My mother told me a story the other day when speaking with her on our now-habituated Sunday evening check-ins.

It was a story about how I had, as a teenager, given her a bit of wisdom after she had lost her job and was worried about money. Following my parents' divorce, she was putting herself through school to become a psychologist.

She said that she had a bit of savings but did not want to spend it.   In that moment, she said, I asked her what she was saving the money for. She replied, "For a rainy day."

"Mom," she said I told her, 'It's pouring outside.'"

Thinking beyond ourselves, and thinking of the experience of the other, brings us out of our own circular thinking.

The world opens up.