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The relationship between a parent and their child is one of the most significant in their lives, with its primary role being education.

Changing habits is like tightrope walking: an exercise in which the balance is always fragile, but it is the small changes that pave the way to truly remarkable results.

While it can be healthy to be aware of other people’s judgement—we can adjust our behaviour to become more pro-social—sensitivity to the perception of judgement can get out of hand. In worst case scenarios, children can become depressed, anxious and avoid settings in which judgement is anticipated. Here are some strategies to help, as shared by clinical psychologist Katie Kjelsaas.

The wind is blowing and it is snowing at the Siret Customs Point. Refugee groups stream by, women with children clinging to them, and the words of a little girl from another war, concluded almost eight decades ago, keep running through my mind: “And this was imprinted in my mind, that when my father is not home, it is war.”

To err is human. “The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no ideas”, Albert Einstein said.

Crouched in the trenches of the horror of old age, modern individuals no longer wish to recover anything from the natural ageing process that their ancestors practised with such serenity. On the contrary, the first signs of physical decline become the raw material for a wide range of efforts (from picturesque to sickly) to forge a youth that the mirror refuses to restore.

Poverty and laughter don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand. People who are worried about where their next meal will come from or where their children will sleep that night find it hard to wear smiles.

#vanlife . . . it’s the aesthetic trend we’ve seen sprawled across the internet in the past decade. The reservoir of photographs framed by flung-open doors or windows onto a glorious, unpeopled view has stirred many an individual’s curiosity.

From a certain point of view, our life can be divided into moments when we have let circumstances determine our future, and moments when we have gone where we wanted to go, despite the circumstances.

We think we know what a good life is, but what is a "good death", if it exists? When incurable diseases ravage the body and death becomes an imminent reality, the question takes on painful outlines, especially in a society open to arranging the circumstances of death according to the will of its protagonist.

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.

Pastor and author Ed Gungor reckons he’s learned a lot about life from Frank, his small white-haired terrier. So much so that he has entitled his book One Small Barking Dog: How to Live a Life That’s Hard to Ignore. 

There are times when life sets before us an opportunity for radical change. Such a moment led Narayanan Krishnan to dedicate his life to feeding the poor and the mentally disabled on the streets of India.

What I need now is stability. And that can only come through sacrifice. That's what I've heard and that's what I’m doing. My family? It can wait—dear ones, too. The little joys of life? Who has time for that? I'm still waiting.

One night while checking on his patients in a palliative care centre, the therapist risked asking a confusing question to a person whose universe had shrunk to the size of his sickbed: “What brought you joy today?” The answer was immediate: “Being alive.”