The Choice

by Edith Eger

Conventional wisdom says that if something bothers you or causes you anxiety, then just don’t look at it. Don’t dwell on it. Don’t go there. So we run from past traumas and hardships or from current discomfort or conflict. For much of my adulthood I had thought my survival in the present depended on keeping the past and its darkness locked away.

Bad things, I am afraid, happen to everyone. This we can’t change. If you look at your birth certificate, does it say life will be easy? It does not. But so many of us remain stuck in a trauma or grief, unable to experience our lives fully. This we can change.

Often, the little upsets in our lives are emblematic of the larger losses; the seemingly insignificant worries are representative of greater pain.