We all experience power lines in our interactions with partners, family, colleagues, and friends. After you've been shocked by one of these, dazed momentarily by the lightning strike, take some time to recover and reflect.

The sun was shining, and the sand was warm beneath my feet. But what I heard there left me cold.

My father, Robert S. Fiffer, was a larger-than-life character, and though he lived only 48 years (of which I knew him for nine), he had an outsized influence on both the world and me.

We want to be surprised by stories, yet at the same time feel the surprise was inevitable.

Elaine hated the certainties of death and taxes as much as anyone. She avoided the former for 91 years (passing on in 2015) and railed about the latter for much of that time.

The summer after my father died my mother did something bold and adventurous—she took me on an African safari.

Sometimes life needs a jiggle, a little fiddling to restore its fullness…

Like many children, I held the adorable (then) and naive (now) belief that I could change the world—if only I could run the show.