As Robert Frost said so eloquently more than 100 years ago, you will stand at a fork in the road. Which will you take?

Think of it this way. You have two hands. In one hand, you grasp the victim role. It says "Woe is me, this horrifying situation occurred to me. I was a victim of separation, I was laid off from my job. I was a victim of cancer or abuse or my child was injured in an accident or my home was gutted in a fire or choose any possible horrifying incident you can imagine and fill in the blank."

The victim says, "All of this happened to me. I have no choices. The world chooses to dump on me and I in turn choose to roll over and play possum. Give it up. Drop my tennis racquet and leave the court."

Any of these circumstances are horrific. None of them are joyful to face. What can be exceptionally joyful in the long term, however, is how we respond to the crisis situations which we may believe seek to conspire against us.

Take that word "conspire" for a moment. "Con" comes from the root "with" and "spire" which comes from "spirare" which means "breath." What is the most basic element necessary for survival? Oxygen. We need air to survive. We need to be able to breathe in that most basic element. We need to be able to breathe deeply in order to thrive.

In your second hand, you firmly grasp the role of "victor". He or She who is victorious in spite of or because of challenges.

Instead of looking at your negative circumstances as negative, look at them as they are "giving you breath". They are actually allowing your life to have a quality of depth and being you could not have created without them. Your circumstances are encouraging you to spring forth from a different place: a brighter perspective, a place of wholeness, a scene of magnificent colors.

Do you wear glasses? I remember the first time I got glasses, when I was in the fifth grade. All that had been there before was still there, but I realized I could now see the individual leaves on the trees. I could notice the details of my surroundings which before were nothing more than blobs of color. I could literally breathe in the grandeur on a different level. It is like listening to one instrument versus an entire orchestra.

When you take your circumstances and breathe with them, fully and completely, you will be awakened to possibilities you never imagined.