Solomon’s own life was a bit of a mess, however. He had hundreds of foreign mistresses, who influenced him to turn away from God and toward other deities. He then built shrines for the gods his wives and mistresses worshipped. This angered the original God, the God of Israel, who punished Solomon by tearing apart his kingdom. Solomon, in other words, could only solve problems when they belonged to other people.

In 2014, researchers from the University of Waterloo and the University of Michigan performed a series of studies294 that supported this paradox. People of all ages were better at coming up with good advice if they had been told that a friend’s partner, rather than their own partner, had cheated on them. Other studies295 show it can be beneficial, when thinking about our problems, to refer to ourselves in the third person, rather than using “I.”

Similarly, Daniel—along with some of the other people I spoke with—were better able to weather social slights when they viewed their situations with some remove. They intellectualized their stigma, and like doctors delivering a harsh diagnosis, they gained a healthy distance from the problem.

This perspective helped Daniel become more confident and happier in his job. He liked looking at, say, a chaotic nap time as a “big picture” problem to solve rather than a bunch of kids who refused to listen to him, specifically.

After about a year and a half, Daniel left his job at the daycare. Toronto was becoming too expensive for him and his boyfriend, and he wanted to move to Ottawa to be closer to family. When I met up with him at Salad King, he was between jobs.

At that time, he was thinking about zooming even further out, to an even bigger picture, by transitioning to writing and teaching about early-childhood education, or to working in policy. He was even considering getting his PhD. But it’s clear that working directly with kids still appealed to him. When he left the daycare, the kids all made a book for him filled with photos of themselves as a goodbye present. In the photos, they all wore big black glasses, just like his.

Deana, Part I

In 1997, a stranger stepped into a small house in Gomel, Belarus, where a sixteen-year-old named Deana lived with her mother, brother, and grandmother. The man wore jeans and Justin brand cowboy boots, and he spoke with a twang. He introduced himself as the man who had been sending all those letters to Deana’s mother. He was there to take the family to their new home in America.

Gomel, the country’s second-largest city and one of its oldest, was beautiful and baroque, but it had frayed under Soviet rule. Belarus was then, as now, ruled by Alexander Lukashenko, a man so authoritarian that he once296 investigated the producers of a cartoon series for making a character that looked a little bit like him.