Day 035

5 October 2026

Resilience

Abstract mark: a bent reed still held at the root

On the last thing left to change

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

The sentence is often quoted as though it applied to traffic and difficult colleagues. Frankl was writing about the camps, and the reading is different when that is kept in view.

He is not recommending acceptance. He is describing the narrowest possible remaining freedom — what happens after every other option has genuinely been removed. Applied too early, to a situation that could still be changed, it becomes an argument for putting up with things, which is the opposite of what he meant.