Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything

by Viktor E. Frankl

Because how human beings deal with the limitation of their possibilities regarding how it affects their actions and their ability to love, how they behave under these restrictions—the way in which they accept their suffering under such restrictions—in all of this they still remain capable of fulfilling human values.

What do athletes do but create difficulties for themselves so that they can grow through overcoming them?

Either we change our fate, if possible, or we willingly accept it, if necessary.

What would have become of each of us without our fate?

This was a clear acknowledgment that true suffering of an authentic fate is an achievement, and, indeed, is the highest possible achievement.

What we “radiate” into the world, the “waves” that emanate from our being, that is what will remain of us when our being itself has long since passed away.

And in spite of everything, no human suffering can be compared to anyone else’s because it is part of the nature of suffering that it is the suffering of a particular person, that it is his or her own suffering—that its “magnitude” is dependent solely on the sufferer, that is, on the person; a person’s solitary suffering is just as unique and individual as is every person.

What leads us forward and helps us along the way, what has guided and is guiding us, is a joy in taking responsibility.

Responsibility is something one is both “drawn to” and “withdraws from.”

If we delve into the nature of human responsibility, we recoil: there is something terrible about the responsibility of a human being—and at the same time something glorious!

It is terrible to know that at every moment I bear responsibility for the next; that every decision, from the smallest to the largest, is a decision “for all eternity”; that in every moment I can actualize the possibility of a moment, of that particular moment, or forfeit it. Every single moment contains thousands of possibilities—and I can only choose one of them to actualize it.

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.

To say yes to life is not only meaningful under all circumstances—because life itself is—but it is also possible under all circumstances.