"Can I help you find anything?" he asks. "How 'bout the meaning of life?" I reply. Without hesitation, he tells me, "That's two aisles over, middle shelf, in a small can!"

I thought I'd cured myself of my chronic "foot-in-mouth-itis" -- that is, saying things to people based on assumption, being totally wrong, then feeling like a jerk. But alas, it lingers.

Driving, I'm like a bow being pulled across the strings. Now, I am in the rondo, the third movement, where things that used to matter don't and things that never mattered do; where the mundane appears vivid and even the simplest, most ordinary routines become holy.

I reach out to shake his hand, and he grips my forearm as I grip his. I go to my car and find a dollar in the tray, which I give to Ra, though never did he ask for it. As I drive out I see him mounting his bicycle, ready to ride on now that I'm safe.

We saw played out on the national stage how seductive it is to believe our own fabrications about the way it is, and we saw the prices we'll pay as a result of our unwillingness to look beyond what we think we already know.

With greater frequency I've recently wondered why I'm being shown the splendor and richness of the world that I've been fortunate enough to experience and can only conclude there must be a greater purpose -- a grander design to it -- than my own personal fulfillment.

As we all know, life is short. It is therefore one of the rarest and most valuable commodities we have. In case you ever forget this tenet, recall Drake's horrendous acronym: YOLO. Being happy is a state of mind, not an action, and this article will provide the panacea for your painful troubles.

But then I thought, even if "Call Me Maybe" was my favorite song ever, and even if I believed that I would never tire of it, there would eventually come a point where I could no longer tolerate it. Then I started thinking about death.

This study suggests that people feel that their own self-concept is influenced more strongly by what they have done than by what they own. Another series of studies in this paper explores perceptions of self by others.

In one of the not-so-great ironies of the modern world, we're trained to make a living but not how to do the living we're making. We wind up without the skills to do what is essential for physical and mental health -- participate in our lives through engaged experience.