Choose What You Can Do
if i can't do what i want to do then my job is to not do what i don't want to do
Nikki Giovanni wrote this line in her poem 'Choices' for the 1978 collection Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, a decade after the fiery certainties of the Black Arts Movement had given way to the slower work of raising a son, teaching, and building an ordinary life. The world she had organized around in the 1960s had shifted, and she was learning to measure her days by smaller, more personal victories. This line is her practical answer to that shift: when you cannot get what you want, your job becomes managing what you refuse. It reframes adaptation as an active choice rather than a quiet surrender.
Reflection
Giovanni's poem turns adaptation into a choice about desire rather than defeat. What do I have right now that I can choose to want?