a daily blog on well-being and how to feel better by Mark Barger Elliott…

In our new series inspired by Kevin Toolis’ book In My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die we consider again the topic of “how to live.” A question that can help us consider how to live is to ask, are we alone or is some other entity – god,…

Pedro Almodóvar is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker who recently published a book called, The Last Dream. In an article about the book Almodóvar made this observation – “I have a problem with death now, with mortality. I don’t think ‘I’ve just lived another day,’ but instead, ‘I’ve got one less day to live.’” A phrase…

I was recently introduced to Kevin Toolis’ book In My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love, and Die. And I thought, are these not the three courses, the three subjects, we are invited to take in the precious days that life grants us. To learn how to live. To learn how…

Wallace Stevens is considered one of the finest poets of the 20th century. He wrote poetry while working for insurance companies. I have always appreciated the title of his poem “Prologues to What is Possible,” where Stevens writes this line:  The way the earliest single light in the evening sky, in spring, Creates a fresh…

I recently came across an interview where actor Tom Selleck shared advice his father gave that had greatly influenced his career – “Risk is the price to pay for opportunity.” Some opportunities appear without a cost, but these are, as the saying goes, few and far between. Most ask that we do pay the price…

Taking a moment to understand scale is a fascinating idea. And to get a sense of the size of things we usually need to compare one to another. For example, as Allan Lightman explains, “If we wanted to travel to the Sun on a high-speed train, say at two hundred miles per hour, it would…