Psychology

The epidemic of false information in this worldwide pandemic is even more infectious than the virus itself. Fortunately, there is a vaccine for this epidemic of fake news: quality information and information filters. However, not everyone has been vaccinated. Here is an immunization effort.

“No doubt equality of goods is just; but, being unable to cause might to obey justice, men have made it just to obey might. Unable to strengthen justice, they have justified might; so that the just and the strong should unite, and there should be peace, which is the sovereign good....” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts)

"I was wrong. I'm sorry"—these words can have a magical effect on a struggling relationship. But if we fail to show empathy, the apology will sound fake or hurt the offended person even more.

Before I started looking for the meaning of life, I thought I had already found it. Or, that it had been given to me. In the world I came from, the road was clearly laid out. My life's major events were all mapped out, and precious little was negotiable.

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.

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

One night while checking on his patients in a palliative care centre, the therapist risked asking a confusing question to a person whose universe had shrunk to the size of his sickbed: “What brought you joy today?” The answer was immediate: “Being alive.”

11pm and I am worried my patient will not make it till tomorrow morning, says Dr Glenn Wakam. Twelve hours after intubation, the COVID-19 patient's condition deteriorates dramatically, and Wakam knows that an even more difficult intervention follows: to explain to the patient's wife, who begs to be allowed to say goodbye, that the hospital does not allow her this sad privilege.

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.”

The inability of the mind to concentrate on what one is experiencing in a particular moment has the effect of overshadowing the joy of a day, even when the subject of the wandering thoughts is as pleasant as can be.

I've always liked pets, but from a distance. Raised by a mother convinced that animals cannot possibly live under the same roof as people, I adopted a similar opinion, which I kept for many years, even if a great number of people tried to prove me wrong.

One of the best-known stories told by ambitious entrepreneurs today is that if you work hard, you will have a lot.

We often treat burnout syndrome as a diagnostic fad. In reality, overworking has become the norm, and its consequences are serious enough to urge us to identify the best strategies to prevent it.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day. – Emily Dickinson

It happens to all of us: we feel the warmth of a song or the peace of prayer and have the sense that God’s love is there, alive and near. But true love does not stop at emotion. It asks to be expressed in concrete ways, shaping the choices and actions of everyday life.