Do you find meaning in suffering and death? If so, what?

[Mudhammam]

I just woke up from a bizarre dream in which I drove an old friend to the hospital (we also got caught in a tornado/hurricane/water spout/or something on the way, which lifted my car up and then set it down--guessing it had something to do with watching the news when I fell asleep and seeing that tragedy in Taiwan) and was then pushing him around the corridors. In real life, he's been dead for almost 2 years and in fact, I did used to push him around in doctor's offices as he was wheelchair-bound due to a degenerative muscle disease. This past week I've also been reading Auschwitz extermination camp surivivor Viktor Frankl's classic book, "Man's Search For Meaning," in which he talks about the differences between people who gave up all hope (and often died as a result) and those who made an "inner decision" to view their sufferings as meaningful. I'd like to share some quotes from the book and then get your take on what you perceive as meaning in suffering or death, if you see any at all:

"An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man's attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete."

"It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future - sub specie aeternitatis. And this is his salvation in the most difficult moments of his existence, although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task."

"What does Spinoza say in his Ethics? - "Affectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam." Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it."

"The prisoner who had lost faith in the future - his future - was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay."

"What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men,
that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to
think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life - daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

"Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners." (italics in original).