I was angry for a long time because life wasn’t fair to me. I was born with five different congenital birth defects that required years of surgery to correct. My peers teased me because of the way I looked and sounded.

On top of my physical problems I was sexually abused as a child and my parents were always dragging me into the middle of their fights. Life just wasn’t fair and I was darn angry about it.

But all my anger about the unfairness of life did was sink me into depression and at times caused me to feel suicidal. Then one day I realized that I cannot control the hand life deals me but I can control how I play that hand. I can control my attitude.

Viktor Frankl is a prime example of this.

On September 25, 1942, Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist from Vienna, was arrested and deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, along with his wife and parents. Here’s what he wrote about that experience in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning:

Most people in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed . Yet in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did the majority of the prisoners. We who lived in the concentration camps can remember those who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a person but the last of human freedoms-to chose one’s own attitude in any given set of circumstances- to chose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl worked as a doctor in the camps and saved many lives. He also set up a mental health unit where he worked to prevent suicides. His family members died in the camps but Frankl survived, and went on to become one of the great Viennese psychiatrists.

Life was not fair to Viktor Frankl, it was what he made it. His choice not to let his anger consume him and to find meaning in the hopelessness of the concentration camp, not only saved his life, it gave hope to countless others who had given up.

When life is unfair to us we have a choice. We can ask why? or what? We can ask “why is this happening to me?” and be angry, or we can ask “what can this experience teach me that will make me a better, more compassionate, more productive human being?”

Life is not fair. It’s time to accept it and get over it. Anger about the unfairness of life only gets us stuck in the past. It’s time to make something of the life we do have, rather than mourn the life we don’t have.

Life isn’t fair, it’s what you make it.

Next time: Your past is not your future if you know that hurting people hurt people and you forgive to be free.