side-effect.....................

      

     By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it was a closed system.  I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence."  It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other that oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.  The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.  What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it.  In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning