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Whether a life is fulfilled doesn’t depend on how great one’s range of action is, but rather only on whether the circle is filled out.
It is not only through our actions that we can give life meaning—insofar as we can answer life’s specific questions responsibly—we can fulfill the demands of existence not only as active agents but also as loving human beings: in our loving dedication to the beautiful, the great, the good.
Those who experience, not the arts, but nature, may have a similar response, and also those who experience another human being. Do we not know the feeling that overtakes us when we are in the presence of a particular person and, roughly translates as, The fact that this person exists in the world at all, this alone makes this world, and a life in it, meaningful.
In general, of course, it is not advisable to create difficulties for oneself; in general, suffering as a result of misfortune is only meaningful if this misfortune has come about through fate, and is thus unavoidable and inescapable.
Either we change our fate, if possible, or we willingly accept it, if necessary.
Those who rebel against their fate—that is, against circumstances they cannot help and which they certainly cannot change—have not grasped the meaning of fate.
Fate really is integral in the totality of our lives; and not even the smallest part of what is destined can be broken away from this totality without destroying the whole, the configuration of our existence.
This should not surprise us once we recall the great fundamental truth of being human—being human is nothing other than being conscious and being responsible!
Now, the suicide also flouts the rules of the game of life; these rules do not require us to win at all costs, but they do demand from us that we never give up the fight.
“What if we were immortal?” And we can give the answer: if we were immortal, then we could postpone everything, but truly everything.
No death, no end would be looming over us, there would be no limitation of our possibilities, we would see no reason to do a particular thing right now, or surrender ourselves to an experience just now—there would be time, we would have time, an infinite amount of time.
Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.
Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it—or leave unfulfilled—that gives our existence significance.
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.
“Live as if you were living for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!”
the finite nature of our relationship with another person also makes the life of each individual not meaningless but only meaningful.
As discussed earlier, just as death proved to be necessary for finding meaning in that it justified the uniqueness of our existence and with it our responsibleness, we can now see that the imperfect nature of human beings is meaningful since—now regarded positively—it represents the individuality of our essential inner being.
Analogous to the functional value of the single cell for the whole organism, the unique individuality of each human being is given value through its relationship with an overarching whole; namely, a human community.
“If I do not do it, who else will do it? But if I only do it for me, what am I then? And if I do not do it now, then when will I do it?”
