Midterms are nothing short of a mental battlefield. Our sleep-deprived children step out of the house, their hoodies raised over their ears like helmets, covering hair they didn’t have time to comb while also keeping inside their overburdened heads the Latin words for “seize the day.”

They clutch their swords — their No. 2 pencils and erasable pens; and grasp their tiny shields — the one-page sheets filled with the equations for photosynthesis and the description of the domain Archaea.

When the kids arrive at school, they don’t look left and right because they don’t have much time to chat with friends, avoid enemies or wonder what fashion statement the popular students are making. They are bracing for battle and they have to climb the mountain in front of them without allowing too many mistakes to slow them down.

We adults have been through these moments before, just as we have had shots, skinned our knees and struck out in a big game. And yet watching our kids go through all these challenges brings a whole new level of anxiety, butterflies and, like Pandora’s box, rays of hope. Might this be the time when they succeed just as they feel they are about to succumb? Could this be just the confidence boost they need to help them relax and attack these tests with the equivalent of the light side of the force on future tests?

While the kids write about epiphanies, rarely, as those of us who have gone through this know, do they happen in the middle of an exam. Sure, there might be a moment when they say, “Oh, right, of course, I know this. The answer is ‘0’ because it can’t be anything else.” But more often, even if they figure that one out, they still have another six pages of mysterious questions, such as “What king believed in absolutism?” [Louis XIV of France]; and how did Dante know what my world would be like on test day when he wrote “The Divine Comedy”?

There are all kinds of lessons that await them, some of which apply to the material itself, while others relate to the best test-taking strategy. I recall a test many years ago in which the teacher urged everyone to read all the instructions first before starting. Few of the students did that because they didn’t want to lose time and because any sound outside their heads competed with the pneumonics they were repeating inside their brains like lines in a play.

As the tests arrive on their desks, their legs might start shaking involuntarily, trying to get their minds moving, the way Olympic runners take short, quick jogs before crouching down in the starting blocks. They go through whatever lucky rituals they might have, thinking about the words of a friend or relative, taking a few deep breaths or looking up at the clock, knowing that — one way or another — the hands that slowly circumnavigate those 12 numbers all day, every day, will move them toward their uncertain future.

Maybe they chuckle to themselves at the higher dose of perfume than normal from the girl to their right or the stronger scent of Axe deodorant from the boy to their left. Maybe these other students didn’t take showers that morning because they got up too late or because they sat on the edge of their beds cramming through those last few facts.

Few of them will emerge from the battle completely unscathed. Hopefully, next time around, they’ll remember their earlier wounds and will learn how to avoid making the same mistakes. That, in any context, constitutes progress.

Steven Strogatz picked up the phone to hear the familiar voice of someone he’d never met.

“I got a call from out of the blue, which was really shocking,” said Strogatz, a math professor at Cornell University. “He said, ‘this is Alan Alda. I don’t know if you know me, but I’m an actor.’”

Alda had read an article Strogatz wrote for Scientific American about synchronization in the natural world, which included phenomena like thousands of male fireflies flashing in unison like a Christmas tree. Alda said he wanted to discuss the article.

The Manhattan-born actor visited Strogatz, who was then at MIT in Massachusetts.

“He was this super-famous TV and movie actor,” Strogatz said. “He was not particularly well-known for work in science communication, like he is now.”

At the time of his call to Strogatz, which was more than 20 years ago, Alda was only one year into hosting the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers, in which he wound up interviewing hundreds of scientists during the 11 years he hosted the program.

Alda, who is turning 80 on the Thursday this newspaper comes out, has developed a second career as a science communicator, winning a star-studded list of new fans who appreciate his passion, intellect and, most of all, thirst for knowledge that has turned this seven-time Emmy winning actor into a champion of scientific knowledge and scientists.

Alda is “phenomenal,” said Eric Kandel, the director of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University. Kandel explained that Alda and a talented Norwegian journalist have been the master of ceremonies for the Kavli Prizes, which are given out in Oslo, Norway, every two years to researchers in astrophysics, nanotechnology and neuroscience.

The prestigious Kavli awards are modeled after the Nobel Prize. Kandel, 86, knows a thing or two about those awards as well: he shared the Nobel Prize in 2000 in Physiology or Medicine.

Alda has helped teach Kandel about the communication of science. Alda’s “range is quite broad and his ability to communicate is quite remarkable,” Kandel said.

Kandel attended an 80th birthday bash for Alda a few weeks ago. He took a turn talking to those celebrating an extraordinary life.

“What had been emphasized by the family was his acting career,” Kandel said. He described two important features about Alda.

First, “He’s revolutionized the communication of science to the public. He’s made an enormous impact. He does not have a peer.” And second, “He’s the most unpretentious guy you’ve ever met. You’d never have thought he’d done a movie.”

In 2006, the unpretentious Alda approached Shirley Kenny, the former president of Stony Brook University, about starting a center that would help scientists share their goals, approaches, and results with the public.

Alda met with several people in East Hampton, including Howard Schneider, the dean of Stony Brook’s journalism school.

“The creation story” that explains the origins of the Center for Communicating Science, “starts with this porch meeting,” Schneider said.

When the group returned from East Hampton, they discovered that there were occasional programs and courses and workshops about communicating science, but there didn’t appear to be any center devoted exclusively to “improving the ability of scientists to communicate with the public,” Schneider said.

Aided by former U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop and current U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington), Stony Brook applied for, and received, a federal grant of $220,000 to start the effort.

Alda “was the inspiration and remains the inspirational figure in this effort,” Schneider said.

The seed money led to the founding in 2009 of the Center for Communicating Science, offering students an opportunity to learn how to connect with a range of audiences through various types of training, including improvisational acting, which is the only training Alda received.

Improv requires people to listen to what other people are saying and build off of that, forging connections through shared common ground, Schneider said.

“One rule of improv is that you say, ‘Yes and,’” said Elizabeth Bass, a founding director at the center. “You have to take what [the other person] gives you and add to it.”

Valeri Lantz-Gefroh, the improvisation director at the center, came from the world of theater to the center. She said Alda helped her learn more about a “skill I’ve been working on for 30 years by teaching it in a different way. That gift has come from Alda.”

Indeed, scientists who have taken these courses suggested that they have been invaluable in helping them deliver their message and connect with their audience.

Colin West, a research assistant at the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stony Brook, took six courses at the center. Before he attended the classes, he said he was introverted.

“It’s not enough to eschew the jargon from my own vocabulary,” West said. “I should be trying to understand the jargon and phraseology that’s typical in their patterns of thought and incorporate them into my language.”

Alda has also helped a wide range of scientists. He has “made many of us look from the outside at what we do and ask how we can do better in telling our stories and be more engaging about our fields,” said Louise Leakey, a research professor in the department of anthropology at Stony Brook who works on human evolution in Africa.

Alda asked Leakey to sit on the advisory board at the center because she was working to make the fossil collection accessible online and set up a citizen science project in paleontology.

The notion of sharing science with non-scientists has only recently become more acceptable and more popular, in part because scientists are struggling to get funding for projects ranging from basic science exploring physical properties at an incredibly small scale to discoveries that might help treat diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s disease or schizophrenia, researchers said.

Alda has continued to be a driving force at the center, which, in 2013, was renamed the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. In what friends suggest was typical self-deprecating fashion, Alda said he was flattered that the school was named after him and suggested that, to that point, only a horse had shared his name.

Committed to the center and passionate about science, Alda continues to keep a schedule that would exhaust someone half his age. Years ago, he shot his final episode of The Blacklist, in which his character, Alan Fitch, dies.

That night, Alda flew to Chicago to give a talk as the keynote speaker of the American Association of Medical Colleges to an audience of more than 1,200. Alda didn’t get his wake up call and got up 20 minutes before his 8 a.m. speech, when he inspired leaders about the need to share science with the public.

That night, Alda flew back to New York, where he opened on Broadway in a matinee of “Love Letters.”

Bass said Alda’s work ethic has inspired others at the center.

“We want to help” these efforts become “an important part of his legacy,” Bass said.

It’s a legacy that continues because of a lifesaving surgery Alda had when he was meeting with a scientist in Chile in 2003.

When a local surgeon made a diagnosis and told him the procedure, Alda said he’d need an end-to-end anastomosis. The surprised surgeon asked him how he knew that, and Alda said he used to pretend to perform that in the show “M*A*S*H.”

Friends, colleagues, and scientists appreciate the active intellectual life Alda and Arlene Alda, who have been married close to 59 years, share.

Arlene Alda, a photographer and children’s book author, and her husband have numerous books in their house, Strogatz said. They use these books to continue to feed their curiosity. Alda has also asked Strogatz to give him geometry problems to solve.

“He works on them with great effort for weeks or months at a time,” Strogatz said.

For Alda, the final product, however, is less important than the process. And that process continues as Alda heads into another decade.

These days, the people who imagine his distinctive voice aren’t picturing Hawkeye Pierce in a red robe running to a helicopter so much as they are looking for inspiration in their efforts to share the wonder and beauty of science.

“Sometimes when I have to explain a complicated topic to a nonscientist, I imagine Alan sitting next to me and asking me questions like I’m a guest on Scientific American Frontiers,” West said. “Trying to envision what questions he would ask often helps me figure out what answers to give.”

The team moves as a unit, wearing the same clothes, often with the same hairstyles and even, on occasion, with the same walk or swagger.

They laugh together, lean on each other, share embraces and confess their inadequacies.

“I was terrible,” one of them said, while she took a restorative homemade brownie from a friend.

“You’ll get ’em next game,” her friend suggested. “We’re back on in 15 minutes.”

We took our daughter to a regional volleyball competition in Pennsylvania recently, where teenagers from all over the area trekked in packed cars to bump, set and spike together.

The weekend presented an opportunity for our children to play a sport they love, while it was also a chance for parents to squirm, squeal and celebrate alongside them.

The younger generation exuded joy and confidence. After every point in teenage volleyball, the girls cheer, offer a quick huddle and then return to their positions on the floor.

Our team developed its own ritual after long points in which it emerged victorious. The players all jumped straight up in the air, then met in the middle of the floor to celebrate the hard-won point.

When they’re not on a volleyball court, these children mostly move around individually, even if they can stay in touch with friends and family on their phones and through social media. They don’t take tests together, they don’t study together — most of the time — and they don’t have a common goal. Sure, they might all wish each other the best but, ultimately, they learn on their own and succeed individually.

Modern team sports which, admittedly, take an extreme commitment of time and money, have also created opportunities to make memories, to grow together and, for the moment at least, to share a goal that is bigger than any one person.

That, of course, isn’t limited to sports. That can be true of a music group where everyone creates the kind of live performance that reverberates in audiences’ minds long after the instruments are put back in their cases and the musicians return to their homes and their homework.

The unbridled and shared joy in the moment is akin to witnessing the flames of a dancing campfire high in the mountains on a starlit night. During these matches there are no tests, no boyfriends, no worries about college, no concerns about acne, no wardrobe misfires and no helicopter parents. There is only the euphoria of the moment, the ecstasy that comes from pulling together and going toe-to-toe with another team and, at least in that second and for that point, emerging victorious. It’s not even about winning the gold medal or even a match.

My daughter’s team defeated one of its opponents easily, winning two games by a wide margin. The other team, however, won several exciting points and, despite the lopsided score and the unbalanced skill sets, celebrated every point with the same energy as if it had achieved something remarkable. And who’s to say it didn’t? The games presented ample opportunities for victories that were independent of the final scores.

Parents were as emotionally spent after exciting matches as their children, as they cheered, clapped, pranced nervously along the sidelines, and hooped and hollered. They basked in their children’s successes and encouraged them to find a way to triumph, where the margin of victory often seemed to reflect perseverance and determination as much as it did genuine skills.

In our lives, we have become so focused on our goals for tomorrow and plans for our future journey that we don’t always get to stand up and celebrate the moment. All weekend, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and a community of new friends celebrated a common goal of finding and sharing the best in each other.

He started, “Once upon a time, three little brown bears.”

“No, no, that’s not right!” she shouted, interrupting him before he could get to the action. “They weren’t little, there weren’t three of them and they weren’t brown.”

“Wait!” he protested, putting up a finger. “Who is telling this story, you or me?”

“No, well, if you’re going to tell it, tell it right,” she argued.

“But it’s a children’s story,” he snapped. “Can’t we just tell the story?”

“You want him to go to school with the wrong details? You want him to come home with a bloody nose because someone punched him when he argued about whether they were little brown bears or medium-sized, endangered polar bears?”

“You think our kid is going to get into a fight because I might have used the wrong details in a story? Weren’t we trying to put the kid to sleep? Look at him now. He’s crawling all over the bed, putting everything he can reach into his mouth,” he said.

“Yeah, well, get the details right next time,” she huffed, storming out of the room.

What is it about storytelling that divides the sexes? Why is it that a man remembers a story one way and a woman seems so much better at remembering the details?

Is it fair to generalize? Well, like every generalization, yes and no.

A friend recently shared his observation that his girlfriend, whom he thinks is absolutely one of the best people he’s ever known, has only one small problem — she tends to take all the momentum out of his stories by correcting him.

Is she wrong, I wondered? And even if she’s not wrong, do the details matter? When I thought about all the couples I’ve known over the years, it seemed to me, in my nonscientific recollections, that the women were more likely than the men to halt a story to fix a detail.

“So, there were we were, in the middle of a fire alarm scare in Boston, and we were standing at the window ledge, eight stories up,” he might be saying.

“No! No! We were in San Francisco, not Boston, and we were on the 11th floor,” she might suggest.

A glare and bad body language often follows, as the man loses the thread of his story while he grinds his teeth, wondering whether he can or should confront the love of his life in front of other people.

Is this one of those differences between the sexes that reflect the fact that men are from Mars and women are from Venus? I suspect it is. The way I see it, the details we share about our lives in stories are like the fish we might collect if we were standing at the edge of a pier in Stony Brook, dropping nets into the water to catch fish — or story details — as they swim by.

The holes in a man’s net are larger, letting the small fish swim through, while the holes in the women’s nets are smaller. The women pull up their nets and notice and count the large and small fish, paying meticulous attention to everything, cataloging the variety of fish in their nets.

The men look at the fish and wonder: (a) “Is this enough for dinner?” (b) “Should I take a picture of it?” and most importantly (c) “Did I catch more fish than my brother or the stranger at the end of the pier who kept bragging about all the fish he caught?”

The next time a man’s story goes off track because of specific details, maybe he can suggest he’s focusing on the “bigger fish.” Then again, a woman might rightfully reply that he’s just telling another “fish” story.

When the Wright brothers invented man-made flight more than a century ago, I can’t imagine they thought it’d be a good idea for airlines to charge for meals when more than 200 people are stuck in the same plane for over four hours. Then again, they may not have imagined just how common and popular planes would be.

Almost anywhere in the country, we can look toward the heaven and see a plane bathed in sunlight at the end of the day.

Then again, someone on that plane might have just closed the blind, keeping that annoying light off the screen to watch a fictional character stuck on Mars, colonizing a planet with potatoes.

Speaking of uncomfortable situations, maybe the guy or girl stuck in the last row near the bathroom is rooted near someone who insists on sharing his life story, his experience with his neighbors, or his laundry list of gripes. If the Long Island Rail Road can make quiet cars, can airlines designate quiet sections? Maybe they can add a quiet button, with a picture of a flight attendant with a finger over her pursed lips on the bulkhead?

The flight attendant might whisper, “As you can see, the captain has turned on the ‘No-sharing terrible stories, petty frustrations, or things you might find funny with the person next to you button.’ Please, zip it! While you’re at it, please stop tapping that person on the shoulder to get him to look at you. He doesn’t want to look at you. He’s trying to close his eyes.”

We are a culture that marinates in our frustrations, anger and judgments.

“Can you believe the food cart only had chicken or fish and didn’t have a vegan/vegetarian/dairy-free option?” someone might ask.

“Would you have bought something from the cart?” we might reply.

“Heavens, no. Did you see the prices? I’m just saying they ought to offer it.”

Each flight starts with informative details. “We’ll be flying at 34,000 feet,” the captain might share in his best “The Right Stuff” voice.

“Excuse me, miss? Can we fly at 33,000 feet? My doctor suggested I stay below 33,000 feet because anything higher triggers the side effects from the drug I’m taking because of that ad on TV.”

Then there’s all the beeps. Bing! “You can move about the cabin now but keep your seat belt fastened when you’re in your seat.” Bing! “The restroom in the front is just for the first-class passengers, regardless of how badly you have to go to the bathroom because you ate nine hours of food so you wouldn’t be hungry and have to buy a meal on the plane.”

How about putting the people who want to invent new, safe and potentially delicious food options together with the airlines, giving people a chance to sample new foods? We’re a captive audience, watching movies, playing cards, reading and wondering whether we should be eating breakfast or dinner, depending on whether we’re trying to keep our stomachs on the local time in the place we left or the local time in the place we’re going to. While we’re sitting there, let’s watch independent films we can’t see in the suburbs and eat food that comes from the land we’re flying over.

I love those images of our plane that indicate where we are located. Too bad for Rhode Island and Delaware that the image is often bigger than the entire state. That could exacerbate a small state’s inferiority complex. The Wright brothers may have gotten us started, but we seem to have flown off course on our commercial flight conveniences. Bing!

There we are at the Baseball Hall of Fame. And, look, remember that time mom ran into Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard on the street and got a selfie with him. Speaking of selfies, how about that one of our nephew who ran into Celtics’ basketball player David Lee in Boston?

Yes, every year, we produce countless photographic memories, capturing the moment. Those pictures may be worth a thousand words — and more.

I’m talking about our other senses. We have this incredible evolutionary gift that enables us to experience our lives, to appreciate and understand what’s happening now beyond just seeing a video, or flipping or clicking through a photo album.

At some point we’ve all lost someone we love. We can look at pictures, visit their graves and listen to their favorite songs. But the experience, at least for me, of remembering how they spoke or what they said breathes life into that memory.

Despite growing up in Manhattan, my Aunt Maxine developed a Jimmy Durante way of speaking. “Hey, you!” she’d shout at me from across the room. “Did yah remembuh? It’s my boithday soon and ya gotta get me a cake and a watch.”

Shorter than most adults, Aunt Maxine, who died several years ago, was so much more than her small frame. Yes, she flooded the airwaves at times with a deep voice that could seem like a jackhammer. And yet she could charm a Mona Lisa-type smile out of the most hesitant of audiences. My first thought is not of her stature, but the gift of her humor and of the back scratches she shared with her small, soft hands.

As we prepare to close the book on 2015, it’s worth going beyond the pictures of experiences, victories, defeats and challenging moments to celebrate our senses.

I recently attended a holiday party where a couple described in savory details the taste of a seven-fish stew they eat every year at Christmas. A relative who died long ago used to make it for their family. Not only do they appreciate the flavor, but they also use the taste to reconnect with their ancestors who left Italy long ago.

When we look at that picture of ourselves at a baseball game, we can and should remember the sun that peaked through the clouds, warming the backs of our necks. Even if we don’t eat the hot dogs, we can bask in the connection between that smell and those times we sat high in the seats at a baseball stadium, waiting for the hot dog vendor to place those warm meals wrapped in napkins in our mitts, which we refused to remove in case a foul ball came our way.

When we see that picture of our daughter in the dress she bought for a party, let’s allow the squeal she let out when she found the perfect outfit to echo in our minds. If you’re lucky and your daughter shares an excited sound, does a triumphant dance or expresses a joy that resonates throughout her body, you know how those movements or sounds make you feel. It’s probably something akin to how mother penguins, who have left their young for days on end to hunt for fish, react when they return to the familiar call of their young.

Or, maybe, we’ll take a moment to relive the way we bent over double, laughing with our wives and kids, about something ridiculous we said just before we got out of the car. Wonderful as the pictures of each year are, they’re the tip of the sensory iceberg of the experiences we shared in 2015.

My children are excellent musicians. OK, so I’m a little biased because I love music, I’m kind of fond of them, too, and I have worked with them on their developing skills.

What they’re even better at than playing music, however, is finding ways not to play it. Well, I mean, ways not to play their instruments. They’re perfectly content to play all kinds of music including, to my surprise, country music. Many of my daughter’s adolescent friends are also fond of this genre which, on the Eastern Seaboard, seems about as typical as a 65-degree, mid-December day. Is global warming moving country music north?

Anyway, my children have developed ways to put off practicing. There’s the hunger excuse: “No, no, seriously, Dad, if you could feel inside my stomach, you’d know I’m starving.”

When the food arrives, they are far too busy laughing out loud to notice.

“I am hungry, it’s just that I had to send this text message now. It’s urgent.”

When I take the phones away, they insist someone will be stranded in the metaphorical frozen bus station in Alaska, with polar bears closing in and their friend’s only defense is a text message that will send a tone that terrifies bears.

Back to music, or not. So, now that we’re five years into their music education, their procrastination playbook includes headaches, cold sores and tired eyes that can’t possibly read such small notes. Crying “wolf” too many times, when I’ve seen them bouncing around the house after their headaches rendered them unable to practice, has made me less inclined to believe them.

But, then, last week, my son picked up his instrument and, within seconds, had developed a serious case of the hiccups. One of the many genetic gifts from my father are these hiccups that cause fish to change directions in nearby tanks, birds to fly from their trees and heads to swivel in the direction of that sudden violent, two-toned sound. Even when they were in my wife’s uterus, our children caused her stomach to jump, as if they were miniature maracas.

Before he could play a note, my son increased the tempo of his hiccups, generating a violent and explosive noise. While I was annoyed that he wasn’t playing when he promised to practice, I admit that I was impressed that I was outmaneuvered by an adolescent, hiccuping diaphragm.

A friend has this technique where she drinks from the opposite side of a glass while holding her nose. I’ve seen it work before, but I’m not sure I’d want to try it with my son without an EMT present. I had him try my method, which involves holding his breath for as long as he can, taking a small breath and then repeating the process. I figure it’s a way of starving the diaphragm of air until it goes back to its usual job. He gamely tried, but it didn’t work. I even scared him by telling him about all the standardized tests coming in the next several years. That was similarly ineffective.

When I gave up, I saw a small Mona Lisa-type grin on the corners of his mouth which formed as he pulled his unused instrument apart and put it back in its case. I wondered how, if he had so much control over his diaphragm, he might use that power constructively? Then I remembered the American military blasts unpalatable music to force drug dealers and foreign leaders out of their homes. Maybe instead of pop music making these dictators wilt, the military could blast the sound of violent hiccups. “OK, guys nothing’s working, let’s bring in the diaphragm.”

Is there divine  in all of us, or only in the people who share our religion? If your God, my God, anyone’s God, created the Earth and all the people, animals and planets on it, then does She want those who are true believers to annihilate and destroy the other people She created because they don’t believe in Her?

What? You don’t think God could be female? That’s a topic for another column. Recently, I read about a charitable act. At the end of the article, I saw that people were commenting about how that charity could only come from someone of their religion — I’m not going to indicate what religion it was.

The commentors were convinced that it couldn’t have come from someone who followed a different religious discipline. Why? If there are elements to ourselves that are a combination of destroyers and builders, lovers and haters, sinners and saints, why should something extraordinary or even inspirational be limited to one religion?

Couldn’t everyone’s God speak through or act through one person, regardless of his background or religion, to inspire others to greater heights, to do something incredibly beneficial to his or her fellow human beings without selecting only those people who go to the right building, speak the right language and follow the right religious practices? Maybe we need to close our eyes to see the divine  in everyone.

Religion has this way of bringing out the best in us and, at times, the worst. We sometimes feel that we’ve received some message from a divine being who tells us that we must right the wrongs of people who are outside our religous group. Centuries after the Crusades, humans still resort to weapons to make our point with those who have other religious beliefs.

I understand the fear, especially in an era when every politician with national aspirations describes a boogeyman (or woman). I also understand the reality that there are people bent on destroying us and that we can’t go naively into that good night, imagining we live in a utopian world where we can ignore threats. It’s real and it dominates the headlines every day.

This isn’t about the extreme cases, where we have to be vigilant against killers who, for whatever reason, feel they are doing something important in their lives by killing others before dying. That doesn’t seem like much of a way to honor anyone’s God.

This is about the way we relate to each other and the way we think of religious groups outside our own. Why should something spectacular or incredible have to originate from the mind or heart of someone from our religion?

Turning this around, do you like everyone in your church, temple or mosque? Do you routinely sit during services and feel a universal kindred spirit with everyone in that room that you don’t feel with the people in your child’s classroom at school, at your daughter’s ballet recital or at a concert where the music seems to echo around the room long after our kids have stopped strumming?

Would you randomly pick a name out of the hat at your house of worship and be equally thrilled to host any of those people in your home for a week, a night or even a long dinner?

Religion can offer us a chance to see and imagine that the best is yet to come in anyone around us. We don’t have to give up our own religion and it doesn’t lessen our religion to believe that something spectacular lies just beneath the surface of another person passing by us, even if that person doesn’t share our religion.

If we are all God’s children, wouldn’t She (or He) want us to put more effort into getting along with our siblings?

During the holidays we donate coats to the homeless, buy presents for strangers and send cards to the brave soldiers representing our country far from home. In addition to those charitable efforts during this time of year, how about if we come up with ways to give to our planet?

Huh? In light, if you’ll pardon the pun, of the current United Nations climate-change meeting of world leaders in Paris, perhaps we can add a few small items to our lists. And, no, most of them don’t require spending any money. In fact, they will help save money.

For starters, and this is something my Depression-era grandparents ingrained in me from an early age, turn off the lights in rooms we don’t use. I know that’s tough, especially during this darker time of year, but it cuts our electric bill. That’s an extra few bucks in your pocket at a time when our kids absolutely, positively, have to get the latest, greatest, fastest, most-fashionable present to pass the holiday parent test.

When we drive somewhere and wait for someone, turn off those engines. Seriously, idling is something we should never do. It wastes gas and pollutes the environment. I appreciate all the effort parents make to sit outside schools, piano lessons, practices and games, waiting to pick up their children. But leaving the engine on is not only unnecessary, it fills the air with pollutants just before our children step in the car. Having sat in cars in temperatures below freezing for close to a half-hour, I assure you that the car stays warm if you don’t open your window or door. Seriously, try it. It also gives us those cherished moments of silence.

Then, there’s the thermostat. Yeah, I know we like it warm, but for the month of December, how about turning it down just 2 degrees? If that becomes unbearable, lower it just 1 degree. It might not seem like much individually, but that can and will make a huge difference collectively.

During the night we can turn off our computers and printers. These machines are much faster at booting up than the same electronics were just a decade ago. While we’re waiting for our computers to come back online, we can check our emails, send important messages about what we just realized we need to get from the store, and send instant messages to people around the world.

OK, so, we’ve got that shopping list and we know you’ll forget something because the overstimulating holiday environment of most stores has an ability to soften our brains. The bright and clever displays and constant caroling music on the radio encourage us to buy something that wasn’t on the list, turning us into consumer marionettes.

But if we were more efficient about our holiday shopping, we could buy that extra thing and still cross everything else off the list. What does that buy us? It gives us more time to write that rhyming couplet expressing our enduring love for our spouse and it reduces the amount of time we’re running back and forth to stores.

How about walking? I know it seems hard to imagine carrying everything from store to store but, let’s face it, it’s hard to find parking spots anyway. Instead of using gas to get from one place to another, by walking we could burn off that extra piece of pumpkin pie that called to us from the refrigerator.

Like so many other efforts at this time of year, giving to our planet will bring returns for us, our children and grandchildren down the road.

Is the McDonald’s commercial bothering anyone else? I get it. The Golden Arches is serving breakfast all day long. Something about that radio advertisement is irritating, especially after I’ve heard it for the 20th time in a day.

In honor of that commercial, I thought I’d share a list of the trivial things I’m thankful for. Yes, I know there are many real things to appreciate, but, for now, I choose to focus on the mundane.

I’m thankful I’m not sitting next to someone telling me why he’s so angry at his ex-wife. Divorce is tough and coordinating activities for kids is challenging — even for parents who are happily married — but, dude, I don’t need to hear every twist and turn in your agonizing morning. I know, that sounds terrible and unsympathetic, but we don’t have to share everything with everyone.

I’m thankful that some games get canceled because of rain or snow. I know it’s our fault that we put our kids in all these sports and that some time down the road, I’ll have to get back on the road for a makeup game. But, in the moment, I can’t help enjoying the unexpected freedom to leave the keys and my chauffeur hat where they are.

I’m trivially thankful I’m not much taller. If I were much taller, I might have to duck when I entered a room or struggle to find a place to hide when someone who is about to tell me all the things about his ex-wife that bother him. Who am I kidding, right? It’d be cool to be taller and be able to dunk a basketball or even have a better view of people coming down a crowded hallway.

I’m thankful I’m not waiting behind a car that’s in the left lane and doesn’t have a blinker on. I’m not sitting at a turn when, just as the light turns green, the guy puts on his blinker, forcing me to wait while the cars in the right gleefully pass me without giving an inch to allow me to sneak into the other line. Hooray! Let’s hear it for those last minute blinker people, who give me a chance to appreciate the same traffic light another time through the green-yellow- red cycle. You never know: maybe the light will go from yellow to green this time and I will be the first one to witness it. And, maybe the traffic light will send me a Morse code signal with the winning lottery number.

I’m thankful I’m not in middle school. If you really need me to explain this one, you were probably sickeningly popular during those awful transition years and you need another rite of passage time in your life, just so you can understand the rest of us.

I’m thankful someone isn’t trying to tell me, right now, what should outrage me. I recognize that people get outraged about real and important things, like how politicians focus too much on one thing and not the thing that matters most to them in the moment. But, hey, just because I remain calm while other people are loudly outraged doesn’t mean I deserve that disgustedly frustrated look I get when I shrug in the face of your fury.

I’m thankful some of the dialogue in movies out right now is so bad that it’s added an unintended comic dimension while giving me the chance to appreciate the difference between quality entertainment and words to connect computer animated excitement. The Mockingjay Part 2 film offers several such gems. In one scene, Peeta Mellark, played by Josh Hutchinson, and Gale Hawthorne, played by Liam Hemsworth, discuss their competing interest for Katniss Everdeen, acted with considerable seriousness by Jennifer Lawrence. They conclude that they’re not sure who Katniss will choose, but it probably doesn’t matter much because all three of them are unlikely to survive anyway. Oh yes, the sweet agony of the love triangle in the middle of a life or death struggle.