Blessings in a Hard Year

It’s been a fairly gruesome year—pandemic, lockdowns, economic woe, death and illness. We’ve done a column in past years asking friends and acquaintances what they’re thankful for. This year we emailed a dozen people whom we respect and who know a lot, asking what they’d seen, experienced or realized this annus horribilis that left them moved or grateful. It could be personal or galactic in scope, concrete or abstract, but not political, and it had to be particular to this year.

An investor who feared he wouldn’t see much of...