From philosophers to psychologists and kings to commoners, all individuals in the history of humankind have sought happiness and meaning in an often hostile and indifferent universe. From complex theories using an afterlife to lend meaning and happiness to life to those arguing in favor of complete hedonism as the only means of happiness for those locked inside the mortal coil, a majority of theories have argued in favor of a “forgetting” of the self to find true meaning and happiness for the self. To Viktor Frankl, we cannot pursue happiness because it is not a tangible essence in and of itself. Instead, it is a product, a result, a manifestation of another phenomenon, meaning “Human happiness or fulfillment cannot be successfully pursued; it can only ‘ensue’—which is to say that it can only come to us as a by-product of meaning” (Faith 3).
While the above may cause alarm throughout the pop-psyche, self-help realm of psychologists, philosophers, and authors, instant happiness is an absurd concept from Frankl’s perspective. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl attempts to explain the connection between happiness and meaning. One of the biggest obstacles to this is Frankl’s belief that meaning is a mystery. While each of us has a purpose or goal in life which gives it a particular and unique meaning to us as individuals, unless this purpose or goal must be present in our minds. Unless it is, it gives no conscious meaning to our lives in there here-and-now. Yet, faith enters into the equation to Frankl because this purpose that is a mystery cannot be resolved by trying to find it, it can only be discovered through living. Faith comes into the equation because we must believe in that purpose as we move through life in order to ever achieve the level of being it that produces as one of its by-products happiness or what is more commonly referred to among the modern intellig
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