Social

When confronted with the pandemic, we are anything but equals.

In a conversation with Dr. Shelly-Ann Bowen, we discussed her research on what determines whether someone will be active or passive in the face of catastrophic events—fires, floods, or a cancer diagnosis. Social injustice, a lack of self-awareness, and even an immature understanding of faith paralyse action. But there are ways to make positive changes.

Women work an average of 68 hours per week, while men work 55 hours—a total that includes both professional commitments and household responsibilities. This was the conclusion of a 2007 study conducted by sociologists at the University of Cambridge across European Union countries.

Some houses allow you to read the owners' story on their walls and through their windows. Although it happens less and less often, the most beautiful houses are built by those who mean to live in them. Cara Brookins and her children know very well how every beam or window in their house was put up, because they built it together.

In its first two decades, the 21st century has already received several titles: the century of speed, the era of information, or the digital era. In a constantly connected world, does authentic disconnection still exist?

I have always loved family photographs, especially old ones. They allow you to wander freely through the stories of times and lives that are little known yet also familiar.

Even in difficult times there are many things we can do at home to help children as well as teenagers to feel less worried.

The face muscles relax, and the eyes become empty before boredom urges them to seek another centre of interest. The restlessness culminates with some leaving and others immersing themselves in the exploration of their phones. Others seek to divert the discussion with a joke or hasten its end through a detached or ostentatious silence.

Education is essential for the survival of any social group, since a community ensures its existence and development only by passing on to the next generation the knowledge it has accumulated, the power it derives from it and its ideological aspirations.

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. 

Sometimes I think I was born with a magnifying glass in my hand, one through which I critically scrutinize everything I do and say and which relentlessly magnifies every imperfection.

How did the phrase “time is money” come to steal the true meaning of time? Time is not money, it is life.

The year 2022 was perhaps richer than previous years in events that affected the whole world.

When strangers give you a helping hand after your friends have forgotten about you, the world suddenly seems a little more beautiful. This was the experience of PJ Robins when a crowd of strangers suddenly arrived at the party for his autistic little girl, which no one else had wanted to attend.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” said Nietzsche in one of his essays back in 1889. Easier said than done when you’re facing unemployment, illness, rejection, or a blank exam paper. We tend to see these as things we need to get rid of. This can’t possibly be the life we wanted.