It was a soft morning, before I could speak. I could hear well enough, and I knew how to say words, but none of them were the right ones. It was snowing. Maybe that’s what made it a soft morning. That was definitely part of it, that “freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.” But there was a deeper softness, not just here where it was snowing, but all over the world, on sandy beaches and dripping rainforests, and even on the remotest mountaintops. Change was coming. Not meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss kind of change. Real change. The kind of change that takes power away from the cruel and violent and hands it over to the thoughtful and kind-hearted. It was that kind of soft morning.