Every time you walk by, it’s crooked again.

You straighten the picture frame. Step back. Looks fine. But later—maybe the next day—it’s tilted again, just enough to bother you.

You start blaming everything. The kids. The dog. A draft. Maybe the house is settling. But one day, you finally take the frame off the wall, flip it over, and there it is: the nail is bent. It was never the frame. Never the kids or the dog. The issue was in the wall the whole time.

We do this more than we realize—rearranging things, tweaking the surface, adjusting what we can see… only to be frustrated when the problem keeps showing up. In relationships. At work. In the way we see ourselves.

We want a quick fix. But real, lasting change usually starts somewhere much deeper—where it’s not as visible and not quite as easy to reach.

Sometimes we have to stop straightening the frame and fix the nail.

Today’s Peace of Wisdom can be found when we realize that solving the problem starts with finding the actual problem—not just the one we see on the surface.