#1408 - responsibility
Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl is probably the book that impacted me most significantly. Anytime I'm reflecting on something, I go back to Frankl's words. Maybe it's because my quest for truth is, in the end, my quest for meaning.
In the last few days, I had a few conversations about adversities. Personal ones and collectives ones. Almost invariably, the conversation quickly turns into a search for a meaning, a reason or at least a culprit to make sense of what has happened or is happening. However, as much as I love exploring what lies beneath the surface of events, I'm always left with a sense of emptiness. Even when we find a reason.
Take the disasters connected to climate change, we know what is happening, and we can keep talking about what governments, businesses and societies should do and change. But the ones who are truly asked to change are us.
It is me.
I am the one asked to give meaning to the events that trouble my soul. And my answer should emerge from my actions.
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.