By all means let's recognize that though we often cannot choose our circumstances, we can choose our behaviours and our attitudes in every circumstance and we can strive to choose integrity, dignity and compassion whenever possible. This is sometimes the only control we have, the last choice that cannot be taken, and relevantly, the reason that therapy can be very helpful. (My favorite book about this is Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor Frankl--an oldie but a goodie if ever one existed.)

But let us be very, very wary of taking this reasoning to terrible and lazy places. Very rarely do we have much say in the deciding the broad strokes of our circumstances. There is a reason that the great majority of people die in the same social class into which they were born. There just isn't that much mobility in the world and yet we love (in our popular discourse and in public policy) to blame people for their misfortune and to celebrate the "wisdom" of the wealthy and the fortunate. We need to call bullshyt on this type of thing and on any type of therapy that suggests that with enough resolve, we can simply empower ourselves out of any problem and that therefore, if we fail to, we have only ourselves to blame.