The Choice by Edith Eger- 6/5 ratings
The other day, I said that I have never believed in those listicles titled 'Top 25 or 50 books to read before you die'. However, in complete contradiction to what I said earlier, if I were to ever create a list of the top 25 books to read before you die, I would include this book.
Hope. Hope is what makes me say that I will come to the next Bookaholics review meeting, even though multiple things can go wrong between now and then. Hope is a beautiful thing. Like love, you can't really define it. It is the engine that runs the world. If ever there were a paragon of keeping up hope and keeping one's spirits up amid unimaginable horrors, it is Edith Eger.
In his book Man's Search for Meaning, the psychotherapist Viktor Frankl talks about logotherapy. He says that a person can make it out of even the most dire circumstances if they can find some meaning to keep going. That meaning and will to live is what causes hope to flower and bring meaning to a person's existence. This quote of his comes to my mind:
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 way.
And Edith Eger lives by this quote. The words 'Even in hell, hope can flower' on the cover should give you an idea what this book is about. Edith is literally transported to hell, the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz. But Edith survives the Holocaust and makes it out alive. However, once she is freed, she is unable to fully live in the present because the past keeps creeping up on her: those images of death, emaciated bodies, people toppling into ditches because of weakness, people giving up on life because they extinguish all hopes of life and find no reason to live. What Edith experiences once she is outside is trauma, post-traumatic stress. Her body signals to her that she is not safe outside, and harmless sounds and sights make her cower for safety and raise her anxiety.
But what Edith does next is remarkable. She studies psychology, pursues a PhD in clinical psychology at the age of 50, seeks inspiration from the works of Viktor Frankl and Carl Rogers (a humanistic psychologist who introduced the concept of unconditional positive regard), learns about the concept of learned helplessness, does the hard work of healing herself and decides to help people who have experienced trauma. Having experienced the worst kind of human suffering, she alleviates her clients' suffering.
This is the journey of a remarkable woman who found the will to live and kept the flame of hope alive amid the most unendurable circumstances. This is the story of Edith Eva Eger, who, when presented with a choice between life and death, chose life by drawing on her inner strength.
Edith's experiences at Auschwitz make for an uncomfortable reading experience. There are harrowing details about what the Nazis did to Edith and her family at Auschwitz. Edith's matter-of-fact narration when recounting these atrocities will make what you read even more discomforting. However, this is a part of human history that we have to acknowledge.
I conclude with this paragraph from the book. This is when Edith established her private practice but was assailed by self-doubt. She felt like an impostor. That was when she wrote this:
I began to formulate a new relationship with my own trauma. It wasn't something to silence, suppress, avoid, negate. It was a well I could draw on, a deep source of understanding and intuition about my patients, their pain, and the path to healing. My first years of private practice helped me to reframe my wound as something necessary and useful, and to shape and develop my most enduring therapeutic principles. Often the patients I worked with mirrored my own discoveries about the journey to freedom. Equally often they taught me that my search for freedom wasn't complete – and they pointed me in the direction of further healing.
And I loved this little innocent statement tucked away in the middle of the book:
When you have something to prove, you aren't free.
And this paragraph, a gold mine:
Anger, however consuming, is never the most important emotion. It is only the very outer edge, the thinly exposed top layer of a much deeper feeling. And the real feeling that's disguised by the mask of anger is usually fear. And you can't feel love and fear at the same time.
This is one of the best books I have read in my life.
