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The Bass and the Meaning of Life |
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A while ago I wrote a column called “The psychology of bass playing” (Issue 6 of The Bottom Line), in which I took a satirical look at psychology by letting a few dominant schools of thought in this discipline answer the question: “Why does the individual play the bass?” (Thank you so much for all the positive feedback I have received on that!). In addition to my chosen profession, I mentioned a movement that I hold dearly, namely Logotherapy. My idea for this column is to look at logotherapy in brief, and then show where the bass fits into this paradigm. For literally millennia now, philosophers have been struggling with the question: what is the meaning of life? For me, Viktor Frankl – the Father of Logotherapy – has answered that question. But a brief note on Frankl first. Frankl was a neurologist and psychiatrist in Vienna. However, he was also a Jew, as was captured by the Nazis in 1942 and sent to Auschwitz. Here he endured some of the horrors we have all read about until he was liberated in 1945, only to find out his parents, brother, and wife died in these camps. And despite all of this, Frankl walked out of the camps and said: “Life has meaning under any circumstances”. How is such meaning found? Frankl provided three basic assumptions: 1) Freedom of will. People are always free to choose - our circumstances just provide the context in which we make decisions. But: with freedom comes responsibility: we alone are responsible for the outcomes of our decisions. 2) Will to meaning. People are motivated to find meaning – everyone wants a purpose in his or her life. The ‘will to meaning’, then, is fuelled by the tension that results from the gap between what one is and what one wants to be. 3) Meaning of life. Meaning is found in one of three ways: i) By what you give to life, i.e. your creative works ii) By what you take from life, i.e. experiences iii) By the stand you take towards an unchangeable fate, e.g. a terminal disease However, meaning is also threatened, in particular by three things: i) Suffering (physical/emotional) ii) Guilt (due to fallibility) iii) The transitoriness of our existence, i.e. the fact that we will all inevitably die And this is where the crunch lies: How will I face up to these things? Will I ask why me, blame, fold, fade into a state of apathy, maybe kill myself? Or will I stand strong and try and find the purpose of it all, what good can come from it? I don’t think I am over-generalising when I say we all have been there and we all know what it feels like to be kicked down. But we all also know what it is like to get up. But: What made you get up? Or, if you were really as low as you could go, what prevented you from ending it all? In your answer to this question is where you will find the answer to “what meaning is there in my life?” In this regard, then, Frankl distinguished between three ‘kinds’ of meaning: i) Ultimate meaning – believing that you are part of a bigger ordered universe, as is illustrated by faith ii) Specific meaning – the meaning the unique individual finds in specific situations iii) Values – where different individuals find similar meaning Thus, the answer to the question: “What is the meaning of life?” is rather simple: The meaning of life is what you choose to make it. We ultimately choose if we believe in God or not. We choose how we face situations. And we choose what we take from it. Obviously this was very brief, and hopefully not too incoherent, so if you are interested in knowing more, I suggest that you get hold of Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, an excellent book consisting of firstly, an account of his experiences in the death camps, and secondly, an overview of logotherapy. This book can be found in any Exclusive Books (hey, can we charge them for this free ad?) or something similar. Alternatively, contact me. Now, where does the bass fit in? · We all chose to play the bass (albeit for many different reasons), which means there is some inherent meaning already. Why the bass? Why not drums? Guitar? Piano? Why music? Why not something like sport? · We are all motivated to be as good as we can be. For what reason? · What do we give to life with the bass? Music, enjoyment, knowledge (teaching), inspiration to others… · What do we get from life via the bass? Music, enjoyment, stress release, respect from others, fullfilment, a sense of belonging… · And finally, how do we face the situations we cannot change? To use a famous example, what if after the accident in which he lost his fingertips, Tony Iommi decided to hang up his guitar? Black Sabbath would never have existed, and neither would metal as we know it today. Or to bring it closer to home, if you lost the use of your arm tomorrow, would you pack away your bass, or would you try and do something with the knowledge you have of the instrument? “Life does not owe us pleasures; it offers us meanings” When asked to describe the strongest human emotion possible – what would you say? Love? Hate? Happiness? Fear? Frankl would say hope. And finally, to steal a line from Iced Earth’s Melancholy, which to me sums up everything Frankl said: The human spirit cannot die. |
