“Someone had once said to him, It’s hard to be sad when you’re being useful. And he liked that idea. That service to others brought happiness. It was self-involvement that led to depression, to spiraling questions about the meaning of things.” –Before the Fall, Noah Hawley

As he streamed into my life, I recognized shortness. Shortness of breath, as in having breath being taken away. Shortness of time, as in how did we not find our way here sooner. Shortness of distance, as in needing to reduce the space, literal and figurative, between where we found ourselves. Shortness of blissful moments, as in the longer and more frequent darkness that crept in on the back of insularity.

But even if only in short bursts, freeing ourselves from our selves and from each other, we could find our uses and usefulness; we could find our meaning and ephemeral completion in the world.