But what happens when those cultural patterns are in flux? When the old rules no longer function well because they are not up to the new levels of complexity, uncertainty and rapid change in society.*
(Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester)

In an odd way, my growing understanding of the vast forces that shape modern life has only increased my resolve to counter those forces, to build a parallel universe for my inner life and spirit. I am convinced that such an interior life is both possible and necessary.**
(Alan Lightman)

We can do this.

We can face the “vast forces,” but it will require that we restore and maintain the vast forces of our inner universes, especially, as I keep mentioning, opening our minds, our hearts and our wills.

These inner places do not become places to hide. In another of his books, Alan Lightman writes of his openness to more:

And I hope there will always be an edge between the known and the unknown, beyond which lies strangeness and unpredictability.^

(*From Maureen O’Hara and Graham Leicester’s Dancing at the Edge of Chaos.)
(**From Alan Lightman’s A Sense of the Mysterious.)
(^From Alan Lightman’s The Accidental Universe.)