The Friday News Minute!
A weekly gem of information you will be using on Monday!
Published by Andrew Sanderbeck
Managing Partner of The People~Connect Institute
www.peopleconnectinstitute.com
Warm and happy Friday greetings from the Public Library in Antigua in the Caribbean! It has been a very interesting trip so far...and one of the observations that I have made is that there are few people on our crusie ship, the Costa Atlantica, that speak English. In my training classes onboard, the ships officers do their best to speak English to me, but the majority of people are speaking Italian and French. This has caused me to really open my eyes to how big the world is and to just how many people are in it. It is also making me wonder why each of us are on the planet and what we are do.
Man's Search for Meaning...continued
It is a curious thing...this search for meaning and purpose in our lives. Last night I was thinking about Victor Frankl's book and wondered if I was any closer to understanding my own "Search for Meaning" than I was perhaps 20 or 30 years ago. I feel like I have...yet I also feel like I have not.
There seems to be so much struggle in my life and in the life of others. Yet, I remember a quote from Frankl about what is positive about struggling and striving for meaning:
"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him." From Man's Search for Meaning
I am so blessed in life. Last night at the "Gala Dinner" onboard the Atlantica I found myself sitting in the dining room with my wife in a a total state of humility. I know that there is much to be grateful for in my life and yet...an emptiness prevails. It is an invisble emptiness, one that is neither happy or sad. It is there and I know that it yearns to be fullfilled.
After reflecting further on the work on Frankl, I began to wonder if I am asking the right questions in my search for meaning:
"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." From Man's Search for Meaning
I fully appreciate the words "taking responsibility to find the answers". This is my quest. It is your quest as well. It is likely that pursuing the answers will fill the emptiness within us. It is also likely that the answers will prompt more questions.
And perhaps then, the search for meaning will feel less like the "filling of an empty space", and more like the building of a foundation to our fullfilling human experience.
Andrew Sanderbeck ===========================================================================