The best books are those that tell you what you already know, but didn’t know that you knew.—Neel Burton, psychiatrist and philosopher, University of Oxford
There is more to being human than the absence of disorder.
If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent much of your life trying to make sense of things—happiness and suffering, love and loss, reason and emotion, the strange business of being human.
We live in an era of rapid change. Many of the structures that once gave us identity, meaning, and direction have weakened. More than ever, we must answer life’s deepest questions for ourselves. How should we live, love, work, suffer, and die?
My search for answers has taken me through philosophy, psychology, literature, history, and ancient wisdom—because the deepest truths often emerge where disciplines meet.
I hope you find something here that speaks to you.
If you’re new here, these are good places to begin.
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. —Nietzsche & Frankl
Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) was an Austrian psychiatrist and neurologist, the founder of logotherapy. His experiences in Nazi concentration camps profoundly shaped his outlook, which found its fullest expression in Man’s Search for Meaning, one of the most influential books of the twentieth century.
Viktor Emil Frankl was born in Vienna in 1905. As a schoolboy, he attended evening lectures in philosophy and psychology. While still in his teens, he sent one of his papers to Sigmund Freud, who arranged to have it published in an international psychoanalytic journal. Frankl later joined Alfred Adler’s circle, only to break away after concluding that both Freud and Adler had got it wrong.
Freud argued that we are driven primarily by the pursuit of pleasure. Adler emphasised power, mastery, and the overcoming of inferiority. Frankl proposed a third possibility: meaning.
From 1928 to 1930, Frankl organised counselling programmes for suicidal students, which supported his growing belief that people needed reasons to live as well as reasons not to die. After qualifying in medicine in 1930, he specialised in neurology and psychiatry, treating patients with depression and suicidal thoughts.
The Decision
In 1941, Frankl obtained a visa to emigrate to the United States. Then one evening, he returned home to find his father holding a fragment of marble salvaged from a synagogue that had been destroyed by the Nazis. The fragment bore part of the Fifth Commandment: Honour thy father and thy mother. Frankl tore up his American visa and chose to remain by his parents in Vienna.
The following year, Frankl and his family were deported. His parents, brother, and pregnant wife all perished. On arriving at Auschwitz, the guards confiscated the manuscript that he had been working on for years.
Stripped of his possessions, his profession, and even his name, he found himself wondering what remained of himself.
He later recalled:
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms—to choose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances—to choose one’s own way.
Frankl’s conclusion echoes that of the Stoics: while our circumstances may be taken from us, our response remains our own. Instead of sinking into despair, Frankl found purpose in imagining the future. He pictured himself lecturing to students about the psychology of the camps, transforming his suffering into knowledge that might help others or illuminate the human condition. He silently reconstructed the manuscript in his mind and, after the war, painstakingly rewrote it from memory.
He also wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, which he draftedin little more than a week. Intended as a brief account of his experiences, it went on to sell many millions of copies.
The ideas he had carried through the camps became the foundation of an entirely new approach to psychotherapy.
The Will to Meaning
Frankl’s message is ultimately one of hope. Even in the most absurd, painful, and dispiriting of circumstances, life can be given meaning—and so too can suffering. Life in the camps confirmed his conviction that our deepest motivation is neither pleasure, as Freud had believed, nor power, as Adler had believed, but meaning. Pleasure and success matter, but they cannot satisfy us for long unless they serve a larger purpose. As Frankl wrote, ‘Happiness cannot be pursued, but must ensue.’
These ideas became the foundation of logotherapy (from the Greek logos, meaning ‘word’, ‘reason’, or ‘principle’), which is often described as the ‘Third Viennese School of Psychotherapy’, following those of Freud and Adler. Part philosophy and part psychotherapy, logotherapy belongs to the existential tradition—but differs from it in holding that meaning is not simply created, but also discovered.
Logotherapy seeks not merely to relieve symptoms but to help people discover meaning in their lives.According to Frankl, meaning can be found in three principal ways: through creating or contributing something of value; through our relationships, especially love; and through the attitude we adopt towards suffering that cannot be avoided.
Depression and Meaning
Frankl coined the term ‘Sunday neurosis’ to refer to the dejection that many people feel at the end of the working week when they finally have time to realise how empty and meaningless their lives have become. This existential vacuum can lead to all manner of distractions and compensations: anxiety, avoidance, binge eating, drinking, overworking, and overspending. In the short term, these distractions carpet over the existential vacuum, but in the longer term, they prevent action from being taken and meaning from being found.
For Frankl, depression results when the gap between what a person is and what they ought to be, or once wished to be, becomes so large that it can no longer be carpeted over. The person’s goals seem far out of reach and they can no longer envisage a future. As in Psalm 41, abyssus abyssum invocat—’hell brings forth hell’, or, in an alternative translation, ‘the deep calls unto the deep.’
Thus, depression is our way of telling ourselves that something is seriously wrong and needs working through and changing.
Unless change can be made, there will continue to be a mismatch between our lived experience and our desired experience, between the meaninglessness of everyday life and the innate drive to find meaning, to self-actualise, to be all that we can be.
From an existential standpoint, the experience of depression obliges us to become aware of our mortality and freedom, and challenges us to exercise the latter within the framework of the former.
By meeting this ultimate challenge, we can break out of the cast that has been imposed upon us, discover who we truly are, and, in so doing, begin to give deep meaning to our life.
After the War
After the war, Frankl returned to Vienna, where he rebuilt both his life and his career. In 1947, he married Eleonore Schwindt, with whom he had a daughter, Gabriele. He became head of neurology at the Vienna Polyclinic Hospital and lectured at universities around the world. He refused to be defined by his wartime experiences. He remained an enthusiastic mountaineer throughout his life and, in his sixties, fulfilled a lifelong ambition by earning a pilot’s licence.
By the time of his death in 1997, Man’s Search for Meaning had sold many millions of copies in dozens of languages. It continues to inspire psychologists, philosophers, doctors, teachers, clergy, and countless ordinary readers searching for purpose amid suffering, loss, and uncertainty. He helped broaden psychology beyond pathology, arguing that resilience depends not merely on optimism or self-esteem, but on having a reason to get up in the morning.
His message has become more relevant than ever. Many people today enjoy unprecedented freedom and prosperity, yet struggle with loneliness, anxiety, and a pervasive sense of emptiness. Technology offers endless distraction, consumerism endless temptation, and social media endless comparison. Yet none can answer the question that mattered most to Frankl: What is my life for?
Some emotions are so ancient that we share them with lizards.
One day, while holidaying in Mauritius, I opened a kitchen drawer to find a large lizard staring back at me. Before I had time to think, I jumped back and slammed the drawer shut. Only afterwards did I notice that my heart was racing and my body primed for action. But as soon as reason reasserted itself, the fear evaporated, leaving me with nothing more than a mildly inconvenient lizard problem—which, if memory serves, I chose to ignore.
The lizard’s reaction, of course, was just as swift, if not swifter. It darted for cover before either of us had had time to think. In that split second, human and reptile behaved in remarkably similar ways.
This encounter raises an intriguing question. Are some emotions so ancient and basic that they are shared across much of the animal kingdom?
An Ancient Idea
The idea that some emotions are more fundamental than others is an old one. The Book of Rites, one of the Confucian classics, identifies seven basic ‘feelings of men’: joy, anger, sadness, fear, love, liking, and disliking.
In the twentieth century, psychologists sought a more scientific answer. Paul Ekman proposed six universal emotions—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise—while Robert Plutchik proposed eight, arranged in opposing pairs.
The theory was simple and elegant. These emotions evolved because they solved recurring problems faced by our remote ancestors. Fear helped us escape danger. Disgust kept us away from disease. Anger enabled us to defend ourselves and our resources. Being evolutionarily ancient, these basic emotions are thought to be ‘hard-wired’: fast, automatic, and largely unconscious.
It’s an appealing idea—and Plutchik’s Wheel does look striking. But is it true?
Plutchik’s Wheel
Is Fear the Most Basic Emotion?
The difficulty is that psychologists cannot even agree on the list. Some propose six basic emotions, others seven or eight, still others many more.
But there is one emotion on which almost everyone agrees: fear. Fear is found almost everywhere in the animal kingdom. A gazelle bolts before a lion. A cat startles at a loud noise. A lizard darts for cover. Before any of these creatures has had time to think, its body has already kicked in.
Fear, more than any other, may be the prototype of a basic emotion.
Beyond Fear
Other emotions are less straightforward. Take anger. We often become angry not simply because something unpleasant has happened, but because we believe we have been insulted, cheated, or treated unfairly. Those judgements involve much more than an unthinking reflex.
Someone pushes past you in a queue. If you assume they simply failed to notice you, you may feel only mild irritation. But if you conclude that they deliberately ignored you because they think they’re more important than you, you are much more likely to become angry. Same event. Different interpretation.
Even fear, perhaps the most basic of all emotions, can be triggered by beliefs and values that are themselves shaped by culture. Imagine waking up in a cold sweat, believing that you have slept through an important exam. Your panic has little to do with the examination itself, and everything to do with what the examination represents: success or failure, opportunity or disappointment, status, perhaps even self-worth. A lizard can fear a predator, but not an examination. The emotional machinery may be ancient, but what sets it in motion is often anything but.
With fear, culture often shapes the object of the emotion. With more complex emotions, it can shape the emotion itself. Schadenfreude (German, ‘harm-joy’)—the pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune—is not common to all peoples in all times.
Neither is romantic love, which seems to have emerged in tandem with the novel. In Madame Bovary, itself a novel, Gustave Flaubert tells us that Emma Bovary only found out about romantic love through ‘the refuse of old lending libraries’.
The Emotional Animal
The search for the basic emotions has taught us something important, even if it has failed to produce a definitive list.
Some emotions are so ancient that we share them even with birds, lizards, and fish, although what triggers them may be entirely different and shaped by our beliefs and values. Others depend increasingly upon language, memory, imagination, and culture.
Perhaps, then, the question is not Which emotions are basic?
It is How much of every emotion is basic?
The startle reflex, the racing heart, and the impulse to flee belong to our evolutionary inheritance. But what those responses are directed towards—and, in more complex emotions, even the emotions themselves—are increasingly shaped by language, culture, and the stories we tell ourselves.
Our emotions are at once among the oldest things about us—and among the newest.
Home is not merely where we return, but where we are recognised.
The Odyssey is usually described as the story of a man trying to get home. But this is only half the story. The real journey is not geographical but psychological and moral. Odysseus is trying not merely to return to Ithaca, but to become the kind of man who can return.
This is why, after almost three thousand years, the Odyssey continues to speak to us. We are all trying to find our way home—not simply to a place, but to a life that feels genuinely like our own.
Every encounter presents Odysseus with a different temptation. The Lotus-Eaters invite him to forget who he is. Circe seeks to trap him into surrendering his humanity. The Sirens tempt him with endless fascination. Even after escaping the Cyclops Polyphemus, Odysseus succumbs to the temptation of pride. By revealing his true name, he forgets his true purpose and risks undoing all that he has achieved. Again and again, Homer asks the same question in different forms: what must we refuse if we are to remain true to ourselves?
The greatest temptation of all comes from Calypso. She offers Odysseus what human beings have always desired: immortality, together with eternal youth and freedom from suffering. Yet he refuses. He chooses instead to return to his ageing wife, his uncertain kingdom, and his mortal life. In doing so, Homer suggests that to become fully human is not to escape our condition, but to embrace it. Only by accepting the limits of human existence can Odysseus finally become himself.
From one perspective, it is a baffling decision. Why exchange paradise for hardship? Like the modern philosopher Bernard Williams, Homer intuits that a life derives its meaning not from its length but from being truly our own. We would rather live a finite life that belongs to us than an endless life that does not.
At last, Odysseus reaches Ithaca. But instead of returning as a conquering hero, he enters his own home disguised as a beggar. His wife does not recognise him. His servants do not recognise him. His kingdom does not recognise him. But one creature does.
Outside the palace gates lies Argos, the hunting dog that Odysseus had raised before leaving for Troy. Once magnificent, Argos has been left to grow old on a dung heap. Yet the moment Odysseus approaches, the dog recognises him. Disguised though he is, stripped of every outward sign of rank and identity, his faithful companion sees through it all. Argos wags his tail, lays back his ears, and, having seen his master one last time, quietly dies. In Homer, true recognition has nothing to do with appearances. We are recognised not for what we possess or the roles we play, but for who we truly are.
It is one of the most moving scenes in all of literature because it speaks to one of our deepest longings. We want our lives to amount to something. But we also want to be known and loved for who we are, beneath all our roles, titles, and disguises. Home is not merely where we return. It is where someone knows who we are—and remembers.
Before Odysseus can reclaim his kingdom, he must first reclaim his story. At the court of the Phaeacians, he recounts everything that has happened to him since leaving Troy. By weaving his adventures into a coherent narrative, he recovers not only his past but himself. We make sense of our own lives in much the same way: not merely by living them, but by telling them. There’s a lovely irony here. At the very heart of the Odyssey, Homer hands the poem over to Odysseus himself. Odysseus quite literally rises into the narrator of his own life, before finally heading home.
Perhaps that is why the Odyssey still feels so modern. We, too, leave home, lose our bearings, and become distracted by ambitions, comforts, fears, and false identities. We, too, sometimes wonder how we ended up living the lives we are living.
The Odyssey endures because Homer understood that the longest journey any of us will ever undertake is not outward across the seas, but inward into our hearts.
Continue Exploring
If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy my book, The Meaning of Myth.
If Not Physical Fitness, What Was Yoga Originally For?
The original purpose of yoga was not to strengthen the body, but to free the mind.
Millions of people practise yoga for stronger backs, greater flexibility, or relief from stress. These are genuine benefits. But they were never yoga’s original purpose.
The first yogis were not searching for physical fitness. They were searching for freedom.
More than two thousand years ago, Indian philosophers concluded that the root of human suffering lies not in the body but in the mind—or, more precisely, in our mistaken understanding of who we are. Yoga emerged as a practical method for overcoming that mistake.
The First Meaning of Yoga
One of the earliest surviving discussions of yoga appears in the Katha Upanishad, composed around the fourth century BCE. There, the brahmin boy Nachiketa rejects wealth, power, and a long life to ask Yama, the god of death, a single question: What becomes of us after death?
Yama replies that this knowledge cannot be gained through study alone, but only through yoga, which he defines as ‘the firm holding back of the senses’:
When the five organs of perception become still, together with the mind, and the intellect ceases to be active: that is called the highest state.
From the beginning, then, yoga was not a form of exercise but a discipline of inner stillness.
Why We Suffer
Classical yoga rests on Samkhya, one of the oldest schools of Indian philosophy. It seeks to explain both the nature of reality and the origins of human suffering.
According to Samkhya, reality consists of two fundamental principles. The first is Purusha, pure consciousness or the witnessing self. The second is Prakriti, which includes not only the physical world but also the body, the senses, the ego, and even the mind itself.
An ancient Indian image captures the idea beautifully. Two birds perch in the same tree. One pecks eagerly at the fruit, tasting now sweetness, now bitterness. The other simply watches. The first bird represents the self absorbed in the changing experiences of life; the second, the silent witness that remains untouched by them.
Yoga teaches that we mistake ourselves for the first bird when our true nature is the second. We identify with our thoughts, emotions, and fears, forgetting that these are passing experiences rather than our deepest identity.
Yoga Beyond Meditation
Composed in the centuries around the beginning of the Common Era, the Bhagavad Gita broadened the meaning of yoga. Alongside meditation, it described the yoga of knowledge (Jnana Yoga), selfless action (Karma Yoga), and loving devotion (Bhakti Yoga).
Its central message is that freedom comes not from withdrawing from life but from living without attachment to success or failure. Like Stoicism, the Bhagavad Gita teaches that peace of mind depends less on what happens to us than on how we meet it.
As the god Krishna tells the warrior Arjuna:
Work done for a reward is much lower than work done in the Yoga of wisdom.
Yoga was no longer confined to the forest or meditation hall. Everyday life itself could become a spiritual practice.
Patanjali’s Yoga
The philosopher Patanjali transformed these ideas into a practical discipline in the Yoga Sutra, the foundational text of classical yoga. He famously defined yoga as:
Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.
To achieve this, Patanjali described an eightfold path combining ethics, posture, breath control, concentration, and meditation, culminating in samadhi, complete absorption. Significantly, the physical postures (asanas) formed only one stage of this much larger discipline.
How Yoga Became Exercise
If yoga began as a path to liberation, how did it become associated with stretching and physical fitness?
The answer lies in its long evolution. Later traditions, especially Hatha Yoga, placed increasing emphasis on physical postures, though still in pursuit of spiritual liberation.
The decisive shift came in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Indian teachers such as Tirumalai Krishnamacharya presented yoga in dialogue with Western physical culture and modern medicine. Their students—including B. K. S. Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois—introduced these new forms of postural yoga to Europe and America, where they proved enormously popular.
Modern yoga is therefore not a misunderstanding of the tradition so much as one particular branch of it. While its philosophical roots remain ancient, its familiar image as a form of exercise is surprisingly modern.
The yoga practised by millions today is therefore only one chapter in a much older story.
The Original Purpose of Yoga
Millions of people come to yoga hoping for stronger backs, greater flexibility, or relief from stress. The first yogis hoped for something altogether more ambitious: freedom from suffering through a deeper understanding of the self.
Whether or not we accept their answers, the first yogis were asking one of humanity’s oldest and most profound questions:
Who am I?
For them, the search for that answer was the true purpose of yoga.
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