Meaning of Life | The Men's Work Directory

Why the question matters more than the answer

Viktor Frankl, writing from Auschwitz, made the argument that has become the foundation of existential psychology: human beings are oriented toward meaning, and the loss of meaning is a specific form of suffering with specific consequences. The man who cannot find meaning in his life does not merely feel unhappy — he experiences what Frankl called the existential vacuum: a profound inner emptiness that no external addition can fill.

The question of life's meaning is not a question that gets answered once. It is a question that a man's life is organized around, whether he is conscious of it or not. The man who has never examined the question is not living without an answer — he is living with an unexamined one, usually inherited from his culture or his family. The work of asking the question consciously is the work of taking authorship of the organizing principle of one's life.

What the depth psychology tradition says

James Hollis's answer to the question of life's meaning is not a formula. It is a process: the meaning of a man's life is not given to him in advance. It is something he discovers through living it honestly — through following what genuinely calls him, through enduring what cannot be avoided, through the willingness to be changed by experience rather than defended against it.

Hollis's key distinction: the question 'what is the meaning of life' often receives generic answers — love, service, connection. These are true, but they are not the man's answer. His answer is particular to him, to his specific nature and circumstances and history. Finding it requires him to live his own life rather than an approved version of someone else's.

Bill Plotkin adds the dimension of soul: the meaning of a man's life is connected to what he is specifically here to contribute — his 'ecological niche' in the human community, the particular form of gift or service that only he can provide. This is not a metaphor. It is Plotkin's clinical observation, drawn from decades of wilderness-based soul work, that each person has a specific offering, and that the felt sense of meaning is most reliable when the man is moving toward that offering rather than away from it.

Living with the question

The men's work tradition does not offer a definitive answer to the meaning of life. It offers something more useful: a serious engagement with the question and the practices that support it.

The rites of passage tradition — at Animas Valley Institute, at Illuman, in the initiatory work of Michael Meade — creates containers in which men can hold the question in ways that daily life does not permit. The vision quest removes the usual distractions. The men's circle provides witnesses. The ritual creates a frame in which the question can land with its proper weight.

Frankl's insight, drawn from the most extreme possible circumstances, is relevant here: meaning is not found through direct pursuit. It is a by-product of living in alignment with one's deepest values and commitments. The man who pursues meaning directly often misses it; the man who pursues what genuinely matters to him often finds that meaning follows.

Common Questions

Is there a universal answer to the meaning of life?

Frankl's answer: no single universal answer, but a universal human capacity for meaning that each person must fill with their own particular content. The structure is universal; the content is individual. 'What is the meaning of life' is less useful than 'what is meaningful in my specific life' — a question that every man can begin to answer, if he is willing to be honest about it.

I've stopped believing in God. Does the meaning question still have an answer?

Yes. Frankl was not a religious thinker in the traditional sense — his logotherapy is secular in its foundation. Hollis, Plotkin, and Keen all work within frameworks that do not require supernatural belief. The meaning question is a human question, not a theological one, and it has human answers — grounded in relationship, contribution, experience, and the willingness to live authentically rather than safely.