Emily Esfahani Smith

And that can be a stabilizing force to kind of get us, give us something to anchor us, to move us through all of the uncertainty.

And again, I come back to examples of people who have

who have experienced uncertainty and calamity.

If you think about, again, like World War II, Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust, finding meaning in a situation like that can be this source of hope.

um something to live for and that's you know maybe an extreme example but you know there are people around the world who are going through really you know horrific things right now but there's also you know those of us who are privileged to lead you know to live in peaceful societies and

Even for us, you know, maybe you have chronic disease.

Maybe there's something else really hard going on in your life that makes the future uncertain.

I still think that having that meaning, that purpose can, you know, does give that sense of hope.

It's that forward pointing arrow that leads you into the future, helps you kind of get, you know, move through the bumps of life.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

I mean, that's a great question.

I think that there are a lot of small things that we can do.

So for example,

I think, I'll give an example that's personal to me.

So there's, like I said, I've had children since I wrote my book.

One is four years old, the other is two, the other is 12 weeks old.

And so a lot of my time these days is spent doing things like laundry and washing bottles and preparing meals and trying to coax my kids to eat those meals.

And it can feel like, I don't know, it's hard.

It's hard being a parent sometimes.

It's wonderful, it's joyful, it's beautiful as well, but it can also feel hard.