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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."

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.

The generation born with the tablet and the smartphone in its arms, but which ends up being exploited by big data cultivators and controlled by radicalization and polarization, can become the generation that implements anti-democratic movements.

He had played the lottery for years, using the same numbers every time. But on the one day that he forgot to buy a ticket, the draw revealed the winning numbers to be exactly his "lucky" numbers.

Is it possible, as single parents, to instil in our children a love for God and for the church?

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?

Adults who choose not to have children are often portrayed as selfish people, so preoccupied with their own lives that the prospect of the sacrifices that raising a child would entail seems repulsive to them. Is this view fair or is it just an unfair judgement?

Courage is a special virtue: unlike other virtues that can be formed and polished over time, courage only makes itself known spontaneously and fully in situations where one is required to act, proving its existence.

“Influencers pay double.” With this message, Joe Nichhi, the owner of a small ice cream business, tried to deter self-proclaimed celebrities who would ask him to give them free ice cream in exchange for “exposure” on their social media platforms. But he succeeded more than that. Nicchi has become an international symbol of disgust with “insta-begging.”

I accepted the challenge of writing about motivation thinking it was an easy task, after so many motivational speeches read, listened to, or given.

Statistically, by now Josh should have been either in jail, living on the street, or dead. The long years in which he was abused and expelled from the families who took him in made him no longer trust anyone. But the love of adults who showed him that they cared was stronger than anything that pushed him toward self-destruction.

"Did you hear what he did?" "Guess what we found out about our new colleague!" In spite of their apparent enthusiasm, gossips—people who laugh loudly and try to capture the attention of others through the tantalising information they have to share—are often not as happy as they seem.

Since Hans Selye introduced the concept of stress into the language of science almost seven decades ago, it has now become firmly rooted in our vocabulary and permeates all levels of everyday life. One common cause of stress, though unevenly distributed among us mortals, weaves enough threads into its intricate fabric that it cannot be entirely avoided: the relationship with time.

Daily stress is a good excuse to avoid other people's needs, but this choice is a double loss. The kindness we display to make other people's days better is a very strong antidote to the high level of stress we experience daily.