I agree about Viktor Frankl and meaning in life. I have read his two most well-known books and found them helpful in gaining insights about meaning.

People who haven’t experienced severe trauma might find meaningful experiences by looking on life as a giant laboratory. They can start with an idea that has logical or intuitive appeal to them and test it by acting on it.

The results will either give meaning or they won’t. Then they can move on to the next idea. Some ideas will work and some will not. If the effort is life-long, they will discover plenty of meaningful experiences.

For parents, I suggest what their children will experience is a combination of effort and luck on the part of the parents. Parents can give 100% of themselves to protect their children, which is what I did after having an abusive childhood. But some things we can’t control. That is when luck (or God or fate) take over.

If nothing else, we can try to give our children a strong foundation with which to handle traumatic experiences. The strong parents and children may survive. The weak ones, like an example in my article, often fail.

Thank you for your comment, Joachim.