pain, and joy experienced. We can be confident that while we are not perfect, we (with God’s help) can live a rich life that honors Christ.
The more I learn about Wisdom, the more I realize that Wisdom involves a flexible dance of moving and shifting to the seasons of life. Some seasons are fantastic—you never want them to end. Others are slow, arduous, and difficult. Most of the time, they are a mixture of both. What will make us look back at the past with pride and joy? Well, according to Frankl, it’s meaning. When we live with meaning (and as a Christian I see this meaning as one intertwined with the good news of Jesus), we will look back not with regret, or sadness, but with satisfaction that we did what we were called to do. “Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered.”3
There is a reoccurring theme when the Bible talks about Wisdom: intentionality. Proverbs says “the complacency of fools destroys them” (1:32). When we are complacent, when we live without intention or meaning, when we waste away our days, we won’t file our calendar sheets away with pride. It’s like I tell my son who wants to only play video games when he gets together with friends or his cousins: “Most of the time, you won’t remember anything about this day if you stare at a screen the entire time.”4 But he may remember a great catch he made during a impromptu football game or the water fight he got into when he was expecting to stay dry.
So how do we live with meaning now? Frankl would do an exercise with his patients to help them. He would tell them to imagine they were old and that they lived a life a meaning. How would they describe that life?
I thought about this for a little while and decided to do what Frankl encouraged his patients to do. Here’s what I wrote down:
I lived a life of allegiance to Jesus, doing my best to become like him and acting towards others the way that he did. I pointed my children to Jesus, who also chose to dedicate their lives to him.
I wasn’t perfect, but I lived a life of wisdom and integrity even when it required me to sacrifice getting ahead or getting something I wanted.
I spent my most precious resources (time and attention) on the most important areas of my life: my faith and my family.
My marriage was fantastic. In fact, I feel like I had the best marriage in the world. We weathered storms and enjoyed sunny days. We were faithful to each other. We said we were sorry and offered grace and forgiveness.
I have a great relationship with my children and grandchildren. I fostered this by spending time with them, offering them grace, and being firm, but not overbearing. They always felt like they could talk to me about whatever was going on in their lives.
I didn’t take myself too seriously. I was fun—even a goof at times—and people genuinely felt like I was a joy to be around.
People walked away from me feeling seen and heard. I was an “illuminator” not a “diminisher.”
I was a compassionate and generous son, brother, uncle, friend, co-worker, and neighbor. People knew they could rely on me.
I helped build some great businesses, producing products that really helped people. I had to make tough decisions, but I always did right by the people I worked with. I can look everyone who worked for me in the eye without feeling embarrassed or ashamed.
I was a good steward of the gifts that God gave me (my talents, my time, my money, my mind, my body).
I helped people learn and become more like Jesus. I stood up for the weak and vulnerable. I contributed to a healthy local church that served each other and our community.
I need to refine this a bit—it’s still rough—but what an exercise! Imagining that you’re at the end of your life and looking back in hindsight!
What would your answers be? Write them down and remind yourself of them everyday. Or, it might be good for some of you to imagine being old and regretting your life. What made this happen? How can you stop it from happening?
Attack the problems of life and live in such a way that you’ll look back at the past with satisfaction rather than regret. We can’t stop time, but we can find meaning in it.
Or, as Frankl puts it: “Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.”5
To be clear, Frankl doesn’t argue that meaning guaranteed survival. One needed perseverance and a lot of luck to make it through the concentration camps.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (p. 121). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.
Ibid, 121-122.
“Most of the time,” but not always. I remember quite a few few video games sessions with friends and family members (like the time my buddy and I came back from 40-0 in NFL Blitz and miraculously won on the last play of the game). The key is moderation and a strong social dynamic. Video games work best when we’re playing a game with people who are in the same room as us.
Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (p. 150). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.