When I was making sense of a friend’s suicide, I read it again and wrote this post, Living in a World More Focused on Means than Meaning. When I was going through my midlife chrysalis, Frankl’s book helped me to see that “suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning,” which led me to creating my first attempt at emotional math, Despair = Suffering – Meaning, which led to my NY Times bestselling book, Emotional Equations.
For those who don’t know it, Frankl’s book explores the human capacity to find meaning in even the most horrific circumstances, offering insights into the nature of suffering, hope, and the search for purpose in life. Frankl’s personal experiences as a concentration camp prisoner provide a stark but ultimately inspiring account of his journey to develop logotherapy, a therapeutic approach focused on helping individuals discover meaning in their lives. While few of us will experience the horrors of a concentration camp, the book helps us to see the universality of human experience and how to find hope and meaning no matter your circumstances. It’s a great book to read if you’re having a bad week, month, or year.
MEA is honored to be collaborating with St. John’s College, the Great Books school, to offer our first Summer Classics workshop at our Santa Fe ranch campus July 14-19, Crossroads & Classics: Navigating Transitions with Art & Literature. Imagine diving into excerpts from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Plato, Yeats, Robert Frost, and Georgia O’Keeffe with a collection of other midlifers who realize that there’s so much to be learned from these remarkable writers, poets and artists. Don’t worry, you won’t have to read any of their books in their entirety.
Give yourself the gift of a week of spaciousness on MEA’s four-square-mile campus so you can sit in a hammock and read a great book while also conversing with a new collection of peers. You invest in nourishing your body regularly – this week will feed your soul and you deserve that!
-Chip