The Magic of Laughter

  Laughter is the closest distance between two people.  –Victor Hugo “The sound of laughter is universal” state linguists and psychologists. Humans are born with the instinct of laughter. Having asked the question “what makes people laugh?”, the philosophers of ancient Greece said that one laughs at his own past self, as well as at the sense of superiority they felt over others in the face of adversities and unexpected situations. 2500 years after Plato, Nietzsche argued that laughter is simply a reaction to the existential loneliness and sense of death people feel. When triggered by joy and humor, Freud

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Emotions Behind the Mask

“Our eyes, our pupils, our hands, our gestures … it is our whole body that will be called upon to transmit our emotions when wearing a mask,” says neuropsychologist known with her research on vision and cognition, and psychology of perception. “Wearing a mask can prevent us from decoding what the facial features radiate,” she says and continues : To communicate, we need to process the information which is emitted in the triangle formed between the eyes and the mouth. This information we gather from the facial emotions allows us to understand the state and the intention of the person

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An Astrophysicist’s Flirt with the Universe

We are confined within the limits of our knowledge of the natural world, and yet we strive toward knowledge, always more knowledge… Yet we cannot ever think that we know everything. Knowledge advances yes, but it is like an island surrounded by the ocean of the unknown. “As the Island of Knowledge grows so does the shore of our ignorance.” We are actually confronting the mystery of who we are.

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Wonders of Solitude

  Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn.   –David Whyte   “One wonders only when he is alone, and seeks the truth, ” said Einstein. The great thinker Goethe said that creative inspiration comes only when he is alone. Winnicott, one of my favorite psychologists, defines “the capacity to stay on his own” as a crucial indicator of child development. H.D. Thoreau, the notable American philosopher and nature lover proclaimed that he made his spiritual discoveries during his walks in nature. He wrote in Walden that being on his own in nature provided him

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Gravity, Grace and Love

  But already my desire and my will Were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed, By the love which moves the sun and the other stars. – Dante Nietzsche said, “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”  In his reasoning between love, life and madness he finds his resolution : to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. Simone Weil (1909-1943), the renowned French philosopher and activist with outstanding intellectual gifts describes the essence of love in Gravity and Grace :

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A Life Truly Lived

Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us and take with us when we depart. Dr. Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004), in her pioneering work with patients nearing the end of their lives in palliative care, interviewed them on their feelings about life and death, and how they measure the life they lived.  The results of her work proclaim that the patients unanimously express their emotional state as  “yearning for love,”  a shield needed against the fear of death, and the measure of the degree of inner peace and contentment they savor at the end of their life

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