Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our Lives? Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire

As Frankl trudges through snow for miles with his fellow prisoners, his mind turns to his wife, a prisoner at another camp at Auschwitz.  In spite of her absence, she is more real and luminous than the people around him: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire…The salvation of man is through love and in love…It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all,  ceases somehow to be of importance.,,.”Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death” (pp 49-50)

(Pic re shared courtesy: www.adikanda.com,

 Viktor Frankl; ‘Man’s Search for Meaning.’ pp 49-50) 

Is there any Purpose or Meaning in our lives? Attitudinal Heroism

 No discussion on the meaning of life is complete without turning to Dr. Viktor Frankl. A distinguished psychiatrist by profession, he spent three  horrendous years  at the  Auschwitz concentration camp in Germany during World War II. Name, fame, wealth, social status, education, family background etc fell into a dust heap at Auschwitz. A prisoner was just a ‘number’ in rags surviving on watery soup and a piece of stale bread. A bag of bones shackled to dehumanizing work until the inmate was too weak to be useful at which point he was sent to the gas chambers. Is there any meaning or purpose in such a wretched existence? Is there any virtue in ‘getting through’ such suffering? Frankl says there is, because unavoidable suffering is ‘attitudinal heroism.’ A condemned man trapped in terrible circumstances can turn his suffering into an achievement by refusing to compromise on  his dignity, decency and compassion. A man who refuses to be brutalized by circumstances is a hero. What we become when faced with suffering is an inner decision. We can either sink to the level of animals or rise above our situation to grow spiritually and give a deeper meaning to our lives.

(Pic re shared courtesy: www.wherenow.com,

Viktor E. Frankl; ‘Man’s search for Meaning’)