Book Review: Yes to Life

I cannot imagine the anguish Holocaust victims faced in the atrocities afflicted on them. Yet even when stripped of all dignity and freedom, Viktor Frankl continued to find meaning in life. After three harrowing years of bondage and demoralization, he emerged and rewrote the contents of a manuscript confiscated with his belongings. Man's Search for Meaning came together in nine intense days of writing. A year later, the lectures compiled in this book, Yes to Life, were delivered in Vienna. What amazed me most is that he didn't respond simply to the fate of the Jews, but expanded his argument to include any threatened life (be it internal, by suicide, or external, by society). He writes, "Our unique strengths and weaknesses make each of us uniquely irreplaceable."

Frankl affirms the value of every life. Each individual person matters. He expresses the arguments he is most familiar with from his time under the Nazi regime, "it would be conceivable that the state, as the guardian of public interest, should free the community of the burden of these highly 'unproductive' individuals [be they elderly or incapacitated by mental limitations] who consume the bread of the people who are healthy and fit for life." But Frankl asserts every person holds value. In those concentration camps, Nazis deemed only those fit for work as worthy of life. Frankl urges three separate areas give life meaning: in creating, in experiencing (loving), and in reacting favorably to what fate inflicts. "[Death and suffering] do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place."

We cannot foresee when that suffering will come to us that will lend even more meaning to our lives. "None of us knows what is waiting for us, what big moment, what unique opportunity for acting in an exceptional way." He urges his listeners and readers to say yes to life in spite of everything because each hour is a gift with promise. Frankl inspires us to live in exceptional ways through our actions and reactions to what life presents. He writes, "Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited 'for all eternity.'" With Frankl, I want my life, my suffering, my death to bear meaning. May I live up to that responsibility. May I not shrink back when called upon to suffer.