matthew from ecclesiastes 4

I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady.

One of the greatest struggles we face in this life is the temptation to compare ourselves to others. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” But in the final part of ...

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

During an interview that took place during the 1976 presidential election, Rosalynn Carter was asked what her husband, Jimmy Carter, had that his opponent, Gerald Ford, didn’t. She responded simply, “...

Ann was a working mother in her 30’s, and one of the millions of women who saw the marshmallow castle on the December cover of a popular women’s magazine. Ann confessed, later, that she felt like a “b...

Love is hunting for bigger game than happiness. Love is a union of souls. When one member of a couple suffers from Alzheimer’s, the other doesn’t just go away. Instead, as Lewis puts it, love says, “B...

Sometimes our successes can be more devastating than our failures. We fight, strain, and struggle in pursuit of something or someone that looks to be good, and after days or months or years, we obtain...

Many years ago, I was on my way home from work and a friend came to mind. It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard from him for a few days, and I knew he had been having a tough time. (This was before th...

Don’t all these little tweets, these little sips of online connection, add up to one big gulp of real conversation?

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, has made more money in a single day than Heller had earned fro...

I challenge those who come to me for marriage counseling this way: “If you do what I tell you to do for an entire month, I can promise you that by the end of the month, you will be in love with your m...

Most people can bear adversity. But if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test.

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.