How should we understand the weird experience of coincidence?

Forget the ideal of work/life balance – your needs and interests are much richer than that, and your life can be too

Whether grieving a death or connecting to colleagues, creativity enables an artful life, according to Chinese philosophy

«But imagine instead that we worked with idea that creativity wasn’t about novelty. That doesn’t mean we’d have to give up the value of originality entirely, but rather see it as one of a range of possible outcomes. Casting a wider net in this way might hence make creativity (whatever it involves) easier to achieve.»

These odd values were long dismissed as bookkeeping. Now physicists are proving that they describe the hidden shape of nature

The pursuit of achievement distracts from the deeply ordinary activities and relationships that make life meaningful.

I’ve spent more than three years interviewing friends for “The Friendship Files.” Here’s what I’ve learned.

«I’ve come to believe that friendship doesn’t always have to be about presence; it can also be about love that can weather absence.»

Research on empathy development in adolescents suggests an under-appreciated potential for positive peer influence

«Positive peer relations in adolescence are associated with more satisfying romantic relationships and greater effectiveness at work later in life.»

Anger is a fuel that’s dangerous when out of control. But managed well, it can energise you to identify and confront problems

«situations where you experience unfairness or injustice.»

In all its baroque and sometimes cruelly overbred forms, the dog is a paramount symbol of both human hopes and foibles

«As a rising middle class started to focus on their own family trees, creating an ‘elite’ from new money, so dogs started to be classified too.»