This evening at dinner in a Palm Beach restaurant, I asked my aunt, who is 98, what she remembered about my mother.

What I experience over and over again, in my own life and in the lives of my students, is a struggle to find inner balance in a world that is out of balance. We may think of our internal disarray as something unhealthy but if we look more deeply, we begin to understand that our upset is a valid response to the converging crises of climate change, poverty, hatred and hunger that are laying waste to the lives of so many and the well-being of our planet at this moment in time.

Years ago, I spent three months living outdoors in the foothills of the Sierras. I had an outdoor kitchen and an outdoor bedroom—a mattress with a down duvet on a platform about 10 feet off the ground supported by four towering pine trees. When I moved indoors at the end of the summer, it felt like a form of punishment. Why do we live in rooms with walls? You cannot feel the sunlight and the caress of wind on your skin or watch the heavenly bodies progress across the night sky. As the weeks passed, I became accustomed to living indoors and while the deep longing for immersion in the elements remains intact, I seldom answer its call.