Thrown into relief

The following is an excerpt from Alain de Botton's book The News: A User's Manual, that struck me quite strongly.

Living is usually something of an emergency anyway, but our struggle must usually be strenuously concealed. Our anxieties churn away within us, yet on the outside we must smile and and deliver upbeat answers to inquiries about how we're doing. The storm calls a temporary end to this charade. With the wind howling outside, we're allowed to be worried and, even more blessedly, we can direct our worries towards something large, objective, and relatively simple - for it is ultimately easier to dig, rescue, save, and resuscitate than to meet the challenges of those quieter, more temperate days when we are left alone to bear the responsibilities of making a living, staying in love, raising sane children, and not wasting our brief lives.

...

Against the backdrop of miles of polar whiteness, the value of any fellow human being is thrown into relief. Criteria for compatibility drop to the modest level at which they should have perhaps always been.