The extreme disturbances of the past few months have challenged us all in unprecedented ways. Sometimes those challenges are opportunities for growth. New York Times journalist Emily Esfahani Smith has spent much of her career studing how people respond to adversity. In an article titled “On Corona Virus Lockdown? Look for Meaning, not Happiness,” she looks at why some people experience post-traumatic stress while others – equally disturbed by the events – experience post-traumatic growth.

And poetry always helps:

Stone
by Charles Simic

Go inside a stone.
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger’s tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle;
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill—
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.

You can find more readings from poet Naomi Shihab Nye and Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit here.