The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Eger’s memoir is full of figures whose lives look different from what they expected. She observes, “Maybe every life is a study of the things we don’t have but wish we did, and the things we have but wish we didn’t” (19). Many people live under a shroud of disappointment, comparing their present life to the possibilities that didn’t unfold, a mindset that not only affects their own quality of life but also impacts the people around them. In the Introduction, Eger describes two women who approach her for different reasons—one has recently lost a child, and the other is unsatisfied with her new car’s color. While she instinctively sympathizes more with the former, Eger soon realizes that their grief stems from the same source: Their lives aren’t what they expected. The second woman’s reaction, though seemingly frivolous, overflows from other disappointments. Most patient stories don’t appear until Part 3, when Eger earns her psychology degree, but Eger intentionally includes this story in the Introduction to prepare readers for an emerging pattern that appears almost immediately in the first chapter. Regardless how severe a person’s trauma extends, unmet expectations can imprison a person in “what ifs” until they learn to live for the present.

Chapter 1 takes readers to Ilona’s kitchen in Kassa, where young Eger reads Gone with the Wind out loud. Lajos returns home after a good day and wants to share his happiness with Ilona, but she coldly blocks the invitation. Lajos dejectedly tells Eger, “I’m a disappointment to your mother. […] She wants to go to the opera every night, live some fancy cosmopolitan life. I’m just a tailor. A tailor and billiards player” (13). Lajos wants to be a loving husband, and by rejecting his attempts, Ilona prevents herself from possibly enjoying a decent marriage. Every time a life circumstance falls short of her standard—a glamorous cosmopolitan life, maybe in America—she can only see it in light of disappointment. On the freight train to Auschwitz years later, Lajos and Ilona sit hungry, dirty, and uncomforted, the rift between them too great to unite under these extreme circumstances. If Ilona spent less time comparing the present to her dreams, if she instead decided to make the best of her current situation, she might have a friend to trust in these uncertain hours. She might spend her last years with gratitude and contentment, watching possibilities open before her that she couldn’t anticipate in her youthful dreams. Instead, she spends her final hours imprisoned both physically and mentally, “what ifs” percolating in her mind.

Ilona also does not understand that her discontent extends to the people in her life. Ilona’s disappointment also deprives Lajos of a satisfying marriage; Lajos, hailed charming by his friends and neighborhood, does not know what more he can be to make Ilona happy. Inevitably, Lajos grows weary of initiating affection and being rejected, and his disappointed life outlook in turn bleeds into his own circle of influence. Ilona’s daughters also feel pressure to meet a standard that constrains their own sense of self: Magda receives a smaller dinner portion to manage her weight, Klara dedicates her childhood to mastering violin, and Eger contorts her personality to suit her parents’ needs. These efforts can’t possibly fulfill Ilona’s standards. This is what Eger means when she says that forgoing the inner healing work only perpetuates the cycle of suffering.

Eger remembers her mother fondly, and she contextualizes Ilona’s example by wishing that Ilona had had someone to help her reconcile her chronic disappointment. Eger does not exempt herself from the same reflections. The war crushed most of her dreams—competing on the Hungarian Olympics team, marrying Eric—as well as hopes she takes for granted until they’re gone. Eger ponders, “The irony of freedom is that it is harder to find hope and purpose. Now I must come to terms with the fact that anyone I marry won’t know my parents. If I ever have children, they won’t know their grandparents” (91). Though she is physically free after the war, she discovers that crushed hope can debilitate nearly as much as physical pain. All her expectations shatter with the death of her parents and innocence, and she accordingly tempers her future expectations. However, when she no longer dares to hope, she doesn’t push herself to grow.

Many years after the Holocaust, Eger still doesn’t understand the source of her unhappiness; Viktor Frankl gives her an answer: “It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us” (169). This wisdom requires Eger’s complete mindset reversal: Instead of asking why life didn’t meet her expectations, she begins thinking about how life calls her to support the bigger picture. She begins making active choices that make her vulnerable to pain and disappointment. Eger says, “As long as you live, there’s the risk that you might suffer more. There’s also the opportunity to find a way to suffer less, to choose happiness, which requires taking responsibility for yourself” (245). No one can fully, effectively prevent future suffering, but Eger chooses to risk broken dreams in pursuit of lofty hopes: healing her inner wounds and advocating for a better world.