The human heartbeat can be heard two weeks after conception. It occurred to me, then, that this is how a person enters the world: as heartbeat. Perhaps this should help to frame the meaning of life. If we were once all heartbeats then so many other human characteristics take on a new kind of superficiality. If we can relate to one another, heartbeat to heartbeat, then maybe we wouldn't have all of this strife we see in our world today.
In Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, there is a scene that has stuck with me since I first came across it. Frankl describes the horrid conditions of Auschwitz -- how the sky was gray, the tattered uniforms were gray, the snow was gray -- but off in the distance in a house on the side of a hill, someone turned on a light. This one light broke through the grayness of his existence, and defying all that he was up against, gave him hope.
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