Social

I’ll never be able to separate the memories of childhood from that of books. They intertwine like colours in fabrics, in a jumble of real and fantastical, bitter and sweet, joy and guilt.

As the balmy Australian summer took a chilly turn, I found myself sitting one day in a pub in Jindabyne, New South Wales with a friend attempting to escape the bitter autumn weather. As I took in the ambience, I reflected on what was a largely alien environment to me.

We often do it without even thinking. Labelling our children as shy, cheeky, fussy or even smart. In the right context, calling our children these things is innocent enough. It even helps explain certain types of behaviour. 

Both personal experience and numerous studies confirm that genuine friendships are an essential source of balance and well-being, and that cultivating them contributes significantly to our physical and emotional health.

I never cease to marvel at those who help, in an organized manner, troubled children, abandoned elderly or victims of violence. However, the general need for such heroic saviours reveals the failure of the social group that is apt to address these situations: the family.

Under the burden of evil, often made public obsessively, insinuatingly, too often we perceive the world as an endless cycle of negative emotions and predictions. We lose the broad perspective that encompasses the initiatives beautifully woven by people whose hearts beat for God and for their fellow men, people who make this world liveable.

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

If you had to guess, how many Australians would you say die from suicide every day? A handful, maybe three or four? Try nine. On average, seven Australian men and two women pass away every single day through suicide. That’s 63 each week, or 252 each month. In 2022 alone, 3,249 Australians died by suicide. In New Zealand during the same year, 538...

Procrastination is self-harm, psychologist Piers Steel says. A kind of self-harm that we can become addicted to if we do not detect the reasons behind it and especially the effective strategies to counter it.

When war steps out of the pages of history books and into the real world, it resonates with a harsh, cutting tone, becoming a seismic record of humanity’s darkest nightmares. The recurring faces of war’s hideous nature show that, no matter how advanced human civilization becomes, moral evil doesn’t disappear—it merely gets passed down from generation to generation, patiently waiting for the right...

Should my child’s photos be displayed on Facebook—even if I were to amp up my privacy settings? Before Elliott, my son, was born, I was adamant that all online footprints of him would be non-existent, or at most, kept to a minimum. I knew anything I posted on the internet featuring Elliott would stay there forever, and I didn’t want him living with...

“Am I still human if I’m afraid?” The question asked by a well-known fictional character can be the starting point for reflecting on how we learn to live with our fears.

Whether we see ourselves or not as living collections of our habits, we know from experience that, once formed, our habits are not as malleable as we would like them to be.

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

“…the world was not worthy of them…” (Hebrews 11:38)