Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.

The line frames loneliness not as an end-state but as a spiritual and moral catalyst. By casting the response as a prayer, it suggests that solitude can be transmuted—through inward discipline—into purpose. The movement from “something to live for” to “great enough to die for” intensifies the demand: a life’s meaning is measured by the depth of one’s commitments, ideally reaching the level of self-sacrifice. In Hammarskjöld’s idiom, this points toward vocation and service, where personal emptiness becomes the pressure that drives one toward responsibility, solidarity, and a cause larger than the self.