Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

How we deal with the tough parts of our lives, he observes, “shows who we are.”

Frankl felt the younger generation of his day no longer had the kind of role models that would give them a sense of enthusiastic idealism, the energy that drives progress.

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,

That very eagerness for consumption has become today a dominant worldview, one devoid of any greater meaning or inner purpose.

the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me?

I can’t stay for your lecture; please be so kind and tell me quickly, what is the meaning of life?”

This one is funny

“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?”

“My God, I just think, Doctor, it’s still better that I hear voices than if I was deaf as a post.”

The woman speaking is schizophrenic. Frenkl found it incredible she managed to find gratitude in her condition

The nearer the end of his life came, the more this man’s will to live asserted itself and the less he wanted to admit to his approaching end.

Imagine that the man liberated from the concentration camp returns, comes home. Then he may be met with some kind of a shrug of the shoulders. And above all, he will always hear two phrases from other people: “We did not know anything about it,” and “We also suffered.” Let us start with the second statement and ask ourselves first whether human suffering can be measured or assessed in such a way that the suffering of one person can be compared to the suffering of another.

But here we have to make an important distinction: we have to differentiate between collective guilt and collective liability.

we could not perceive our survival as anything other than undeserved mercy.

On survivors guilt

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.

His book Ärztliche Seelsorge (The Doctor and the Soul), in which he had definitively formulated his theory on the human orientation toward meaning, had indeed existed in manuscript form since 1941. In fact, he carried this manuscript with him during his deportation, still hoping that he would be able to publish it one day. As he writes in his memoirs, he eventually had to discard his coat with the manuscript sewn in the lining.21