Aging — finding purpose and meaning to life
“Most of us go to our graves with our music still inside of us, unplayed.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes
In his 1946 book Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl examined the experiences of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, their responses to pain and torture, and how identifying a purpose, reason to live, or something to be positive about became a psychotherapeutic method of endurance for survival when faced with hallowing experiences. Since I read that book, the philosophy of purpose, reason, and meaning to life has brought me face-to-face with myself many times for reckoning, and was reinforced a few days ago I listened to a Podcast from City Arts & Lectures featuring Ocean Vuong on his journey as a writer, a migrant, Asian-American, and his book On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous. In the dialogue Ocean explored meaningful themes over an hour including conversations on time, memory, identity, belonging, war, violence, desperation, hope, love, loss, death, then language and words. Of many things, Ocean shared his struggles making it through college to become a doctor or lawyer as his family hoped. His family perceived him as a migrant from war-torn Vietnam ushered into the arms of the great United States with opportunities to pursue a well-paying career, lift himself out of poverty, and pull his family up the economic ladder by firstly earning a…
