The Choice

by Edith Eger

suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional.

There are different ways to keep yourself going. I will have to find my own way to live with what has happened. I don’t know what it is yet. We’re free from the death camps, but we also must be free to—free to create, to make a life, to choose. And until we find our freedom to, we’re just spinning around in the same endless darkness.

The irony of freedom is that it is harder to find hope and purpose.

To be passive is to let others decide for you. To be aggressive is to decide for others. To be assertive is to decide for yourself. And to trust that there is enough, that you are enough.

We can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light.