text: 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 were 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 than 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