There's More to Life Than Being Happy - Emily Esfahani Smith - The Atlantic

There's More to Life Than Being Happy - Emily Esfahani Smith - The Atlantic

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, wrote in Man's Search for Meaning of two of his fellow inmates in the concentration camp, both of them despondent and suicidal, "In both cases, it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them." One had a child waiting in a foreign country, one was a scientist with books he needed to finish writing.

"This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'..."

"Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself -- by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love -- the more human he is."

The article by Emily Esfahani Smith looks at modern sociological research into happiness and meaning in light of Frankl's insights and personal experience, as he sacrificed the safety of exile abroad to honor his father and mother by going with them to the concentration camp.