In 2008, Jim Carrey starred in a romantic comedy called “Yes Man.” He plays bank loan officer Carl Allen who has become withdrawn and depressed since his divorce. A colleague suggests that Carl attend a motivational seminar that encourages participants to seize every opportunity to say “yes.”
Carl has, in the magic of the film’s mythology, entered into some kind of covenant with a higher power, where saying anything other than yes results in bad luck.
As he says yes to more and more requests (an unhoused man asks for his car, he says yes; he approves several requests for microloans at work and receives a promotion), Carl meets Allison and the two fall in love.
Hijinks ensue.
I’ve been thinking about this movie recently as I’ve been trying to adopt a similar attitude, albeit for a very different reason. Unlike Carl, I’m happily married but physically miserable. I get winded just walking around the block, and I’ve lost close to 10 kilograms from my already underweight post-CAR-T self (16 in total).
But I’m making it my policy to say yes to whatever I can; to not let my current disabilities keep me from taking advantage of life.
Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Say Yes to Life in Spite of Everything that “what matters is to make the best of any given situation,” an approach he ironically dubbed “tragic optimism.” He’s not saying one must believe that all tragedy will disappear; it’s about ensuring that tragedy doesn’t get the final word.
Another Frankl aphorism: “Live as if you were living for the second time.”
Lucy Kalanithi, whose husband documented his battle with terminal lung cancer in the beautifully crafted memoir When Breath Becomes Air, shared during a TED talk the insight that “being human doesn’t happen despite suffering. It happens within it.”
Shortly before his death from cancer, neurologist Oliver Sacks collected a number of his essays in a book, Gratitude. Sacks doesn’t minimize illness; he simply refuses to let it be the whole story. “Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
Saying yes to the feeling of sadness or anger doesn’t numb the emotion; it helps it pass faster.
Over the course of a month, I said yes to two plays that our musician son, Aviv, was performing in (The Baroness Rothschild – see my review here – and a revival of the Broadway hit Guys and Dolls); downed a sloppy brisket sandwich at the Modi’in Beer Festival; and enjoyed an evening of dance from New York’s Peridance troupe, one of the few artistic groups to visit Israel since the October 7 Hamas-led massacres.
I shuffled into Kabbalat Shabbat services at Nava Tehila in Jerusalem; and gave my rapt attention to the words and songs of Angela Buchdahl, of New York City’s Central Synagogue, who spoke at Israel’s stunning National Library about her new memoir and the experience of becoming the first female Asian rabbi.
I haven’t been able to say yes to everything. During my recent hospitalizations, I missed four weddings, a performance by Ishay Ribo and Amir Dadon at Hutzot HaYotzer, and another concert by Aviv, who plays in a Phil Collins tribute band. I also had to cancel our highly anticipated family cruise to Iceland; I was simply not strong enough on the date of embarkation.
On the flip side, there are the grandkids. I can’t flip two-year-old Roni upside down or vigorously kick a ball with four-year-old Ilai (although we did play a relaxed game of tossing the frisbee through the monkey bars at the park), but I can still read to them and tell them stories.
When our own children were young, I had a tradition of making up “Frieda and Ernest” stories. I never knew what I was going to say before I sat down. Everything just flowed out of me in real-time.
“Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Ernest and his sister Frieda. They lived in a big house in Italy in a village at the top of a mountain in Tuscany with their Uncle Giuseppe.”
With the help of Uncle Giuseppe, Frieda and Ernest went on fantastical adventures all over Europe. There was a statue garden outside of Paris where the stone figures came to life and did battle with each other. Another time, Uncle Giuseppe invented a flying carpet that took in a panoramic view of the Colosseum in Rome.
I made one doozy of a mistake when I was telling those stories so long ago – I never wrote any of them down. I’ve forgotten most of the details of the hundreds of tales I came up with. But I see now that was never the point.
“Will you be able to tell us about Frieda and Ernest if we take a vacation together?” Ilai asked me.
“As long as I have a brain and it goes with me,” I replied.
Why keep saying yes? Because the alternative for me – waiting until I feel healthy again – could mean waiting forever. Life doesn’t begin after recovery. It’s whatever you can say yes to right now – even if today includes fatigue, lugging along a suitcase full of medication and maybe needing a nap afterward.
It’s also an antidote to the kinds of less-illness-defined excuses that are canon in Western society, such as “I’ll travel when I retire” or “I’ll spend more time with family when work slows down” or “I’ll be able to enjoy myself when treatment ends.”
Say yes to each of those now, not later.
That would be a good message to work into a future Frieda and Ernest story.
I first wrote about the power of saying yes for The Jerusalem Post.
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