The Friend Who Believes In Nothing A Bolivian dancer at Carnaval de Valencia I have a friend who believes in nothing. He is unfazed by the 1:4 trillion chance of living a human life, and the seven trillion functional nerves in the human body. The way everything fits together. He ignores those among us who have seen signs or received communication from beyond the confines of the living world. He is very pessimistic, to the surprise of no one. His heart is closed. His energy field is a small...

The Joy of Losing Oneself A girl in Warsaw, lost in a floating sea of bubbles. Feeling lost? Good. That means you’re searching. Searching means you’re on the edge of something real. I beat my mid-life crisis to the punch. At 38, I had a successful marketing business. My income was increasing by the month, but I spent almost every waking hour at my desk. I was lost. I booked a flight to Greece without a plan. On a tiny island, after five days of fasting, I interrogated myself and scrawled some...

He Wrote an Entire Book... With His Eyelid A Monarch butterfly outside of Spadina House in Toronto Jean-Dominique Bauby was 43 years old when he suffered a massive stroke. When he woke up, he was trapped inside his own body—completely paralyzed. Trapped in—and by—his mind. He could, however, move one thing: his left eyelid. Doctors called it “locked-in syndrome.” His mind was intact, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Most people would have given up. Bauby didn’t. Instead, he wrote a book,...