Sublime

used to ask, Why me? Why did I survive? I have learned to ask a different question: Why not me? Standing on a stage surrounded by the next generation of freedom fighters, I could see in my conscious awareness something that is often elusive, often invisible: that to run away from the past or to fight against our present pain is to imprison ourselve

Survivors don’t have time to ask, “Why me?” For survivors, the only relevant question is, “What now?”

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote: “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. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Frankl learned this lesson in a Nazi concentration camp (Frankl, 195

same: “I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”

We can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear. Hostile. Paralyzed. Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent.

OUR FIRST ACT AS FREE MEN was to throw ourselves onto the provisions. That’s all we thought about. No thought of revenge, or of parents. Only of bread. And even when we were no longer hungry, not one of us thought of revenge. The next day, a few of the young men ran into Weimar to bring back some potatoes and clothes—and to sleep with girls. But st

“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” (Frankl, [1959] 2006).