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

Every day I read a few pages from Art That Changed the World, a lovely coffee table book from DK publishing. Yesterday I enjoyed reading how Leonardo DaVinci is known by art historians for introducing a style of painting called sfumato (“in the manner of smoke”) where he blurred edges and offered viewers “grace,” as…

We attended a lovely service last night where we sung a hymn with the line, “our life long pattern daily.” It’s a lovely phrase that invites us to reflect on what or whom we are patterning our lives – a person, an idea, a philosophy, an ambition? Or, are we not basing our life on…

We visited the Cloisters yesterday, a museum that looks exactly like its name at the very northern part of Manhattan. As I walked by a sculpture of a woman’s head with the title, “Head, perhaps of an Angel,” I thought, that’s interesting. (You’ll find a photo of the piece at on-emotions.com) The entire description read,…

Seth Godin raised a wonderful question recently about how we determine value. The context he was framing it in was in regard to business. How does Netflix, Godin asked, determine value when it attempts to discern the value of a single show or one customer when the measurement is the number of streams? It used…

Psychologists note there is a fascinating connection between deciding to help people who are in need and then determining that we like them after we help them. Assisting people, in other words, helps not only the one who requires help, but apparently the act of helping others helps us to like the human race a…

We heard a beep in our rental car after the light turned green. Had I done something wrong, or was there a problem with the car. What was it? Then I saw the words “Leading Vehicle Driving Way” on the dashboard. What is this, I wondered? Then it occurred to me this beep was for people…