At the time of this writing, confirmed global cases of coronavirus surpassed one million. The world is grappling with an unprecedented pandemic -- the likes of which most of us have never witnessed before in our lifetimes. COVID-19 has claimed close to 53,000 lives throughout the world, and that number is  expected to surge in the next week or two. Nearly 6,000 people have died in the United States alone -- well over 2,000 more casualties than China. Italy still leads with a staggering 14,000 deaths, followed by more than 10,000 reported in Spain. The coronavirus has sent markets reeling and caused businesses big and small -- from bars and restaurants to theaters and hotels -- to shut their doors and lay off or furlough workers. Indeed, the outbreak is taking a heavy mental and financial toll on everyone from medical staff on the front lines to entrepreneurs to stay-at-home moms. A whopping 10 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits in March. Some experts ...

When I consider my closest friendships, I always ask one thing:  Would we have clicked in the same way had we met a year later?  Five years later? Ten years after? Chances are, we would not. The reasons why we gel more with certain people are almost self-explanatory. In general, most of our friends are close to us in age. It's not at all surprising given we probably met them in school or doing some activity that people in our age bracket might enjoy. I met my closest friends in different stages of my life: one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high school, one in college, and one at my second job out of college. Three of them are single guys with no kids, while the other two -- the best man at my wedding and a female coworker I recently addressed in a prior post -- are married with children. Can you guess which of these friends I see and talk to more? Indeed, my friendships with these two latter friends has changed drastically since they became p...

If there's one thing I've learned about Facebook, it's that it seems designed to make people envy each other. The child-free couple taking off on a cruise vacation at the drop of a hat. The newlyweds boasting of how perfect their lives are together. Sally posting pictures at the finest restaurants in Beverly Hills. Many people seem to use the social networking site as a way to portray their lives as being better than yours and mine. And some of them will go to the ends of the earth to get as many "likes" and positive comments as they possibly can. Thus the reason I've cut back on my use of Facebook in recent months. It's also devolved into a popularity contest of sorts that I wish not to be a part of. Maybe you don't wish to compare your life to others' because you're happy with it as it is. Just because the Coopers have three kids and a dog, live in a huge house, and go to Disney World every three months doesn't mean I have the least...