Life is not a story that builds to a climax. It is a story that meanders. In the first half, we accumulate resources—skills, friends, status—and, in the second half, we lose them, bit by bit. This is nothing like a traditional narrative. Life is a series of vaguely connected moments.

In a disconnected story like that, meaning is produced in another... See more

Everything in nature is embedded. Cells are embedded in organs, organs in organisms, organisms in ecosystems. At every level, the part depends on the whole for its existence and function, and receives signals from that whole about how to behave. A neuron doesn't know where to fire without the context of the brain around it. A cell doesn't know... See more

“In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's... See more