Alina Kartman

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. – Emily Dickinson

Dr Zeno L. Charles-Marcel is an associate director in the Department of Health for the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In front of the camera, the woman smiles calmly. The dimple on her right cheek, among the wrinkles, shows that Annie has repeated this smile many times in her 81 years of life. Today, however, only her lips are smiling. A strange tension weighs on her eyebrows. Today is the day Annie has decided to die.

When confronted with someone else’s strong emotions—intense joy or heartbreaking pain—we often do not know how to react. In the case of joy, the other person usually doesn't mind, because his feelings console him. But in the case of pain, things are completely different. Misunderstood suffering can make the sufferer isolate himself from the very people who could help him. So, how can...

Can the thinking of a single philosopher be so influential as to change the fundamental values ​​of a society and lead to tremors of transcontinental proportions, like the economic crisis that began in 2007? Could Ayn Rand's philosophy be the almost-imperceptible reason for transforming the United States, as Levine puts it, into a "selfish nation"?

These days, we are free to believe anything and to be anything, at least in theory. However, if we gave history a closer look, we would realise that it is not beneficial for us to believe or be just anything. We agree with the biblical exhortation, often distorted by popular lore: "...test them all; hold on to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

In developed countries, where the public debate on tobacco consumption has been so widespread that even those who had no desire for it were educated on the negative effects of smoking, the prevalence of this toxic habit dropped so drastically that it caused trouble for cigarette manufacturers.

Making any choice denies the possibility of at least one other choice. When confronted with this truth, young people often find themselves unprepared for life’s big choices.

Some psychologists fear that religion erodes self-esteem. Some believers fear that self-esteem endangers salvation. Who is right?

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. – Revelation 21:4

Economic capitalism has a psychological twin, one that is not as bold and brash as its profit-obsessed counterpart, but if we look into the subtle details of our interior universe we find it hidden there.

Sartre may have been right when he said Hell is other people. Yet, for some, their first step toward Heaven is meeting the God who shelters in someone else's soul.

It’s strange how popular the saying What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger is, when it’s obvious that it is not what hits you that makes you stronger, but the way you take the hit.

Hope can be palpable and elusive at the same time, both reasonable and independent of logic. Yet this independence from logic is not synonymous with indifference to reason, but a victory over it. Hope has its own logic, one that changes lives for the better.

No one has ever seen a thought, not even a neurosurgeon. However, today we know more about the way we think than what we were able to visualise, yet still less than we would like to know.