Two years ago, when I found myself temporarily retired by a jobless universe, I moved back in with my parents, who live on a farm in Ireland. Many a stressed-out New Yorker would kill for the chance to unwind in an emerald paradise remote enough that a strange car passing up the road was a thrill, but I found myself floundering, unable to make peace with the fact that I was no longer a contributing member of society.

The world seemed to be in an unholy mess, with earthquakes and wars and financial and glacial meltdowns, and it just didn’t feel O.K. to be sitting out the storm like Lady Muck on her landed estate, however splendid the isolation.

I was desperate for a cause of some sort to validate my existence, so the day I saw a local member of the Garda trying to catch a runaway horse, I jumped at the chance to help out. We had to drive the horse off the road before he caused an accident, but he couldn’t be lured from the lush grass of the roadside ditch. When I got closer, I could see why. The poor animal was skin and bone, and the field he just escaped from was barren as a desert. As we gave him a chance to fill his empty belly, I felt awash with guilt that I had been so overwhelmed by the world’s out-of-reach problems that I ignored this tangible one right on my doorstep.