The Most Important Thing A Working Person Must Determine
After All, What’s the Point?
“Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how’.” - Viktor Frankl
“Daddy, why can’t we go play,” my son was perturbed.
“Sorry, Son,” I said to the click of his seatbelt, “I have to go to work, and you have to go to school.”
“But why?” His question hung in the air. The thought that struck me crumpled my heart in my chest and made it sink against my diaphragm. My son was going to school, so he could grow up and later go to work, so …
A very dismal future loomed on our horizon…
Paying bills, and helping the children navigate school and grow up in the world, and going to work, and fighting traffic, and handling family matters and business dealings, all while trying to keep an eye on retirement, and college tuition and endless other considerations…put you into a routine that forces you to wonder, Should you really continue to do “this”? Whatever “this” is for you.
Viktor Frankl advises in his quote above that when you have a reason to go on, that “why” provides the fuel you need to keep burning the proverbial candle at both ends.
Viktor Frankl should know. He survived Hitler’s concentration camps. Four of them, he reports. For years, he held out hope of seeing his wife again. But she had been snatched away from him, and he never saw her again.
He survived years of torture and endured the horror of seeing hundreds of people die needlessly around him.
And Frankl thrived through those terrible years because he made a decision to take control of his mind. One of his most famous and most popular quotes is, “Ultimate freedom is man’s right to choose his attitude”.
Dr. Frankl’s book “Man’s Search For Meaning” exploded onto the world stage with his conclusion that even with its suffering, or maybe especially because of its suffering, Life has a meaning that can be found.
The big idea here is when one looks beyond the circumstances and difficulties of life and finds “Meaning”, you develop the energy to keep on going, keep on giving, keep on serving…your fellow human being. Frankl also said, “In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”
Here’s how this applies to us, working people.
- If your current sacrifice is a job you don’t really love, but you do it so your family can be provided for, remind yourself of the great cause for which you labor.
- Since you have goals and dreams of improving the quality of life for yourself and your loved ones, take joy and be strengthened in your resolve to achieve great things for your precious loved ones.
What should you do about this?
- Keep asking yourself “Why is that…” until you arrive at the core reason for everything you do.
- Some experts say you need to go down 7 levels deep. Why do you want to make more money? So my family can have things I didn’t have. Why do you want your family to have those things?… Why is that important to you?… Why do you feel that way?… Keep peeling back that onion.
- Don’t be ashamed or afraid of facing your feelings. The truth will set you free.
- That core knowledge of your real “reason for being” will give you both the freedom and the energy to overcome every obstacle that stands in the way of your sacred reason for being and working so hard.
Hey, by the way, if you are committed to making this work for you, let me invite you to hire a life coach to explore this further.
The Big WHY
Why you do what you do is not just an important consideration. It is the most crucial issue of one’s life. Your decision to swing your legs out of a warm bed at the crack of dawn, fight traffic, work through conflicts with a boss or co-workers, and get back home to take care of growing, demanding children’s band, soccer practice, and other extra-curricular activities; so you all can do it all over again tomorrow — needs a reason.
You got to have a “Why”. Else you would just quit and not bother.
But because that reason is somehow clear to you, if only intermittently, you keep trudging onward, upwards. Odds be damned.
