"A person should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather should realize that he himself is the one to whom the question is addressed," Frankl himself concluded from his observations. In other words, each person decides for himself what meaning to fill his life with, no one will give him this answer in a ready-made form.

Outside of extreme circumstances, the desires of most people are simple and understandable: to provide themselves and their loved ones with a comfortable existence. Eat better, live more and more comfortably, have more and more sophisticated entertainment... And there is no limit to this race for comfort and pleasure. We may live much better today than our ancestors lived a hundred or fifty years ago, but we are much worse off than some of our neighbors on the planet! And even a multimillionaire will envy a billionaire.

And at the same time, there were always those among people who left their comfortable homes and embarked on long and dangerous journeys in search of new lands, or settled among the poor in distant lands to alleviate their sufferings, or went into the barren desert to converse alone with God... Why was it worth giving up such natural human worries? People discovered a very important meaning for themselves — and in comparison with it, comfort and prosperity no longer meant anything.

In Soviet times, almost all residents of our country indulged in forced asceticism, except for the very top. Food and almost everything in general had to be obtained through connections or stand in queues for these goods, and it was possible to travel around the world only with the permission of the party committee. And then the Soviet system fell, and the former Soviet people discovered that the "national property" was instantly privatized by someone, and they got practically nothing. Children fainted from hunger during lessons, highly qualified engineers sold Chinese consumer goods in the bazaars... People seemed to have no time for high meanings – they simply had to survive.

But even then, for some reason, not only stalls with beer and snacks multiplied, but also book publishers, people went not only to the markets, but also to preach about God. People were baptized en masse. The old idols had collapsed, and it was necessary to take care not only of food and clothing, but also of a new meaning for a new life.

However, the times of the initial accumulation of capital are long gone. Of course, there are a lot of really poor people in the country, but residents of big cities have already mostly got used to the new conditions of the game, dressed up at seasonal sales, went to relax by the warm sea, tried various delicacies... Young people no longer understand how it was possible to stand in line for doctor's sausage, darn socks, wash plastic bags.

But the anguish and bewilderment remain. Why is there still so much indifference, cruelty, greed and hypocrisy around – people are indignant. Why are we deceived and manipulated at every step, why don't we live like in the prosperous West? It seems that our country has everything: talented people, rich culture, wonderful nature, and almost all possible minerals in the bowels. What do we lack?

And not only us, if you think about it. One of the surest indicators of how frustrated people can be in life, how meaningless it seems to them, is the suicide rate per capita. So, at the top of this list are very different countries: poor and rich, dictatorships and democracies. It turns out that it is not external circumstances that determine how meaningful a person sees his own life.

In the biblical book of the prophet Amos there are these words: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord God, when I will send a famine upon the land, not a famine of bread, not a thirst for water, but a thirst for hearing the words of the Lord" (8:11). It is this thirst that we feel now, when the material hunger has been satisfied as much as possible. And it turned out that you can crave a word as much as water on a hot day... By the way, the "word" in Greek sounds like "Logos", it is with this concept that the Gospel of John opens: "In the beginning was the Logos". And in the same way the Greeks denoted meaning. "Man in Search of the Logos" is how the title of Frankl's book could be translated.

It is human nature to come up with logical explanations for everything that happens to him. The so-called "Stockholm syndrome" is also based on this: people taken hostage by terrorists over time begin to justify the actions of terrorists and identify themselves with them. It is unbearable for them to think that they are only a means, an expendable material for terrorists. They will be inclined to agree that terrorists have lofty goals and that they are the helpers of these truth-seekers, and that is the meaning they invent for their suffering. Only because of this, of course, they do not cease to be pawns in the terrorist game.

From the point of view of the Bible, our entire world is taken hostage by terrorists, their head is called in the Bible: "the prince of this world", that is, the one who rules in this world without having real rights to do so. And people tend to find their comfortable place in this world, and even come up with reasonable explanations for the current terrorist order: we have this and that bad, because we are hindered by such and such enemies, because we have an unfortunate fate, because our circumstances have turned out so unfavorably... And once all these obstacles are removed, that's where we will live happily and prosperously!

Only the true meaning of events is only clouded by such explanations. The biblical view of things assumes that in the beginning of everything there really was a meaning, or rather, God's plan for this world, and therefore for each of us. It is not as easy to solve as a crossword puzzle or solve as a mathematical problem. Rather, man recognizes it in his life by listening to his conscience, reason, and feelings, and guided by the Word of God, and on this path he may find wonderful discoveries—it is such discoveries that sometimes make him give up comfort and abruptly change his way of life in order to follow the revealed Meaning of All Life.

What it will be depends ultimately on each of us. For some, it consists in experiencing as many pleasures as possible and accumulating as much wealth as possible, but such a materialistic approach looks quite repulsive. Some people put the service of high ideals at the head of their lives, such as art or science, or the political transformation of society, but it often turns out that behind these high desires there is also a thirst for acquisition: world fame, power over people, refined intellectual pleasures. Someone is serving other people, like the sick, or the poor, or even just members of their family, and that's wonderful... Unless at the end of life a person comes to the conclusion that he did not have a life of his own, if he is not disappointed in his service.

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you," says Christ (Matthew 6:33). What a vague call! It is clear how to seek fame or money, but how to seek the Kingdom and truth? What is He talking about? It seems to me that here he calls us precisely to search for the great, authentic Meaning of our life. The rest: prosperity, comfort, a reasonable social order, will follow by itself, that is, it will either arise, or... We will learn to do without all this and not suffer. And this main meaning of life can be different for everyone, it cannot be described by any universal formula. "In my Father's house are many mansions," Christ says elsewhere (John 14:2).