Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

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At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. A 1991 reader survey for the Library of Congress that asked readers to name a "book that made a difference in your life" found Man's Search for Meaning among the ten most influential books in America. None of us knows what is waiting for us, what big moment, what unique opportunity for acting in an exceptional way.” What emerges from Frankl’s inversion of the question is the sense that, just as learning to die is learning to meet the universe on its own terms, learning to live is learning to meet the universe on its own terms — terms that change daily, hourly, by the moment: Those who rebel against their fate—that is, against circumstances they cannot help and which they certainly cannot change—have not grasped the meaning of fate. Fate really is integral in the totality of our lives; and not even the smallest part of what is destined can be broken away from this totality without destroying the whole, the configuration of our existence.”

For an example of living all 3 forms of meaning, see this companion post: A Real-Life Meaningful Example of Saying “Yes to Life” (Short Story) 1. Through our Actions (Doing) In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo two decades later in his superb forgotten essay on the antidote to the hour of despair and life as a moral obligation to the universe, Frankl turns the question unto itself: Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is… each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.” If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something ‘progresses.’ In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age.” If we were to try to summarize in a formula the unique nature of existence and the uniqueness of every human being, and this uniqueness as auniqueness ‘for’—in other words a uniqueness that is focused on others, on the community—a formula that can remind us of the terrible and glorious responsibility of human beings for the seriousness of their lives, then we could rely on a dictumthat Hillel, a founder of the Talmud, made into his motto almost two thousand years ago. This motto is: ‘If I do not do it, who else will do it? But if I only do it for me, what am I then? And if I do not do it now, then when will I do it?’ ‘If not I’—therein lies the uniqueness of every single person; ‘If only for me,’ therein lies the worthlessness and meaninglessness of such uniqueness unless it is a ‘serving’ uniqueness; ‘and if not now,’ therein lies the uniqueness of every individual situation!“The book is split into three parts. Viktor Frankl says: “And ultimately that was the entire purpose of these three parts: to show you that people can still— despite hardship and death (first part), despite suffering from physical or mental illness (second part) or under the fate of the concentration camp (third part)— say yes to life in spite of everything.”

In this poignant masterpiece of writing, Frankl recalls how in the Buchenwald concentration camp they would sing over and over again: "We still want to say yes to life. We still want to say yes to life." They sang this song in unimaginable circumstances which led Frankl to write: “To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances – because life itself is – but it is also possible under all circumstances.: (Viktor Frankl, Yes to Life in Spite of Everything, p.107) In den Bergen bekommen die Gedanken ihren freien Lauf, und es gibt eigentlich keine größere, wesentliche Entscheidung in meinem Leben, die ich nicht dort getroffen hätte." Auf die beiden ihm zu Ehren benannten Franklsteige in den Wiener Hausbergen soll er ebenso stolz gewesen sein wie auf die 29 Ehrendoktorate. For, let us ask ourselves, honestly and seriously, whether we would want to erase the sad experiences from our past, perhaps from our love lives, whether we would want to miss out on everything that was painful or pain inducing-then we would surely all say no. Somehow we know how much we were able to grow and mature precisely during these joyless periods of our existence." (p.57) Just months after his liberation from Auschwitz renowned psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl delivered a series of talks revealing the foundations of his life-affirming philosophy. The psychologist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience and his conviction that every crisis contains opportunity. With this symphonic prelude, Frankl arrives at the essence of what he discovered about the meaning of life in his confrontation with death — a central fact of being at which a great many of humanity’s deepest seers have arrived via one path or another: from Rilke, who so passionately insisted that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” to physicist Brian Greene, who so poetically nested our search for meaning into our mortality into the most elemental fact of the universe. Frankl writes:Alguien como Viktor E. Frankl, cuya primera crisis existencial le sobreviene a una edad tan temprana como la que tenía Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart cuando compuso su primer minué, ha tenido que dejar forzosamente su impronta en el siglo XX: el siglo del replanteamiento de todos los valores, de la aceleración vertiginosa de todos los procesos y de la decadencia de las costumbres, sometidas a una constante manipulación cotidiana.

The past few years have certainly disenchanted us, but they have also shown us that what is human is still valid; they have taught us that it is all a question of the individual human being. After all, in the end, what was left was the human being! Because itwas the human being that survived amid all the filth of the recent past. And equally it was the human being that was left in the experiences of the concentration camps.” Viktor Frankl gives us the gift of looking at everything in life as an opportunity' Edith Eger, bestselling author of The Choice Every stage of life and every different circumstance demands us to find new meaning and new goals. Sometimes this meaning can change by the day and even by the hour. There is great wisdom in having the flexibility to change directions according to the task in front of us. Suffering has a crucial purpose in our lives. Do we not know the feeling that overtakes us when we are in the presence of a particular person and, roughly translates as, The fact that this person exists in the world at all, this alone makes this world, and a life in it, meaningful.” This is the text of a series of three lectures given in 1946 by Viktor Frankl, the Auschwitz survivor famous for his book Man's Search for Meaning about his philosophy of finding a sense of purpose and meaning even in the direst of circumstances a human being can live through. These lectures further elaborate on his philosophy, raw and fresh barely a year after his liberation from the camps. He had managed to survive through his belief in an ultimate sense of purpose in life, a belief that every human being, must find and live out their own sense of purpose, be it big or small, to live their lives fully.Here are four crucial ideas from Frankl’s re-discovered manuscript. We are responsible for every moment in our lives. Generations and myriad cultural upheavals before Zadie Smith observed that “progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,” Frankl considers what “progress” even means, emphasizing the centrality of our individual choices in its constant revision: Viktor Frankl war Zeit seines Lebens ein begeisterter Bergsteiger und Kletterer (diplomierter Kletterführer). Erst im Alter von 80 Jahren hatte er mit dem Klettern im 3. Grad aufgehört. Im Bergerlebnis sah er eine Schule des Meditierens und der modernen Askese, Einübung in die Frustrationstoleranz und die Möglichkeit, kämpfen und auch warten zu lernen. Als Grund, der ihn zum Klettern bewogen hat, nannte er die Angst davor und das Wissen, dass man stärker sein kann als die Angst. Dies wollte er vor allem jungen Menschen, die an Sinnlosigkeitsgefühlen leiden, vermitteln. Toda la obra de Viktor E. Frankl está impregnada del profundo conocimiento del ser humano que tenía su autor, y de una visión humanista que nunca lo abandonó y que lo impelía a buscar a toda costa un sentido a la vida del individuo concreto y de la existencia humana. Así, a pesar de los años terribles marcados por su reclusión en campos de concentración nazis, sus reflexiones sobre el sufrimiento y la libertad esencial del ser humano ponen de relieve en todo momento el valor de la vida y nuestra capacidad para sobreponernos a las peores adversidades.