Victor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning after surviving a concentration camp during World War II. He observed the outer extreme of what happens to people who no longer have a WHY to live for. They’d wither and die in the camp. Even the most dire rations and punishing labor could be survived by many, as long as they had a purpose still beckoning, but once that light went out, so did they.

Modern life is rarely that dramatic for most people likely to read this, but Frankl’s fundamental truth is still relevant. A truth he spent the rest of his life trying to teach in the form of logotherapy as a psychotherapist.