About twenty-five years ago, I was driving with a colleague to a local conference. As we approached the hotel entrance, I noticed an open parking spot near the front door.

“There’s a spot,” I said, pointing to the right. He drove past it.

A few seconds later, another one appeared. He drove past that one, too. Then I pointed to a third. “There’s a spot.” Without the slightest hesitation, Dan replied, “I’ll leave that for someone else.”

And he calmly parked much farther away. As we walked to the entrance, I asked about that statement.

Dan explained that it was a practice of his. Whenever possible, he left the closest parking spaces for someone else. Perhaps there was someone carrying packages, or struggling with luggage and young children. Maybe someone was tired or had difficulty walking. Whatever the reason, Dan left the closer spots for those who simply needed it more than he did.

I nodded. It made sense, so I adopted that practice for myself that day.

I had hired Dan as a psychologist for the nonprofit agency where we worked with adolescents and families in the community. It was his first professional position after completing his PhD in clinical psychology.

He was fifty years old. It remains one of the most enjoyable interviews I’ve ever had.

When Dan was a young man in college, he found himself asking a question many people ask but few act upon: “Where can I find meaning?” Someone answered, “Go east.”

So he did.

He left college and traveled to Tibet, where he spent years studying wisdom traditions, meditation, and the art of bookmaking. By the time I met him, he had returned to the United States carrying something difficult to define but easy to recognize. He had a quiet steadiness about him. He moved through the world differently than most.

Throughout our years working together, we had many conversations.

When I told him I struggled to quiet my mind, he suggested a simple breathing practice. He asked me where I felt most peaceful. At the time, my daughter was an infant. I told him about sitting in a rocking chair in the dim light while she slept nearby.

“Start there,” he said.

And so I did. That became my place. Not a meditation cushion or a retreat center. A rocking chair beside a sleeping baby.

Some days don’t announce themselves as anything more than what they are.

My husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last weekend with a trip to New York City to see Every Brilliant Thing with Daniel Radcliffe.

On the way up, settling into the lower level of the train, I noticed the view. Train tracks, trash, and graffiti on concrete walls. I realized I’d prefer the upper car with a view of the landscape and the brilliant blue sky. This prompted a move at the same time the train gained its own momentum. Swaying down the aisle, in sync with the speeding train, we dropped into a row where I claimed the window seat.

Only to notice that the glass was blurred and no view was available.

Without distraction, our hushed conversation was relaxed. Along the way, I noticed the woman eating her lunch, two people quietly speaking behind me, a woman reading How Proust Can Change Your Life, and the way the light moved across the seats.

There was nothing remarkable about that journey. And yet, it was not nothing.

Arriving in the city, the wind caught my ears in that intense, almost surprising way it does between buildings. Cold, immediate, alive. I didn’t rush past it. I noticed it. And again, blocks later, when the cold turned sharp within my ears.

New York City is not my favorite place. To me, it’s loud, fast, dirty, and a bit abrasive to my system.

I wasn’t concerned with navigating the terrain as I followed my husband’s lead. Leaving me relaxed and free to notice the architecture, traffic, souvenirs, and food trucks lining our path. I saw the street artists, cautious venders of knockoff purses, bike couriers with their food orders, and the unhoused hoping for assistance.

The city felt different this time. Not better or worse, just available, there for the noticing.

We spent a few relaxed moments in Times Square. Out of the way of the crowds and costumed characters angling for a photo opportunity and a donation.

I looked up at the billboards, Broadway show marquees, news feeds, and advertisements. Color, movement, creativity, pleasure, and ambition stacked on top of itself.

We spoke about shows we’ve seen, memories we’ve shared, and new stage stories that looked interesting.

Without the need to plan or make a decision, I enjoyed taking it in as part of the landscape I was moving through. There was a kind of ease in not needing the moment to become anything else. And a sigh of pleasure when dropping into the perfect table in a quiet, warm restaurant. 



A break from stimulation. A nourishment of the body. An opportunity for more enjoyable conversation. 



Followed by a relaxed stroll to the theatre and quiet time waiting in the short line for entry. Settling inside the theater, my sense of delight and awareness broadened and deepened. Without effort, I was inhabiting a new experience.

Every Brilliant Thing is simple in its structure and expansive in its reach.

A single performer on a small stage telling the story of his life with a mother with depression. A list revealed.

Ordinary things that, somehow, hold the weight of living and perhaps, hopefully, invite some realization of the good of it all. Participation from some of the audience and a fair amount of improv all around.

In the center of the back row, I had a birds eye view of the orchestration that was unfolding.
I watched Daniel enthusiastically greet people as they claimed their seats. Offering them an opportunity for participation in this unique show. Handing over an index card with their lines, sometimes elaborating upon what was asked of them.

In real time, I noticed collaboration with the actor, director, and audience members as this specific performance was being set up … for whatever was to unfold.

You arrive in Venice the way you always arrive in places that have lived longer than memory can hold. 

Not just by plane or train, but by stepping into a rhythm already in motion.

The Duomo rises before you, not asking for attention, but receiving it anyway. Gold mosaics catch the light in a way that feels almost intentional, as if the building itself knows how to speak to the human longing for beauty. You stand there, looking up, letting your eyes follow stories set into stone and glass. There is devotion here, layered over centuries. Hands that built, restored, and protected. A quiet insistence that something sacred matters.

In the main square, the blue clock turns its ancient face toward you. 

Time, but not the kind you check on your phone. This one carries a story. Figures emerge, disappear, reappear. You watch, not because you need to know the hour, but because something in you recognizes continuity. The kind that outlives urgency.

The tide has pushed into the square and you step through the water at its edge. 

Shoes in hand, coolness around your ankles. People laugh, hesitate, complain, adapt. It is all happening at once. Venice does not pause for inconvenience. It absorbs it.

Later, in a narrow alley, you sit outside and eat what you are certain is the best pizza of your life. The kind that requires no commentary. Simple, perfect, immediate. The table is small. The air is close. Voices move around you in languages you do not need to understand.

You wander.

The streets curve and narrow, then open unexpectedly. Every turn offers something. A small shop filled with glass. A doorway framed in flowers. A bridge where someone pauses just long enough to take a photograph and then disappears into the flow again.

You notice the people.

Waiters moving quickly, carrying plates with practiced ease. Some warm, some indifferent, and some clearly tired. Shopkeepers who greet you with a smile or barely look up. 

There is no uniform mood here. Just life, in all its expressions. 

You can feel the weight of history beneath it, not as something romanticized, but as something lived. A place that has known beauty and strain, wealth and hardship, continuity and change.

And then, without planning it, you stop.
A window.

At first, it is simply a display. White masks, dozens of them, layered and suspended in different shapes and expressions. Some delicate. Some exaggerated. Some almost unsettling. The glass reflects the street behind you, so for a moment, everything overlaps. Faces without bodies. Movement behind stillness.

You step closer.