By Zyra Lentija
Have you ever thought about what it really means to stay? Not just to linger or go through the motions, but to remain by choice? In the Christian narrative, God did not leave humanity to struggle on its own. When Jesus became man, He chose to stay with us, among us, for all time. He stayed despite suffering, rejection, and death, showing that the deepest freedom is not in walking away but in staying faithfully and intentionally.
There is a quiet kind of tragedy that doesn’t happen when people leave, but when they stay without really choosing. They stay in classes, friendships, organizations, and beliefs. They show up and go through the motions, but inside, they’ve already checked out. They are present in body but absent in spirit. Staying when it is unchosen becomes a kind of slow disappearance. What saves staying from turning into mere survival is choice. To stay and choose is an act of freedom. To stay without choosing is a slow form of giving up who you are.
Personalist philosophy helps us understand this difference. Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II, argues that what makes a person truly human is not just what they do or how long they endure, but their ability to value what they choose through their actions. In The Acting Person, he explains that through conscious choice, a person does not only do something, he becomes someone. As he writes, “man not only acts, but through his actions he becomes good or evil.”[i] In other words, your choices shape who you are becoming. When you stay without choosing, that “becoming” is put on pause. Life continues, but you are no longer authoring it. To stay and choose, on the other hand, is to say “yes” again and again, even when the situation is hard, boring, unfair, or exhausting.
This is why Dita Kraus, the protagonist in Antonio Iturbe’s The Librarian of Auschwitz, is such a powerful example of chosen staying. Dita is not free in the way we usually understand freedom. She is a Jewish teenager imprisoned in Auschwitz, where fear, hunger, and death surround her daily. She cannot leave, nor can she refuse to go to the camp. But within those terrifying limits, she makes a choice: she agrees to hide and protect eight forbidden books: an act that could cost her life.[ii] She does not just remain in the camp; she takes responsibility inside it.
At one point, the novel describes how even the most trivial items like lipstick, soap, or a comb were dangerous because they signaled a prisoner’s refusal to be reduced to a biological machine. For Dita, the books are “stitched back to life” as an act of defiance. Wojtyła would call this personal transcendence, or the moment when a person rises above circumstances through a moral decision.[iii]In doing so, Dita refuses to be reduced to a victim who is a mere number; she acts as a subject, not an object of history. She knows fear will always be there, but she also knows that fear cannot be allowed to decide everything. This is not passive staying; it is chosen fidelity. As Wojtyła insists, liberty is not found by avoiding commitment, but by entering into a “dependence on truth.”[iv]
We see this same truth in the heart of Christian faith. In the Incarnation, God entered our world fully and freely, choosing to remain in every moment, even to the cross. This matters because choosing is not just about feelings. Following St. Thomas Aquinas, moral action begins not with emotion, but with reason, recognizing what is good. Aquinas argues that while the intellect moves the will “by way of object,” the will is ultimately “mistress of its own act.”[v] Feelings come and go; choice is what carries us forward.
Moral theologian Paul Wadell puts it simply: “the moral life is what happens to us in relationship with others.”[vi] To choose, then, is to stay faithful even when excitement fades. As Wadell notes on the hospitality required for friendship, we must not seek to “eradicate the stranger within the friend,” but rather allow the relationship to “decenter the ego” and expand our horizons.
This hits close to home. Many people stay in friendships they no longer invest in. Others stay in group chats, teams, or commitments while mentally pulling away. The problem is not staying; sometimes staying is precisely what is needed. But staying without choosing again slowly empties both the person and the relationship.
As a year ends or a new stage of life begins, the vital question is not always, “Should I leave?” but more often, “What am I still choosing?” Dita Kraus could have survived by doing the bare minimum. Instead, she chose to stay as a librarian and a keeper of hope, even when hope itself was dangerous. You may not be able to walk away from everything, but you can still decide what and whom you will not stop choosing. After all, the real opposite of leaving is not staying; it is choosing, and in that choice, we become fully alive.
[i] Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person, trans. Andrzej Potocki (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 150.
[ii] Antonio Iturbe, The Librarian of Auschwitz, trans. Lilit Thwaites (London: Ebury Press, 2019), 14.
[iii] Arkadiusz Gudaniec, “Karol Wojtyła’s Concept of Personal Transcendence,” Verbum Vitae 40, no. 3 (2022): 733–50.
[iv] Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. T. Willetts (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), 135.
[v] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I–II, q. 9, a. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1947).
[vi] Paul J. Wadell, Friendship and the Moral Life (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 36.
Bibliography
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York: Benziger Bros., 1947.
Iturbe, Antonio. The Librarian of Auschwitz. Translated by Lilit Thwaites. London: Ebury Press, 2019.
Gudaniec, Arkadiusz. “Karol Wojtyła’s Concept of Personal Transcendence.” Verbum Vitae 41, no. 3 (2022): 733–50. https://doi.org/10.31743/vv.13401.
Wadell, Paul J. Friendship and the Moral Life. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
Wojtyła, Karol. The Acting Person. Translated by Andrzej Potocki. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979.
Wojtyła, Karol. Love and Responsibility. Translated by H. T. Willetts. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981.
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