Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

Every single moment contains thousands of possibilities—and I can only choose one of them to actualize it. But in making the choice, I have condemned all the others and sentenced them to “never being,” and even this is for all eternity! But it is wonderful to know that the future—my own future and with it the future of the things, the people around me—is somehow, albeit to a very small extent, dependent on my decisions in every moment. Everything I realize through them, or “bring into the world,” as we have said, I save into reality and thus protect from transience. But on average, people are too sluggish to shoulder their responsibilities. And this is where education for responsibility begins. Certainly, the burden is heavy, it is difficult not only to recognize responsibility but also to commit to it. To say yes to it, and to life. But there have been people who have said yes despite all difficulties. And when the inmates in the Buchenwald concentration camp sang in their song, “We still want to say yes to life,” they did not only sing about it but also achieved it many times—they and many of us in the other camps as well. And they achieved it under unspeakable conditions, external and internal conditions that we have already spoken enough about today. So shouldn’t we all be able to achieve it today in, after all, incomparably milder circumstances? To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances—because life itself is—but it is also possible under all c...