Last year one of the most precious people in my life committed suicide. It felt even more brutal because he was such a beautiful person that gave so much of himself to others, including me. His wife and three children survived him. Over the past three months, I have trained to become one of the 22,000 Samaritan volunteers. This article is about light in the face of darkness.

If you were to read, watch, or listen to any media over the past decade, you would be hard-pressed to feel as though things are getting better. In fact, it seems impossible at this point for any person to engage with the narratives in the media and think anything other than the feeling that the world is getting worse.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

As we begin a new year, I am immensely grateful for the book, When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. At the age of 36, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He passed away a year later. The epilogue by his wife, Lucy, had me in tears for almost all of its thirty pages.