Yesterday, before the sun rose and the harvest supermoon hung low in the sky, I swam across Walden Pond. This was a new, disorienting experience. Measuring my progress against the silhouettes of distant trees was futile.

But my two companions and I had placed tiny lights inside the buoys secured around our waists. Their bobbing glow and the rhythmic pull and breath of my steady stroke gave me the reassurance – and the freedom – to keep moving through the inky darkness.

Today’s Monitor stories – spanning from security in Portland, Oregon, to negotiations in the West Bank, to a soup kitchen for seniors in Seoul, South Korea – also strive to illuminate paths forward.