May Saysay ang Buhay

In V. Frankl’s “Man and His Search for Meaning,” there’s an account of a father encouraging his 6-year old daughter to thank the Lord for curing her of measles. The daughter responded, “but wasn’t it God who gave me measles in the first place?”

At various points in my life, Frankl, proponent of the Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy, silvered a few disconsolate nights and pulled me from the gulch of desolation. In psychology, there are 3 major conceptions of man’s primary motivational force: Freudian’s psychoanalysis centers on pleasure: Adlerian psychology emphasizes power; and Frankl’s logotherapy focuses on man’s groping for life’s meaning.

Informed by Nietzche’s existentialist thought, “he who has a WHY to live can bear with any HOW,” VF’s patented couch session style was to floor patients with the standard question: Why do you not commit suicide?

Why indeed, if we feel life is forbidding, stifling, why do we insist on surviving anyway? Variations of this trick question have helped me deal with self-doubts and self-hurt as well as counsel a few friends to slay their own demons, enthusing that the more devils we kill, the more we form angels.

Existentialists argue that surely, if there is a purpose for life, there ought to be a meaning for everything trapped with it – suffering, dying, etc. but is there truly a meaning, an ordered sense to the randomness of this world?

Existentialism is quite simple. The challenge it tosses for each of us is to seek that purpose and life will be superfine in a non-metaphorical sense - contentedly inhaling all the shit on this earth and calmly enduring all indignities.

A quasi-bible, I keep revisiting the pages highlighted in green marks (a folly of youth) whenever I need a rope to hang on to, staving off despair with philosophical oomph. After losing my mother rather unexpectedly, Frankl gave me a different perspective on my suffering mode that makes me less unsettled. There is meaning to our suffering, he reassures.

A week ago, I hinted parting with the book, thinking it has already served its purpose and another friend might be needing it more. Baan expressed her mild protestations. Only then did I discover – she too, leans on Frankl for enlightenment and drinks from his cup. Tough luck.

Our taste in literature differs. She, of the no-nonsense type buries her nose on medical journals, books on spirituality and psychology while my bedtime leisure is usually spent in fiction-land. Henceforth, the stuff we commonly savor are celebrated: Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s “Gift from the Sea,” the Anais Nin diaries, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and YES magazine, to mention a few.

YES magazine may not lead us towards our purpose in life which could be quite an elusive pursuit to most of us really, but Jean Paul Sartre sways us to invent our own essence. Frankl, however, argues that our essence is not invented by us but by a Higher Being. Our only sweat is to unravel that essence.

As a whole, I cannot claim to fully internalize my 'essence' but parts of my anatomy, I know what they are for. For instance, my hands – they were made to make one man happy, ahoi!; my tongue for some gastro-carnal delight and moody lashings, my clavicle for that blatant body cue for mating and so on and so forth. Ole!

Frankl’s faith in humanity is nothing short of colossal. I think eminent writers/thinkers are those that bare the madness of the world, swerve our attention to the “unbearable lightness of being,” conceal their skepticism poorly and yet in the end, feed our soul with hope and pull us inches closer to this Supreme Being, this Central Force most of us conformingly label God.

Like that 6-year old finding irony in a God that allows unspeakable suffering yet at the same time, heals and comforts, I, too, quibble with His impotence, His indifference, His contradiction but relieved I am not in His shoes. Because according to G. Bataille “being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evil is unimaginable unless God willed them,” an obvious paraphrase of Epicurus lambasting that if this God cannot control evil because He cannot, He is impotent but if He can actually prevent evil and is just unwilling, He is malevolent.

Oh, to be culpable for everything – our misfortunes, our sorrow, our grief, our turmoil. To be ignored most of the time when everything is peachy. But I am exercising free will here, a gift some people consider overrated. I choose to be buddies with this God, maybe not the Abrahamic God or Job’s, but my God still, and share some occasional banters and healthy tirades.