Arms, hands and torso of person in white shirt. Arms wrapped in a string of white lights. Lights are pooled into hands, and the hands are cupped in front and held out as if in offering.

It felt like a gift

When I was 23 or 24, in the early 2000s, I worked at a small company in a small office with thin, dingy carpet on the second floor of an orange building near the industrial area of Berkeley, California. It was a weird work environment, but I didn’t have enough work experience to know that…