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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.

The refrain: “I’m booored…” is “the worst song on the parenting soundtrack,” says journalist Kat Patrick humorously. Chanted in the most inconvenient moments, this complaint often triggers the parent’s guilt or concern. But there’s nothing wrong with letting your child get bored sometimes.

The TV-series Friends was recently reviewed in The New York Times as “enormously easy to watch”. This characteristic however does not make the show unique, nor can it account for its popularity today, more than 15 years since its final episode.

Some people may feel particularly inhibited in social situations. Meetings cause them stomach-aches, conversations overwhelm them with shyness, and anxiety does not allow them to utter a single word.

The love of money may be the root of all evil, but the need for money cannot be subjected to a harsh moral judgment.

Even if our "relationship with work" is often a complicated one, about which we do not always have the best feelings, we should remember that our jobs are more than just sources of income.

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.

In a study published in the journal PLOS One, researchers came to the counterintuitive conclusion that people with higher intelligence have higher levels of generalised trust.

When we want to position ourselves for or against voluntary euthanasia, we must first be aware that, in addition to the subjective dimension of the issue, there are also important objective aspects to consider.

The end of a year is both a period of revising and the most favorable time for drafting wishes for the upcoming year. However, the problem arises when we realise that last year’s resolutions have remained unfulfilled in the absence of a concrete plan.

It is said that the intelligent and cynical Talleyrand, a French diplomat and Catholic priest who was later secularised, said to Napoleon when asked to devise a political message: "Sir, give me the idea and I'll find the arguments myself..." If such an intellectual attitude is cynical and unscrupulous in politics, let's imagine the consequences in the religious sphere.

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.

When life takes a bad turn, we are often tempted to console ourselves with nostalgia. We begin to look at the past in a different light. We realise that we had been too demanding of ourselves, of others, of the world. That even though we had everything we needed we still wanted more. That we were always looking for something else, without paying...

In 1867, when Edson White was 18 years old and working at the Adventist type-room in Battle Creek, Michigan, he had a transformative conversation with Mr Bell.

Anyone who thinks they know exactly how to raise a child will usually change their perspective after becoming a parent. Beyond the joy of welcoming a new family member, they are confronted with the "despair and helplessness" of navigating the complex and unfamiliar world in which they now find themselves, writes psychotherapist Isabelle Filliozat.