When You Can’t Change Your Situation, Change Yourself

When we are no longer able to change a situation . . . we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor Frankl, Auschwitz prison camp surviver, psychiatrist and author (1905-1997)

Sometimes it’s not the words, but the person who says them.

The above quote is compelling on its own but takes on a much deeper level of meaning when we know the story behind it. As an inmate at Auschwitz during the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl was subjected to horrors most of us can’t even imagine. Yet as he reflected on that experience, Frankl found hope and valuable insight into the human condition:

“The experiences of camp life show that humanity does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Humanity can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the people who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person 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. . . .”

In later years, Frankl came to mentor Edith Eger, a fellow Auschwitz survivor. Edith was sixteen when her parents were killed on their first day at the concentration camp. Frankl’s work was a catalyst for her becoming a therapist and aided in her own healing. She wrote honestly about her personal journey:

“The choice to accept myself as I am: human, imperfect. And the choice to be responsible for my own happiness. To forgive my flaws and reclaim my innocence. To stop asking why I deserved to survive. To function as well as I can, to commit myself to serve others, to do everything in my power to honor my parents, to see to it that they did not die in vain. To do my best, in my limited capacity, so future generations don’t experience what I did. To be useful, to be used up, to survive and to thrive so I can use every moment to make the world a better place. And to finally, finally stop running from the past. To do everything possible to redeem it, and then let it go. I can make the choice that all of us can make. I can’t ever change the past. But there is a life I can save: It is mine. The one I am living right now, this precious moment. . . .

And to the vast campus of death that consumed my parents and so very many others, to the classroom of horror that still had something sacred to teach me about how to live—that I was victimized but I’m not a victim, that I was hurt but not broken, that the soul never dies, that meaning and purpose can come from deep in the heart of what hurts us the most—I utter my final words. Goodbye, I say. And, Thank you. Thank you for life, and for the ability to finally accept the life that is.”

I can add very little to such powerful words. I simply encourage you to sit with them, let them speak to you, and embrace their truth in your own way. If you do, you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

This post was based on Richard Rohr’s Daily Mediations from The Center for Action and Contemplation, May 19 & 20, 2021 www.cac.org

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (Beacon Press: 1959, 2006), 65-57, 112.

Edith Eva Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible (Scribner: 2017), 155, 156, 232, 233.