Freedom of Choice: Are We Still Free When Life Is Beyond Our Control?

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Dr. Viktor Frankl

Today, I would like to explore a question that I have been interested in both personally and academically during my graduate studies in Philosophy. When fateful events take us into their grip and seem to take away all control over our lives, does our freedom as human beings remain? Do we always retain the freedom to choose, despite everything?

Until my mid-twenties, I believed that even when fateful events happened to us, we remained the ultimate architects of our lives and could choose among limitless possibilities through our free will, even in the face of circumstances beyond our control. However, unexpected life experiences invited me to reconsider this belief and explore very different perspectives.

When I suddenly lost my father in 2020 and found myself, almost overnight, in the midst of a chaotic grieving process, I was confronted, in a profoundly painful way, with the reality that life is not shaped by our free will alone. I learned that sometimes our emotions can almost take over our entire being and impose themselves upon us. Contrary to what I had believed, we did not have limitless choices in every circumstance. There were experiences in life in which the reins seemed to slip entirely from our hands, when we could not even control ourselves. This realization shook me deeply.

Two years after my father’s death, my beloved grandfather was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Seeing him through an extremely difficult illness and eventually saying goodbye to him once again made me feel as though I were completely in the grip of fate. When life tests us with profound suffering, I experienced how dramatically our sphere of freedom can shrink, and how sometimes the only choice left is simply to go through the pain. For a long time, I therefore completely lost my faith in free will and came to believe that our fates controlled us from beginning to end.

In 2026, however, discovering the philosophy of the esteemed psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl opened up an entirely new horizon for me. The training I undertook in “Logotherapy and Existential Analysis” introduced me to a completely different perspective through which I could reframe everything I had experienced.

According to Frankl, who spent three years of his life enduring the horrific conditions of concentration camps, we retain the freedom to choose our attitude even in the face of fateful circumstances. The ability to determine how we will respond to the circumstances that befall us is inherent in human nature.

This perspective invited me to look at my life through a new window. No matter how painful the fateful events I have encountered in recent years have been, I realized that choosing to acknowledge the pain and courageously move through it was, in itself, my choice. According to Frankl, in each moment and situation we encounter in our lives, we are called to make the most meaningful choice available to us. And my own life experiences have taught me that when pain cannot be eliminated, sometimes the most meaningful thing we can do is to continue living and allow ourselves to be transformed through the experience of that pain. This new window that opened in my mind freed me from feeling like a helpless victim of fate.

Today, through this reflection, I would like to invite you to think about your own life experiences. In those moments beyond your control when you felt like a victim of fate, what was the unique attitude that remained yours to choose? What meaningful response did you give to those fateful circumstances? When pain was unavoidable, what was the choice you made in the face of that pain—the choice that made you who you are?

Perhaps the moments when we discover most deeply who we are are precisely those in which we choose how to respond to fateful circumstances. And perhaps what lies at the very heart of what makes us human is our ability to choose that attitude.

Feel free to share your experiences and perspectives on this 🤍