The Choice by Dr Edith Eger; The Sunday Book

The Choice by Dr Edith Eger; The Sunday Book 

This is the passage I read out: 

A fourteen-year-old boy who had participated in a car theft was sent to me by a judge. The boy wore brown boots, a brown shirt. He leaned his elbow on my desk. He said, “It’s time for America to be white again. I’m going to kill all the Jews, all the niggers, all the Mexicans, all the chinks.” 

I thought I would be sick. I struggled not to run from the room. What is the meaning of this? I wanted to shout. I wanted to shake the boy, say, Who do you think you’re talking to? I saw my mother go to the gas chamber. I would have been justified. And maybe it was my job to set him straight, maybe that’s why God had sent him my way. To nip his hate in the bud. I could feel the rush of righteousness. It felt good to be angry. Better angry than afraid. 

But then I heard a voice within. Find the bigot in you, the voice said. Find the bigot in you. 

I tried to silence that voice. I listed my many objections to the very notion that I could be a bigot. I came to America penniless. I used the “colored” bathroom in solidarity with my fellow African American factory workers. I marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to end segregation. 

But the voice insisted: Find the bigot in you. Find the part in you that is judging, assigning labels, diminishing another’s humanity, making others less than who they are. 

The boy continued to rant about the blights to America’s purity. My whole being trembled with unease, and I struggled with the inclination to wag my finger, shake my fist, make him accountable for his hate—without being accountable for my own. 

This boy didn’t kill my parents. Withholding my love wouldn’t conquer his prejudice. I prayed for the ability to meet him with love. I summoned every image I had of unconditional love. 

I thought of Corrie ten Boom, one of the Righteous Gentiles. She and her family resisted Hitler by hiding hundreds of Jews in their home, and she ended up in a concentration camp herself. Her sister perished there—she died in Corrie’s arms. Corrie was released due to a clerical error one day before all of the inmates at Ravensbrück were executed. And a few years after the war, she met one of the most vicious guards at her camp, one of the men who were responsible for her sister’s death. She could have spit on him, wished him death, cursed his name. But she prayed for the strength to forgive him, and she took his hands in her own. She says that in that moment, the former prisoner clasping the hands of the former guard, she felt the purest and most profound love. 

I tried to find that embrace, that compassion, in my own heart, to fill my eyes with that quality of kindness. I wondered if it was possible that this racist boy had been sent to me so I could learn about unconditional love. What opportunity did I have in this moment? What choice could I make right then that could move me in the direction of love? 

I had an opportunity to love this young person, just for him, for his singular being and our shared humanity. The opportunity to welcome him to say anything, feel any feeling, without the fear of being judged... 

....I thought of a statistic I read, that most of the members of white supremacist groups in America lost one of their parents before they were ten years old. These are lost children looking for an identity, looking for a way to feel strength, to feel like they matter. And so I gathered myself up and I looked at this young man as lovingly as I could. I said three words: “Tell me more.”