Social

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.

"Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters written in prose." (Beverley Nichols)

When we were kids, we were experts at finding new hobbies.

It’s important to grant our kids their independence, but would they know what to do in an uncomfortable, tricky or dangerous situation?

Close your eyes, cover your ears, and imagine that all your life you will need to get by without being able to see or hear much. Perhaps merely imagining this makes you shiver, and in no way can you associate such a life with joy, independence, or travel. Tony Giles is one of those people who has managed to successfully remove all these...

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” said Nietzsche in one of his essays back in 1889. Easier said than done when you’re facing unemployment, illness, rejection, or a blank exam paper. We tend to see these as things we need to get rid of. This can’t possibly be the life we wanted.

In 1991, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe published Generations, theorising that every 80 years (one generation cycle) would consist of four “turnings”. Beginning after a crisis, the first turning would involve a feeling of recovery, or “high”. The second would be a spiritual awakening, while the third would see the dissolution of institutions and the rise of individualism. And finally, a crisis...

Because life in developed societies follows a more or less regular pattern, sociologists have managed to identify the age at which conditions are most conducive to forming a friendship. It's not that people who are not of this age are unable to form meaningful connections with other people, but at other ages, life takes us on different paths, without asking for our permission.

Twenty-first century people are bombarded with fiction about romance.

A smooth sea never gave a skilled sailor, said Franklin D. Roosevelt, suggesting that without hardship, challenges and even failures, we cannot become our best selves.

There are people who love animals; we see them often, offering scraps of food to stray dogs or pigeons in public squares and parks, gazing at them affectionately, touching them, speaking to them tenderly. Rarely, however, does any of that reserve of sympathy find its way into the silence, indifference, or reproach with which people respond to a request for help from someone...

Even in difficult times there are many things we can do at home to help children as well as teenagers to feel less worried.

The loss of a loved one unbalances us; we are never ready for it. Here are a few recommendations given by psychologists for such a situation.

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

Looking back, I realize how the ferocious world beneath the heavens is tamed, at crucial moments, through communication on that biblical Ladder of Jacob.