This Is Where You’ll Find the Meaning of Your Life

You’ll Find the Ultimate Meaning of Your Life at the Intersection of the 3 Paths: Love, Work and Suffering.

Photo by Adrien Tutin on Unsplash

First, they take your luggage.

Then, your jewelry and everything in your pockets. Then, your shoes. Then, your jacket. But you can’t give them your jacket because sewn into the lining is something you can’t bear to lose.

So, you tear it open, retrieve what’s inside and tuck it under your arm, while they take the rest of your clothes and leave them in respective piles as you move down the line. And then they shave your head. Now, you’re naked and that thing under your arm becomes conspicuous and they take that, too.

You plead but they won’t give it back and if you protest any more, they tell you, they’ll take your life and after that, the gold fillings from your teeth. That’s what it was like to be processed into Auschwitz for Viktor Frankl.

That thing tucked under his arm was his life’s work: a manuscript.

Written in the manuscript was a hypothesis: the core of human motivation is a Will to Meaning — a desire to find meaning in life.

When they destroyed his manuscript, they left him only one option: to act out his philosophy under…