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  A tribute to Dr. Said Mekbel — and to everyone who stands on shoulders they can never fully repay. Some people leave a mark on the world with their name on a building. Others leave it in the way their grandchildren move through life; the standards they hold themselves to, the things they refuse to settle for, the quiet voice in the back of their head that says  you can do more, go further, don't stop here. My grandfather left both. It Started With a Woman and a Bag Before there was Dr. Said Mekbel, there was his mother. A Lebanese immigrant who arrived in Costa Rica with nothing but a bag, two children, and a determination that history rarely records but always depends on. She didn't speak the language. She had no education to speak of, no connections, no safety net. What she had was the particular ferocity of a woman who had decided that her children's lives would be different from her own. She learned Spanish. She built a life. And then her youngest was born: the fifth ...

A question more of us are asking than we admit. There is a particular kind of person who moves through the world a little differently. They notice things others don't. They replay conversations afterward, not out of insecurity, but out of genuine care about how their words landed. They walk into a room and read the emotional temperature within minutes. They lose sleep over things that most people around them have already forgotten. And at some point, almost all of them ask the same question:  is something wrong with me, or is something wrong with everyone else? The answer, it turns out, is neither. But getting there takes a while. What We Carry Without Knowing It Most of us don't spend much time thinking about how we were shaped. It's easier to think of ourselves as self-made, as individuals who arrived at our values through logic and choice. But the truth is messier and more tender than that. The way you were raised leaves a mark that goes deeper than memory. Whether love ...

And I can't stop thinking about it. I grew up in Latin America. I have lived in Canada, the UK, the United States. I have sat in rooms with policymakers, economists, and executives talking about the future of energy, of markets, of technology. I have also walked streets where that future feels very, very far away. And somewhere in the middle of all of it is my mother's voice. She had a particular way of moving through the world - eyes open, always. She didn't let us look away from things just because they were uncomfortable. She pointed out the woman on the corner. She asked questions at the dinner table that had no easy answers. She installed something in us - a kind of awareness that I didn't always know what to do with when I was young, but that gets louder with every passing year. Lately, it's deafening. The most extraordinary and most unsettling moment of our lives I work in economics. I follow macro trends for a living. I track what's happening in ma...

A thought a lot of us keep coming back to, no matter how many times we try to leave it alone. There is a certain kind of life that looks, from the outside, exactly like it's supposed to. Good education. Graduate degree. A respectable career. The kind of CV that signals competence and stability - the white collar job, the benefits package, the ability to pay rent and take a trip once in a while. The measurable markers of a life on track. And for many people who have built that life, there is genuine pride in it. Real effort went into it. Real things were earned. But quietly, often late at night or in the middle of a conversation they're only half present for, a question surfaces that doesn't go away: Did I choose this? Or did I just follow the formula? The Formula Is Real. That's the Problem. Here is something most people don't say out loud: for a certain subset of the population, professional success was never really that extraordinary. Not to say it wasn't earn...

In the hustle of daily life, it’s easy to lose sight of the hardships many people face. For those of us living in the developed world, it’s all too common to become desensitized to the realities that others confront – our own lives often feel far removed from them. Between the routine of a 9-to-5 job and the comforts of modern life, it’s easy to forget that for many, even meeting basic necessities is a struggle. The Trap of the Rat Race The relentless rat race pushes us to constantly strive for more – more success, more money, more status. We chase these things because society tells us they define our worth. But in this pursuit, we forget to appreciate what we already have. Over the last two months, I’ve had the opportunity to travel through Latin America, where I grew up, and was reminded of the stark realities many people face daily. Growing up there, I was always conscious of how hard life can be for the majority. What many in developed nations take for granted –   a decent ...

  En una sociedad obsesionada con el éxito material, las palabras del ex presidente uruguayo José Mujica resuenan con una claridad impactante: "Vivimos en una civilización que nos dice que triunfar en la vida es ser rico. ¿Por qué se confunde ser con tener? El único milagro que hay es haber nacido". Estas palabras son más que una simple declaración; son un llamado a la reflexión profunda sobre el propósito de nuestra existencia en un mundo que a menudo nos empuja hacia una búsqueda superficial de la felicidad a través del consumo y la acumulación de riquezas. Mujica nos recuerda que el verdadero milagro reside en el simple hecho de haber nacido, en la extraordinaria casualidad que nos trajo a este mundo. Sin embargo, una vez que nacemos, ¿cuál es el propósito de nuestra vida? Esta es una pregunta que a menudo pasamos por alto en nuestra búsqueda constante de éxito y estabilidad financiera. Pero, como señala Mujica, si no nos hacemos esta pregunta, el mercado se encargará ...