I first received a copy of Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in 2009 while I was deployed to Afghanistan. I can’t remember where it came from, it might have been included in a care package along with some coffee and DVDs. I do remember picking it up during our last couple of weeks in country, right before we flew home. As with everything in life, timing matters. Looking back now, I think that since I’d very recently experienced a ton of pain, loss, and hardship, the book just kind of glanced off of me. It simply struck me as a story of incredible human endurance in the face of unthinkable evil. The deeper, more meaningful messages just didn’t click.

Over the next several years, I often wondered what people found so profound about this book. As social media became more prevalent, it seemed that a day never passed without somebody sharing a quote or meme attributed to Frankl and his wisdom. Finally, this spring I became convinced that either Frankl had become the new Ben Franklin, prolific in internet misattributions, or I’d missed something really important in that book. So, I dug it out of my closet and decided to give it another look. Turns out, the latter was true and Man’s Search does indeed contain some powerful lessons.

Reading it today, a decade later and far removed from my military service, was a completely different experience. While still struck by the capacity of the human spirit, and shocked by the horrors of Nazi brutality, I really latched on to the later pages of the book where Frankl attempts to make meaning of his suffering. He lays it out beautifully in this passage that he calls, “The Existential Vacuum”

The existential vacuum is a widespread phenomenon of the twentieth century. This is understandable; it may be due to a twofold loss which man has had to undergo since he became a truly human being. At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal’s behavior is imbedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people wish him to do (totalitarianism).

A statistical survey recently revealed that among my European students, 25 percent showed a more-or-less marked degree of existential vacuum. Among my American students it was not 25 but 60 percent.

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom. Now we can understand Schopenhauer when he said that mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. In actual fact, boredom is now causing, and certainly bringing to psychiatrists, more problems to solve than distress. And these problems are growing increasingly crucial, for progressive automation will probably lead to an enormous increase in leisure hours available to the average worker. The pity of it is that many of these will not know what to do with all their newly acquired free time.

Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday Neurosis,” that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. Not a few cases of suicide can be traced back to this existential vacuum. Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression, and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. This is also true of the crises of pensioners and aging people.

Moreover, there are various masks and guises under which the existential vacuum appears. Sometimes the frustrated will to meaning is vicariously compensated for by a will to power, including the most primitive form of the will to power; the will to money. In other cases, the place of frustrated will to meaning is taken by the will to pleasure.

Remind you at all of the world you live in? Frankl wrote this in 1959! His observations and insights from the post-WWII era are stunningly descriptive of our current situation in the developed world and perhaps more relevant than ever. All of our real human needs are likely being met many times over. Our lives are so easy that we’re essentially manufacturing problems for ourselves. We are inventing hardship where it need not exist - unless of course, we actually do need it.

Frankl would submit, and I would agree, that a life well lived requires some suffering (or at least struggle). As humans, we are built to solve problems, overcome adversity, and survive in harsh environments. We’re equipped to handle the physical and mental stress of taking care of ourselves and our tribe. This work provides us with purpose and focus - it literally makes us human, and we just don’t know what to do in its absence. We no longer spend our days hunting, gathering, migrating, building shelter, or fighting off wild animals, which leaves us with tons of excess capacity. What we choose to do with all that time and energy is really interesting to me. It doesn’t appear that we are dedicating more time to family, leisure, community, or art. I think most of us are instead choosing to replace our old selective pressures with new ones. We’re opting for all sorts of mental and emotional suffering. Our new existential threats are entirely in our own heads. Any of these sound familiar?:

• “I haven’t accomplished enough.”

• “I’m not living up to my potential.”

• “I’m not a good enough parent.”

• “I’m not enough for my partner.”

• “How can I get more influence?”

• “Why do people even listen to him/her?!”

• “How did he/she ever get so successful?!”

Here’s the deal. We have to accept our innate need for the struggle. It’s hardwired into our DNA. We’ve tried for decades to make our lives easier and more convenient and it has left us miserable. We just end up wanting it newer, bigger, smaller, cheaper, automated, faster. There is no end and no satisfaction. It’s a treadmill to nowhere. So let’s just choose struggle, but struggle better.

We have the power (and luxury) to choose hardship that actually makes us healthier, stronger, and better. We can put some of the challenge and uncertainty back into our lives in ways that are productive and safe. There are a lot of ways to do it, but I have personally found that choosing physical hardship is the place to start. In a physical world, it is easy to find endeavors that are difficult and offer no guarantee of success. These kinds of undertakings get us out of our heads and focused on the present, primal task at hand. They also offer a little bit of nervousness and stress around the result…but a healthy, manageable amount.

For example, you could commit to running 10 miles or doing 500 pushups everyday, which would certainly be hard, but probably just miserable. A better option might be to commit to training for your first marathon, or a GORUCK Challenge. Learn a new sport that you’re going to suck at for the first 6 months. Sign up for something that scares you a little like Brazilian Ju-Jitsu or CrossFit. Just pick whatever form of suffering works for you. Put yourself in an uncomfortable position, embrace the struggle, focus on the work that’s right in front of you - and tell that little devil on your shoulder that you’re too busy to take his call today.