“When was the last time you felt a moment of unadulterated child-like joy?” When my therapist asked me this question, it was difficult for me to come up with an answer. I looked back on the last few years and realised that I’d had far fewer of these moments than I’d have liked. Not that…

“Love is easy to feel, difficult to hold, and astoundingly painful to hand over to someone else.” I spoke those words to a friend not too long ago, and (not to be prideful) I thought they were quite beautiful so I wrote them down. I’ve spoken at length about love on this blog over the…

I hate flying. Not the flying itself, but the logistics of it: flying means going through airports, waits at security if not at the gate itself, having to take your electronics out or your shoes off, and host of other little inconveniences that just suck the energy out of you. Finally, by the time you’re…

I am not a good person. Or at least, I’m not always sure that I am: what is a good person, after all? In a sense, this question demands that I consider some of the qualities that I feel may be lacking in myself, and it has no easy answer. How can I make any…

I cried at the end of La La Land. Sue me. How could you not in that final scene? But for those of you who haven’t seen it, allow me to explain. La La Land is, of course, a love story. An aspiring actress and a struggling jazz pianist meet by fate, so it seems,…

I used to hate my philosophy degree. Especially after I graduated, struggling to find work, I loathed the fact that I studied philosophy, and why? Because in all honesty, when you’re that kind of person, your life is, as my mum says, “written in italics“. Life is never easy, but studying the humanities will simply…

I left home for the first time when I was eighteen years old. I was quite excited about it. Not that I didn’t like my home, but I was never too fond of my hometown. It was small. It never felt like much of anything, and I can remember dreaming of the city, which I…

The other day, I was sitting in on a confirmation class, listening to a young and charismatic seminarian explain the idea of belief in God. He expressed an overload of ideas and sentiments, some of which I would say I can relate to or that played an important role in my own “pilgrimage”. And every…

“Do you believe in fate, Paul?” Not as such, no. If by fate you mean this idea that certain things are destined to happen no matter what we do, then I do not believe in it. For instance, perhaps it was fated that I would always study philosophy or convert to Catholicism, or that I…