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

I was having a conversation with someone regarding the deepest aspects of the human condition when she made the observation it was helpful to be “armored with curiosity.”  That’s interesting, isn’t it? We often think of armor as something we put on to protect us, especially when we feel we are going into battle. But…

2nd century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote down his observations on life and leadership in one of my favorite books, Meditations. In one of its more helpful passages Aurelius offers advice on how to persevere through life’s many challenges. He wrote: “You have to assemble your life yourself—action by action. And be satisfied if each…

“Right up to the last minute,” wrote Paul McCartney about musician Jimmy Buffett, who died on September 1st, “his eyes still twinkled with a humour that said, ‘I love this world and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it’.” In her poem Peonies, poet Mary Oliver asks the question, “Do you love this world?” Jimmy…

We were at a Bruce Springsteen concert last night; couples in their 70s, 60s, and 50s, were proudly wearing concert t-shirts and a few families had come to introduce the next generation to the man they call “the Boss.”   But sitting next to us was man who clearly came alone. Five foot eight, in his…

Jeff Tweedy is one of my favorite singer/songwriters. In his book How to Write One Song he encourages his readers to choose “verbs over nouns.” Why? Because that will guide you towards “what you want to do, not what you want to be.”  In other words, to move towards what we want to be, we first…

The Washington Post called Patrick Bringley’s memoir All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me, “Exquisite… A beautiful tale about beauty.”  The memoir describes how Bringley spent a decade as one of 500 museum guards watching over treasures from Egypt to Rome and the wonders of the museum that we might miss.…