Sometimes so much accumulates at once that a thought arises which is hard to put into words:
That something is fundamentally wrong.
Not just the situation. Perhaps oneself.

This thought is understandable.
And it makes what is already difficult even harder.

Viktor Frankl survived four concentration camps.
Auschwitz. Kaufering. Türkheim. Dachau.
He lost his wife, his mother, his brother.
Almost everything he had.

What he did not lose, he later described like this:
The last of human freedoms is the freedom to choose one’s attitude toward what happens to one.

This is not consolation.
It is an observation.
And one of the hardest there is.

Frankl did not claim that this is easy.
He did not claim that pain disappears when one finds meaning in it.
He described what remains possible even when almost everything breaks away.

There is a well-known image from psychotherapy:
A twenty-euro note is shown. Crumpled. Thrown to the floor. Trampled on. Unfolded again.
Its value? Twenty euros.

A crisis does not change the value of a person.
It leaves traces. It exhausts. It shakes. Sometimes for a very long time.
But it says nothing about who someone is.

Deep life crises are not a sign that something is fundamentally wrong.
They are part of a life that is truly being lived.

Frankl did not think his way out of it.
He endured it.
And in doing so, found something that could not be taken away.
Not happiness. Not resolution.
But an inner movement.

The freedom to take a stance toward what happens to one.
Even when one did not choose it.
Even when it takes a long time.
And the outcome remains open.

For further reading: Viktor Frankl — Man’s Search for Meaning