One of the most powerful books of the 20th century was Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning.
Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist living in Vienna when the Nazi’s came to power. He was aware of the unraveling of things and had obtained a visa to secure refuge in the United States. But at the eleventh hour, he chose to stay in Vienna in order to care for his elderly parents who could not travel.
On September 25, 1942, Frankl, his young wife and his parents were rounded up and sent to the death camps. The Nazi’s took and destroyed all of Frankl’s writings and research. They exterminated his wife and his parent in the gas chambers… and burned their bodies in the crematoria.
Through it all, Frankl chose to care for his fellow prisoners. He chose to believe that, despite the odds, he would survive. He chose to believe that, even in this darkest of times in history, evil would be overcome, good would prevail.
He chose to believe in hope.
Frankl did survive… and after he was released he went on to write Man’s Search for Meaning. Its central tenet: That the greatest gift of our humanity, the greatest of all of our human gifts, is our power – our freedom – to chose how we will be in every moment – regardless of our circumstance.
We get to choose:
➢ Hope over despair;
➢ Kindness over hatred;
➢ Peace instead of turmoil.
We get to choose the work that makes our hearts happy; we get to choose the relationships that nurture our souls; we get to care for these beautiful bodies that have been given to us.
We get to choose to see beauty in all things; to hold all as sacred, as divinely given.
We get to choose to act even in the face of insurmountable odds. We get to choose to begin again no matter how often it is that we have failed. 
We get to see the majesty of this very moment; and we get to choose to believe that the best is yet to come.
And above all else, we get to choose love…
Because we are free.
Celebrate your independence day.
It is amazing with the suffering & heartache Frankl experienced that he survived, and even thrived with hope and giving inspiration to others. As you say, so much is about our choices about how we respond to tragedy. Although, losing our loved ones (my son’s death at 24) is not a choice we would make, we do have the choice about how we respond. Of course, recovery does not happen over night. Those of us grieving have to go through that journey of grief to get to the other side, and begin making choices about how we will now live our lives. I like what Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” Thanks Walt.