Psychology

When strangers give you a helping hand after your friends have forgotten about you, the world suddenly seems a little more beautiful. This was the experience of PJ Robins when a crowd of strangers suddenly arrived at the party for his autistic little girl, which no one else had wanted to attend.

“Mister Watson, come here, I want to see you.” With this message, Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant, Thomas Watson, launched the telephone. The door had opened to distant, personal and instant contact.

Too tired to even touch hands, my husband, Bernie, and I crawled into bed. It was the end of a day in which we’d hardly spoken to each other, except to ask where things were or say where we were going—or had been. Our house had been full of guests for several weeks. To make matters worse, we’d just moved in and there...

We have trouble understanding and accepting the image of a loving God, as we have grown too familiar with the type of love that offers itself only when it finds in a person the qualities that make them easy to love.

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.

Detecting an introvert is not as easy as we may think, because sometimes introverts are not shy or silent at all, they take responsibility, work extraordinarily in teams, and can even be skilled public speakers. Yet several traits can unveil the introverted character of an individual.

When a closed window shade becomes an SOS sent by those used to living on their own but afraid of dying alone, something has fundamentally changed in a society that not long ago valued human relationships.

Sunday afternoons were a sacrosanct time when I was growing up in Argentina. Everything seemed to quiet and slow down between 2:00 and 5:00 pm, during siesta. Even shops would shut. All you could hear was the sound of the cicadas as the whole neighbourhood took a nap. Young and old, rich and poor were unified by this wonderful tradition. At least, I...

A seemingly endless stream of needy causes compete for our attention and money every day. Our emails, mailboxes and phones are bombarded by charities asking for generous donations to help.

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.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens" (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

When I ponder the statement, “Life holds potential meaning under any condition, even the most miserable,” the story of an anonymous woman comes to my mind. She made a deep impression on me and taught me about two existential states: having, and being.

Let’s begin with the introvert or extrovert question. We tend to be one or the other—or at least lean toward one or the other. Being either is not a problem, but it does impact how we handle life. Extroverts are likely to say that introverts are too quiet and introverts that extroverts are too noisy.

I believe that every Eastern European has, at some point, realised when meeting a Westerner that their interaction could be improved if they were more open themselves, as the foreigner usually is.

Lace-edged rumours wafted through the student campus in Sagunto, Spain: Devin, one of the American boys who had come to Spain for a year of study, was dating Teresa, a second-year theology student who was hard to miss. Her striking beauty and cheerful nature attracted gazes like a magnet. No one suspected then, not even the protagonists of this relationship, that their love...