When I opened Viktor Frankl’s  “Psychotherapy and Existentialism,” he started out with a joke.  I don’t recall much of the book except that his thesis was, what we really need in our lives is meaning.  If we can find meaning, even if we have to take full responsibility, create and impose it ourselves, we can survive things we would not otherwise endure.  And,  I also recall the joke.  I loved it.

It was about a little boy who left home to go to school.  The wind was raging and the rain had frozen on the ground, so it was treacherous going.  When he finally made it to school, the teacher asked why he was so late, he said that the wind was so strong,  for every step he’d taken, he’d slid two steps back on the icy path.  “Then how did you ever get here?” the teacher asked, and he said, “I gave up and started back home.”