Meaning in Suffering and Resilience

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men 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 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.

And there were always choices to make. 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.

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

In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the very moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. As Nietzsche said: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’