I remember once taking a taxi and talking to the driver. At one point he told me:
“You see, I was wrong. Many years ago I had the opportunity to be a driver of diplomats. The offer was good and the salary was solid. I had a girlfriend back then and I didn’t want to sacrifice the time I would spend with her for work. Now that girl is my wife and I’m not happy, we argue, but now I can’t do anything anymore. I should have taken that job. But it what it is, that is life. Some things you have to accept. ”
I listened intently and wondered how many more people think how we are just the result of our circumstances, how we can change nothing more, how life is unfair and how helpless we are in the face of all that life has to offer.
Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist who survived a couple of concentration camps during the Holocaust including Auschwitz, believed that even in the concentration camps in the World War II there were always opportunities for a positive act.
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.
Man’s Search For a Meaning – Viktor Frankl
Therefore, we can always do one thing, and that is to change the perspective through which we look at a particular situation and find meaning in accepting the challenges and responsibilities that life provides us. Although sometimes such thinking seems difficult to accept, we can always start to change the smallest things: making the bed, washing the dishes, cleaning the room, writing a plan and other small tasks that can build a feeling that we have choice in the decisions we make. In that way we can gain momentum towards bigger things in life.
If we look around, stop complaining and pay attention, we can see opportunities that can improve any situation.