Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

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With an introduction by Daniel Goleman and afterward by Franz Vesely, Viktor’s son-in-law, this book comprises three of Frankl’s lectures: What remained was the individual person, the human being — and nothing else. Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down — the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one — the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that “he” had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self. 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.“ Eleven months after he was liberated from the Nazi concentration camps, Viktor E. Frankl held a series of public lectures in Vienna. The psychiatrist, who would soon become world famous, explained his central thoughts on meaning, resilience, and the importance of embracing life even in the face of great adversity. In consonance with Camus’s view of happiness as a moral obligation — an outcome to be attained not through direct pursuit but as a byproduct of living with authenticity and integrity — Frankl reflects on Tagore’s poetic point:

The phrase ‘yes to life,’ Viktor Frankl recounts, was from the lyrics of a song sometimes sung sotto voce(soas not to anger guards) by inmates of some of the four camps in which he was a prisoner.” — Daniel GolemanThe question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.” 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.

Today every impulse for action is generated by the knowledge that there is no form of progress on which we can trustingly rely. If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something “progresses.” In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age. As our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure — especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame — these existential infusions of sanity and lucid buoyancy fell out of print and were soon forgotten. Eventually rediscovered — as is also the tendency of our collective memory when the present fails us and we must lean for succor on the life-tested wisdom of the past — they are now published in English for the first time as Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything ( public library). 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.” A human being should never become a means to an end. But already in the economic systemof the last few decades, most working peoplehad been turned into mere means, degraded to become mere tools for economic life. It was no longer work that was the means to an end, a means for life or indeed a food for life—rather it was a man and his life, his vital energy, his ‘man power,’ that became this means to an end.”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. How we deal with difficulties truly shows who we are, and that, too, can enable us to live meaningfully.” Published here for the very first time in English, Frankl's words resonate as strongly today as they did in 1946. Despite the unspeakable horrors in the camp, Frankl learnt from his fellow inmates that it is always possible to say ‘yes to life’ – a profound and timeless lesson for us all.

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.'”The past few years have certainly disenchanted us, but they have also shown us that what is human is still valid; they have taught us that it is all a question of the individual human being. After all, in the end, what was left was the human being! Because itwas the human being that survived amid all the filth of the recent past. And equally it was the human being that was left in the experiences of the concentration camps.” 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: Viktor Frankl nos dejó una conmocionante lección existencial con su relato testimonial de supervivencia en