Analysis

"A friend in need is a friend indeed. Be that as it may, near is my shirt, but nearer is my skin." Is this an outdated saying, or is it still relevant? To whom, when, and how are we prepared to offer help?

When you are addicted to alcohol, the whole of society is your enemy: TV shows, their commercials, your neighbours in your free time, the family at big holiday gatherings, entire aisles in shops that convey the message that "you'll feel better if you drink alcohol".

"Logic suffers from a great logical fallacy: it believes that reality itself is of a logical nature. If it encounters something that cannot be understood logically, it will claim that this something doesn't exist, but only appears to exist..." (Lucian Blaga, Horizons and Stages)

I just got back from the funeral of a fifty-four-year-old mother who left behind a grieving teenager. His father told how the boy wanted to ask his mother for forgiveness, on her deathbed, for all the stubbornness typical of a seventeen-year-old. He was already forgiven.

"You? Fat? No way!" "With all due respect, officer, that wasn't a red light!" Every day, billions of lies leave the mouths of billions of people. Lying is a moral pollution that we declare harmful, but seem to believe is indispensable in life.

A seemingly endless stream of needy causes compete for our attention and money every day. Our emails, mailboxes and phones are bombarded by charities asking for generous donations to help.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

Louis Zamperini experienced the bizarre smell of death so many times that he came to the verge of losing his mind. However, he survived, and by choosing to forgive the unforgivable, he was able to breathe life into an entire world.

I was a young student looking for a good paying job to support my family and my studies. On that day, I found myself in the head nurse’s office at the nearby nursing home for the elderly.

Most of us want to trust. We assume that others possess our own level of honesty and goodwill. Sadly, this is neither a sensible nor a safe attitude anymore.

How do we value a human’s life? Should we rate lives on their value to their community? That would mean a life-saving surgeon would have more value than someone living on the street. Or is it potential—which would make a baby more valuable than a 50-year-old? What about the value we place on those later in life versus those at the end?

Jason Padgett was exactly as one would expect someone who has no interest in school to be. He was only interested in parties and bars and was a magnet for both fun and trouble. That’s how he ended up being expelled, which didn’t affect him too much. However, getting beaten savagely changed his life forever, in the most unimaginable way possible.

The mental load is a concept that has gained attention in the last little while. What if mental load had a baby?

Every day is an opportunity to ask ourselves how it is that human life has such little value in the eyes of some of our contemporaries—those contemporaries living in freedom and democracy (on paper, at least), who are educated and socialised within the same civilization as we are, often even in the same community, or under similar civil laws and generally having the...

Entitled "From pauper to pastor," Jeremiah Steepek's story had all it needed to go viral. People were moved, liking and sharing it on social media with an enthusiasm that, ironically, is never seen in relation to real beggars. Is there a way out of this seemingly unfortunate situation?