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Two recent stories in Australian media shocked me to my core. Two 12-year-olds in different states took their own lives after being bullied at school. 

"In films you often get dying words – someone gasping out things like 'Please tell Jim I love him', which sort of makes me laugh. I've never seen that happen," says psychologist Lesley Fallowfield, highlighting the discrepancy between how people usually die and our misperception of how life ends. Not only is the transition from life to death usually slow, involving a period...

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.

"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

In a society that is more concerned with form than substance, character ranks second. It is the power of the image that dictates things.

In a world of rising toxic masculinity, here are some basic foundations we can provide to ensure our sons grow up to be men who make us proud.

Change is the only constant in life, especially the kind that comes unexpectedly and makes us believe that we cannot give in to it without giving up on ourselves, or turning into something we are not.

I believe that every Eastern European has, at some point, realised when meeting a Westerner that their interaction could be improved if they were more open themselves, as the foreigner usually is.

“Can’t good people teach bad people to be good?” Madeleine asked her mother, with the innocence of a seven-year-old.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

More and more people are choosing cohabitation over marriage. Many young people believe that cohabiting helps them to make better decisions about marriage by giving the couple a chance to "practise" before making a lifelong commitment. There is also a belief that cohabiting before marriage reduces the likelihood of marital problems or divorce.

Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a counterpoint to the previous article in the Declaration that recognises the right to work and to do so in fair conditions. After affirming the human right to work, Article 24 reads, “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” It is a...

Fathers are an important part of their children’s lives. Good dads can provide stability, protection and love in a child’s life.

John the Baptist's call—"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near"—succeeded in bringing Jews "from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan" to the desert where the prophet preached, to confess their sins and be baptised. Two thousand years later, the exhortation to "repent" is buried under a mountain of pejorative associations.

We are so familiar with complaining that we don't even recognise its presence in our interactions. It has become part of us—and, according to rumours on the internet, so have its consequences. The whining we are told we do every minute of every conversation has the power to destroy our neurons.