Neil Pasricha didn’t start out to create a killer-blog, he was just going through a really, really hard time and decided he either needed to look for some of the simple joys and pleasures of life or… well, he actually wasn’t sure what else he would do. And so he had a simple idea – notice the small delights of life and share them on a blog. And he executed it really well – these ideas are often quite simple and yet, perhaps for that reason, take you off guard. And it doesn’t hurt that his posts are written with care. 1000 Awesome Things became his project and blog. It received a couple of hits, and then a couple dozen, and then a...

The day after any national election is usually one of powerful and diverse emotions – celebration and relief on one side, disappointment and grief on another – and never more so than after an election as grueling and at times divisive as this one. Yet amid these divergent and conflicting emotions, I find myself filled with a sense of gratitude and grace that has little to do with the election results themselves but rather springs from several elements of the day, elements that while viewed perhaps as peripheral by many seem to me to be at the very core of who and what we are as a people. Here are the ones that immediately come to...