There is much wisdom in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
Man's search for meaning (purpose) always is the primary motivation in his life. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone.
Man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. The Author logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
According to logotherapy, this meaning in life could be discovered in three different ways: 1. by creating a work or doing a deed; 2. by experiencing something or encountering someone; and 3. by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.
The first, the way of acievement or accomplishment, is quite obvious.
The second one is by experiencing something - such as goodness, truth, and beauty - by experiencing nature and culture or, by experiencing another human being in his very uniqueness - by loving her. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.
The third one is the unavoidability of suffering. In accepting this challenge to suffer bravely, life has a meaning up to the last moment.
The only really transitory aspects of life are the potentialities; but as soon as they are actualized, they are rendered realities at that very moment; they are saved and delivered into the past, wherein they are rescued and preserved from transitoriness. Logotherapy, keeping in mind the essential transitoriness of human existence, is not pessimistic but rather activistic. The person who attacks the problems of life actively is like a man who removes each successive leaf from his calendar and files it neatly and carefully away with its predecessors, after first having jotted down a few diary notes on the back. He can reflect with pride and joy on all the richness set down in these ntoes, on all the life he has already lived to the fullest.