Beauty, Meaning, This Life

[dcl 3,297]

“Should I perhaps try to explain for you with some hackneyed phrase how and why experiencing beauty can make life meaningful? I prefer to confine myself to the following thought experiment: imagine that you are sitting in a concert hall and listening to your favorite symphony, and your favorite bars of the symphony resound in your ears, and you are so moved by the music that it sends shivers down your spine; and now imagine that it would be possible (something that is psychologically so impossible) for someone to ask you in this moment whether your life has meaning. I believe you would agree with me if I declared that in this case you would only be able to give one answer, and it would go something like: ‘It would have been worth it to have lived for this moment alone!’”
Writing in Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, Victor Frankl speaks with "passionate life-tested conviction to the two great pillars of aliveness that had helped him survive the Holocaust and that help so many of us, even in circumstances far less life-threatening, survive our lives — music and the natural world."