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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.

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

Every generation of parents loves their children and searches for the best ways to support them and prepare them for a successful start in life. Modern parents, however, often take this effort to extremes, complicating their children’s lives (and their own, just as much) in an attempt to clear a perfectly smooth path for their still-uncertain steps.

"If there is anything more heartbreaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light." (Victor Hugo)

On any given day, a typical person checks the clock several dozen times.

How do you respond when someone asks: "How are you"? With a slight shrug and an unconvincing "Fine"? What else could you say, when you are not convinced that your daily life adds up to anything more than that?

"School is where children learn that they have to read. Home is where kids learn to read because they want to," conclude the authors of a guide to cultivating a passion for reading in children of all ages. It is clear that with good resources and role models, a child can become passionate about reading, but there are parents who wonder where they...

Romantic love is easily hurt and somewhat pretentious, especially when faced with direct honesty. Friendship is more solid.

When I was young, I wanted to be the first person to set foot on Mars.

When you look into the innocent eyes of a child, you can hardly imagine that someone could intentionally hurt them. Stories of slavery seem to belong to an evil and distant past. However, few of us wonder who makes our clothes or electronic equipment, under what working conditions, and how much they are paid for it. The answers to these questions will likely...

“What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (Job 7:17-18)

What we do in our free time reveals who we are when we step out of the whirlwind of daily tasks. But the projects and relationships to which we devote our free moments also reveal who we will become. At the end of the journey, people see the value of every second much more clearly, and often realise that rest—physical rest, but more...

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

“You are always afraid people will judge you or know your weakness. It’s like being totally naked in front of a huge crowd,” says Bruno Feldeisen about the hidden struggle he had with anxiety.

What would you say if you read an article that tells you that the human ability to make choices freely and consciously—that is, free will—might just be an illusion? What if the article backs up its claims with scientific research? Such curiosity is sparked by an article published on livescience.com.