The Freedom That Can Never Be Taken Away

"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." - Victor Frankl

I wonder if you’ve ever heard of locked-in syndrome?

It’s a nightmare. 

Basically, it’s a situation where every part of the body has been paralyzed, except for the movement of your eyes. In other words, you are “locked in”. Trapped as a conscious creature in a completely immobile body. It’s horrible, but it’s real, and people suffer from it.

I’ve often imagined how I would respond if I were to experience this kind of condition. 

Would living still be worth it? 

Is there a mode of being, an attitude that I could adopt, that would make life worth living even if I had lost all of my independence and all of my bodily function? 

I’m convinced that there is and it has to do with what we choose to pay attention to.

Imagine for a moment that you were experiencing locked in syndrome. 

Your first feeling would probably be horror. I know mine would be. Grief would be right on its heels.

I’d be thinking about all the things I wanted to do. All the things I used to enjoy that now I won’t be able to. All the ways my hopes and dreams had just been shattered…

But after enough time passed, if it really was the case that this was your new reality, do you think  you could ever reach a place of acceptance? 

And if you did reach a place of acceptance, what do you think would happen to your attention?

I suspect it would force you to really slow down. I mean, it would stop you completely, really. 

You can’t go anywhere. You can’t do anything. You can’t solve any problems. 

All you can do is watch. 

And listen.

And think.

And choose your attitude.

And when you slow down, and pay close attention, you start to see that this world is infinitely detailed. Infinitely complex. Endlessly interesting and beautiful.

Here’s what I mean:

As I'm writing this, some sunlight is coming through the window and hitting the wall in front of me. If I look closely, I see that the wall isn’t just one color. There’s actually a texture to it from where the paint rollers rolled on their paint. 

I can see the interplay of light and shadow. 

I can see the shadow of heat waves, radiating upward. 

It’s beautiful.

If I just stop and watch closely, this relatively mundane scene shows itself to be brimming with beauty. Waiting to be noticed. 

This is true of all of life. It is possible to find the beauty in everything.

This doesn’t mean suffering isn’t real. It doesn’t mean life isn’t hard. This isn’t naive and blind optimism. 

Rather, it’s an action, a defiant choice we can make no matter how hard life gets, to look for where the beauty is hiding. Because it is there, somewhere. I guarantee it.

This is about changing the lens you see the world through.

My father in-law, Bobby, was recently diagnosed with cancer. It’s been hard. It’s not something I would wish on anyone. He’s been in and out of the hospital constantly. I’ve watched him suffering and it breaks my heart to see it. And yet somehow, in the midst of all of this, I have seen glimpses of beauty. 

The way the nursing staff care for him. The way his family has loved and served him. The way it has brought us together, with a deep sense of gratitude for who Bobby is and what he means to us. And I’ve seen it in Bobby’s attitude towards his diagnosis. I remember when he first received the news that he might be dying, he said something truly profound. 

“We’re all dying, but we aren’t all living.”

Being confronted with his own mortality has caused him to appreciate the gift that life is and the beauty that every day can bring. From the feeling of sunlight on your skin, to the smell of coffee, to the deep love that is felt when a family member just sits with you, quietly, by a hospital bed.

When life throws these kinds of challenges at you, you have a choice. You always have a choice. 

You can become bitter, resentful and hopeless. OR

You can choose to look for and find the beauty in everything.