What Are We Without Our Hopes?

To my regulars and wonderful new souls, welcome to another thought-provoking edition of Think About It.

It’s already August, and for me, it’s always hard to make sense of this month. Do you like living on borders? Because August surely feels like that. I mean, are we supposed to say goodbye to summer or prepare for autumn’s arrival? Or you can even think of it like something that’s transitioning - it’s neither this, nor that. So, what is it then?

I won’t drag this further and leave it to you to ponder over it.
Let’s get to what really brings you here.

This week, we will be discussing a quote from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.

Again, this book isn’t an easy read; it’s meant to be read slowly because it’s filled with so many insights and Frankl’s personal experiences. 

What really struck me—and has stayed with me since then—is a simple sentence:

There isn’t any fancy language or metaphor used here. It is just as simple as it can get. It’s one of those lines that’s easy to read past. But something makes you stop and immediately think about it. That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

Here, Frankl is identifying something that separates us from virtually every other living species.

Most species are concerned with the present only. That is to say, they only care and think of their immediate environment. Humans, however, are gifted (or burdened) with self-awareness and the capacity to imagine.

Let’s take an example of any animal. It lives almost entirely in the present moment. When it's hungry, it seeks food; when it's tired, it sleeps. But humans? We're time-travelers of consciousness.

We can't just be. We need to be becoming. We need a sense of trajectory, of movement toward something.

It becomes clearer when you read the full passage. Frankl writes:

That Latin phrase "Sub specie aeternitatis" is crucial. It means “under the aspect of eternity”.

Frankl is suggesting that humans need to see their current suffering as part of a larger narrative that extends beyond the present moment rather than as an endpoint. It's like being able to zoom out from a single dark brushstroke to see the entire painting it contributes to.

To be human, Frankl seems to say, is to look forward, even if you have to force yourself to do it.

It’s this forward-leaning orientation that allows our pain to become endurable, our sorrow to become meaningful, and our emptiness to be filled by the mere shape of possibility.

But then the question is: how to do that?

Well, Frankl actually answers that as well. He writes his personal account of his daily life in the concentration camp:

This passage reveals Frankl's initial state of mind, which is consumed by the trivialities of survival.

His thoughts are a chaotic loop of pain and anxiety, focused on immediate problems like food, cigarettes, and shoelaces. This mindset is a form of spiritual and mental confinement.

It’s a psychopathological influence of the camp, where the only reality is the present moment's misery.

But then he forces himself to turn his mind to an imagined future:

What Frankl did cannot be considered wishful thinking. He projects himself into the future. But it’s not just any future. It is the future where his pain has already become a story, an object of analysis, something with meaning.

The pain doesn't disappear, but it gains purpose; it becomes material for future understanding and teaching.

Why this works is because of the narrative self.

Humans are essentially storytelling creatures. We don't just want to experience events; we need them to mean something within the larger story we're telling about ourselves. 

So, when Frankl imagines himself as a future lecturer, we can’t say he’s escaping reality; instead, he's recontextualizing it within a narrative where his suffering serves a purpose.

Albert Camus presents a very similar sentiment toward the end of his novel The Plague:

In essence, what Frankl and Camus wrote touches on a fundamental philosophical distinction. While other animals primarily exist in a state of being (responding to immediate needs and stimuli), humans seem to require a state of becoming. We need to feel we're moving toward something, growing into something, contributing to something beyond our immediate circumstances.

Without this future orientation, we feel aimless, and that becomes a source of misery and suffering. We literally cannot function as human beings. Frankl discovered that even in conditions designed to strip away all humanity, this forward-looking capacity always remains our last, unconquerable freedom.

Before I wrap up, here’s something for you to think about: 

Do you think this "peculiarity" is ultimately liberating or imprisoning? Does our inability to simply be in the present moment—our constant need for future meaning—represent human transcendence or a kind of existential burden that other creatures are free from?

That’s all for this week.

See you again next week.

Until then
Stay curious

Zaid

(P.S: Think About It is really close to hitting 50 subscribers. A small milestone, but that means a lot to me. Thanks to you all. And I request you to share it with at least one person who you think will like it 😀)