In his powerful little book Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl wrote about surviving a German concentration camp. "Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you became the plaything of circumstance....It is this spiritual freedom--which cannot be taken away--that makes life meaningful and purposeful."
I first read Frankl's words so many years ago that my yellow highlighting now fades into the yellowing of the pages themselves. Yet as I read them, they are still as profound as they were then. That someone who survived the Holocaust could write about the experience as spiritual freedom still leaves me in awe.
Over half a century later, I recently heard the articulate Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped at knife point and held captive for many months earlier this century, talk about moving beyond her experience. Although she was only 14 at the time of her capture and subjugation, she described a conversation with her mother the day after she was rescued by police. Her mother encouraged her that the best way to get back at her kidnapper was to have a happy life. Now 25, Smart has done that.
There are things that happen in our lives over which we have little or no control, but we always have control over our experience. I think of Frankl and Smart, I am once again certain that having peace is a choice, and it is a choice that we make, as Frankl said, every day and every hour.
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