Say yes

This week I finished two books that left me emotionally drained. The first, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, is a novel about two sisters dealing with the scourge of World War II in occupied France. The second is psychiatrist Victor Frankl's book Say Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything, a series of three lectures given in 1945 after he was released from a concentration camp. Both books address the complexities of saying yes to responsibility in the midst of unbearable suffering and a catastrophic breakdown of social norms and human decency.

It is pointless for me to try to relay the power and intelligence of Frankl's voice, or the emotional strength and awareness displayed by Hannah's characters. Frankl's focus is on how to find meaning in life when suffering cannot be avoided. Indeed, he believes suffering is meaning, or at least a vehicle for finding it. What he suggests in his lectures is that by taking responsibility, especially in dire circumstances, we are saying yes to life, recognizing its value and honoring its gift. 

Frankl describes how the Nazi's deprived him and his fellow inmates of every form of identity they once possessed, "everything that was not essential was melted down" until all that was left was "an individual with a decision to make." 

We've all heard, asked, or thought the cliche question, "what's the meaning of life?" It's a pointless question since we can never correctly discern the answer. I think the more meaningful query is, what is life asking us? And I imagine life's question to be, "Who are you?"

There are approximately 7.8 billion persons on Earth at present, all unique individuals of every age experiencing billions of different ways to live. And being a human is hard. Even without invasion forces and concentration camps there is plenty of suffering to go around. But by simply living as distinct individuals each of us provides the answer to life's question, though perhaps unknowingly: I am this.

I am this and you are that and we enter the world as separate, lone creatures. The circumstances we are born into may constrain or expand our choices but those choices should be ours alone. No one else has a right—though they will surely try to claim it—to mold us into a favored form or seduce us into thinking, believing, or acting in one way only. And our differences, that some decry, are instead our greatest advantage; living examples showing us diverse ways to be, learn, and think creatively.

The polarization of America now stretches across every surface we touch; sometimes without awareness we step to one side or the other, claim someone else's words as our own, or show allegiance to—whatever. It's hard to say "I am this" when others are yelling "you're wrong!" Or "You can't be!" Or even "it's forbidden to be you!"

I hope we get past this troubled period without more violence, without the witless and narrow-minded becoming the omnipotent. Just as the books I read left me emotionally drained, so too does reading the daily papers or watching the evening news. But there is so much more that is good and positive and commonly shared. That should be our collective focus, not the daily dirge of negativity. It's always time and there's always a way, in Frankl's words, to "say yes to life."