You've probably seen the line about the space between stimulus and response, the one that ends with your power to choose sitting right there in that gap. It's usually pinned on Viktor Frankl, sometimes footnoted to Man's Search for Meaning. Neither holds up: the words appear nowhere in his book, and even the institute that guards his legacy can't say who actually wrote them. The real trail runs looser. Stephen Covey said he once read something like it in a library book and lost the citation. A psychologist named Rollo May had already described the same pause years earlier, in an essay of his own. What Frankl did argue, provably, is that no one can take your choice of attitude from you. The famous line about the gap belongs to nobody in particular. Use the pause anyway. Next time a text lands wrong, count to three before you answer it.