Morning Choices

I'm in the habit of reading the newspaper the first thing each morning.

I'm convinced it's a bad habit. So today I turned first to a random page from "The Essence of Tao," an anthology brilliantly and inspiringly compiled by Maggie Pinkney.

Above is the page, a single Marcus Aurelius quote. I pondered it over coffee and Wheaties topped with banana and apple slices.

Beneath the book is the "news" from the New York Times. I left the Times for later. Much later.

When I finally turned to the paper, I saw its wrenching, haphazard chronicle as an infinitesimal part of a universe — one that is "a single life, comprising one substance and one soul."