Yes To Life In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

There are three main ways people find fulfillment of their life meaning, in Frankl’s view. First, there is action, such as creating a work, whether art or a labor of love—something that outlasts us and continues to have an impact. Second, he says, meaning can be found in appreciating nature, works of art, or simply loving people; Frankl cites Kierkegaard, that the door to happiness always opens outward. The third lies in how a person adapts and reacts to unavoidable limits on their life possibilities, such as facing their own death or enduring a dreadful fate like the concentration camps. In short, our lives take on meaning through our actions, through loving, and through suffering.

First, he recommended, gain some internal control over your own mind and how you react to life’s difficulties. Then, adopt an ethic of compassion and altruism, the urge to help others. Finally, act on that outlook in whatever ways your life offers.

Our lives continually pose the question of our life’s meaning, a query we answer by how we respond to life.

“Whoever has a why to live can bear almost any how,” as the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche declared.

Those who found a larger meaning and purpose in their lives, who had a dream of what they could contribute, were, in Frankl’s view, more likely to survive than were those who gave up.

The lesson Frankl drew from this existential fact: our perspective on life’s events—what we make of them—matters as much or more than what actually befalls us. “Fate” is what happens to us beyond our control. But we each are responsible for how we relate to those events.

What is meant by that? We will not be far off the mark if we express it like this: as soon as we notice any pedagogical tendency in a role model, we become resentful; we human beings do not like to be lectured to like children.

What does all this prove? What has come through to us from the past? Two things: everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there are, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being.

But this tiredness is a feeling – and we all know that feelings are not reasons. That someone is weary, feels exhausted, is in itself not a reason for them to stop in their tracks. Rather, everything depends on whether carrying on does actually have meaning, whether that makes it worth overcoming the tiredness.

Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which already seems obvious to us.

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked – and behold, duty was joy.

happiness should not, must not and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfilment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty and that we will later try to define more closely.

It was Kierkegaard who told the wise parable that the door to happiness always opens ‘outwards’, which means it closes itself precisely against the person who tries to push the door to happiness ‘inwards’, so to speak.

Now we also understand how, in the final analysis, the question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life, it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us – we are the ones who are questioned! We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential ‘life questions’. Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to – of being responsible towards – life.

From this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent sense of futility. Because now the present is everything, as it holds the eternally new question of life for us. Now everything depends on what is expected of us.

No less naive was the young man who spoke to me one day, many years ago, as I was about to give a little seminar somewhere on the meaning of life. His words went roughly like this: ‘Hey Frankl, don’t be angry with me, I’ve been invited to my future in-laws tonight. I really do have to go, and I can’t stay for your lecture; please be so kind and tell me quickly, what is the meaning of life?’

First of all, our answer can be an active answer, giving an answer through action, answering specific life questions with a deed that we complete, or a work that we create.

Whether a life is fulfilled does not depend on how great one’s radius of action is, but rather only on whether the circle is fully filled out.

It is not only through our actions that we can give life meaning – insofar as we can answer life’s specific questions responsibly – we can fulfil the demands of existence not only as active agents, but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful, the great, the good.

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.

We give life meaning through our actions, but also through loving and, finally, through suffering.

This was a clear acknowledgement that true suffering of an authentic fate is an achievement, and, indeed, is the highest possible achievement.

in the final analysis, it is not a question of either achievement or endurance – rather, in some cases, endurance itself is the greatest achievement.

But if life always has meaning in accordance with the possibilities, if it only depends on us whether it is filled in every instant with this possible, ever changing, meaning; if it is entirely our responsibility and our decision to actualise this meaning, then we also know one thing for certain: the one thing that is certainly senseless and has absolutely no meaning is – to throw away your life.

Conversely, the fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfil it, to use our time and occupy

We also do not judge the life history of a particular person by the number of pages in the book that portrays it, but only by the richness of the content it contains.

Life no longer appears to us as a given, but as something given over to us, it is a task in every moment. This therefore means that it can only become more meaningful the more difficult it becomes.

‘Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something!’

but now we can see that there is also a second way in which the person as a unique and individual being always comes into his own, in which the value of his personality is also realised and his personal, specific meaning of life is fulfilled: this is the way of love, or better still, of being loved. This is more or less a passive path, without any striving, without any doing – ‘without doing anything for it’ – in being loved, what someone otherwise had to strive for in his activity or employment now seems to fall into his lap; on this path of being loved he achieves the things he would normally have to fight for and win through his performance, but without needing to earn them: indeed one cannot earn love, love is not a reward, but a blessing.

But we said that the answers that we must give to life’s specific questions can no longer exist in words but only in deeds, and more than that: in living, in our whole being! The questions of ‘our lives’ can, as we felt, only be answered by each of us being responsible for ‘our own lives’.

What leads us forward and helps us along the way, what has guided and is guiding us, is a joy in taking responsibility. But to what extent is the average person happy to take on responsibility?

But on average, people are too sluggish to shoulder their responsibilities. And this is where education for responsibility begins. Certainly, the burden is heavy, it is difficult not only to recognise responsibility but also to commit to it. To say yes to it, and to life. But there have been people who have said yes despite all difficulties. And when the inmates in the Buchenwald concentration camp sang in their song, ‘We still want to say yes to life’, they did not only sing about it, but also achieved it many times – they and many of us in the other camps as well. And they achieved it under unspeakable conditions, external and internal conditions that we have already spoken enough about today. So shouldn’t we all be able to achieve it today in, after all, incomparably milder circumstances? To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances – because life itself is – but it is also possible under all circumstances.