Chris Johns

So that's an important distinction.

Meaning, they both believed in meanings.

The classical existentialist said that you can make it whatever you want, basically.

And so if it involves boozing and shagging or revolutionary Marxism, that's fine.

Whereas Frankl, I think, as I say, was much more morally based, is that there is a meaning there, but you must find it.

You won't get it from a guy sitting on a cloud handing down tablets.

It's a well-established result in economics that, you know, beyond a certain quite surprisingly low level of income, the satisfaction you get from an extra dollar, pound or euro gets less and less and less.

Exactly.

Yeah.

One or two, not so much, I have to say.

I won't talk too much about that.

Well, I might later, depending on how things go in this conversation.

But it's the not knowing the simple stuff, because I think what you described there is absolutely right.

My...

own experience of grief would be to say that what I've learned is that what people can do for me is just turn up they don't have to do or say anything and that when people say things like well there's nothing I can say I say absolutely there's nothing you can say so therefore say what you want there's not there's no right or wrong things to say don't tell me that you've got a year after which you've got to move on or stuff like that that's that's not good stuff to say there are no rules

Because all of the evidence, and me being me and numbers and all the rest of it, I've looked at the evidence and the research around grief.

And what's emerged is not surprising.

Everybody's grief is different.

There are some common characteristics, but everybody experiences grief in their own way.

And so you've got to let people do it.