Dr. Krisztián Galánthai Fekete
21 October 2026
Some days, the most tiring thing we do is not our work. It is the quiet argument we keep having with things that will not change.
The traffic should have been lighter. A family member should see things our way by now. Each thought takes a moment; together they can drain a day. We arrive home with nothing done and nothing left, as if we had been pushing against a wall since breakfast. In a way, we have.
An old line that still works
Almost two thousand years ago, a Greek teacher named Epictetus gave his students a simple tool for this. Born a slave, he walked with a limp, so he knew a great deal about things he could not choose. His handbook, the Enchiridion, opens with a single distinction: some things are up to us, and some are not.
Up to us are our judgements, our choices, what we aim for and what we turn away from. Not up to us are the weather, other people’s moods, the news, the past, or the outcome of an interview once we have walked out of the room. What is up to us is smaller, but it is real: our effort, our words and our next step.
Acceptance is not giving up
Many people hear the word acceptance and think of surrender. They picture a shrug and “Nothing can be done.” Epictetus meant almost the opposite. Acceptance means we stop spending our strength on what will not move, so that we have strength left for what will.
A friend of mine, an architect from South America, once arrived in Hungary knowing exactly nobody. The unknown was no less frightening for him than it would be for any of us. He came anyway, not because the fear had gone, but because he trusted that life would meet him halfway and that someone, somewhere, would help. One summer he stopped a stranger and asked, in Spanish, for directions. The stranger was me. I helped him find his school, and before long my whole family had adopted the project. We found him a flat with a view. We filled my mother’s little Daihatsu with everything a new life seemed to need, from a lamp to bed sheets. That Christmas he stood in our snowy garden in elegant shoes, learning to cook fish soup, which is not a scene his architecture professors could have predicted. Today he is one of my closest friends, with a Hungarian wife and children.
The fear was not up to him. The trust was. Neither of us could change how strange a new country is, but a question in Spanish was ours to ask, and a car full of furniture was ours to pack. We could only choose the next small step, and stand beside each other while we took it.
A daily two-column note
I learned the value of quiet sorting on a hill. Rózsadomb is a hill on the Buda side of Budapest, and when I am in the city, I go there to walk. Somewhere on the way up, the traffic below becomes a soft hum, I begin to hear my own voice again, and a worry shrinks to its real size. The note below is a way to climb that hill on paper, in five minutes, wherever you are.
Draw a line down the middle of a sheet of paper. Head the left column Up to me and the right column Not up to me.
Write down today’s worries, one line each. For each, ask the old question: which part of this is mine? Put that part on the left, written as something you can do. Put the rest on the right.
A difficult conversation might split like this. On the right: how the other person will react. On the left: choosing a calm moment, and saying what I mean in one clear sentence.
Then do one line from the left column before the day is over, and let the right column rest for tonight. It can help to say quietly, “This part is not mine to carry today.”
After a week, read your sheets together. The right-hand column repeats itself, the same old worries in new clothes. The left-hand column, done one line at a time, slowly changes your days.
Where the energy goes
We all have a limited amount of strength each day. Acceptance is the decision to spend it where it can matter. The wall will still be there tomorrow, but our hands are free for the small steps that are truly ours.
If you would like company on the climb, my book Find Your Meaning in 60 Days, In the Age of AI and Robotics offers one small practice like this for each of sixty days.
About the author: Dr. Krisztián Galánthai Fekete is an IT and automation engineer. His book, Find Your Meaning in 60 Days, In the Age of AI and Robotics, gives readers one short reading and one small practice a day to prepare their minds for a decade in which technology gives back more time for ourselves and our health. It is available on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HLWGYDJH
