Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

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How steadfast would a person’s belief in the meaningfulness of life have to be, so as not to be shattered by such skepticism. How unconditionally do we have to believe in the meaning and value of human existence, if this belief is able to take up and bear this skepticism and pessimism? In the grueling, endless suffering of the concentration camp, Viktor Frankl imagined himself standing at a podium giving a lecture entitled “Psychology of the Concentration Camp.” This vision of a future in which he would be able to use his suffering to help others sustained him through the horrific days and nights. Just months after he was liberated from the concentration camps, Viktor Frankl stood at that podium and gave the lectures he had envisioned for so long. This series of lectures was published in German in 1946 and remained untranslated, until recently when the manuscript, “ Yes to Life In Spite of Everything,” was rediscovered. 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.” Frankl gave these three lectures in Vienna in 1946, just nine months after his liberation from a concentration camp. Together, they offer a condensed primer to his best-known work, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946). Known as “logotherapy,” Frankl’s approach aimed to help suicidal people find meaning through creativity, love, and suffering. This was no mere intellectual construct but a pattern he observed in his patients and manifested in his own life. Fatalism is overcome, Frankl insists, by individuals creating meaning. However, this is more complicated than achieving contentment, for in a “balance sheet” view of life, bad moments outweigh good ones. Therefore, happiness cannot be the goal, he argues. Instead of asking “ What can I expect from life?” he advocates flipping the question to “ What does life expect of me?” Joy comes from fulfilling that duty. He gives the real-life example of a man being sent away for a life sentence: Frankl expects the prisoner would then have deemed his existence meaningless, yet when fire broke out on the prison ship, he saved 10 lives. From this, the author concludes that “none of us knows what is waiting for us” and so suicide is “the one thing that is certainly senseless.” Furthermore, illness and suffering offer opportunities for spiritual growth, whether through resistance or—if death is inevitable—acceptance. Frankl cites a terminally ill patient who could no longer work but found meaning in reading, music, and conversation. To modern readers, many of the sentences may seem convoluted while the oral format accounts for slight repetition. However, the case studies are relatable and the overall viewpoint convincing. Psychologist Daniel Goleman’s introduction, though overlong, gives useful context. These lectures focus on suicide, forced annihilation and concentration camps respectively. With such difficult content I had expected this read to be quite depressing, but there’s hope running through even the darkest of themes. Given the author’s belief that we can find meaning regardless of our circumstances, this hope felt particularly appropriate.

Viktor Frankl gives us the gift of looking at everything in life as an opportunity' Edith Eger, bestselling author of The Choice If we now summarize what we said about the ‘meaning’ of life, we can conclude: life itself means being questioned, means answering; each person must be responsible for their own existence. 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.” This slim, powerful collection from Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist Frankl ( Man’s Search for Meaning) attests to life’s meaning, even in desperate circumstances…This lovely work transcends its original context, offering wisdom and guidance.”la correspondencia de Frankl al regresar a Viena después de que terminara su vida como prisionero en cuatro campos One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment—so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a 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. This should not surprise us once we recall the great fundamental truth of being human—being human is nothing other than being conscious and being responsible!“ Viktor E. Frankl, der Begründer der Logotherapie, gibt in diesem Buch einen Querschnitt durch sein gesamtes publizistisches Schaffen auf dem Gebiet der Psychotherapie und ihrer anthropologischen Grundlagen. Die Frage nach dem Sinn des Lebens bleibt ebenso aktuell wie Frankls Antworten darauf. Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment, but cautions equally against the “blithe optimism” of previous, more naïve eras that had not yet faced this gruesome civilizational mirror reflecting what human beings are capable of doing to one another. Both dispositions, he argues, stem from nihilism. In consonance with his colleague and contemporary Erich Fromm’s insistence that we can only transcend the shared laziness of optimism and pessimism through rational faith in the human spirit, Frankl writes:

At this point it would be helpful [to perform] a conceptual turn through 180 degrees, after which 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?

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One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a 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. Art from Margaret C. Cook’s 1913 English edition of Leaves of Grass. (Available as a print.) One of the outstanding contributions to psychological thought in the last fifty years." -Carl R. Rogers (1959) 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. 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. Whether a life is fulfilled doesn’t depend on how great one’s range of action is, but rather only on whether the circle is filled out.” (p.36) One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a 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.

Reading Frankl’s book reminded me of something I recently learned about the roots of redwood trees. The roots of the towering, majestic redwood trees do not grow deep into the ground as one would expect. Instead they grow outward in circles, extending hundreds of feet laterally, by wrapping around each other so that in a storm, all of their roots are interconnected. This is how Frankl and others survived the war, by constantly focusing on and reaching out to others, by wrapping their roots around each other in the harshest of conditions. In the course of life human beings must be prepared to change the direction of this fulfillment of meaning, often abruptly, according to the particular 'challenges of the hour.' The meaning of life can only be a specific one, specific both in relation to each individual person and in relation to each individual hour: the question that life asks us changes both from person to person, and from situation to situation.” (p.59) And now to the question of the meaning of our imperfections and of our particular imbalances: Let us not forget that each individual person is imperfect, but each is imperfect in a different way, each ‘in his own way.’ And as imperfect as he is, he is uniquely imperfect. So, expressed in a positive way, he becomes somehow irreplaceable, unable to be represented by anyone else, unexchangeable.“ How we deal with difficulties truly shows who we are, and that, too, can enable us to live meaningfully.”It is part of the nature of suffering that it is the suffering of a particular person, that it is his or her ownsuffering—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.” 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:

What leads us forward and helps us along the way, what has guided and is guiding us, is a joy in taking responsibility.” We are not able to direct fate— we describe fate as whatever we have no influence over, whatever escapes the power of our will.” An inspiring document of an amazing man who was able to garner some good from an experience so abysmally bad . . . Highly recommended.” That selfsame year, the young Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by reading. Some through humor. Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character. Viktor Frankl This meaning, Frankl asserts, can come through “our actions, through loving, and through suffering.” Meaning doesn’t only come from work. Illness, physical or mental, doesn’t necessarily equal loss of meaning. Suffering can be either meaningful or meaningless.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. Human beings are able to find meaning even where finding value in life is not possible for them in either the first or the second way—namely, precisely when they take a stance toward the unalterable, fated, inevitable, and unavoidable limitation of their possibilities: how they adapt to this limitation, react toward it, how they accept this fate.” 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. 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: