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Living For Others: The Fulcrum of The Fundamental Questions
Living For Others: The Fulcrum of The Fundamental Questions
Living For Others: The Fulcrum of The Fundamental Questions
Exordium:
The journey for the choice of the topic of today’s paper has been long, mind-boggling,
tedious, onerous and demanding. This is largely because I was seeking for a topic that will be, at
least, close to common for all. Ours (especially for seminarians) is a path that is marked by
uncertainties of varied hue, by breathtaking surprises enmeshed with complexities. Ours is a journey
embarked in the Spirit, a journey that can be captured well in Victor Frankl’s words: ‘The best of us
did not return.’ Ours is a voyage in which most of us do continually entertain the thought that we
should have joined the other ship sailing in the opposite direction. Furthermore, sometimes
passengers of the one ship understand themselves to be more fortunate than the passengers of the
other ship; sometimes, also, the latter see the former as lacking the requisite courage to make a bold
step, to venture out. Both, most of the time, misconceive the ordeal involve in the different ships.
The foregoings and more moved this writer to conclude that what matters most is not the particular
ship in which the passenger sails but the state of the passenger, i.e. his self-fulfilment or regret.
Therefore, self-fulfilment is understood as the hallmark of human life on earth. Anthropologically,
moreover, human life is beset by inevitable and inescapable fundamental questions. The direction
one follows in pursuit of these fundamental questions determines one’s self-fulfilment or regret in
life. Here, living for others is proposed as the answer, crux, and fulcrum of the fundamental
questions.
Fundamental Questions:
Human life is a mystery that has surpassed its various reductions by biologists, evolutionists,
psychologists and philosophers. In a word, the life of man is a spectacle, with numerous horizons. It
is marked by varied hues of emotions, by successes and failures, by hopes and disappointments, etc.
Of all that could be said of life, a fact is evident: Life is a continuum that starts from conception till
death. Thus, man is left with one option of charting this inevitable continuum responsibly and
actively. When man becomes reluctant to do this, certain events definitely force him to do so. Such
events, for example, are the death of parents, siblings, or any of the significant other, unexpected
abysmal failure or misfortune, protracted illness, incurable/inoperable diseases, etc. These traumatic
events dispose man to raise, albeit in a rhetorical way, certain questions which are fundamental to
his continuing existence: Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? Why is there
evil? What is there after this life? Even before the advent of culture, history bears witness that man
has ever reflected on these questions and has attempted answering them through various means. The
poetry of Homer and the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles are historical instances of man’s
attempts to answering these fundamental questions. The renowned Consolations of Philosophy of
Boethius also falls within this circumference. In fact, all religions on earth are oriented towards
these questions. However, a diagnostic analysis of these questions immediately reveals that they are
all geared towards a terminus ad quem: the search for ultimate meaning in human existence.
Conclusion:
So far on our journey, we have tried to grasp the answer to the fundament of the reoccurring
fundamental questions which arise continually in men’s hearts. We finally have arrived at “Living
for Others” as our panacea. With it, we can be sure of conquering and dispelling the overhanging
meaninglessness of our life. With it, even death has no more power over us; for we live on, even
years after our death, when we live for and in others.
1
V. E. Frankl, “Psychiatry and Man’s Quest for Meaning,” Psychotherapy and Existentialism: Selected Papers on Logotherapy.
(Penguin Books Ltd: Harmondsworth, 1967), 73.
2
Frankl,