And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

As I sat in a cab on Saturday evening being zoomed through some blurry part of Chelsea in the recklessly competent style of the New York cab driver, my friend texted me and asked how I would define a life well-lived. I assumed correctly that she was drunk.

This question brought back memories of a class I took in my senior year at Penn called “Literature of Success,” a popular one among almost-real people getting angstily ready to begin noble consulting and finance professions - both the culmination and beginning point of their lives so far. The class offered a rich reading syllabus with works from Benjamin Franklin (of course), Viktor Frankl, and others which I presently forget, and the goal was to ingest these people’s stories and eventually come to our own answer and plan to achieving success in the real world. And naturally to be graded on the quality of that plan.

I texted her back...