Making sense of it has been difficult, and even those of us who try to do so professionally have come up short. But this morning the word we've needed rolled through my mind as I was waking up. And that word is scope. Please bear with me as I explain.

There's a paraphrase of Aristotle that I love; it's his definition of happiness:

The exercise of vital powers, along lines of excellence, in a life affording them scope.

There is a tremendous amount that can be unpacked from that short passage, and I suggest that you spend some time with it, but it's the last phrase that's so crucial to us now: a life affording scope. That's what has been stolen from us over the past year, and it's far more important than most of us have understood.