Ultimate Freedom, Ultimate Power

Someone you really love, perhaps your child, is in an intensive care unit diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, undergoing a difficult treatment of last resort that has a 15% chance of success. Is joy present? Is peace available? Humor? Love? Is it possible for you to experience them in such circumstances? It can be counter-intuitive, to say the least, to believe they are and you can.

Jet airplanes loaded with fuel and people crash into and destroy both towers of the World Trade Center killing almost 3,000 people. In a church the following Sunday, the minister tells her congregation, "Send love to everyone," and you know she means the hijackers too. Can you possibly do that? Why would you want to? Emily Parker's father, the first parent to speak publicly after the Sandy Hook shootings, so choked with emotion he could barely talk, requested love for everyone, including the shooter and his family.

Among the outpouring of candles, notes, stuffed animals, Christmas trees and ornaments in Newtown, Connecticut, a sign appears: "We Are Sandy Hook. We Choose Love."  The residents are refusing to allow their circumstances to victimize them, to affect their values, to determine their response. They are practicing the ultimate freedom, the ultimate power each of us has every moment of our lives. Viktor Frankl, a Jewish  psychiatrist stripped of everything and imprisoned in a concentration camp during World War II, wrote about this freedom, this power, in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning: "Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. 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." 

It sounds so simple. It seems so easy, yet I'm startled time after time to find myself in situations where I feel helpless, powerless, like a victim. It may take a moment (or two), a couple of breaths (or more!) to realize I have that ultimate power - the power to choose my response to my circumstances. Circumstances can seem so compellingly real - a friend says something hurtful, a family member is critical or unkind, our boundaries are violated, our expectations unfulfilled. It can be hard to remember there is a space between stimulus and response. Sometimes it's just stimulus/reaction, not stimulus/space/choice/response. Having your six-year-old child killed at school may be the ultimate opportunity to practice ultimate power. Yet so many of the parents who lost children at Sandy Hook are doing just that, shining their light, committed to “expanding awareness,” contributing to “awakening,” shifting consciousness. We are being confronted with global opportunities to make new choices in alignment with our highest values as we witness Indian women being brutally raped, an Afghani schoolgirl shot, Syrian genocide.

Giving birth can be painful. Six-year-old Benjamin Wheeler’s mother said she always knew he would do “amazing things” in his life, she just didn’t realize they would happen through his death. At Newtown's Town Hall, there's a banner reading: "Together We Birth a Culture of Peace." Together, painfully, means both houses of Congress. Viktor Frankel also said, “It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” It is an exciting, and, yes, a challenging time to be alive birthing a new planetary consciousness. We are here now by choice, here to participate, here to take a stand. And, we are up to it.