"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost,

but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him."

~ Viktor Frankl

from Man's Search for Meaning

Wow.

Too often, we want to live in the “tensionless” state we can find in meditation—transcending the throes of our daily challenges.

But that’s not the point of life.

The point?

To find a goal worthy of us and spend our lives “striving and struggling” to fulfill the potentiality within us.

As we truly engage in this passionate pursuit of our potential, an effortless effort comes in that beats the sh*t out of any idea of benign “tensionless-ness.”

Our potential is calling.

Let’s answer.

I have argued with friends over the years that the onesided desire for happiness alone without any pain or sadness is not for the real world we live in. Balance is necessary or in Frankl’s view good old fashioned tension to struggle to meet our potential and fulfillment. I get this. But our society seems to have been sold a false dream of endless happiness and no work to get where we want and must go.