Social

The wisdom of friendship consists in finding those who do not require a price, or ask you to change.

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.

At the age of 27, for the first time in my life, I worried that time was passing too fast. For the next few years, the speed with which most of my friends were getting married was the next source of concern.

I believe that the illusion of free time seen as a different world, separated from everyday active life, must be replaced by the image of proactive free time– just like a day of work that satisfies us.

Happiness is a song that we love but rarely sing anymore. It is that familiar children's song that we sang all day every day when we were little. We loved its tune, and it loved us back. We used to live within that melody; it was our default mood. Life was essentially good and it was good to live our life in this...

Love: the ultimate subject. We love people for who they are. However, there’s a kind of love too lofty to truly encompass all the nuances, a love that manifests itself toward people regardless of who they are or what they have become. Such a love beautifully encapsulates the story of Ian and Larissa.

"My exploration of the nobility of the spirit . . . began with the realisation that, following 9/11, many intellectuals were desperate to justify what had happened, failing to distinguish between being highly critical of their own Western society and legitimising a crime, no matter the reasons. I asked myself, 'What use are so many intellectuals who know all the books and music,...

Critical thinking is not a cure-all, but it proves very useful in dealing with, clarifying, and solving some decision-making problems, as well as the thought and belief disputes which occupy our minds.

We often do it without even thinking. Labelling our children as shy, cheeky, fussy or even smart. In the right context, calling our children these things is innocent enough. It even helps explain certain types of behaviour. 

Temperance was once upheld by philosophers, saints and stoics. In a world dominated by indulgence, its call to balance feels more relevant than ever.

Just two and a half decades ago, depression and other mental health disorders were virtually unknown among children and were often ignored.

From a distance, it looked like a simple picture of a tree: nothing very artistic—more of a sketch in subtle shades of brown and green. But as I looked closer I noticed something unusual. The tree had been constructed out of words and phrases. Someone had collected snippets of information about their family and their ancestors, and written it down to form the...

I used to think I was a patient person. Then I became a dad.

"Man is born free but everywhere is in chains." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

A friend carries within him our identity’s safe box.