Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.

I don't know if God exists and I don't care. God's will and design for this temporal and spatial vastness, if any, is so patently, deliberately impenetrable that I doubt any mortal has a grasp on it. The very inexplicability of sad events like the tsunami, like the AIDS crisis or even like the cancer death of the father of one of my daughter's 2nd-grade classmates last week are, to me, reminders to focus on our obligations to one another, not to the infinite; to honor the creator, if any, by honoring creation itself and hoping that's good enough.

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.

There's no sense talking about priorities. Priorities reveal themselves. We're all transparent against the face of the clock.

Don't waste your breath proclaiming what's really important to you. How you spend your time says it all.

This sense of the safe-deposit box as a totem of responsible security inspired me to rent a box myself shortly after the birth of our first child….

You can't buy time or save it, common idioms notwithstanding. You can only spend it.