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One of my coping mechanisms is something I call the Sky Cure. When I’m fed up with bad news or just want to give my brain a break, I go outside and look at the sky. It could be a walk, a run, a hike, a round of golf, or just an hour drinking cocktails on a deck with a view. My general rule, while taking the Sky Cure, is to free my eyes from the tyranny of screens. To gaze at the horizon and contemplate the physical world, as humans have done for most of their bumptious history.

I was golfing recently and on the 17th hole, our group had to wait for the players ahead of us. I was walking the course and feeling tired, so I decided to lie down on the fairway and stretch. Flat on my back, I was astonished at what I saw. Yes, the sky. But it was sky like I barely remembered it.

Lying flat on the ground and looking up, my peripheral vision didn’t extend far enough to see anything around me. Just sky. It was all-enveloping and made me feel like I was floating. No, I don’t smoke weed while I golf.

[5 ways to fix capitalism]

If you think you’ve done this lately, I’ll bet you haven’t. I look at the sky all the time, and I don’t remember seeing sky like this in my adult lifetime. Probably when I was 9 or 10, trying to find familiar shapes in the clouds, I did. But these days, I’m used to seeing sky anchored by treelines or buildings or power cables. A sky without borders is endless and unconcerned with humanity.

I heard the nearby clink of club hitting ball. We were moving again and one of my golf pals had just hit. It was time to get up and finish the round. I quickly fished out my phone to take the picture above.

That sky could have appeared anywhere in the world, I suppose. But I got to see it in the community where I live, where the metaphorical skies are pretty blue, as well. To me, it reflected the rich and rewarding texture of life below.

I play golf at public courses where the starters pair people up so every group is a foursome. If you’re in a smaller group or by yourself, you end up spending several hours playing with strangers. I’ve met many of my golf buddies this way. We get matched randomly and end up playing together for years.

[It’s time to revise the American Dream]

My community teems with people who bond with each other for every kind of reason. They want to play tennis or mahjong together. They pray at the same church. They share tools and gardening tips in the neighborhood. They volunteer for causes they care about and meet like-minded people with similar values. Their kids or their dogs hit it off and friendships develop. People self-sort, and it’s fine, because there are groups for everybody.

We take it for granted, but Americans are uniquely adept at forming communities. When the French chronicler Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, he was famously struck by the way Americans practiced the “art of associating”—something unusual in his home country or others he had visited and studied.

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite,” de Tocqueville wrote in his seminal work, “Democracy in America.” He marveled at “associations of a thousand … kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive. The Americans make associations to give entertainments, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books.” He advised his readers that “nothing … is more deserving of our attention than the intellectual and moral associations of America.”

Is this still true? Do Americans still have the knack for forming rich and robust communities? Sure seems that way to me. And the data backs me up. Nearly 80 percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the quality of life in their local communities. A solid majority of Americans trust their local government.

That’s in obvious contrast to how Americans feel about their country at the national level. Two-thirds of Americans feel the nation is on the wrong track. Those “wrong track” responses have exceeded “right track” answers for most of the 21st century. Trust in the federal government has plunged to historic lows, according to Gallup. President Trump’s chaotic and self-serving presidency is part of that decline, but it’s not just Trump: Trust in Washington has been collapsing for more than 20 years. Consumer attitudes, meanwhile, are close to recessionary levels, even though there’s no recession in sight.

We live locally—but we focus a lopsided amount of our attention on events at the national level. Political reporting from Washington dominates the national news and gravitates toward conflict and controversy. Social media is an outrage machine that draws eyeballs by encouraging people to be angry about stuff even if it doesn’t affect them at all. The highly profitable outrage industry proffers villains responsible for every grievance, and if you don’t have any grievances, it will provide some for you.

What would happen if we devoted our attention to local living in the same proportion that we actually live locally? What if our impressions of America were largely formed by what we see around us in real life instead of breathless reporting from Washington, DC or the press cabin of Air Force One?

I don’t pretend that self-dealing politicians and exploitative oligarchs would disappear. They wouldn’t. But we might feel better about our country and more clear-headed about what’s worth fighting for. Principles such as justice and democracy are important, but the battle for America begins at home, and home is where we live.

This is what the Sky Cure does for me. I put the troubling headlines aside for a while, and immerse myself in the simple, invaluable things that surround me. Then I come back with a renewed sense of purpose. America is still a special place, if you know where to look. And the more you like it, the harder you’ll work to defend it.