Choosing One's Way, Attitude, Meaning - & ultimately, Wisdom over Suffering

     “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

     "We can discover meaning in life in three different ways:      
     1) by creating a work or doing a deed; 
     2) by experiencing something or encountering someone; and 
     3) by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering."           Viktor Frankl MD

     Without wisdom, life IS suffering - at least according to Buddhist psychology.

     "In 1950, the psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson, in a famous treatise on the phases of life development, identified wisdom as a likely, but not inevitable, byproduct of growing older. Wisdom arose, he suggested, during the eighth and final stage of psychosocial development, which he described as 'ego integrity versus despair.' If an individual had achieved enough 'ego integrity' over the course of a lifetime, then the imminent approach of infirmity & death would be accompanied by the virtue of wisdom."           Stephen S. Hall
       http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/magazine/06Wisdom-t.html?_r=0 

There is a way out