Social

“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.”— Bertolt Brecht

Problem gambling in Australia and New Zealand is an issue seldom talked about, but we ignore it at our peril.

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

Behind the prelude to a divorce are four major destructive behaviours which can prevent the couple from keeping their enthusiastic promise of staying together ...for better or for worse, till death us do part.

Women work an average of 68 hours per week, while men work 55 hours—a total that includes both professional commitments and household responsibilities. This was the conclusion of a 2007 study conducted by sociologists at the University of Cambridge across European Union countries.

It is said that the intelligent and cynical Talleyrand, a French diplomat and Catholic priest who was later secularised, said to Napoleon when asked to devise a political message: "Sir, give me the idea and I'll find the arguments myself..." If such an intellectual attitude is cynical and unscrupulous in politics, let's imagine the consequences in the religious sphere.

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.

Psychologists call it "learned helplessness". People just call it "it is what it is". Both terms describe the same phenomenon: the exhaustion that comes from trying to maintain the belief that their efforts matter.

Where there's fear, there's shame, says a Romanian proverb. What the proverb doesn't say (and what many of us don't know) is that the folds of shame hide a multitude of emotional problems and dysfunctional relationships that are passed down from one generation to the next.

Inexplicable joy, sleepless nights, fulfilled dreams, well-founded or irrational fears, wide smiles, bitter tears, unexpected rewards, and sacrifices—they all intertwine in the life of a responsible parent in such a way that it is not easy to grasp how difficult and beautiful they can be, all at the same time.

Henry Ford is believed to have said: “Sometimes a mistake can be all it takes to make a valuable achievement.” Apparently paradoxical, the statement says a lot about us and what we consider at any given moment to be “a mistake.”

The Flight from God describes the experience of distancing oneself from God. When we are under the impression that we are running away and that we reach a space where God is absent, we discover that God is already there, inviting us to believe.

The importance of humour, including in the workplace, is often undervalued, as a series of studies suggest.

Raising a child is not easy at all. Raising someone else’s child is even harder. But raising six children who are not your own, giving up your life, sounds crazy to most of us.

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.