Yes To Life In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

there are people whose desire to commit suicide comes from the fact that they simply feel tired, tired of life. But this tiredness is a feeling – and we all know that feelings are not reasons. That someone is weary, feels exhausted, is in itself not a reason for them to stop in their tracks. Rather, everything depends on whether carrying on does actually have meaning, whether that makes it worth overcoming the tiredness. What is needed here is simply an answer to the question of the meaning of life, of continuing to live despite persistent world-weariness. As such, this is not a counter-argument to living on; this continuing to live, however, will only be possible in the knowledge of life’s unconditional meaning. But in truth, a fourth group of people belong here, those who seek to commit suicide because they just cannot believe in the meaning of living on, in the meaning of life itself. A suicide with that kind of motivation is commonly called a ‘balance-sheet suicide’. In each case it results from a so-called negative life balance. Such a person creates a ‘balance sheet’ and compares what they have (credit) with what they feel they ought to have (debit); they weigh up what life still owes them against what profit they believe they can still derive from life, and the negative balance that they then calculate induces them to commit suicide.