Social

Dependence tends to have negative connotations—we may be addicted to sugar, the internet or gambling. Other times we are dependent on people or relationships, in which case the line between positive and negative is no longer easy to draw.

I was standing in the supermarket queue, pushing my daughter in her pushchair, when a man well past his prime wearing camouflage trousers gave her a long look. Then he turned to me, as if continuing a conversation about parenting we'd started long ago, and said, "You know, this little girl is going to heal a lot of things in you."

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

After 27 years of marriage, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates publicly announced their divorce in May, sending shockwaves across the globe.

While browsing through a folder of old documents, I rediscovered some poems written during my student years. One of them drew my attention because of a verse that resonated with me from the beginning: Only childhood makes us whole.

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

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" (Blaise Pascal).

The sun was shining on that wonderful July Sunday when you were enjoying your summer vacation. Your parents were with you on your walks in the park and watched you ride your bike without the slightest care in the world. Their smile gave you hints of the purest parental love.

Our number of friends tends to decrease as we get older, but this trend, which has many negative effects, can be actively combated even when old age has already set in.

“To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever” (Isaiah 56:5).

Social interactions and the tools that facilitate them are changing the world in ways that even now, after all this time, we cannot anticipate.

They say self-esteem is a vital ingredient for success in life. But what if everything we were taught about self-esteem is wrong?

“Circumstances do not matter when you have a dream.” This seems to be the central message of the stories of those who have succeeded despite unimaginable obstacles. But can dreams still be born in the midst of the struggle for survival, in depravity, and misery? And even if they are born, do they have a chance of survival?

Holiday greetings are a nice custom, but they are also an opportunity to assess how much we care about each other, how much we have grown closer or, on the contrary, how much we have grown apart over the past year.

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.