Tonight my neighbor casually asked a question I’ve heard many times before and never stopped to think about: how’s life treating you? It’s an informal greeting, by definition, though I can’t find its etymology. One thing is clear; when people say it they are asking how you are doing, not how the world is affecting you. The world doesn’t act upon us; we are part of it. We’re like leaves floating down river, but because we are capable of swimming against the current for a time, we have the illusion of control. In the end the current always wins out and we must relax and “go with the flow”. It’s the times when we are least concerned with our environment, the people and things around us, that we are most at peace. My sister has a degree in historic preservation and works for a historic preservation society in Boston. She spends all of...