The Choice

adapt to the impossible and inconceivable. To endure the kapos’
beatings, to get up no matter how cold or hungry or tired or ill, to eat
the soup and save the bread, to watch our own Ęesh disappearing, to
hear everywhere that the only escape is death. Even the third phase,
release and liberation, wasn’t an end to the imprisonment, Frankl
writes. It can continue in bitterness, disillusionment, a struggle for
meaning and happiness.
I am staring directly at the thing I have sought to hide. And as I
read, I ĕnd I don’t feel shut down or trapped, locked back in that
place. To my surprise, I don’t feel afraid. For every page I read, I want
to write ten. What if telling my story could lighten its grip instead of
tightening it? What if speaking about the past could heal it instead of
calcify it? What if silence and denial aren’t the only choices to make in
the wake of catastrophic loss?
I read how Frankl marches to his work site in the icy dark. e cold
is harsh, the guards are brutal, the prisoners stumble. In the midst of
physical pain and dehumanizing injustice, Frankl Ęashes on his wife’s
face. He sees her eyes, and his heart blooms with love in the depth of
winter. He understands how a man who has nothing le in this world
may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation
of his beloved. My heart opens. I weep. It is my mother speaking to me
from the page, from the oppressive dark of the train: Just remember, no
one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind. We can’t
choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light.
In those predawn hours in the autumn of 1966, I read this, which is
at the very heart of Frankl’s teaching: 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.
Each moment is a choice. No matter how frustrating or boring or
constraining or painful or oppressive our experience, we can always
choose how we respond. And I ĕnally begin to understand that I, too,