Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

Frankl argues that suffering, even incurable illness and the inner dignity of dying “one’s own death,” can prove meaningful.

Rather than just seeking happiness, he proposed, we can seek a sense of purpose that life offers us.

even the dark and joyless episodes of our lives can be times when we mature and find meaning. He even posits that the more difficult, the more meaningful troubles and challenges can be. How we deal with the tough parts of our lives, he observes, “shows who we are.”

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.

“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.

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

Because the fact of being is always more pivotal than the word.

everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, 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.

we all know that feelings are not reasons.

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

it is never a question of where someone is in life or which profession he is in, it is only a matter of how he fills his place, his circle.

So, how we deal with difficulties truly shows who we are, and that, too, can enable us to live meaningfully.

suffering as a result of misfortune is only meaningful if this misfortune has come about through fate, and is thus unavoidable and inescapable.

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

So, fate is part of our lives and so is suffering; therefore, if life has meaning, suffering also has meaning.

One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions.

death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering.

Individuality can only be valuable when it is not individuality for its own sake but individuality for the human community. The

indeed one cannot earn love; love is not a reward, but a blessing. On the path of love a person thus receives by “grace” the things he would otherwise have to strive for or obtain through action: the realization of both his uniqueness and his individuality.

we saw that even dying can have meaning, that it can be meaningful “to die one’s own death.”

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.”

he puts a line through his entire former existence.

the soul surrounds itself with a protective shell from which the otherwise harrowing and disturbing impressions will bounce off. This is how the soul protects itself, how it tries to safeguard itself from the overwhelming power threatening to swamp it and tries to preserve its equilibrium—to rescue itself into indifference.

it takes many days before the liberated person is able to enjoy his liberation. He must actually and literally relearn how to be happy. And sometimes he has to hurry to learn this, because often he will soon need to unlearn it again and must learn to suffer again.

the suffering of human beings is incommensurable! Real suffering fills a person completely, fills their whole being.

And in spite of everything, no human suffering can be compared to anyone else’s because it is part of the nature of suffering that it is the suffering of a particular person, that it is his or her own suffering—that its “magnitude” is dependent solely on the sufferer, that is, on the person; a person’s solitary suffering is just as unique and individual as is every person.