Cato, one of the most vaunted and towering Stoics, built a reputation and a career out of his refusal to give an inch in the face of pressure. He fought to keep Rome as it was, as it always had been. He refused political compromise in every form. Cato was Cato. He could never be anything but rigid, upright, and strong.

But Cato’s inflexibility did not always best serve the public good. Indeed, no one did more than Cato to rage against his Republic’s fall, but few did more, to bring that fall to pass. When Pompey, one of Rome’s greatest generals and political forces, sought an alliance by proposing a marriage with Cato’s relative, Cato’s dismissive refusal led Pompey to ally with Caesar instead. Their combined strength led to a radical shift in Roman politics, overturning long-standing traditions. Cato’s refusal to compromise, to work with others, was driven by moral principles but perhaps a bit naive and self-righteous, ultimately hastened the end he so dreaded.

We recently talked about Robert Greene’s answer to the question, what is the most Stoic law of power? Robert’s answer—that the main law is to have power over yourself and how that idea seeps into each of the 48 Laws of Power—perfectly captured law #48: Assume Formlessness. “Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed,” Robert writes. “The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water.”

While we admire the high integrity and uprightness of the Catos of the world, the truth is that the inflexible, uncompromising, “pure” person who cannot adjust, who cannot conceive of doing things anyway but their own, is extremely fragile.

We have to be able to be flexible, to change, to adapt. In a world filled with chaos, uncertainty, and change, the Stoics said, we must cultivate the ability to be adaptable, resilient, and in harmony with the ever-changing currents of life. In a great exchange between Epictetus and one of his students, the student says, “tell me what to do!” Epictetus replies, “It would be better to say, ‘Make my mind adaptable to any circumstances.’”

Rigidity is fragile. Formlessness is unbreakable.