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Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.

It’s an invisible force, lurking and weighing heavily within, gradually convincing you that life isn’t worth much, that it’s better to let go. From the depths of depression, the journey back is incredibly tough, but not impossible. Kevin Breel is one of those people who can attest to this.

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.

After a chance meeting of mutual friends, I was introduced to Tim and Sonia in a restaurant in central Toowoomba, Queensland, eight days before their home was washed away.

What do a foul-mouthed, drug-abusing Canadian, a stately Frenchman from Bourg-en-Bresse and an American businesswoman whose prison nickname was “M Diddy”, all have in common?

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.

It’s strange how popular the saying What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger is, when it’s obvious that it is not what hits you that makes you stronger, but the way you take the hit.

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

After more than a decade of civil war, during which more than 300,000 civilians have died, Syria is hit by a new crisis. People are digging graves again, for the adults and children who managed to survive the war.

In A History of Young People in the West, Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt posit that, in the West, adolescence is first and foremost a social-cultural construction, and therefore a cultural product. They considered it at most subsidiarily as a stage in the physiological process of growing up.

Elspeth Muir’s brother, Alexander, died from drowning. It was 2009, and he had just turned 21. He died from drowning, but his death “was not foreshadowed by his love of water except that it explains why he was near a river, alone, with a blood-alcohol content of almost 0.25. My brother died because he was drunk, and because the drink made him stupid.”

Footballers are often in the headlines for their off-field antics more than their on-field achievements. So, it is no real surprise that the greatest story...

For some people, suffering is temporary. For others, life itself can be a long series of painful blows. However, experience shows that recovery is possible even when people seem to be at the end of their tether.

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."

I used to be among those who have a great aversion to the recommendation to "live in the present," firmly convinced that, in fact, this advice is nonsense. That, in reality, every moment we enjoy right now, is actually a millisecond behind, therefore, it is still not the coveted living in the present.