A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

When a woman finds her purse stolen, she retraces the steps of her eventful day only to realize that the encounters, and her life as a whole, are empty and purposeless.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.

As she walks alongside the Hudson River with her friend, a woman excitedly explains her intricate vision of what would give her happiness.

A man who firmly believes he does not love the woman he felt obligated to marry begins to realize the gravity of losing her after she ventures into the woods one stormy evening.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

After their only child dies during his gap year abroad, a woman reflects on her relationship with her husband and comes to understand that they deal with fear and grief in different ways.

On the night before her wedding, a woman dreams of the house that she once lived in with her family, but then wakes up and must come to terms with how her life has changed since then.