Yes to Life

 Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything by Viktor E Frankl

2020

Weight: 12 oz

Method of Disposal: Giving to my dad 

I thought my father gave me this book, but when I asked him if he wanted it back once I read it and he acted as if he would also like to read it I began to wonder.  I gave it to him.  I do know that the reason it came into my possession is because of him, even if I bought it.

Last year, I was attending a seminar and was asked to consider a quote that might speak to me spiritually or remind me of something important about life and living.  I was struggling to think of an actual quote, though I could find some misquoted snippets supposedly from Buddha overlaid across beautiful, peaceful pictures.  Thank you, Google.

My dad happened to call, and I told him what I was doing.  He immediately recommended a quote from Viktor Frankl and said I should read Man's Search for Meaning.  As soon as we got off the phone, I went in search of it and quickly realized I had read it previously.  At that point, I think I might have then purchased Yes to Life.  It did not seem at all unlikely that a man that survived a concentration camp and the Holocaust to then go on to write books about saying yes to life might know something about what the meaning of life might be or, bare minimum, have an inspiring quote I could share.  The one my dad recommended was some form of this, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  Something I do consistently try to remind myself ever since.

I did not enjoy Yes to Life as much as Man's Search for Meaning, but the power is still there.  Frankl talks about having started to write this book before his time in the concentration camp.  In fact, he sewed the manuscript into his jacket when he was taken away, though his coat was ultimately taken from him.  At some point, at the camp, he began to focus his mental energy on surviving so that he could share what he had written in the manuscript and, while he lived in the cruelest of human conditions, he began writing it again, in his head.  A large part of what I think he wanted us to know is that finding a reason to live will lead us to finding out how to live, which is not to say that there is much that is beyond your control.  The only thing you can always control is how you react to what is happening around you and/or to you.  We do not need to ask what the meaning of life is.  We need to answer the question of life with meaning.