What’s more desirable in life?

Viktor Frankl’s book Mans’ Search for Meaning relays his wisdom as a trained psychiatrist and a Nazi concentration camp survivor. He was so much more than either of these – he was a deeply empathic and caring man whose desire to relay his experiences into a psychiatric therapeutic practice got him through the darkest years of his life. I would therefore call this his “soul mission.” As he recovered his life after liberation from the death camps, he developed a psychiatric practice with a unique warmth and wisdom that both patients, medical students and colleagues treasured.

I was reminded of this by this post on The Marginalian entitled “The Middle Passage: A Jungian Field Guide to Finding Meaning and Transformation in Midlife.”

“In The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife (public library), Jungian analyst James Hollis offers a torch for turning the perilous darkness of the middle into a pyre of profound transformation — an opportunity, both beautiful and terrifying, to reimagine the patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior acquired in the course of adapting to life’s traumas and demands, and finally inhabit the authentic self beneath the costume of this provisional personality.”

As I progress in my “soul growth,” I am able to more deeply appreciate that the path to happiness and joy in life is found in finding meaning in life.