In this podcast with renowned behavioral economist, Dan Ariely, you’ll find out why keeping your options open may be why your window to happiness may be closing.

Several years ago, I attended the funeral of Brian Doyle, a beloved writer (Mink River, Wet Engine) and a friend of mine. Brian was a man of many friends:  St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, quickly filled to capacity, spilling into the aisles and then into the choir loft. The first seven rows

Have you ever played poker and found yourself staring at your hand, unsure of what you really have? I’ve been there, focused on trying to make a pair or three of a kind, only to realize later that I might have had a straight or a flush right in front of me the whole time.

My younger self smiles at me as I sift through old photographs stored in a tattered cardboard box. Finally, under snapshots of my baby sister, and those of my parents in their thirties and forties, ­­I find the note. 

It’s a garden-variety notecard with watercolour flowers on the front, perfect for writing an obligatory thank you note. It once carried the scent of my mother — a combination of cigarettes, hand lotion and

“This is the natural end-stage of your disease. There is nothing more we can do for you.” Those are the words my cardiologist of twenty years said to me shortly after my thirty-sixth birthday. Diagnosed at the age of seven with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, a congenital heart defect, I lived with the specter of death for three decades.