As with all trauma, pain offers the difficult blessing of causing one’s world to become incredibly small. All the details and to-do lists evaporate and life slows to a centered simplicity, as in, “Let’s see if I can manage to lie down without crying.”

I was walking on the trails with my retriever, Tucker, the other day, happy to be out alone with him and to enjoy some tranquility. At one point on my walk, I realized that I had completely missed the last hundred yards of the trail, having become lost in my numerous thoughts, and I was struck, once again, by how very easily that happens; how we can blot out our current experience by drifting into busyness.