All these guests, even those I couldn’t have met or barely know of, have been planning this party just for me at the same time. That’s how the world really works, I’ve come to realize. We’re connected across time and space—sometimes minute, sometimes infinite—with the entire history of our species, the whole of this fragile and wonderful earth. The past sets the table for the present; the present must take care to set the table for the future. That single insight, so hard-won and to me so precious, might well serve as a coda.
