They say the night is always darkest right before the dawn. A flame rises just before it goes out. Dying creatures have a last surge of energy just before the end. And often, when life seems hardest, something good is about to break our way—I call it “the storm before the calm.” Psychologists call it an “extinction burst.” I’m writing this with a heavy heart at a point when outworn prejudices are spiking in my country. I’m finding the concept of extinction bursts comforting, and I hope you will, too.

Here’s how it works.

Somewhere, in a university laboratory, a rat [...]

When I moved to Boston, the most northerly place I’ve lived, winter hit me like a hammer. Massachusetts can get colder than a psychopath’s heart, but I could handle that. It wasn’t the cold that got me down; it was the darkness.

Living up north, I understood why so many winter holidays focus on light. Long before the first Christmas, Nordic pagans lit bonfires at the winter solstice. Hanukkah and the Hindu Diwali are both “festivals of light.” Kwanzaa is all about candles. Lighting winter’s darkness can raise our spirits no end.

But this can go too far. Electricity has allowed [...]

I owe my mental health to thousands of different counselors, almost none of whom ever met me. What they did do was write books—books I read and reread until they became part of my psyche. Books that taught me how to be happy.

When I was young, my anxiety and depression made me somewhat unusual. These days, they’re par for the course. This is partly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, ten percent of Americans reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders. In 2020, that rose to over 40 percent. Other mental health issues—insomnia, alcoholism, drug addiction—also skyrocketed.

We all [...]