Social

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

We walk into a room full of people and from the first second, we draw a conclusion about how we will feel in their company. And often what we intuited happens. How is this possible?

One night while checking on his patients in a palliative care centre, the therapist risked asking a confusing question to a person whose universe had shrunk to the size of his sickbed: “What brought you joy today?” The answer was immediate: “Being alive.”

After more than a decade of civil war, during which more than 300,000 civilians have died, Syria is hit by a new crisis. People are digging graves again, for the adults and children who managed to survive the war.

In an ideal world, everything would be simple: you, as the father or mother, tell your child, the apple of your eye, to do something and, being perfectly obedient and submissive, they do as they’re told. However, we don’t know if such a world would really be ideal. Nevertheless, for many parents, this resembles a paradise to which they would love to escape...

After the authorities in different countries announced a relaxation of the restrictions, people started to impatiently waiting for that, maybe even with plans to recover last bits of a confiscated spring.

My one-year-old son eyes the chickpea-filled bowl suspiciously. He tentatively pokes a stubby finger into the bowl and starts stirring the legumes around. I’m pretty sure it isn’t my imagination when, seconds later, his hazel eyes light up and his little pink lips curve ever-so-slightly upwards.

Joaquín Carmona had 16,000 followers on Twitter, and his posts about Spanish athletics were appreciated even by sport professionals. None of his followers had ever met him in person, and when silence fell on his account for three months, people began to look for him, write to him and ask who Carmona really was.

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.

We are so familiar with complaining that we don't even recognise its presence in our interactions. It has become part of us—and, according to rumours on the internet, so have its consequences. The whining we are told we do every minute of every conversation has the power to destroy our neurons.

The American Economic Review recently published the results of the largest randomized study ever conducted to measure the impact on the quality of life that deactivation ones Facebook account might have.

Children have big feelings. Even worse, children have big feelings over what seem to be rather inconsequential things.

More than ten years ago, I received a book for my birthday. The message inside the gift said: The Bible is the Lord's love letter to humankind. I give you this book with the hope that the reply mankind gave to God will also nourish your soul. Happy birthday! And, indeed, so it was.

And they lived happily ever after. This sentence closes many of the stories we often read in just a few minutes. In reality, between the beginning and end of a love story lie years of experiences and events which, at times, can be more difficult than they seem.

Making any choice denies the possibility of at least one other choice. When confronted with this truth, young people often find themselves unprepared for life’s big choices.