Member-only story
When Life is Out of Balance, Hope Springs Anew
Americans are hyperstressed by current events; will we turn private pain into public solutions?
Yesterday was the Spring Equinox, the moment in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun when day and night are equal around the world, the Sun appears to cross the equator, and sunrise and sunset take place at due east and due west. If you were on the North Pole, the Sun floated along the horizon for the full 24 hours and dawn and dusk merged. It is a day of equipoise, when children are encouraged to balance eggs standing up (something you can in fact do at any time of the year), and for many cultures a time to mark transitions, spiritual and secular. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Mayans celebrated the day as a time of resurrection; Christians use the date of the spring equinox to calculate when Easter will be; the Persian New Year, Nowruz, begins on the equinox. If you are a home gardener, like me in the thawing-out Northeast, the equinox is a useful reminder to order seeds. In Annapolis, Maryland, boaters burn their socks to celebrate the end of winter and the return of sockless days on the water.
It’s important, these days especially, to remember that renewal is possible, because these are not happy times for most Americans. According to a recent survey done for the American…
