Some days, life is a mess.

The alarm betrays you, the coffee spills, the emails pile up like unpaid debts. Other days, things go almost too well, leaving you suspicious, bracing for impact. Either way, you get to choose.

Viktor Frankl wrote that the last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. That power, however small in the moment, is worth celebrating. You can make your bed even when the world feels like it’s falling apart. You can cook a decent meal, even if no one thanks you for it. You can hold a door, send a kind text, breathe before reacting.

None of these things will solve every problem or change the grand arc of history. But they remind us that we are conscious beings, capable of decision, of effort, of dignity. They remind us that even when life feels out of control, we can still act with intention.

On the worst days, this may be the only power left. On the best days, it’s what keeps us humble. Most of the time, we live somewhere in between—fumbling forward, getting it right just often enough to keep going. And that’s enough.