How to cherish the obstacles in your life
“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.
Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin surely struck gold when he began writing A Song of Ice and Fire.
What about the failures that haunt us?
A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.
Vulnerability is at the heart of trust
Among the greatest disappointments of life is having our expectations unfulfilled; not by politicians, or publications that promote false news or weather forecasts, but by those close to us—people in whom we have invested our confidence.
Family on 35mm film
We love stories, and Hollywood knows how to dramatise them. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that Hollywood is first and foremost an industry driven by ratings and profits. Children are more vulnerable and more likely than adults to pick up identity models from the film world.
Our parents’ need for meaning
No matter how much we avoid it, the day will come when our parents will not be able to get by without us, just as we would not have been able to grow up without them.
Deadly ideas
“To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever” (Isaiah 56:5).
More than just one thing
If you were asked to describe who you are, what would you highlight first?
The letter that did not get lost
Denisa Selagea has lost many things so far, from keys and phones to patience and opportunities. She has also lost sight of many words that needed to be said. So, this time, she thought she would stitch them onto paper before they got lost, to be read before it’s too late.
Successfully going back to school
Want to start the new school year on the right foot? Here are some back-to-school tips that will help make that transition from holidays to school a lot easier.
COVID-19: How to stay positive and balanced
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.
How much are we worth as humans?
Every day is an opportunity to ask ourselves how it is that human life has such little value in the eyes of some of our contemporaries—those contemporaries living in freedom and democracy (on paper, at least), who are educated and socialised within the same civilization as we are, often even in the same community, or under similar civil laws and generally having the...
Grateful—even for lemons
Things happen anyway, whether good or bad. Why put extra effort into trying to respond positively when certain things happen? Why be grateful?
How to sleep well in the age of anxiety
Sleep is perhaps the most important, complicated, and misunderstood physiological mechanism that keeps us alive.
A few things that help life make sense
I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.


























