Orr lives in a cruel world, parallel to our own, of malthusian compromises and perverse public transit, though I'll let you read the book yourself to find out more about that. No matter how little Orr cares for our typical shifgrethor, politics, annaresti modes or old speech, he's a fully realized person placed outside his will at the inflection point of power, potential, and crisis. But before all that, he experiences a moment of solidarity, of seeing and being seen, that drives the supernatural to happen among the most possibly mundane:
Life has hardship in it. But it also has sunlight and other people in it!
How is one to tell about joy? This is one way; to foreground every triumph with the toil and tears preceding it. Pain as a constant—I know this firsthand well enough—whose absence is noteworthy enough to be worth celebrating. But still, the best thing to bring that absence, to give us grounds to celebrate: other people, the beauty of a face, the humor of a word, the thing we can only share by giving it to each other.
That mutual affirmation! The woe weighs, yes; the problems are no less real, just more distant. Still we found, and will find, what we need. The nervous system, accepting a calming influence, a relaxation of every taut nerve. A brightness of the eye and lightness of the spirit. For a few moments, kindness and that joy are not linear but radiant, and it is perhaps our only job to make these moments happen again and again, or to savor the cherished second that they last.