Adam Pash, senior editor for the ever popular Lifehacker blog, has created very a cool new AIM bot that helps you track your purchases and stick to a budget. I think this is a great idea, and as you’ll see from his screencast vid below..it’s very easy to use!
A man who dedicated his career to reporting on the impact of religion in people’s lives, writes about his spiritual journey and eventual loss of faith in an incredibly honest and moving article for the Los Angeles Times. I have been looking for a story like this for quite some time. As someone who used to be very religious there is much about his personal struggles that I can relate to.
Lately I’ve been reading Man’s Search for Meaning by psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor Viktor E. Frankl. This book is incredibly inspirational. Each time I pick up it up it fills me with a deep sense of existential urgency. The idea is basically that the only important metaphysical question is not “What is the meaning of life?” but rather “What is the meaning that life is demanding from me?” In the unique circumstances given to us, we each have some task to fulfill or some problem to solve in a way that no other individual could replicate. To recognize those task(s) and take responsibility for their execution is ultimately the meaning that we create for our lives.
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore striking similarity to each other. Both men haad talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument–they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished. His work could not be done by anyone else, any more than another person could ever take the place of the father in his child’s affections.
This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears towards a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.” -Victor E. Frankl
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