Frankl and Meaning

So I've been reading the amazing Viktor Frankl who came through many concentration camps with his heart and ideas intact. I can only be in awe of such a man. His ideas are stimulating but need mixing up with other ideas to get a fuller picture.
His favourite quote from Nietzsche is that once a man knows why to live he can endure anyhow; this is Frankl's initial launch pad. What is meant here is that meaning in life ensures a fulfilling life, possibly happy and definitely one that can endure suffering.

Meaning obviously has a huge impact on life. A dull job takes on new significance when a child is born and the job is then reinterpreted as that which supports them. An athlete will endure significant pain to win a race. Here meaning is given to the activity, by the meanings we ascribe, looking after children, or winning races. There are three different types of meaning for Frankl. Social meaning where you do something for society, e.g. make your world a better place. Experiential meaning which can be a sunset or the love you have with someone. Attitudinal, the meaning you give to your own pain, or joy, where you bear your cross with dignity.

The challenge for meaning is not a fixed ultimate meaning, as meaning only exists outside the act, i.e. the job is to support the child, so the only thing outside life is something outside my life, nothing inside will do. The only ultimate meanings would be God type events, so you need to ascribe meaning to the small parts of your life, the days, the weeks, the years, and the smaller the unit, the more vitality it will have.

The relation to happiness is that happiness ensues through successful outcomes of your meaningful engagements, spending time with your loved ones, winning races or supporting children. Happiness can't be aimed at in itself nor can success. You don't feel good about winning a race if you don't care for races, likewise aiming directly at happiness can only be seen with drugs, but here happiness is insubstantial, life becomes a hollow search for drugs.

There are however a few conundrums to be worked through with meanings. Is something really meaningful to me, or am I not truly doing the most meaningful thing. So whilst I might say I am finding meaning in playing a video game, I could realise it would be more meaningful to me to go to a party.You never ever reach any fundamental answers; whilst yesterday the party would have been better today it may be the video game.

So introspection, self awareness and therapy can help with this. The other more awkward notion is the hierarchy of meaning, i.e. this is meaningful because of that, so being polite to my boss, is meaningful as it helps my job as it helps me support my child, so either meaning this has another meaning or it is self standing. Even if you draw in some God figure to give meaning to the whole of life, then what gives God meaning?

Thus you have to ascribe meaning without foundation and then must confront the absurd. You could choose this value or that, and fundamentally each choice is irrational and absurd. If you question your values there is nothing to save you.

Ok so at the moment we're left in a bit of a pickle we all need to construct and support or own values, which can only have substance if we look away from the fact we create them. There's another side to this, albeit not entirely coherent. As much as we give meaning to life, life also gives meaning to us. Life calls us, has requirements for us. I am my mother's son, I have a book to write, and my friends want me to be there for them. As such meaning also comes from outside, from life. We still also have to choose which of these competing demands we respond to, but still there is a dynamic where meaning is generated internally and externally.
I would also at this point like to look at freewill and determinism. These are necessary bed fellows, two sides of the same coin. We are confronted by things, events in our world, of which we have no choice. How I interpret them, how I respond to them is up to me. I am free only in so far as I can choose my reaction to my determined position. I can perceive my determined position only in so far as I am free to choose it.

Whilst there is a natural relation between internal and free and external and determined, this is not merely the difference between me and the world, but rather between the subject of experience and experience. By subject here I mean not in the classical subject object split but rather in terms of the locus of conscience, the place where emotions are, the body, the primal place where we are engaged with the world. An embodied Dasein if you like.
There does seem to be a key question here that is asked of us. How much should I create my meaningful life and how much should I respond to it? This is the polarity between active and passive, planned and spontaneous, me and the other.

To focus too heavily on one side or the other comes at a potential cost, which I don't say is necessary, but certainly one I've experienced.If you focus too much on the self created then your projects can become empty as they are only enriched through the vitality of the world. If you focus too much on the world created then you lose yourself and your projects become dull and boring as your desire for them is absent.