Drinking up meaning

In his book, Man’s Search Meaning, Victor Frankl writes, “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.” Sitting with those words and reflecting on my life and our world, it seems there may be few words which speak more powerfully to our current struggle as individuals and a society.

We are surrounded by pleasure. We can binge hundreds of shows. We carry access to countless forms of entertainment and distraction in our pockets and purses. With a quick search on Google, Yelp, or a host of others apps, we can discover dozens if not hundreds of things to do with our time.

Most of us don’t do sitting still very well. Think about it…one of the most common answers to “How are you?” is “Busy.”

I am convinced one of the reasons we keep busy is to mask the absence of a deep sense of meaning in our lives. We run to pleasure and its cacophony of noises to drown out the ache in our soul.

We fear sitting still or in silence because it can be deafening, believing if we run fast enough, make enough noise, stay busy enough, we might forget the empty space deep inside crying out for meaning.

I have fallen into this trap throughout my life. Being an Enneagram 7, it happens fairly easily.

Life has slowly been teaching me to sit with pain and discomfort. Meditation practice over the last nine months has aided me in building mental and emotional muscles I didn’t realize were there.

While there is still have much to learn, I am beginning to understand something else Frankl says about pleasure: “Pleasure is, and must remain, a side effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself.”

He it right. When pleasure becomes the goal, it loses a certain level of enjoyment. It may taste good in the moment, but can often have a bitter aftertaste. This often brings us back to the well for more; the cycle continues, our pursuit of pleasure for pleasure’s sake draining our soul.

I don’t know all the answers, but have discovered some pathways heading in the right direction. I am learning that pursuing meaning produces pleasure, a pleasure deeper than anything we try to create. Meaning, true, deep meaning, offers a spring of living water and invites us to drink. Drink up!