Social

If we were to liken life to the Olympics, then we would easily understand two fundamental things: you can’t score first in all the tests and, even in the areas where you are very capable, you can win by doing less than your best if those you compete against are not much of a challenge.

Responsible, achievement-oriented and highly principled – this is what a brief portrait of a perfectionist child looks like, explaining why, up to a certain point, this is the kind of child most parents dream of.

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.

Can the thinking of a single philosopher be so influential as to change the fundamental values ​​of a society and lead to tremors of transcontinental proportions, like the economic crisis that began in 2007? Could Ayn Rand's philosophy be the almost-imperceptible reason for transforming the United States, as Levine puts it, into a "selfish nation"?

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

“What is mankind that you make so much of them, that you give them so much attention, that you examine them every morning and test them every moment?” (Job 7:17-18)

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.

What we think about ourselves, over time, becomes our reality. This is a good enough reason to identify thinking errors left running in the background and to seek out strategies for healthier thinking.

Loss begets pain, but pain is not one-size-fits-all, so there are no recovery methods that work in all situations. We do have at hand, however, explanatory models of pain, studies that dismantle myths about grief and, above all, "a psychological immune system" that helps us recover from painful experiences.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens" (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

I just got back from the funeral of a fifty-four-year-old mother who left behind a grieving teenager. His father told how the boy wanted to ask his mother for forgiveness, on her deathbed, for all the stubbornness typical of a seventeen-year-old. He was already forgiven.

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

While most of us have been staying inside for several weeks, many leave the safety of their homes every day to help us live our lives as normally as possible.

Inexplicable joy, sleepless nights, fulfilled dreams, well-founded or irrational fears, wide smiles, bitter tears, unexpected rewards, and sacrifices—they all intertwine in the life of a responsible parent in such a way that it is not easy to grasp how difficult and beautiful they can be, all at the same time.

In the book Love Beyond Reason, John Ortberg presents familiar and hidden nuances of a love that emerges revealingly from chapter to chapter, using lived out stories and biblical episodes, as well as familiar illustrations from literature.