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Can you be happily married to anyone? The idea of ​​happiness as a thing of one's own creation persists in our times, although its cultural sedimentation belongs to the modern age.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry – Winston Churchill

Our reality isn’t always a calm place. Feelings of safety and peace that are so necessary for our well-being often elude us. What is happening today on a global level only goes to show how fragile our world is, and how easily we can lose control over the things we thought we had mastered.

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.

The readers who immerse themselves in the maze of paper and ink, savouring every word, seem to be on the verge of extinction.

Social upheaval, an identity crisis, the sexual revolution, experimentation with drugs, and Eastern philosophies distanced entire generations in Western Europe from conservative values and faith. However, in the same 1960s and 1970s environment, Marijke and Bernard Beranger found something better and more lasting.

People can’t live on bread alone. They also need hope.

11pm and I am worried my patient will not make it till tomorrow morning, says Dr Glenn Wakam. Twelve hours after intubation, the COVID-19 patient's condition deteriorates dramatically, and Wakam knows that an even more difficult intervention follows: to explain to the patient's wife, who begs to be allowed to say goodbye, that the hospital does not allow her this sad privilege.

We think we know what a good life is, but what is a "good death", if it exists? When incurable diseases ravage the body and death becomes an imminent reality, the question takes on painful outlines, especially in a society open to arranging the circumstances of death according to the will of its protagonist.

You wouldn’t think so, but whether or not children do chores is one predictor of their future happiness and success. 

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength,” says Corrie ten Boom, thus underlining a truth all Christians burdened by worry should remember.

By 2030, epidemics will be eradicated; life, rejuvenated by injections, giving lifespans of 150 years; and cars almost obsolete with aeroplane ownership common. These were the 1930 predictions of FE Smith, a British politician and friend of Winston Churchill.

When I was four years old, my younger brother was born. My parents focused on my brother and spent less time with me. It was only 40 years later that I discovered how this had affected me.

In a society that is more concerned with form than substance, character ranks second. It is the power of the image that dictates things.

The end of a year is both a period of revising and the most favorable time for drafting wishes for the upcoming year. However, the problem arises when we realise that last year’s resolutions have remained unfulfilled in the absence of a concrete plan.