9
PRINCIPLE 7. Extend Beyond Yourself
Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness,cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.1 (V. Frankl)
Every day Vita delivers our mail—cheerfully. It’s her trademark attitude. One day, in miserable weather, we heard her whistling as she went about making her deliveries. Instinctively we shouted out to her, “Thank you for doing such a great job!” She stopped in her tracks and said with surprise. “Thank you! Wow, I’m not accustomed to hearing that. I really appreciate it.” We wanted to know more. “How do you stay so positive and upbeat about delivering mail every day?” we asked her. “I don’t just deliver mail,” she said enthusiastically and with a great deal of pride. “I see myself helping to connect people to other people. I am helping to build the community. Besides, people depend on me and I don’t want to let them down.”
Vita’s attitude about her work reflected the words inscribed on the General Post Office building in New York City: “Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The Greek historian Herodotus wrote these words in the fifth century BC. Unfortunately, too often today, postal workers bear the brunt of many complaints about their lack of service ethic and the possibility of their coworkers “going postal.” Fair or unfair, the phrase “going postal” has become the symbol of all the negativity a job has to offer: boredom, repetitiveness, exposure to the elements, irritated customers, and a kind of automated behavior that ultimately inspires an explosion of pent-up rage—a killing spree, retaliation against all the suffered injustice of the job. Ultimately, the person doing the job must take responsibility for their choice of attitude and their reaction to the criticisms or complaints leveled at them. In Vita’s case, she takes this responsibility seriously. She believes that she is serving a higher purpose, one that extends beyond her own personal needs. In this way she brings meaning to her job, and her work in turn becomes meaningful.
Self-Transcendence
The capacity to extend beyond oneself, according to Frankl, is one of our unique traits as human beings. Indeed, self-transcendence, as it is referred to in Frankl’s Logotherapy, is the essence of our humanness. Being human basically means focusing on and relating to someone or something other than oneself. Recognizing the abstract nature of self-transcendence, Frankl used the human eye as an analogy:
In a way, your eyes are self-transcendent as well. Just notice that the capacity of the eye to perceive the surrounding world is ironically dependent on its incapacity to perceive itself, except in a mirror. At the moment my eye perceives something of itself, for instance, a halo with colors around a light, it perceives its own glaucoma. At the moment I see clouding I perceive my own cataract, something of my own eye. But the healthy eye, the normal eye, doesn’t see anything of itself. The seeing capacity is impaired to the very extent to which the eye perceives something of itself.2 (V. Frankl)
Like the healthy human eye, we also have the potential to experience self-transcendence. This unique aspect of our humanness, however, is a matter of choice. What we learn from Frankl’s life and work is that we all have the opportunity to realize this potentiality—we can choose to focus on ourselves and, in some way, be selfish, or we can extend beyond ourselves in service to others. The potential to do either is always within us, but Frankl believed that only in extending beyond ourselves will we experience ultimate meaning.
In the concentration camps, . . . in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentials within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions.3 (V. Frankl)
Another illustration of self-transcendence can be found in the humanistic concept advanced in South Africa called Ubuntu.4 The full expression in Zulu of this concept is ubuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, translated roughly into English as “a person is only a person through other persons.” Ubuntu is not about relationships per se; rather, it is about the way human beings establish their own humanness by recognizing and reaching out to the humanness of others. In effect, by extending beyond ourselves we fulfill or realize more of ourselves. This is because life is reflective. We are more of ourselves because we are connected to others. Living our lives in community gives us a deep sense of humanity, belonging, and meaning.
To gain an appreciation for the reflective basis for self-transcendence, let us share an insightful story called “The Echo”:
We parked our car snugly at the side of the winding road and began our hike down the steep hillside toward the base of the gorge. Learning not to rush our journey, we stopped to admire the breathtaking view. Before us lay the majestic peak of Crete’s highest mountain, Mount Psiloritis, also known as Mount Ida. This mountain holds a very special place in Greek mythology as the place where Zeus was born and raised. As we continued our descent, we remarked to each other how peaceful it was to be in nature. Continuing our conversation, we noticed a slight echo sounding in the valley. “I love you,” we each shouted. The mountain repeated back to us, “I love you.” We knew at that moment the mountain and Zeus were teaching us something special. Everything we think, say, and do in our lives will come back to us in some manner. Like our meaningful experience in the shadow of Mount Psiloritis, whatever we put out will be reflected back to us in some way—in our own lives, in our own well-being, and in our relationships with others.5
What goes around comes around. Our lives are a reflection of the thoughts, words, and deeds we share with others. Now stop and think for a moment. Are you paying attention and listening to your echo? From what life seems to be calling out to you, what are you calling out to life?
Former star tennis player Andrea Jaeger lives self-transcendence. During her years on the tennis circuit, Andrea spent her time off visiting sick children in hospitals around the world. When her career in tennis ended, she decided to dedicate her life to helping terminally ill children have an opportunity to experience and enhance life outside of their hospital rooms. After moving to Aspen, Colorado, Andrea founded the Kids’ Stuff Foundation and created the Silver Lining Ranch to host small groups of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. “I believe in the philosophy of one child at a time,” Jaeger says. “If you can make a child smile or laugh, well, your place in the world has been preserved. You carry a lot of what the kids bring, and when you see the strength, the character, the hope in their eyes and hearts, it gets you through the darkest hours you could ever have fund-raising.” Andrea’s giving, self-transcendent spirit shone through during an interview with NBC Dateline. When asked, “How do you want to be remembered?” Andrea said, “I don’t need to be remembered. I want the kids to be remembered.” In no small way, Andrea’s response shows us that the heart’s light within the human spirit is most brightly illuminated when we discover meaning beyond our own lives.
The Path of Forgiveness
Often those who have experienced deep suffering rise up to become role models for us, teaching us not to be bitter or stuck in our own suffering but instead to reach out and forgive others. Viktor Frankl, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Aung San Suu Kyi—all transformed their suffering into service. Meaning, amplified by extending beyond themselves, became their life’s work.
Perhaps the most challenging thing we can do to go beyond ourselves is to forgive. Viktor Frankl, as an important case in point, forgave his Nazi guards; he even felt compassion for them. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he wrote about the SS officer who was the head of the concentration camp from which Frankl was finally liberated. After his liberation, Frankl learned that this man “had secretly spent considerable sums of his own money at the drugstore in the nearby village, purchasing medications for the camp inmates.”6 Frankl, moreover, did not subscribe to the concept of collective guilt whereby all Germans, including those of future generations, were to be held responsible for the atrocities committed by their fellow countrymen during the Holocaust. Whenever possible, he fought against the idea of collective guilt, even though it was an unpopular stand immediately after the war.
Nelson Mandela also walked a path of forgiveness during and after his nearly thirty years of imprisonment. Although most of us haven’t experienced the same kind of formidable life challenges that Frankl or Mandela faced in their lives, we can learn from them. Indeed, if we pay attention, we will find that life calls out to us every day to go beyond our own interests. We know that, whatever happens to us, we always have the freedom to choose how we respond. We can focus on someone else’s guilt, but this only imprisons our souls. Like Frankl and Mandela, we can instead choose to move toward forgiveness.
Forgiveness means letting go of our suffering. It has much more to do with our own well-being than with that of the person(s) we forgive. When we hold on to our suffering—our resentment, hurt, anger—we are inside ourselves with self-pity. Our suffering becomes a veil through which we see ourselves and others, something we have to feed, keep alive, and justify. If we don’t, we believe we allow the other person to be “right” in their unjust treatment of us. But forgiveness does not mean forgetting, diminishing, or condoning the misdeed. It has much more to do with freeing ourselves from its hold. We do not have to agree with what happened to us, but we can accept the situation and ultimately let go. In time, we may even move beyond this to have compassion or empathy for the other person or people, having a deep understanding of their behavior and seeing life from their perspective. When we forgive, we liberate ourselves from captivity. As we extend beyond ourselves along the path of forgiveness, we find our own interests are served in ways that are inexplicably and profoundly meaningful.
Miracle on the Hudson
There are many instances where we can be challenged to extend beyond ourselves. On January 15, 2009, US Airways flight 1549 took off from New York City’s LaGuardia Airport headed toward Charlotte, North Carolina. Shortly after takeoff, Captain Chelsey Sullenberger (“Sully”) radioed air traffic control to report that the plane had been hit by a large flock of birds, resulting in the rare case of both engines being disabled. Although the air traffic controller suggested the plane return to LaGuardia or, alternatively, travel to another airport in New Jersey, Sully realized that both options were not possible and quickly communicated: “We’ll be in the Hudson!” Landing the large plane gently in the river was a miracle, but what followed next was a great illustration of Frankl’s Logotherapeutic principle of self-transcendence: extend beyond yourself.
As the aircraft began to sink into the Hudson River’s frigid gray current, witnesses described a scene of level-headed teamwork among passengers and crew to evacuate everyone, including an infant and an elderly woman in a wheelchair. As passengers scrambled for the exits, they did so in as calm a way as possible under the circumstances, so that everyone filed quickly and safely through the exit doors and out onto the wings and the emergency chutes. All of this was accomplished under extremely harsh conditions—most passengers were not properly dressed for being outdoors, and they fled without their life jackets. A few even fell into the 36-degree water, where hypothermia would have quickly taken their lives. Fellow passengers, who effectively were strangers, displayed unselfish acts of courage, risking their lives to fish their fallen comrades out of the water!
Sully and his copilot, Jeffrey Skiles, and their crew exhibited calm and professionalism throughout the ordeal. Sully personally walked up and down the listing, drifting craft twice to ensure that all passengers and crew had evacuated before being the last to leave the plane. Those aboard the responding Coast Guard vessels, tour boats, and commuter ferries worked rapidly to rescue the people from the jetliner, even giving them their gloves, jackets, and coats to prevent hypothermia. All 155 passengers and crewmembers survived. It truly was “the miracle on the Hudson.” What happened on the Hudson River that day illustrates that we can rise above our own individual situation and, against all odds, manifest the human spirit and find deep meaning by extending beyond ourselves.
Team Spirit
Not everyone gets a chance to feel the kind of human spirit manifested on the Hudson. Unfortunately, so many people today feel disconnected and alone, with no one to rely on in case of emergencies or even for their everyday needs. Instead of being meaningfully connected to others in our communities, some are forced to fend for themselves or rely on strangers and institutions for their survival. Some people suggest that this disconnect is a result of technology separating us from each other, but we believe there is a stronger underlying cause. The “me first” way of living, focusing on the individual and individual rights, is what is actually causing much of our loneliness. As a result, our communities are suffering. When we don’t emphasize what connects us, we are divided.
We need more “team spirit,” whether that team is a group of two or three people or a neighborhood or organization. The term “team spirit” refers to the feelings of camaraderie (and synergy) among the members of the group or team, which enables them to cooperate and work well together. Ideally, we want the results of the team effort to be larger or more significant than if individuals work alone. We all recognize team spirit when we feel it, but what exactly is it? A leading authority on team spirit offered the following observation:
When you ask people . . . what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It becomes quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit.7
Team spirit is bigger than we are—no matter how large our group is—yet it cannot exist without us. Team spirit grows out of doing and being together. When team spirit is alive, anything becomes possible. When we give and take, when we are there for one another, we help raise an individual’s spirit as well as the whole team’s spirit. When team spirit is high, we relax into enjoying the process of being and doing together. We get caught up in the energy of the team and even the fun we are having together. Creativity flows and productivity increases. Deeper meaning can be found.
Beyond Ourselves
Some individuals live beyond themselves and for others in their work lives and personal lives. Usually, they seem to be doing this because it’s in their nature or because they have been blessed with good mentors along their path—including parents, teachers, and bosses, who have guided them by example. Their giving natures may also have grown out of their personal experiences. Perhaps they suffered in their youth, so they want to help other children by becoming foster parents. Perhaps they have a lot of money and have a comfortable life but want to give back, so they joined the Peace Corps. Perhaps they rose to the top of their profession and are searching for deeper meaning, so they connected with a nonprofit organization that serves others. Every day we see people doing things for others—quietly, unexpectedly, and without compensation or the expectation of glory. These are the unsung heroes of our time. If we were to ask these people why they do what they do, they might not have ready answers. But we suspect that they would all agree that it feels good. Selflessness feels good. It satisfies a yearning to transcend ourselves, knowing that we are honoring a deeper meaning in life when we serve the needs of others.
The search for meaning in our lives takes us on paths large and small. When we go beyond ourselves—whether in service, forgiveness, unselfishness, thoughtfulness, generosity, and understanding toward others—we enter into the spiritual realm of meaning. By giving beyond ourselves, we make our own lives richer. This long-understood truth is at the heart of all meaningful spiritual traditions. It’s a mystery that can only be experienced. When we do experience this truth, we are in the heart of meaning.
When we work creatively and productively with others, our experience of meaning can be profound. When we work directly for the good of others, meaning deepens in ways that reward us beyond measure. Whenever we go beyond satisfying our own personal needs, we enter the realm of what Frankl called ultimate meaning. Other people call it connection to a higher self, to God, to our own spirit, to universal consciousness, to love, to the collective good. Frankl’s decision to call his unique approach to psychotherapy Logotherapy is significant in a spiritual sense. As we discussed in chapter 2, besides being roughly translated as “the meaning,” the root word logos, a common Greek word, has deep spiritual meaning and implications. No matter what it’s called, ultimate meaning is deep meaning, and when we find it, it transforms our lives.
When we focus solely on ourselves and our own needs, we are being prisoners of our thoughts and our actions. When we spend our lives consumed with our own struggles and our own perspectives, we limit our ability to connect meaningfully with others. Meaning, at its deepest level, is found in self-transcendence—going beyond our own needs and desires to truly care for others. In doing so, we help both ourselves and others. We find meaning in service to others while simultaneously helping ourselves to become more closely aligned with who we truly are.
Meaning Reflections
Recall a situation in your personal or work life in which you felt the need to self-transcend, or extend beyond yourself, to deal effectively with it. Perhaps you were faced with a pressing family issue or perplexing customer issue that required an extraordinary response. Maybe you were faced with a question of corporate social responsibility or parental guidance that required some soul-searching for an answer. How did you extend beyond yourself to deal with the situation? What did you do as a result of your shift in consciousness? As you think about the situation now, what did you learn about your capacity for self-transcendence?
• In what ways do you relate to something other than yourself in your personal life?
• Are you stuck in anger about a particular situation or person, or have you moved onto forgiveness or even compassion?
• In what ways do you relate to something other than yourself in your work?
Meaning Affirmation