When I was at business school I learned from one of the many personality tests they had me take that the only activity I really enjoyed was something they called "talking about the meaning of life, etc." My 15th reunion is coming up in just a couple of months and I realize now that I learned something very valuable and never acted on it. I have not spent nearly enough time over the past 15 years talking about the meaning of life. I got thrown by the "etc." Sort of a dismissive, gratuitous etc.
Fuck the etcetera!
I am going to talk about the meaning of life.
Victor Frankl said that "everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Given that my favorite activity is talking about the meaning of life, given that I called this blog Logotherapy, the school of psychotherapy that Frankl founded, and given that Frankl is my hero, it pains me to say this. But I am not sure he is right about that.
If he's right, why did I yell at my two year old son, "Stop throwing the fucking blueberries on the floor!" I don't know if my kids are the meaning to my life--but certainly they are chief among the delights of my life. And I have all kinds of freedom. I could keep working. I could stop working. I could have had a nanny there, but I chose to have some alone time with my twins that particular morning. I would never choose to lose my temper over the fact that my two year olds behave like two year olds.
What is the meaning of the toddler rage? The rage that the babies clearly feel 100x a day and that once every two or three weeks infects me and even once every two or three months gets to their father, who is really the soul of patience?
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