Social

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.

The fight against the new coronavirus is accompanied by several parallel fights, including the fight against fear, which can turn into panic—one of the most dangerous social phenomena.

“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.

How can we encourage the elderly during this time? How can we help them understand that we don't want to lose them and that, although it's hard for them, we didn't abandon them. I have an elderly mother and, honestly, it would help me a lot. Can you write for me?

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength,” says Corrie ten Boom, thus underlining a truth all Christians burdened by worry should remember.

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."

They have read that love lasts for two or three years, and although they’ve gathered every possible argument why it wasn't the case for them, they couldn't get the possibility out of their minds altogether.

Besides carefree days, Christmas carols and traditional sweet breads, any respectable December also includes an evaluation of the achievements of the previous year and making plans for the future.

Let him that would move the world first move himself. – Socrates

They would rather work alone or in small teams, they do not wish to draw attention, they love quiet, less stimulating environments, and they need time to make decisions. With this general profile, introverts seem to have a slim chance of prospering in a society that usually rewards extroverts—unless they learn to harness their strengths.

The possibility of completely rewriting the rules by which we organise our lives has always captured people's imagination. However, such a reorganisation has materialised, at best, in the pages of a philosophical book and has remained, for the most part, a utopia. But there are exceptions, of course.

We try to protect them as much as we can from the evil and the ugliness in this world, maybe because we know that indifference does not fit in their heart as easily as it has made a nest in ours. And maybe that's why children are the ones who give us amazing lessons of sacrifice and altruism.

The portrait of a good listener contains skills that are formed over time, through an honest interaction with others, motivated by the desire to understand and help them.

If shame were personified, its main characteristic would be its ability to creep into the darkest depths, avoiding any trace of light and any discussion of itself.