Psychology

I was there, I saw him. He was coming towards me mechanically, impassively, coldly. He suddenly stopped in front of me and waited for me to speak. For a moment, I froze. He was tall, thin, his face oval and his eyes blue, slightly sunken under his eyelids. I had met such people before, but there was something special about him.

Ask any cinematographer what gets them excited, and I guarantee there’s a fair chance they’ll answer with “lenses”. Having spent many years studying film and many more practising it, I can safely say that I now understand why this is—and it’s probably the first response you’d hear from me if you asked me the same question.

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.

"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

“To be fearless may be a gift. However, the most precious one is, probably, the courage resulting from developing the habit of not allowing fear to dictate your actions”, says the renowned Nobel Peace Prize winner and democracy activist in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, in her essay titled “Free from fear”.

The whirlwind of activities and deadlines that adult life throws at us often makes us resistant to closeness. We abandon old friends and neglect building new relationships until inevitably, the day comes when we start feeling pressed against the self-erected walls of loneliness.

This article contains stories of kindness, courage and generosity. By their simplicity they prove that all it takes to do good is a heart that is open to the needs of others.

“To them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever” (Isaiah 56:5).

It is said that time makes us wiser. How wise have we become after a global pandemic with millions of deaths, a war on our borders, economic problems, and many personal tragedies in which we are caught as if in the grip of a great storm?

Although grief is a universal experience, we respond differently to its onslaught, so it's no wonder that words meant to comfort often add more suffering to an already heavy burden.

A lack of self confidence is like a stain that doesn't go away by itself. It is like oil dripping out of a machine, its drops collecting in the puddle of an inferiority complex. Such a problem is difficult to mitigate, even with motivational speeches or hopeful injections of fragile optimism.

Walking with a friend in darkness is better than walking alone in the light, writes Hellen Keller. But what if darkness permeates the entire relationship?

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.

At some point, we've all come across the phrase "back in my day," a deeply subjective expression which encapsulates a universal phenomenon: the generation gap.

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.