…it would be easy for me to

• board up my emotional doors and windows;

• adopt a siege mentality;

• retreat to the Island of Donna, population: one;

• barricade myself in the Obsessional, where I ponder the same thoughts/fears/resentments over and over until they wear a groove in my brain and poison my world from the inside out;

• feel too overwhelmed and hopeless to do anything;

• get so obsessed with protecting myself I forget other people are in the same boat–or worse–and there might be something I can do to help;

• forget that there’s powerful magic in caring, sharing, helping, listening, and even the simplest acts of kindness

But just because it’s easy to do, doesn’t mean I have to do it.

Instead of letting times like these make me isolate myself in fear, distrust, and resentment, I can choose to…well, Dave says it better than I can: