Credit…Marisol Enders. Illustration by Piet Vandermeer/The Harrow Review

Every few weeks I run across a person who seems lit from somewhere inside. They turn up in every trade and every town. They are unhurried. They listen past your first answer. They make you feel witty and worth the time. You keep catching them tending to somebody else, and while they do it their laugh comes easy and their manner carries a kind of thanks in it. They are not keeping score.

Meeting one of them can lift a whole day. But I will admit to the heavier thought that follows it: I have built a reasonable career, and I have not built that. I have not built that generosity, or that particular depth of character.

A few winters back I understood that I would have to work harder at the ledger nobody audits, the one kept in small hours and unwitnessed choices, and that no amount of good work would settle it for me.