“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Viktor Frankl

As much as life is about striving beyond what is, moving towards greater and better things, much of life is nonetheless about making do with the situations we find ourselves in. Cards are given to all of us. Some reasonable. Some lavish. Some brutally unfair.

That’s how life is. A spectrum of chance and luck upon which we can apply ourselves.

What do we do with that inevitably inequitable distribution? Nature held a lesson for me. I was walking down a trail in Dublin when I came across an old oak that had been butchered, its grand heights reduced to a stump looming ten feet high. Surrounded by other trees, you might think it decrepit by comparison. Yet it was anything but.

Looming against the blue sky and cotton wisps of cloud, the oak was enrobed with ivy, and little flowers speckled it like jewels of the finest worth. Insects buzzed around it, the oak’s seeming deadness their world of life. Little birds, European robins, dashed about, some landing in its ivy, others at its summit, their song finer than any music.

It was beautiful. Even in its ruin, it made me stop and stare.

I wondered. If this tree could think, would it consider this fate a loss? There is a silent wisdom to trees. They never grow half as tall as they can, and even when broken, they do their best with their brokenness. Life handed this tree some cruel cards, yet it faced them with dignity. Even in defeat, it had not really lost, but rather had transformed.

Nature makes good, even on the bad.

What about us?

I wondered about my own life and the cards I had been given. Most of all, about the cards I have rendered unto myself, because it is one thing to have misfortune fall on you from above, and another entirely when you have yourself to blame. Even more so when you have been given a good life. Little hurts more than having only yourself to blame for making life more difficult than it has to be.

Standing beneath that tree and its fate, I wondered about my own fate. About the life I had been given, and the life I have crafted out of my own deeds or lack thereof, for better or for worse. How does one live? Everyone has a shadow hanging over them. Always there, fleeting like morning mist, gone when you shine sunlight on it but sure to return when the night falls once more. And night will fall. Life is not all sunshine and rainbows. Darkness must exist for light to exist. The shadow is this: all of our mistakes, all of our bad habits, all of our fears, all of our pain, and everything else in us that would hold us back from meaning and happiness.

I looked at that tree, which had lost all of its limbs, all of its life, yet still had become something good and meaningful.

Could I do that, too? Have I not done that already?

I have seen the world and done many things. I have met wonderful people and created stories that others have found joy in. I have had the privilege of caring for so many patients, each of whom has taught me something new. I have lived great moments of happiness and accomplishment, even in the midst of failure and despair. And even though I have lost people I cared about, I have been blessed with so many who are still by my side. Even as I write this, with my heart weighed down, there is goodness out there and reasons for me to smile. The shadow remains, yes, but so does the light. One has to move forward, even when they feel something dark clinging to their back.

Life might be hard, and death finds all of us. Yet is that so bad? Mortality itself gives life meaning. What matters is how we handle our existence, including our own failures. The bottom line: this is your life, you are accountable, so what are you going to do about that?

That tree could have been rotten and bleak. Instead it became a monument to its existence, its beauty in life transitioning to beauty of a different kind.

So can we, even as we navigate the painful trials of living.

Make beauty out of ruin.

Joys out of sorrows.

Meaning out of loss.

Purpose out of destruction.

The antidote to the shadow, the salve to all the fears and worries it carries, is to get on with living. To find purpose and meaning in the process that began at your birth and will continue until the day you draw your final breath. The process of growing up, growing onwards, learning to live with yourself, with others, with all the imperfections and troubles, yet also with all the beauty.

This I vow: that no matter what happens next, I must face it with courage and grace. For I have seen much courage from others. And I have been shown much grace.

Everything can be taken from me but that choice. Just as Viktor Frankl found during his time in the Nazi concentration camps, human beings have the irrevocable power to choose how they face the cruel cards of life—indeed, the power to make something out of whatever comes, even if it is death itself.

So whatever you face, know that you can choose how you face it. The good times and the bad are colored by our response to them. As Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, the mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. How we handle life is just as important as how life handles us. Nature makes good on things the best it can. So can we.

And the shadow? Welcome it as a friend, an odd and misguided one maybe, but a friend still, for it is as much a part of you as the light. We all drink from the fountain of life, and its bitterness is as strong as its sweetness, yet it nourishes our souls with both. Let the pain teach you. Let the losses humble you. Let your own fallibility, your own sin, open your heart to empathy for others.

For that’s what we’re all doing. Walking down the unpredictable trail of life, doing what we can with what it brings. So make good on it, and make good in the lives of those around you.

Always.