Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist, neurologist, and Holocaust survivor who came to a hard-earned conclusion under the most extreme conditions imaginable: Meaning is not a luxury—it is a psychological necessity. While imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Frankl watched people lose everything that typically anchors identity and hope—status, safety, family, control. What he observed was striking. Survival did not hinge on optimism, toughness, or even physical strength. It hinged on whether someone had something to live for. Not happiness. Not success. Meaning.

From these observations, Frankl developed logotherapy, a therapeutic framework rooted in the idea that the primary human drive is not pleasure (as Freud proposed) or power (as Adler suggested), but purpose. Humans can endure extraordinary hardship, Frankl believed, as long as life still feels meaningful.

Pathways to Meaning

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl outlines three primary pathways through which meaning can be found. The first is creating—bringing something into existence that did not exist before, whether through work, expression, or contribution. The second is loving—experiencing deep connection with another person, with nature, or with beauty. The third pathway is the most challenging—the attitude we take toward suffering that cannot be avoided.

Frankl is careful here. This is not an argument for glorifying pain or framing trauma as inherently redemptive. Suffering, he insists, is not meaningful by default. Pain does not automatically make us wiser, stronger, or better. What matters is what happens *after suffering becomes unavoidable—*when there is no cure, no exit, no work-around. In those moments, meaning does not come from the suffering itself, but from the stance we take toward it. Even when everything else is taken, Frankl argues, we retain one last freedom, which is the ability to decide who we will be in the face of what is happening.

I returned to Frankl’s work because the world feels particularly dark right now. Many of the conversations I’m having, both personally and professionally, are infused with hopelessness and helplessness. A recurring question comes up: What can we do? Frankl’s work doesn’t offer reassurance or tidy optimism. Instead, it meets us in the dark and asks us to begin there. Meaning, he reminds us, is not something we wait for better times to deliver. It is something we build—often stubbornly—precisely when things are falling apart.

Frankl’s framework suggests that, even in the midst of systemic crisis and uncertainty, there are still three actions available to us: We can create, we can love, and we can bear suffering well. None of these are sufficient to fix massive structural or political failures. Frankl would not suggest that they are. This is not a quick fix; it is a long, grinding marathon. Sometimes, bearing suffering well is not about solving the problem, but about surviving it without losing ourselves.

So, what does bearing suffering well actually mean?

Bearing Suffering Well

Frankl is explicit that this concept applies only to inescapable suffering. If pain can be reduced, treated, or avoided, he believes it should be. Endurance is not a virtue when harm is preventable. This distinction feels especially important today, in a culture that often glorifies resilience while quietly tolerating systems that exhaust, traumatize, and dehumanize people. Frankl would not call that meaning; he would call it a moral failure. Meaning is not a justification for harm. It is what allows a person to survive harm without becoming it.

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Bearing suffering well, then, means refusing to let pain have the final word on who you are. It means recognizing that even when circumstances strip away agency, dignity, and choice, there remains a narrow but crucial freedom: the freedom to choose one’s inner posture. This is rarely a dramatic or triumphant decision. More often, it is quiet, gritty, and unseen. It may look like continuing to care about another person. It may look like holding fast to a value—kindness, honesty, responsibility—when no one is watching and no reward is coming. Bearing suffering well is the internal act of saying, This will hurt, but it will not hollow me out.

For our current moment—politically, socially, relationally—Frankl’s ideas land differently than the way they’re often distilled into inspirational quotes. Bearing suffering well does not mean staying calm while injustice persists. It does not mean spiritualizing pain or asking individuals to metabolize what should never have been placed on them in the first place. Instead, it asks a deeper set of questions: Who am I choosing to be while I live through this? What values do I refuse to abandon, even as fear, grief, and uncertainty press in?

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Frankl believed that suffering becomes unbearable not simply because it is painful, but because it feels meaningless. In times like these, bearing suffering well may look less like heroic resilience and more like stubborn moral clarity. Staying human. Staying connected. Refusing cynicism as the default setting. Choosing love, responsibility, or truth in small, unglamorous ways, not because it fixes everything, but because it keeps us from disappearing inside what hurts.

References

Frankl, V. E. (1992). Man’s search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy (4th ed.) (I. Lasch, Trans.). Beacon Press.