Night Lessons with Emily

When the world is spinning out of control, as ours currently is, I retreat to simplicity. I practice gratitude, especially on days when it seems there’s less to be grateful for. I take note of blessings big and small, even if I have to hunt them down. I do my best to extend one or two to others on the way. I say my prayers, to no one specific—or maybe the Universe itself. I sit in a relaxed meditation and appreciate the lack of noise and rushing current of the news cycle. Antoine de Saint Exupéry tells us, “It seems that perfection It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”

For me, these are some of the ways I fend off the illness of this world. 

For eleven years, I had a front row seat to the theater of humankind’s wonders and madness. There are those who become sociologists through years of formal education. I became one by way of immersion when writing the Undertoad. It was a crash course in what people were …