The Sting

Imagine you're walking through the countryside, enjoying a lovely afternoon, when suddenly you brush against some stinging nettles. The sharp, burning sensation hits immediately. Now you've got two choices. You can scratch frantically at the irritated skin, making it worse, getting yourself more wound up, maybe even drawing blood. Or you can acknowledge the sting, let it be what it is, and get on with your walk knowing it'll fade in time.

This might seem like a trivial example, but Viktor Frankl would tell you it contains one of the most profound truths about human existence. The sting isn't optional - life will brush you against the nettles whether you like it or not. But what you do next? That's entirely up to you.

Frankl knew something about stings that don't fade quickly. Between 1942 and 1945, he survived four Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. He watched his parents, brother, and pregnant wife die in the Holocaust. He lost everything - his family, his life's work, his possessions, his freedom. If anyone had reason to scratch at life's wounds until they bled, it was him.

But in the midst of unimaginable suffering, Frankl made an observation that would reshape how we think about human resilience. Even in the camps, even when stripped of literally everything external, people still had one thing that couldn't be taken away: the ability to choose their response to what was happening to them. Some prisoners became bitter and cruel. Others found ways to maintain dignity, compassion, even moments of transcendence. The circumstances were identical. The difference was in how they chose to meet those circumstances.

This insight became the foundation of what Frankl called logotherapy - literally "meaning therapy." Unlike Freud, who thought we were primarily driven by the desire for pleasure, or Adler, who emphasised the will to power, Frankl argued that our deepest motivation is the search for meaning. We can endure almost anything if we can find some purpose in it. But take away meaning, and even minor discomforts become unbearable.

Think about how you experience physical pain when you understand its source versus when it's mysterious. Feeling shortness of breath and a burning chest when you’re exercising is a different experience from an unexplained pain in your chest and breathing heavily. The sensation might be similar, but our relationship to it changes completely based on the story we tell ourselves about what it means. Frankl was pointing to something similar but much more fundamental: our entire experience of existence is shaped by the meaning we find or create in it.

Frankl wasn't suggesting we can eliminate suffering by singing morning manifestation mantras to ourselves each morning. He'd been through too much to peddle that kind of optimism. Instead, he was making a more radical claim: that meaning can be found even in unavoidable suffering, and that this meaning-making is perhaps our most distinctly human capacity.

He identified three main sources of meaning. First, we can find purpose through creative work or accomplishments - building something, solving problems, contributing to the world. Second, we can find meaning through love and relationships - truly connecting with other people or even with nature and beauty. But the third source was his most controversial insight: we can find meaning through the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

This third path isn't about glorifying pain or seeking it out. It's about recognising that suffering is unavoidable and that when we've been stung by life's nettles and there's no going back, we still retain the freedom to choose what that suffering means to us and how we'll carry ourselves through it.

In Part II of his book, Mans Search For Meaning, Frankl told the story of counselling an elderly doctor whose wife had died two years earlier. The man was consumed by grief, couldn't see any point in continuing. Rather than trying to talk him out of his pain, Frankl asked him to consider what would have happened if he had died first instead. The doctor immediately replied that it would have been terrible for his wife - she would have suffered enormously. "You see," Frankl said, "such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering - to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her." The man's grief didn't disappear, but its meaning transformed. His suffering became an act of love, a final gift to his wife.

This isn't about finding neat explanations for terrible things or pretending everything happens for a reason. Frankl was clear that some suffering is meaningless in itself - the Holocaust certainly was. But he discovered that even meaningless suffering can be given meaning through how we choose to bear it, what we learn from it, how we let it change us.

The trap many of us fall into is what Frankl called the "existential vacuum" - a kind of inner emptiness that comes from having our basic needs met but lacking any sense of purpose. We might have the amplifier that goes to 11, the promotion, the house, the relationship status we thought we wanted, but still feel hollow inside. Modern life, with all its comforts and conveniences, can paradoxically make this vacuum more obvious. When survival isn't the daily challenge, the question "what's the point?" becomes harder to avoid.

Consumer culture often tries to fill this vacuum by selling us ready-made meanings: you are what you buy, you are your career achievements, you are your social media presence. But these borrowed meanings rarely satisfy for long, because they're not emerging from our actual lived experience - they're imposed from outside. This also isn’t from introducing ‘chosen discomfort’ that many podcasters or influencers talk about like cold showers, lifting weights or becoming a success entrepreneur.

Frankl's insight was that authentic meaning can't be given to us by others or purchased in shops. It has to be discovered or created through our actual engagement with life's challenges and opportunities. The meaning is already there, waiting to be uncovered through how we choose to respond to whatever we're facing.

This doesn't mean we should stop trying to reduce unnecessary suffering or working toward a better world. Frankl spent his life after the camps doing exactly that - healing people, writing books, giving lectures. But he did it from a place of understanding that external circumstances, no matter how good or bad, are never the final word on whether life has meaning.

The person scratching at their nettle sting is trying to control something that's already happened. The person who acknowledges the sting and keeps walking has understood something crucial: the walk itself matters more than the temporary discomfort. The meaning isn't in avoiding all stings - that's impossible. The meaning is in how we conduct ourselves on the path we're already on.

You might not be able to control whether you get the promotion, whether your relationship works out, whether your health holds up, whether the world makes sense. But you can always choose what attitude you bring to whatever is actually happening.