Happiness left behind

“A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness.”

What do we do with bad people?

“Can’t good people teach bad people to be good?” Madeleine asked her mother, with the innocence of a seven-year-old.

Shutters down all over Europe: life in the time of the new coronavirus

These days we all need to hear good news—that life will soon return to normal and that we will be able to return to the troubles of yesterday, which now seem small to us. In the meantime, our lifestyle has seen changes that we could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.

The most common mistakes parents make with their own parents

I just got back from the funeral of a fifty-four-year-old mother who left behind a grieving teenager. His father told how the boy wanted to ask his mother for forgiveness, on her deathbed, for all the stubbornness typical of a seventeen-year-old. He was already forgiven.

Blood is (not always) thicker than water | Sibling estrangement, from causes to solutions

For at least one party, sibling estrangement can be more painful than loss through death, writes Fern Schumer Chapman, who was excluded from her brother's life for four decades.

The original meaning

Before I started looking for the meaning of life, I thought I had already found it. Or, that it had been given to me. In the world I came from, the road was clearly laid out. My life's major events were all mapped out, and precious little was negotiable.

Looking for a loving father

Fathers are an important part of their children’s lives. Good dads can provide stability, protection and love in a child’s life.

What about the failures that haunt us?

A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.

(Dis)connecting

In its first two decades, the 21st century has already received several titles: the century of speed, the era of information, or the digital era. In a constantly connected world, does authentic disconnection still exist?

The dictatorship of tolerance

"Borg creatures. A highly advanced race of predators. They have no conscience. No ethic. Chances are, it has already infected your community, your schools, your church—even your children. This real-life threat is called 'the new tolerance', a simple phrase that describes a complex modern doctrine" (Josh McDowell).

How to build valid arguments

Arguments must be convincing and, in order to convince, they must be valid—the minimum requirement of persuasion.

Small changes and their remarkable impact

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.

Why be moral?

“No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might; so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good....” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts)

Scars that heal

He had made the mistake of asking the doctors for a mirror. Terrified, he saw a monster reflected in it. Lying on the hospital bed, after the doctor left, he pulled on the tube he thought was keeping him alive. He had no reason to live.

What kind of children do our words shape?

"The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice" (Peggy O'Mara).