You have been asking what the point of it is. You ask it at the sink, in the car, and in the gap after a busy week. You do your job and you love your people, and the question keeps coming back.
They are his, from Man's Search for Meaning, and they are given here in plain words.
01
What you make or do
A piece of work, or a deed. Something that exists because you did it.
02
What you experience, and whom you meet
Something taken in and not produced. A place, a piece of music, an afternoon.
Frankl puts meeting another person here.
03
How you face what you can't avoid
When suffering can't be avoided, there is still the stand you take toward it. This is the one in The Man Who Outlived His Wife.
04
The condition on the third
Frankl was firm that the third applies only to suffering that can't be avoided.
He was not recommending that anyone suffer when they don't have to. When Meaning Is the Wrong Thing to Offer has more on that limit.
05
One example
On one ordinary Saturday all three can be there.
You fix the gate. You sit for an hour with a friend and get nothing done. And there is the thing in your life that you can't change, and the way you have decided to meet it this year.
06
How this sits beside the nine rules
This library does not rank the three, and it does not say which one you are short of.
Its own method, subtraction, asks a different question, which is what a moment was taken to mean. Meaning and the Nine Rules takes that question further.
If the question of what the point is comes with thoughts of harming yourself, a page is not enough. If you are in crisis, licensed mental-health care is the right door.If tonight is an emergency, call or text 988 (US). This library is not that door.
The school of therapy Frankl developed is on What Logotherapy Is.