Social

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

In some African communities, during the harsh dry season when food becomes scarce and mothers can no longer feed all their children, a tragic custom persists: some children are left in open-air enclosures to die of starvation.

Even if half of us refer to creativity as a rare trait that only the other half has, in reality, creativity is much like a muscle: the more we use it, the more creative we become.

He had played the lottery for years, using the same numbers every time. But on the one day that he forgot to buy a ticket, the draw revealed the winning numbers to be exactly his "lucky" numbers.

I don’t think I did anything significant the afternoon I saw the movie “Awakenings”. The feeling that I had reached the heart of the human condition strongly impressed me with the idea that we are born captive in a limited nature, and that gave me a heavy feeling of loss.

Sports betting may seem to be a harmless way to unwind, but the relationship between winning and losing is, mostly, not in the player’s favour. Moreover, the road from entertainment to addiction can prove to be a short one, while the recovery process is arduous and long.

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.

From a certain point of view, our life can be divided into moments when we have let circumstances determine our future, and moments when we have gone where we wanted to go, despite the circumstances.

Many families who feared that the new coronavirus would affect their health ended up dreading its effect on something seemingly even more difficult to protect: the well-being of their relationship.

A famous saying asserts that the devil is in the details—in the small things we often deem unimportant. But life revolves around the little things. They take up most of our time, betray our vices and virtues, reveal our limits and courage, and divulge our preferences and dislikes. It is in the trivial moments that we are the most authentic: when we eagerly...

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.

I notice people, and passionately collect their stories. My favourite stories include those small cracks that allow one to peek inside another soul, those moments when their voice is almost imperceptibly altered, the eyes light up for a reason I do not know, and their gestures are unexpected.

I never cease to marvel at those who help, in an organized manner, troubled children, abandoned elderly or victims of violence. However, the general need for such heroic saviours reveals the failure of the social group that is apt to address these situations: the family.

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...

Over the last few decades, the picture of family life has undergone dramatic changes. The pervasiveness and normalization of divorce are just two of these changes.