It was 3:11 AM when my phone rang. My mother’s voice cracked as she told me my dad was gone. An aortic aneurysm – something that I knew was preventable. Just hours earlier, I had been discussing similar symptoms with my boss, an ER physician of twenty years. “Those kidney stone symptoms?” he had said, “Sometimes they’re actually aneurysms. Your dad needs to get to the ER and get checked out.”
But he didn’t go. Instead he scheduled an appointment for the next morning. I highly encouraged him to go, but I didn’t get in the car, drive 6 hours, and make him go. To be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered. The aneurysm burst five hours from our last conversation.
The anger came in waves. At God. At my father for avoiding the ER because he lacked insurance. At myself for not being there. But most of all, at a healthcare system that made my father choose between potential bankruptcy and his life. I was just angry … for a long time.
The Space Between
It was during this dark period that I discovered Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor who lost nearly his entire family in Nazi concentration camps, wrote something that would fundamentally change my perspective on suffering:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
These words hit differently coming from someone who had endured unimaginable horror. Here was a man who, stripped of everything – family, possessions, dignity – discovered that the Nazis could not take away his final freedom: the freedom to choose his response to his circumstances.
The Power of Choice
Think about that for a moment. The same event can devastate one person and barely affect another. Why? Because we give situations their meaning. When I share my father’s story, it may move you, but you likely don’t feel the deep ache I feel. If it was your father, you’d feel that ache. Same situation – different meaning.
This isn’t about minimizing pain or suggesting we shouldn’t feel grief, anger, or frustration. Rather, it’s about recognizing that even in our darkest moments, we have a choice in how we respond … in the meaning we give to the situations we are placed in.
From Reaction to Response
We spend much of our lives on autopilot. Someone cuts us off in traffic – we honk and curse. A colleague makes a snide comment – we snap back. Our kid accidentally breaks something valuable – we lash out. We react as if we’re programmed robots, as if our automatic responses are inevitable and justified.
But what if we could pause in that crucial moment between stimulus and response? What if we could transform our reactive “Why did this happen to me?” into a responsive “How can I choose to handle this?”
Finding Your Space
The key lies in recognizing that tiny gap between what happens to us and how we respond. It’s in that space that our power lives. Here’s how to find it:
- Pause: When something triggers you, take a metaphorical step back. Even a moment’s pause can break the automatic reaction cycle.
- Breathe: Use that pause to take a conscious breath. This creates literal and figurative space between stimulus and response.
- Choose: Ask yourself: “What’s to be gained from my reaction? What response would align with who I want to be?”
From Personal to Universal
This principle applies to everything from minor annoyances to life-altering events. When your phone screen cracks, when you receive a difficult diagnosis, when relationships end – there’s always a space between what happens and how you respond.
My father’s death taught me this in the hardest possible way. I could have remained angry, bitter, and withdrawn. But I choose to channel that experience into compassion for others going through loss or struggling with healthcare access. I choose to honor his memory by helping others navigate similar challenges.
When I was doing community outreach during my tenure in EMS, I made the choice to focus on teaching Bystander CPR to whoever was interested in the class. Not because CPR can save someone who has suffered an aortic aneurysm (it cannot). But because I remembered my mom telling me she did CPR until the paramedics arrived, and that helped her find peace in knowing she had done all she could do in her final moments.
The Ultimate Freedom
Viktor Frankl discovered in the concentration camps what many of us learn through our own trials: our ultimate freedom lies not in controlling what happens to us, but in choosing our response to it. This isn’t just philosophical theory – it’s practical power.
When we truly grasp this, something remarkable happens. We stop being victims of circumstance and start being authors of our experience. We find that our freedom has always been there, waiting in that space between stimulus and response.
Remember: You may not choose what happens to you, but you always, always have the power to choose what happens in you.