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In another timely insight, Frankl saw that a materialistic view, in which people end up mindlessly consuming and fixating on what they can buy next, epitomizes a meaningless life, as he put it, where we are “guzzling away” without any thought of morality. That very eagerness for consumption has become today a dominant worldview, one devoid of any greater meaning or inner purpose.
Frankl’s intuitive sense of how purpose matters has been borne out by a large body of research. For instance, having a sense of purpose in life offers a buffer against poor health. People with a life purpose, data shows, tend to live longer. And researchers find that having a purpose numbers among the pillars of well-being.
“Whoever has a why to live can bear almost any how,” as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared.
“Fate” is what happens to us beyond our control. But we each are responsible for how we relate to those events.
How beautifully Rabindranath Tagore expressed all this, the disappointment human beings feel toward their claim to happiness in life, in this poem in which he says: I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked—and behold, duty was joy.
the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me?
how we deal with difficulties truly shows who we are, and that, too, can enable us to live meaningfully.
And now we also understand what Hölderlin means when he writes: “If I step onto my misfortune, I stand higher.”
So, fate is part of our lives and so is suffering; therefore, if life has meaning, suffering also has meaning.
The human soul also appears to be strengthened by experiencing a burden
