Freedom to Choose How We Respond

None of us knows why we are dealt the cards in life that we are, be they good cards or bad. Perhaps we’re not meant to know. Perhaps the test is not in understanding why, but in how we respond.

We often question whether we deserve life’s misfortunes far more readily than we question whether we deserve its blessings.

When something terrible happens, we ask: Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Why is life so unfair? Yet when we fall in love, experience success, meet someone who changes our life or find ourselves unexpectedly fortunate, we rarely demand that life justify its generosity.

Perhaps neither is something we “deserve”. They are simply among the cards we are dealt.

Life never gave us an ironclad guarantee that it would be fair. It never promised to make us happy or content with what we have, who we are or how we live our lives. The closest thing to a guarantee may be the one we give ourselves: the freedom to choose how we face whatever challenge is before us.

Perhaps that is the unbroken line running through all our lives. Not an unbroken line of happiness or good fortune, because no life offers that. It is the line connecting who we were, what happened to us, how we responded, and who we became because we kept finding our way again.

How often do we hear ourselves say, I want this. I want that. If only things were different. If only I weren’t here.

Perhaps sometimes we should ask a different question. Not simply What do I want? but What do I need, and what can I do to achieve it? Am I prepared, and am I capable, of doing everything that achieving it requires? Or might I be wiser to recognise what I already have and find contentment where I am?

And instead of wishing we were somewhere else, perhaps we might consider the possibility that where we are now has something to offer us that we simply haven’t discovered yet.

We can spend our lives chasing the rainbow on the horizon, convinced that happiness, fulfilment or contentment exists somewhere beyond where we are. And in doing so, we risk overlooking what is already before us.

That doesn’t mean accepting circumstances we have the power to change. Nor does it mean pretending that loss, disappointment or adversity don’t hurt. It means recognising the difference between what we can change and what we cannot, and refusing to surrender our lives to the latter.

Viktor Frankl wrote of “the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” His belief was forged in circumstances more horrific than most of us could ever imagine. External forces could take almost everything from a person, he argued, but there remained an inner freedom: the ability to choose one’s attitude and to search for meaning.

Perhaps that freedom matters far more than we realise.

We cannot always choose the cards we are dealt. We cannot undo what has happened, guarantee what comes next or make life conform to what we once imagined it would be.

But we can choose what we do with what remains.

We can spend our lives defined by what happened to us, forever wishing the cards had fallen differently. Or we can acknowledge what has been lost, recognise what remains, and decide how best to use it.

Maybe finding our way again isn’t about finding our way back to the life we thought we would have.

Maybe it is about making the very best of the life that is before us.

Life’s events often place us in the position of asking, “Who am I now?”

The most profound of those events is the death of our life partner, because we don’t just lose them, we lose part of who we are. We find ourselves asking, Who am I now?

I have written about that a number of times on the journey from “we to me” following the very sudden death of my husband some years ago. Finding the path back to the new me wasn’t easy. Accepting the changes was extremely hard. But over time we gradually rediscover ourselves and begin to build a different life. It isn’t the life we expected, but it can still be a meaningful one.

I was prompted to revisit that yesterday after spending time with a friend who is being forced to face that reality again for the second time. The first was coming to terms with the sudden death of her husband. She rebuilt her life and found her “new me”. Her second challenge, I suspect, is going to be much harder because this time it isn’t about losing a partner. It’s about losing part of herself and the control she has always had over her own life.

Learning to live life on our own is hard. The journey from “we to me” is dark and emotional. But eventually we can once again enjoy many of the things life has to offer—our freedom, our mobility, our independence, our free will and the ability to make our own decisions.

But my friend is now being forced to face life with a disability. To shed the “new me” she became after her husband’s death and discover yet another version of herself. This time she is confronting the loss of much of her freedom, her mobility, her independence, her free will and some of the control over the decisions that shape her life.

She’s fighting against that reality and, in doing so, may unintentionally be making life harder for herself. But I completely understand why.

Perhaps that’s what makes this journey so much harder. My friend has always described herself as a free spirit, a gypsy. Someone who followed her own path, made her own decisions and lived life on her own terms.

Since her husband’s death she has rarely stood still. She has moved from Sydney to Tasmania, to Port Macquarie, to Runaway Bay, back to Tasmania, then to Warners Bay, buying and selling homes, often without ever seeing them in person. Home was never simply a place. It was wherever she chose to build the next chapter of her life.

Then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, everything changed. At just 69 years of age she found herself in hospital facing a life-changing decision. Since then she has moved in and out of hospital for almost two years. The last eight months, following a devastating fall and multiple fractures, have been spent in aged care. She is now facing the daunting task of trying to regain some mobility.

Her loss is profound. Her freedom. Her independence. Her dignity. Control over her own body and many of the decisions that shape her life. Her home and the treasured possessions that connect her to happier times.

Perhaps that’s the greatest loss of all. We can lose people we love and, somehow, still find a way to rebuild because we still have ourselves. But when life begins to take parts of us—our independence, our mobility, our confidence, our identity—we’re left asking an even harder question. Not, “Who do I live without?” but, “Who am I becoming?”

Perhaps that is one of life’s greatest challenges. We think we only have to discover ourselves once. But life has other ideas. At different stages it asks us the same question over and over again:

Who am I now?

While we can walk beside my friend as she navigates the next chapter of her life, we can’t walk it for her. None of us knows how long that journey will be.

It’s natural to build barriers when reality feels too painful to accept. Perhaps the greatest gift friends can offer isn’t to push those barriers down, but to gently help lower them, enough to let a little light in.

Life can still hold joy, laughter and purpose, even if it is experienced from a wheelchair. In my friend’s case, it would never be an ordinary wheelchair. It would be the brightest, sparkliest wheelchair anyone had ever seen. Because beneath the body that has been broken is still the free spirit, the gypsy, who has always lived life on her own terms.

Perhaps that’s why I understand her struggle so well. Life asked me, “Who am I now?” after Richard died. It is now asking her the same question, but in a very different way.

The circumstances are different, but the challenge is remarkably similar. Both journeys require letting go of the person we once were so that, over time, we can discover who we are now.

And perhaps one of life’s greatest privileges is helping others discover who they are becoming. Ironically, when we help light that path for someone else, we often find it illuminates our own as well.