Social

Money is essential in our Western world. It allows us to purchase the necessities of life—food and shelter, for instance. It pays the bills for heating and cooling. There may even be enough for some luxuries.

In the whole array of virtues that a stepparent must possess in order to succeed in raising a well-rounded child whose world has been shattered by the separation of his or her parents, courage is only mentioned in passing. Yet courage is the foundation of a construction that promises to be challenging from the outset, say those who have plunged into the role...

"When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself" (Milan Kundera).

Happiness must come naturally – and this is true for success: you must let it happen simply by not obsessing over it.

Disagreements between husbands and wives happen no matter how much they love each other, and this isn’t necessarily bad. Conflict is normal in daily life, even for happily married couples. It happens when two very different people grow closer to each other and notice that they have different priorities, beliefs, habits and values.

As a teenager, I remember pasting a quote from Blaise Pascal on the wall of my room. It was a thought I resonated with, not without some arrogance: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

I have always imagined that well-being, bright prospects, good health and a clear purpose in life tend not to inspire questions about the meaning of life very often.

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 America, conservative Protestants seem to divorce at least as often as people of other religious orientations. The idea has become an opportunity for finger-pointing and accusations of hypocrisy, but this is only proof that the statistics are misinterpreted.

Pastor and author Ed Gungor reckons he’s learned a lot about life from Frank, his small white-haired terrier. So much so that he has entitled his book One Small Barking Dog: How to Live a Life That’s Hard to Ignore. 

Today, communication is becoming easier thanks to technology, which makes it faster and more accessible. Unfortunately, this does not necessarily mean that we know how to communicate effectively.

Free time is the slice of life that an appropriate will and motivation learn to transform into experiences that make our life better, more beautiful, more balanced, and more pleasant to remember.

As a child, I suffered because of the decisions the adults would make. At least, that's what I believed for a long time. It seemed unfair to me to not have veto power in the key moments that defined us as a family, and I was looking forward to the day when I would detach myself from the will of my elders.

Happiness is a song that we love but rarely sing anymore. It is that familiar children's song that we sang all day every day when we were little. We loved its tune, and it loved us back. We used to live within that melody; it was our default mood. Life was essentially good and it was good to live our life in this...

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.