Meaning Through Experience

Meaning through experience emerges from our capacity to receive value from the world through encounters and relationships. This pathway reveals:

• Love creates meaning that physical separation or even death cannot destroy
• The experience of beauty, truth, and goodness transcends external circumstances
• Suffering does not diminish our capacity to experience meaning-giving encounters
• Memory and imagination extend our meaning-making beyond immediate circumstances
• Deep experiences imprint meaning that remains accessible even in deprivation

Concentration camp prisoners who maintained inner connections to loved ones—present or absent, living or dead—demonstrated remarkable resilience. The meaning derived from authentic encounters cannot be confiscated, even when everything else is taken.