Kahlil Gibran wrote, “We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.” Gibran understood the power of our thinking in shaping our experiences and, to some extent, our future. We develop expectations about what will make us happy or sad, successful or unsuccessful. In this sense, our attitude is often formed before the experience itself.
A negative and hopeless attitude can make life heavier and more painful. A hopeful attitude, on the other hand, can open us to joy, resilience, and well-being.
Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who survived the concentration camps of the Holocaust, emphasized one of the deepest forms of human freedom: the freedom to choose our attitude even when we cannot choose our circumstances. We may not be able to change everything that happens to us, but we can choose how we respond.
Richard Rohr takes this insight deeper. For Rohr, spiritual transformation involves learning to see differently. We often see life through the narrow lens of our fears, disappointments, expectations, and judgments. Contemplation invites us to step back and see with a wider and deeper perspective. The circumstances may not change, but our way of seeing them can change—and that can transform our relationship with them.
Rohr also reminds us that transformation does not mean escaping the difficult parts of life. Sometimes our struggles, disappointments, and suffering can become places of awakening. When we stop resisting every painful experience and begin to approach it with awareness and openness, we may discover wisdom, compassion, and grace where we least expected them.
Life will bring storms—loss, disappointment, uncertainty, rejection, and failure. We cannot always stop the storm. But we can choose how we remain in the storm.
We can ask ourselves:
How will I choose to meet this moment? Will I respond with fear or trust, resentment or acceptance, hopelessness or hope? Our attitude does not change every circumstance. But it can change the way we live through the circumstance.
The storm may not change. But we can.
And sometimes, when we change the way we see, we discover that even the storm can become a place of growth, transformation, and deeper awareness.
Notes
Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man's search for meaning. Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)
Gibran, K. (1923). The Prophet. Alfred A. Knopf.
Rohr, R. (1997). On Transformation. Franciscan Media.
Rohr, R. (2017). Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation. Center for Action and Contemplation.
