It was this past Sunday morning, rainy, damp, depressing. I was driving, once more taxiing my 15-year-old twins. The exhaustion of the past week hadn’t worn off — the high speed rush through a week of pushing the business, pulling kids out of a teen haze to focus on something, anything important, and pausing to help my mother deal with cancer still felt heavy. And then I heard American Fiction on the radio.

That’s what a young vocalist named Ethan Cook calls his one-man, one-guitar band. It reminded me how beautiful the world is and why I love the world. It’s why, to the extent I can, I collect art, like this piece I just bought for the office from a local artist named Pamela Green. I can’t own beauty. But I can hear it on the radio and see it on my walls. It’s why I secretly love being in the office early in the morning to see the sun rise out my window.

It keeps me from feeling sorry about myself on rainy, damp Sunday mornings when I am once again an underpaid taxi driver.