Psychology

When it was close, when I first saw its truly hideous face, I realised that I would never get used to it. And, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much hope I tried to gather, I found nothing bright or inspiring about death. I know I will never find such a brightness, because it doesn't exist. But I saw the...

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.

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

Would you rather “achieve great things or be happy?” That question was asked in a YouGov survey (United States): 81 per cent said they would rather be happy; 13 per cent wanted to achieve great things; 6 per cent were uncertain.

"Did you hear what he did?" "Guess what we found out about our new colleague!" In spite of their apparent enthusiasm, gossips—people who laugh loudly and try to capture the attention of others through the tantalising information they have to share—are often not as happy as they seem.

Can you be happily married to anyone? The idea of ​​happiness as a thing of one's own creation persists in our times, although its cultural sedimentation belongs to the modern age.

Five seconds. And everything smells of heaven, wet grass and happiness.

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."

What is left of me after I shut down my computer, turn off my phone, or wipe away my makeup? What about after I quit my job, after I move, after I lose my health, after I get older? What if no one knew me—would I still be someone?

In a conversation with Dr. Shelly-Ann Bowen, we discussed her research on what determines whether someone will be active or passive in the face of catastrophic events—fires, floods, or a cancer diagnosis. Social injustice, a lack of self-awareness, and even an immature understanding of faith paralyse action. But there are ways to make positive changes.

Over the last few decades, the picture of family life has undergone dramatic changes. The pervasiveness and normalization of divorce are just two of these changes.

Amy Ainsworth is the mother of 5-year-old twin girls, whose appearance is both surprising and fascinating – how could it be any other way when you see a pair of big green eyes showing off from behind the brown curls of one of the girls, contrasting strikingly with the coffee-coloured eyes and black, straight hair of her twin sister?

If optimism helps us get rid of problems more easily, too much optimism does the exact opposite: it amplifies them. Pushed to the extreme, positive thinking prescribed as an antidote to suffering prevents us from accepting reality as it is and starting to look for solutions that can make our lives easier.

After the authorities in different countries announced a relaxation of the restrictions, people started to impatiently waiting for that, maybe even with plans to recover last bits of a confiscated spring.

An experimenter is like a hunter who, instead of waiting quietly for game, tries to make it rise, by beating up the locality where he assumes it is. – Francis Bacon, 17th-century English philosopher