Dr. Joseph Fabry, a key voice in the development of logotherapy and a friend and protégé of famed author and Psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl, spent much of his life helping people answer a fundamental question: How do we live with meaning, especially when life’s old structures fall away?
For business leaders who’ve spent decades leading companies, growing teams, and solving problems at scale, retirement can feel like a long-awaited victory. The grind is over. The calendar is yours. The pressure is gone…
But so, often those same leaders find, so is the “purpose.”
What follows for many isn’t the relaxing second act they imagined—but a slow, creeping discomfort: the existential vacuum.
What Is the Existential Vacuum?
The term “existential vacuum” was coined by Frankl, but it was Joseph Fabry who helped bring the idea into practical, personal terms. The existential vacuum refers to the feeling of inner emptiness that arises when life loses structure, purpose, or clear direction. It’s not always dramatic…it often starts as a quiet discontent: boredom, apathy, a nagging question of what now?
(Interestingly, Frankl coined this term in the 1950s – it was an issue decades before the internet and smart phones.)
Fabry described the vacuum as “a crisis of the will,” where people who are no longer directed by external demands (like a job, a role, or responsibilities) begin to flounder without new internal meaning.
For newly retired business leaders, this risk is high. After years of being needed, making key decisions, and shaping outcomes, retirement can feel less like freedom and more like disorientation.
The Sudden Loss of External Meaning
Running a company—especially as its founder or CEO—provides a deep reservoir of meaning. Every day brings new challenges, and your role gives structure to time, connection to people, and relevance to your expertise.
But when that role ends—whether through sale, succession, or stepping back—it’s not just income or influence that disappears. It’s a system of meaning. And without something to replace it, the vacuum begins to form.
Retired business owners often report:
- Restlessness:Even with full calendars and travel plans, a deeper sense of purpose feels missing.
- Low-grade depression:Not clinical in all cases, but a flatness, an emotional dullness that didn’t exist before.
- Loss of identity:Who am I if I’m not the leader, the owner, the decision-maker?
- Relationship strain:Spouses, adult children, or friends may not understand why “more free time” has made you less fulfilled.
- Inertia:A reluctance to start new things, even things that once sounded exciting. (Remember middle school science: “A body at rest tends to stay at rest”)
Dr. Fabry warned that when people lose sight of meaning, they are prone to fill the vacuum with distractions—comfort, consumption, or compulsive activity. It’s not that these are inherently bad. The danger is they replace reflection with avoidance.
The Myth of Permanent Rest
Retirement culture often glorifies escape: golf, beaches, endless leisure. And while rest is critical—especially after decades of pushing hard—Fabry’s work suggests that meaning is a deeper human need than comfort.
In The Pursuit of Meaning, Fabry emphasized that even when we are no longer working in a traditional sense, our lives must still be directed by something greater than ourselves.
He wrote:
“Man cannot avoid responsibility. He must decide and answer the question: What does life expect of me now?”
For retired business leaders, this is the pivotal question. What is life asking of you now—after the exit, beyond the accolades?
Three Post-Exit Traps Fabry Warns Against
Dr. Fabry identified several ways people unconsciously respond to the existential vacuum. Not surprisingly, none of which lead to lasting fulfillment.
- The Hedonistic Trap: “I’ve Earned This”
Some exit into retirement believing they’ve “earned” the right to disconnect entirely. And while celebration and enjoyment are healthy, a life organized only around pleasure quickly loses depth. Fabry observed that unstructured freedom often leads to boredom, which leads to malaise.
The problem isn’t the golf course or the vacation, it’s when those things become the center of life rather than moments of renewal in a larger narrative of contribution.
- The Distraction Trap: Staying “Busy”
Many former executives stay constantly active, via committees, investments, travel, projects—but still feel hollow. Fabry warned that busyness can become a defense mechanism, shielding us from the harder work of asking, “What now?” or “What still matters?”
Being busy is not the same as being purposeful. Fabry’s work encourages us to ask not just how much we are doing, but why are we doing it.
- The Nostalgia Trap: “My Best Days Are Behind Me”
This is perhaps the most painful version of the vacuum: where a leader views retirement not as evolution, but as decline. Without a new source of purpose, it’s easy to idealize the past and believe that meaning retired along with your business card.
But Fabry challenges this thinking. He believed the second half of life holds its own kind of meaning – different in shape, but no less significant. Your worth is not defined by your title, but by your response to life’s call at every stage.
Three Ways to Reclaim Meaning After Retirement
Like a great business leader, Dr. Fabry didn’t just diagnose the existential vacuum, he offered pathways through it. Below are three meaning-centered strategies business owners can adopt after exiting their companies:
- Choose Creative Contribution Over Comfort
Logotherapy teaches that one of the clearest paths to meaning is through creative work – not necessarily in the artistic sense, but in contribution. For retired leaders, this might mean:
- Mentoring younger entrepreneurs
- Teaching, writing, or speaking
- Starting a Foundation or nonprofit
- Investing in businesses with whom you have values alignment
- Serving on mission-driven boards
The key isn’t replicating your old role, it’s identifying where your wisdom can still create value. When your life serves others, meaning follows.
- Adopt a Meaning Practice
In his writings, Fabry advocated for existential reflection, which is a regular practice of asking what life is inviting you to do, be, or become. Consider journaling with prompts like:
- What moments recently felt most meaningful?
- Where am I being invited to grow?
- Who needs something I still have to give?
These small acts of reflection help tune your awareness toward purpose—and prevent the drift of meaninglessness.
- Embrace “Attitudinal Meaning” in Difficult Moments
Not all of retirement is joyful. There may be health challenges, financial complications, or grief. Frankl and Fabry taught that even in suffering, humans can find meaning through attitude: how we choose to carry pain or limitations.
As Frankl often said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms: to choose one’s attitude.”
In retirement, this can mean meeting illness with courage, loss with grace, or aging with dignity. Meaning isn’t always found in achievement, it’s often revealed in character.
Meaning Is Not a Luxury—It’s a Lifeline
For newly retired business leaders, the temptation is to treat meaning like a bonus: If I find something meaningful, great. If not, at least I can relax. But Fabry’s work makes clear that without meaning, we don’t just become bored.
We become lost.
Meaning shouldn’t be an ‘optional’ part of existence. It is the structure that holds the self together. And the longer it is absent, the more vulnerable we are to anxiety, stagnation, and regret.
The existential vacuum doesn’t announce itself. It whispers. It drains color from the days and purpose from our plans. The best defense isn’t denial—it’s designing a new life filled with meaning.
Final Reflection: What Is Life Asking of You Now?
You spent years answering to the needs of clients, teams, and shareholders. You met deadlines, weathered storms, and built something from nothing.
Now, a different question remains: What is life asking of you now?
Dr. Joseph Fabry believed that meaning isn’t found, rather, it’s made. And even in retirement, your life can be a powerful answer to the question of “…what still matters?”
You don’t need to replicate your past. You only need to respond to the present – with purpose, with courage, and with the wisdom earned through years of leadership.
Because the next chapter isn’t about winding down. It’s about waking up to meaning, once again.
