Psychology

We live in a time in history when we seem to be connected in every way possible. It seems as if there are few, if any, who have no one to socialize with.

Bridges seem to be the emblem of existential stress for Romanians. In the face of a difficult situation, even Romanian folk wisdom recommends: "Make a pact with the devil until you have crossed the bridge."

One of the most overused metaphors for our human experience of life is that of the journey.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry – Winston Churchill

All COVID-19 statistics lead to the same conclusion: the young ones, our children, are at the lowest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus. That’s comforting. But the pandemic does pose a certain danger to them.

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.

He had played the lottery for years, using the same numbers every time. But on the one day that he forgot to buy a ticket, the draw revealed the winning numbers to be exactly his "lucky" numbers.

Some say that of all the opinions we can have in life, the most important is the opinion about ourselves.

“Why are you still single?” Even though I have been asked this question countless times, I still never know how to answer it. 

We cannot sustain our motivation if we don't connect daily to its source and what generates it, or if we don't constantly strive to remind ourselves why we are moving in a certain direction and how to get there, willingly and unforced, exercising free will, despite the inevitable limitations.

“Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.” (Rudyard Kipling)

Many years ago, while I was still in high school, our Romanian language and literature teacher assigned us the task of writing a framed story, complete with characters and a plot of our choosing.

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.”

A cold flash, like the strange, icy feeling after a burn, runs through his body with every breath. He feels his heart racing. It feels like it is counting down to the moment when it will explode—or, mercifully, to the moment when he will turn his pillow to the cooler side, and finally fall asleep.

The face muscles relax, and the eyes become empty before boredom urges them to seek another centre of interest. The restlessness culminates with some leaving and others immersing themselves in the exploration of their phones. Others seek to divert the discussion with a joke or hasten its end through a detached or ostentatious silence.