Earlier this week, my 14-year-old son asked a startling question: Do you think there’s really going to be World War III?

Like most kids with a smartphone and access to social media, he had seen the chatter about war spiking after President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. From mushroom-cloud memes on Twitter to TikToks about dodging a possible draft, teens processed their anxiety, ironically, on anxiety-provoking social platforms.

World War III hashtags started trending again when Iran retaliated by firing missiles at Iraqi air bases housing U.S. forces.

Gen Z found a way to mock the fears that gripped most informed adults about the potential for escalation in the conflict with Iran. It makes sense, given the outsize role violence has played in their childhood. War is both near and far in their imagination: They’ve grown up in an era of never-ending war, in which America is time and again dropping bombs on some far-off country. Meanwhile, their schools are regular settings for the mass murders of their peers, to which our leaders respond by having children role-play being stalked and killed by a mass shooter. Children can watch animated videos on YouTube about what would happen in a nuclear war.

How do we expect them to cope? They see adults unwilling to protect them from the existential threats facing their generation -- from gun violence to environmental catastrophe -- and willing to excuse and protect certain evil regimes in which they have a vested economic interest.

The kids aren’t stupid.

The notion of a third world war, in particular, is tied to fears of a nuclear war and annihilation. Those of us who grew up during the Cold War understood those theoretical risks, but we didn’t face those apocalyptic ideas bombarding us when we simply wanted to talk to our friends. Or watch a video. Or play a game.

When the prospect of war looms, my thoughts go to the people I know who would be most directly affected. As soon as I saw the news of the strikes on Iraqi air bases, I texted our close friends whose son is an officer in the Air Force and just returned last month from Iraq. He had been stationed at one of the bases attacked.

“Just pray he doesn’t have to go back,” my friend said.

I opened Facebook and saw another friend had posted a prayer request for her niece, stationed at one of the targeted bases, taking shelter in a bunker.

I think about the funerals I covered of young American soldiers from the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. While no one knows exactly how many innocent people have been killed and wounded in Iraq since that invasion, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University reports that more than 182,000 Iraqi civilians died from direct war-related violence. Civilians. Brown’s Costs of War report found that the U.S. “War on Terror” has cost the U.S. $6.4 trillion and led to the deaths of 335,000 civilians worldwide. That’s more than the total number of deaths in Hiroshima and Nagaski combined. In the case of Iraq, the argument about “weapons of mass destruction” given to the American people to justify the war turned out to be false.

Maybe that’s why the dark humor war memes seemed chilling to me. We know that the things we want to believe could never happen are entirely possible.

To answer my son’s question, my impulse was to be as reassuring as possible.

“No, I don’t believe World War III is going to happen,” I told him.

To myself, I said a prayer.

A decade ago, I started a simple list.

We were driving back from visiting my family in Texas during the holidays, which is always among the best things I do each year, and I was feeling sentimental. I started jotting down bits and pieces from the past year. I called it the “Best of 2010” and came up with a top 10 list of just a few words -- a destination we traveled to, a visit from people I love -- my highlight reel of the moments when I had felt most joyous.

Looking at that list and reliving those moments felt so great that it prompted me to make another one. I wrote the names of the people who had been especially vital that year -- the people who showed up for me when I needed them the most. I titled that list simply “Team.”

I resolved to find a way to thank those people, sooner rather than later.

The whole exercise probably took less than half an hour, a way to kill time on a long road trip. But it felt like a satisfying way to end one chapter and start the next: focused on the good and feeling grateful.

I decided I would try to make my “Best of” and “Team” lists an annual ritual. I had started it as an email draft to myself, and I eventually compiled it in a Google doc. When something particularly wonderful would happen during the year, I’d open the doc and make a note of it. At the end of the next year, I was culling a work-in-progress down to the most essential moments, rather than starting from scratch.

So now, I have a full decade of those moments and names to reflect upon. I’ll confess that it’s a little more than 100 in total, because some years I couldn’t bring myself to limit it to 10.

I’ve created a longitudinal dataset of my own happiness.

Indulge my nerdiness while I analyze it.

Some expected themes emerged: vacations and holidays with families, celebrations like weddings, visits from friends, special sporting events and concerts, new experiences and milestones for our kids. Obviously, Big Moments aren’t always good times and laughs. But the patina of nostalgia smooths over the stress and conflict that we may have experienced at the time. I often rely on a measure of distance to help bake in the fuzzy, warm feelings and minimize whatever chaos and discord bubbled in the background.

Selective amnesia goes a long way toward familial harmony, I’ve learned.

I discovered some surprises in my dataset, too. The times my work connected with readers, helped someone in a difficult situation or was recognized by others consistently brought me joy over the years. It’s a good reminder that finding meaning and purpose in your work is key to personal happiness.

Another repeat item involved taking on difficult challenges -- like running a marathon, making a film, applying for fellowships or managing a house renovation -- and just being able to complete it. I didn’t win any races or film awards, but working on something hard and being able to finish it ended up on my top 10 list nearly every year. The funny thing is, when I’m in the depths of a project like those, I’m usually miserable -- stressed and full of despair and regret for taking it on.

This turned out to be a great way to check in with myself and my relationships. It’s given me a roadmap on how to prioritize in the future. And the older I get, the nicer it is to have a handy timeline of life’s bright spots.

It’s also been a way to reset my perspective at the start of each year. I read depressing and enraging news stories every single day, and I’ve found a way to make an antidote for myself.

May the next decade be just as list-worthy.

If you’re single during the holidays, someone is bound to point it out. It might be your great-aunt Bertha, your overly concerned mother or even a well-intentioned married friend.

But being alone is better than being miserable in a relationship or suffering through a bad date. To prove this, I surveyed a selection of A-lister singles: all attractive, intelligent, funny people. My interviewees were a writer, a graduate student, a former television news anchor and a lawyer. Two men and two women, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-40s, all willing to share their hilarious bad-date experiences.

The next time someone gives you a sympathetic, pitying or snide comment, laugh and be thankful.

The lawyer was working in a Latin American country when he met a bombshell. She didn’t speak any English, but his Spanish was good enough to score a date. They decided to go to a casino. She was driving them there when another car pulled up directly behind them.

The woman started muttering, slammed the gas pedal in her SUV and took off. She sped down a major thoroughfare, going at least 90 mph, blowing through intersections.

The lawyer started negotiating and pleading -- while wondering if they were being pursued by some underworld mafia hitmen -- but to no avail, as the chase continued. She turned into a secluded residential area, the other car still in hot pursuit. They barely missed a pedestrian and almost flipped the Montero.

The chase continued for about 15 minutes, until he insisted that she pull over at a gas station.

Both vehicles parked, and a blond woman jumped out of the other car and started screaming. The lawyer only caught a few words of the rapid-fire exchange.

“They were some sort of middle-school rivals,” he recalled. “I thought she was going to bust my window out.”

Finally, the screaming match ended. His date declared the other woman crazy, got back in the car, and they resumed their drive to the casino.

The writer noticed him at a Super Bowl party and found him intriguing. He asked for her number, which led to a few engaging phone conversations. She agreed to a date.

They were having dinner at a romantic restaurant when she asked, “So, what do you do for fun?”

“I have a confession: I really like to sing karaoke,” he said.

She tried to cover her surprise. (“That’s my worst nightmare,” she explained to me. “I don’t even watch ‘American Idol.’“)

Her nightmare was about to get much worse.

He asked her about her favorite songs, and she mentioned Stevie Wonder’s classic “They Won’t Go When I Go.”

To her surprise, the date started singing “Superstition” at the table. Loudly. He may have been channeling Rupert Everett or Tom Cruise, but it did not unfold like a restaurant singalong in the movies. No one else joined in.

Undeterred, he tried again. The first song was followed by another R&B ballad. Then a country-western number.

There may have been another song in the set, but the writer seems to have blocked out memories past that point.

She tried to interrupt him after a stanza ended, but he could not be stopped.

“I have not been that mortified in a very long time,” she said. “He wouldn’t stop singing.”

The former TV news anchor said it was hard to get back into the dating pool after a 16-year marriage. So after his divorce, he ventured into the world of online dating. He met a seemingly nice woman, and they arranged to meet for dinner.

He expected a 34-year-old brunette, about 5-foot-6.

He didn’t expect she would be six months pregnant.

“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “But you were so nice. I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t show up.”

Unsure of the protocol in such a situation, he stuck around for dinner and tried to make the best of it.

“I never saw her again,” the anchor said, “but I did get pictures of a newborn emailed to me a few months later.”

The graduate student was watching a movie with her family and a young man who was courting her. She was sitting in a slightly awkward position, on a couch across from her date. She shifted, and to her horror, a rather loud sound escaped from her.

“I was so shocked,” she recalled.

The noise startled her father, who immediately tried to take the fall.

“Uhhh, I have a bad pain in my stomach. I just had some fiber,” he fibbed. “At this age, it’s hard to control.”

The boy called him out.

“No, sir,” he said. “It came from there,” pointing in her direction.

With no other options (or dignity) remaining, she laughed.

“My poor, poor father. Him taking responsibility was almost the worst part,” she said. “I’m still haunted.”