Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

In short, our lives take on meaning through our actions, through loving, and through suffering.

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” For Frankl, this suggests that each of us has our unique life purpose and that serving others ennobles it. The scope and range of our actions matter less than how well we respond to the specific demands of our life circle.

In another timely insight, Frankl saw that a materialistic view, in which people end up mindlessly consuming and fixating on what they can buy next, epitomizes a meaningless life, as he put it, where we are “guzzling away” without any thought of morality.

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 fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty, and that we will later try to define more closely.

the door to happiness always opens “outward,” which means it closes itself precisely against the person who tries to push the door to happiness “inward,” so to speak.

We give life meaning not only through our actions but also through loving and, finally, through suffering.

Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.”

“Life is not something, it is the opportunity for something!”5

Either we change our fate, if possible, or we willingly accept it, if necessary.