"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
-Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
-Nietzsche
What is meaning and purpose? How does meaning and purpose relate to health and healing through cancer?
Meaning and purpose relate to the reasons for your unique lifetime. Your passions are fueled by your meaning and purpose. Your meaning and purpose inspire your passion. Tune into what you are passionate about. That helps to define your meaning and purpose if you aren't clear about those areas.
Pursuing your unique meaning and purpose provides a sense of place, connection, belonging, and contribution. Awareness of and action toward your meaning and purpose helps support your optimal vitality. The expression of your meaning and purpose invigorates the innate capacity to heal. Meaning and purpose may also be associated with why you want to heal, what you can do to help yourself heal, and not being attached to specific outcomes.
Joy and the Emotional Spectrum discusses the work of Lawrence LeShan, PhD and his writing about how psychological and lifestyle changes toward a zest for life can mobilize the immune system. As LeShan explains in Cancer As A Turning Point, it is "the kind of meaning that makes us glad to get out of bed in the morning and glad to go to bed at night—the kind of life that makes us look forward zestfully to each day and to the future." This zest for life is a part of meaning and purpose.
What does cancer teach about meaning and purpose? People sometimes believe that there is some kind of inherent meaning in cancer, but there is none. The ways in which each person chooses to grow through the cancer experience is what makes the meaning. Cancer is a catalyst that can be used as an experience to investigate and manifest meaning and purpose. Although not a teacher, cancer does present teachable moments for learning and transformation. You are your own teacher to explore the scope of the meaning and purpose in your life.
How is meaning and purpose discovered?
Meaning and purpose is discovered in three major ways, according to Viktor Frankl, MD, psychiatrist, author, professor, and Holocaust survivor. In Man's Search for Meaning, Dr. Frankl describes the meaning of life, meaning of love, and meaning of suffering.
- Your unique mission in life that only you can carry out involving work or a deed
- Your expression and experience of love
- Your attitude toward suffering
Meaning of Life
What is your unique mission in life that only you can carry out involving work or a deed? What is the meaning in your life at this specific point? Is it fun for you and creative? Is it motivated by love? What are your dreams and how can you pursue them?
"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment... One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.
As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, 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."
Meaning of Love
What is your expression and experience of love, and how can you find more meaning and purpose in it?
"The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."
"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. 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."
"Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance."
Meaning of Suffering
What is your attitude toward suffering, and how can you find more meaning and purpose in it?
"We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement."
What are some other perspectives about meaning, purpose, and related supportive tips for cancer patients?
The Journey
By Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.
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