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Advertising makes the teenage years seem like the best years of life. However, adolescence is a time of great emotional turmoil for both children and their parents. It's a time when many important decisions are made, with life-changing consequences.

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

Today, communication is becoming easier thanks to technology, which makes it faster and more accessible. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean that we know how to communicate effectively.

I once invited the cashier at my local 7-Eleven petrol station to join me and my friends on a beach couch made of sand to eat hotdogs after his shift. To our surprise, he not only came but continued to join us for months after.

One of the small joys of my childhood was to visit my maternal grandmother at the house on the hill.

“The problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.” (George Bernard Shaw)

Monday! This cruel, heartless day of the week robs us of comfort and freedom and plants us right in the middle of professional responsibilities. If we were to order the days of the week by popularity, Monday would probably end up in last place.

“How can we rejoice if we’re at war?” This was one of the questions that arose in my mind after reading a book comprised of testimonies of people who experienced World War II as children. Decades after this nightmare, and stricken by a crisis that casts its shadow over people and nations everywhere, the question remains: can we still be happy in times...

If shame were personified, its main characteristic would be its ability to creep into the darkest depths, avoiding any trace of light and any discussion of itself.

It’s been said that porn and the internet rose together. As technology develops, the pornography industry finds new and even more instant ways to entangle consumers. I saw a video on social media where a young woman was talking about her subscription account (where people subscribe to access exclusive content of her) making $350k a month.

Mainstream culture has tried to airbrush guilt out of everyday life. It’s the ultimate social faux pas, it seems, to make someone feel guilty—How dare you judge me! Or maybe it’s the penultimate faux pas, because what’s even worse than making someone feel guilty inside is to shame them in front of others.

Big chain stores know them and use them to make a profit. What is more, they are willing to pay a lot of money for studies on how to improve them. We're talking about the secrets of optimal product placement.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (Rudyard Kipling)

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.

How much do we know about love? Enough to understand that love is not an obligation—we cannot love by force, nor be loved in this way.