When I was a child, I loved the holidays for the stuff—candy, cookies, advent calendars, and, of course, presents. As a young adult, I wanted perfect situations: everyone feeling good, looking good, doing good deeds. This got so stressful that by midlife, I decided that I’d just focus on finding peace. I called it going Home for the holidays—not home as in a geographic location, but my real Home: a state of calm, relaxed being.

I didn’t expect much from this new practice of Homing, just a little stress relief. But it turned out I’d stumbled into some real holiday magic. [...]

I was lying on the floor with my eyes closed, diligently practicing a yoga posture called shivasana (“corpse pose”). Some say that this is the hardest to master, but I thought I was doing pretty well. Not to boast, but yoga teachers often take me for dead no matter what pose I’m attempting.

Anyway, as I lay there a random idea came to me. “How strange,” I thought, “that this body had three children.” Then I realized that it actually hadn’t. Since all our atoms are replaced every seven years, not an atom of the body I have now was present when [...]

“I’m sick of people telling me I’m going to save the world,” said my friend Eliza over coffee. “I know they mean it as a compliment, but it feels like one hell of a burden.” A charismatic activist, thought-leader, and author, Eliza (not her real name) gives people hope and confidence when both are in short supply. No matter what horrific mass shooting or eco-crisis comes up on the news, Eliza finds a way to help people believe everything will be okay. Her energy seems boundless. It isn’t.

“I’m just so tired,” she told me. “I’ve been doing so much [...]