I know what you’re thinking: Is this person insane? Or has she been living under a rock? What with the United States government denying the citizenship of a Maryland woman, kidnapping foreign heads of state, and murdering people in broad daylight, this hardly seems the time to let our guard down.

Of course, it’s not letting my guard down that I’m talking about; in these times, that wouldn’t be just foolhardy but impossible. But friends, if I don’t find a way to lessen the tension inside me, it’ll wrap me in its coils until I’m unable to do anyone any good (and am miserable besides).

So, in slight desperation, I turned to 100 Poems to Help You Relax, edited by Liz Ison. In these pages, poets from Rumi to Mary Oliver expound on finding peace in myriad ways, even when the outside world or our internal landscape feels unpredictable and threatening.

In “Summer Night Piece,” Amy Lowell exhorts us to settle into the quiet moments:

The garden is steeped in moonlight,
Full to its high edges with brimming silver…

And the Harvest moon droops heavily out of the sky,
A ripe, white melon, intensely, magnificently, shining.
Your window is orange in the moonlight…

It burns like a lamp before a shrine,
The small, intimate, familiar shrine
Placed reverently among the bricks
Of a much-loved garden wall.

Rumi reminds us in “The Guest House” how temporary each state of being is, even within ourselves:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning, a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture,
Still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
For some new delight…

It can be difficult to sit in the house that is oneself without wanting to fix things: Sometimes, my faucets leak; sometimes, my walls need repairing. (Sometimes, I imagine burning the whole thing down and starting anew.) But I like the idea that even my deepest pain has purpose, as a different poet, Kahlil Gibran, teaches: “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

In “The Peninsula,” Irish poet Seamus Heaney offers another solution for those of us at the end of our rope:

When you have nothing more to say, just drive
For a day all round the peninsula.
The sky is tall as over a runway,
The land without marks, so you will not arrive

But pass through, though always skirting landfall.
At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill,
The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable
And you’re in the dark again…

The incomparable Oliver, on the other hand, suggests a type of “Praying”:

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

It won’t be easy to follow these worthy folks’ advice in the coming years: Our battles will be long, painful, and uphill. Yet we have no alternative but to persevere, so it’s worthwhile to try to find a little joy along the way, as Charles Bukowski writes in “The Laughing Heart”:

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Mariko Hewer is a freelance editor and writer as well as a nursery-school teacher. She is passionate about good books, good food, and good company.