Social

I once invited the cashier at my local 7-Eleven petrol station to join me and my friends on a beach couch made of sand to eat hotdogs after his shift. To our surprise, he not only came but continued to join us for months after.

Whether we see ourselves or not as living collections of our habits, we know from experience that, once formed, our habits are not as malleable as we would like them to be.

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.

When we were kids, we were experts at finding new hobbies.

I must admit, I was a shy child. Shame is a lesson well learned. However, I don’t know if it is always correctly learned.

Talking to your children about death can be an act of love. You can't take away their pain with a simple conversation, but you can give them something just as important: truth wrapped in gentleness, the reassurance and relief that they are not alone in their grief, and even the hope that sees beyond the loss.

Every experience we live teaches us something about the world and God. These lessons are always perfectible. From the pain of other people, however, we learn the wrong lessons so easily.

Amy Ainsworth is the mother of 5-year-old twin girls, whose appearance is both surprising and fascinating – how could it be any other way when you see a pair of big green eyes showing off from behind the brown curls of one of the girls, contrasting strikingly with the coffee-coloured eyes and black, straight hair of her twin sister?

We try to protect them as much as we can from the evil and the ugliness in this world, maybe because we know that indifference does not fit in their heart as easily as it has made a nest in ours. And maybe that's why children are the ones who give us amazing lessons of sacrifice and altruism.

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."

Bridges seem to be the emblem of existential stress for Romanians. In the face of a difficult situation, even Romanian folk wisdom recommends: "Make a pact with the devil until you have crossed the bridge."

American psychologist Barry Schwartz's counterintuitive study argues uncomfortably similarly to communist philosophy, while offering a stunning argument for Christianity, the enemy of communism.

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

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?

For a long time, menopause has been a taboo subject. However, in recent decades, two things have changed simultaneously: women have started talking openly about their experiences, and companies have spotted an opportunity.