The Evolution of Gratitude

How did gratitude evolve? Researchers are starting to trace this common human emotion all the way back to primate behavior.

What Can Albania Teach Us About Trust

At a time when refugees are being turned away at borders all over the world, it seems that there is a lot to learn from Albania’s penchant for hospitality.

Why We Should Teach Empathy to Preschoolers

In the fall of 1979, Yalda Modabber had just moved from Iran back to her birthplace in Boston. Her timing was bad: Just weeks later, a group of armed Iranians took more than 60 U.S. citizens hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Iran. As a result, her fellow students bullied her ruthlessly.

The Disease of Being Busy

I saw a dear friend a few days ago. I stopped by to ask her how she was doing, how her family was. She looked up, voice lowered, and just whimpered: “I’m so busy… I am so busy… have so much going on.”

10 Life Lessons Kids Can Teach Us

What do children know that adults seem to have forgotten? Children are more confident, more courageous and enjoy life far more intensely than adults. Sometimes it feels that we spend our entire lives trying to return to who we were as children. Here’s what we can learn from our younger selves to bring more clarity and joy into adulthood.

How to Suffer Less

Life is a journey, and has its ups and downs.

During that journey, we sometimes experience moments of joy, celebrating in laughter and happiness. There are also other moments — sad, gloomy moments in which we experience suffering and despair.

Almost every one of us prefers the first kind of moments over the second. We prefer light over darkness, happiness over suffering, joy over despair. And we desire them so much that we cling to them as hard as we can, not wanting to let go of them. But it is not in our control to possess them, and no matter how strongly we try to hold on to them, they will always leave us empty-handed, making us feel down and disappointed.

At the same degree that we like the first kind of moments, we dislike the second kind of moments. We try our best to flee from them when we sense them approaching, doing anything possible to avoid experiencing them again — but to no avail. The more our minds are fixated on them, the more we attract them, and the more afraid we are of them, the more we are impacted by them.

All moments, whether pleasant or unpleasant, are temporary, lasting only for a while, until they dissolve and disappear into nothingness. Therefore the less we are attached to or repelled by them, the less we are bound to suffer.