Love as the Bridge to a Balanced Education

Every child walks along the edge of a river we call childhood. On the opposite shore lies a future they can’t yet fully imagine—sometimes radiant, sometimes shadowed, always a little mysterious. The water may flow gently or churn with force, but it remains far too wide for a child to cross alone. This is where love appears—not as an ornament, not as indulgence, but as a bridge that allows a young soul to pass safely to the other side.

This bridge isn’t built overnight ko. It rises from small, quiet gestures: a parent’s steady presence, a teacher’s patience, an embrace that feels like shelter, an ear that listens without judgment. Each day adds a new plank—spiritual, physical, mental, and moral—until a sturdy path stretches across the river. And as much as this bridge helps children reach their future, it also draws the future closer to them.

Love, in the end, is the most enduring architecture in a child’s education.

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🌿 Love as a Spiritual Bridge

A child’s spiritual core is their most delicate inner room—easily shaken, yet easily strengthened when touched with tenderness. In a world that hums with constant noise and hurry, children often lose a quiet place to breathe, to listen inward, to believe that they are held by something larger than routine.

Spiritual love isn’t confined to ritual; it is alive in:

• a whispered bedtime prayer,
• stories told with warmth,
• honest praise for small kindnesses,
• gentle reminders that the Divine is never far, even in chaotic days.

Through these gentle threads, spirituality becomes a bridge leading a child toward calm and purpose. Every sincere act becomes a plank to steady their steps. On this bridge, children learn to see life not merely as a race or a struggle, but as a garden where hope is cultivated.

A spirituality rooted in love reassures children that they are enough, they are cherished, and they are never truly alone.

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🌱 Love as a Physical Bridge

The body is the first home a child ever inhabits. Yet many children grow up without being shown how to care for, respect, and love this home. A healthy body lays the foundation for a clear mind and a resilient spirit.

Physical love appears in actions that feel ordinary but matter deeply:

• preparing colorful, nourishing meals,
• letting children run freely and play boldly,
• ensuring they rest well,
• shielding them from an overload of routines,
• allowing their bodies to meet sunlight, soil, wind, and rain.

In an age where screens tempt children into stillness, the physical bridge becomes even more vital. Its planks are shaped by the adult who maintains a rhythm aligned with nature—movement, rest, breath.

As children cross this bridge, they begin to see their bodies not as constraints but as companions. They learn to listen, to respect limits, and to appreciate the miracle of their own strength.

A body nurtured with love grows into a foundation that withstands pressure, discomfort, and the unpredictable rhythms of life.

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🌸 Love as a Mental Bridge

No storm is quieter—or sometimes more frightening—than the one that brews inside a child’s mind. A child may laugh loudly and run joyfully, but behind that joy lie fears, doubts, embarrassments, and the tender ache of their first failures.

Love in the mental realm stretches a bridge over this inner turbulence. Its pillars are built from:

• safe spaces to make mistakes,
• a chance to try again,
• arms that soothe instead of scold,
• words that guide without wounding,
• expectations that lift instead of suffocate.

On this bridge, children learn one of life’s truths—one often obscured by the race for scores, achievements, and comparisons: failure is not the end.

Crossing this bridge, they discover that courage does not come from never feeling afraid, but from knowing they are loved even when they falter. They come to understand that they can stumble without falling apart, and they can start again without losing worth.

A mind nurtured in love grows into a mind that bends without breaking.

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🌺 Love as a Bridge of Character

Character is not formed in a single moment; it is sculpted through countless small encounters, choices, and examples. And love is the quiet teacher that appears again and again, shaping integrity without forcing it.

Character built on love doesn’t grow from fear of punishment but from understanding the weight and value of every action. This bridge stands tall because it is built from:

• consistent role models,
• boundaries that protect rather than confine,
• gentleness that awakens empathy,
• encouragement that makes responsibility feel meaningful, not burdensome.

On this bridge, children learn to know themselves and to honor others. They grow not only in intelligence but in wisdom; not only in strength but in compassion.

And when they step into adulthood, the character shaped by love allows them to be a calming presence—someone who steadies the spaces they enter.

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🌞 When All Bridges Become One

When spirituality, physical well-being, mental resilience, and character come together, they form a bridge far greater than the sum of its parts. This bridge not only connects childhood to the future—it connects the inner world of a child to the wider world that awaits them.

Love emerges as the master builder—not because it always knows the perfect way, but because it always shows up, always listens, always tries again.

Love is not just a foundation.

Not merely a root.

Not only a light—or a pair of wings.

Love is a bridge—one that allows a child to step into life with meaning, wonder, and dignity.

“Love is a bridge—

A bridge that guides children through the currents of life,

A bridge that awakens courage,

A bridge that turns their journey into a story worth remembering.”

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Claiming Sovereignty of the Soul

Claiming Sovereignty of the Soul. This monologue is a hidden ode to myself, a declaration of the greatest love that chooses light over shadow. It is dedicated to every soul that chooses to stop enduring endless torment.

A Radical Declaration of Love

I must whisper to the core of my soul: this step away is the most radical form of love, directed fully at the owner of this body.

There is no rumble of hatred urging me, but rather a great silence, which acknowledges that reality has now become a threat to my inner integrity. The decision to retreat is a Sacred Promise, an agreement to protect the glory of the self from inevitable destruction.

I choose to be the guardian of my own soul's fortress—a hero who does not run from war, but chooses the right battlefield. I choose to save what is left of the light, before it is completely extinguished.

Wisdom of the Inner Oracle

Listen, Darling, to the whispers from the deepest recesses.

It is an intuition so sharp, a prophetic ability that has already seen the script of endless suffering that awaits in the next chapter.

My soul has already read the cracks, which are not merely on the surface, but deep in the foundation of existence, which will turn me into a cold ice statue if I wait one more day.

A lingering wound is more damaging than pain that is ended. I choose the clean sting today—a pain that has an end and a promise of healing—as a sacred sacrifice for future happiness.

I am stopping this story not because I am afraid of the ending, but because I am entitled to a new beginning.

 Art of Preserving Light

This is the art of the most graceful farewell, an elegy carved without drama, without demands, and without polluting anger. True courage is choosing to stop in the most beautiful state, when love still has dignity and memories still feel pure.

I know that if I stay, bitterness and hatred will crawl in, staining every beautiful memory we ever created. I am cutting this thread while it is still silk, not when it has turned into iron chains that bind my soul in eternal regret.

I am leaving to preserve the light that once was, so that it remains a warm memory, not a burning one.

The Revolution of Soul Sovereignty

This step back is the most personal declaration of Soul Sovereignty. This is an inner revolution that affirms that I am the sole ruler over my emotional space.

I choose the freedom to determine the boundaries of my wounds, a freedom that frees me from torment driven by others.

This is a responsible act, taking full control of my soul's destiny, ensuring that I will never be an object of total destruction.

True freedom is the right to choose which suffering we will bear, and I choose the pain of separation, because within it lies the seeds of independence and self-integrity.

Homecoming to the True Home

Let this departure be the last embrace for myself. This is the silent language of self-esteem, a profound recognition that I deserve to be protected, cared for, and guarded, beyond all desires to connect.

I am drawing a line in the sand not to challenge fate, but to protect the small hope in the future—the hope that one day, I will smile again without pretense, without scars that are too deep.

This departure is a journey back to the True Home. I am leaving, not because of hatred, but because I choose to return home to the safest and most loving place: myself.

Parents underestimate teenage car carnage

Parents underestimate teenage car carnage, warns study - Most parents are clueless about the chances of their teenage children coming to grief when they are driving or being driven by friends.

Even though 74 per cent of accidental teenage deaths occur on the roads, parents believe that their children are at greater risk from factors that in reality present less of a danger. 

 When 18,500 members were polled by the AA, 31 per cent of parents considered that drugs posed the greatest risk to their children, followed by drinking (25 per cent), gun and knife crime (25 per cent), smoking (four per cent) and sex (one per cent). Only 11 per cent considered that travelling in a car was a serious threat to their child's safety.

Male drivers under 30 are more likely to be involved in a speed-related collision than one where speed isn't a factor

"Most parents underestimate the risks their teenagers may be taking as drivers or indeed as car passengers, even though every weekend we read newspaper reports of 'car carnage'," said Edmund King, AA President. "Teenagers are much more likely to be killed or seriously injured in a car crash than in a knife fight or drug overdose. 

Parents need to be aware of the risks taken by teenage drivers and take appropriate action to minimise those risks." AA research shows that in fact more 16-19-year-olds died as passengers (94) than as drivers (79) last year, reinforcing the point, says the motoring organisation, that teenagers and their parents should "vet" the drivers and the cars that they intend to travel in. A 2010 Department for Transport study - "The Characteristics of Speed-related Collisions" - found that male drivers under 30 - particularly those under 21 - were more likely to be involved in a speeding-related collision than in one where speed wasn't a factor. 

 The AA is urging parents to look for signs that their children could be driving into danger. It says parents should keep an eye on how, when and where the car is being driven, who their teenagers are driving with, signs of bad driving such as damaged tyres or scratched paintwork and how driving is discussed among friends. ( telegraph.co.uk )

Drug-resistant 'superbug' strain of typhoid spreads worldwide

Drug-resistant 'superbug' strain of typhoid spreads worldwide - An antibiotic-resistant "superbug" strain of typhoid fever has spread globally, driven by a single family of the bacteria, called H58, according to the findings of a large international study.

The research, involving some 74 scientists in almost two dozen countries, is one of the most comprehensive sets of genetic data on a human infectious agent and paints a worrying scene of an "ever-increasing public health threat", they said.

Typhoid is contracted by drinking or eating contaminated matter and symptoms include nausea, fever, abdominal pain and pink spots on the chest. Untreated, the disease can lead to complications in the gut and head, which may prove fatal in up to 20 percent of patients. 

A boy infected by typhoid from polluted water, lies at a hospital in al-Qouniya village in Idlib countryside, May 27, 2013. REUTERS/Muzaffar Salman

Vaccines are available -- although, due to limited cost effectiveness, not widely used in poorer countries -- and regular strains of the infection can be treated with antibiotic drugs. However, this study found that the H58 "superbug" version, which is resistant to multiple types of antibiotics, is now becoming dominant.

"H58 is displacing other typhoid strains, completely transforming the genetic architecture of the disease and creating a previously under appreciated and on-going epidemic," the researchers said in a statement about their findings.

Vanessa Wong of Britain's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, who was part of the international team, said that since typhoid affects around 30 million people a year, robust and detailed good global surveillance is critical to trying to contain it. 

The research team, whose work was published in the journal Nature Genetics on Monday, sequenced the genomes of 1,832 samples of Salmonella Typhi bacteria that were collected from 63 countries between 1992 and 2013. 

They found 47 percent were from the H58 strain.

The team found that H58 emerged in South Asia 25 to 30 years ago and spread to Southeast Asia, Western Asia, East and South Africa and Fiji. They also found evidence of a recent and unreported wave of H58 transmission in many countries in Africa, which may represent an ongoing epidemic.

Kathryn Holt, a scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia who worked on the study, said multidrug resistant typhoid is caused by the bacteria picking up new resistance genes as disease strains mix and pass from person to person.

Resistance "has been coming and going since the 1970s", she said, but in the H58 strain, the resistance genes are becoming a stable part of the genome "which means multiple antibiotic resistant typhoid is here to stay". ( Reuters )

Should We All Be In 'Monogamish' Relationships?

Should We All Be In 'Monogamish' Relationships? - Chris Messina invented the hashtag. He also believes it is time to re-invent contemporary sexuality, which is why he practices something he refers to as “non-monogamy.”

"As a child of divorce and an aspiring designer-entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, I was suspicious of marriage," the early Twitter employee writes on CNN. “Out here, we’re data-positive and solution-oriented and if your product (i.e. marriage) is failing for 50% of your customers, then you need to fix it or offer something better… 

There’s an argument brewing that says monogamy is not best for a successful relationship. But is there any science behind it? (Photo: Getty Images)

“Monogamy established itself thousands of years ago, when society was ruled by scarcity and resources and potential mates were in limited supply,” Messina argues. “We’re now living in a period of great (though unequally distributed) abundance where our basic needs are sufficiently met, and reproduction is a choice. As a result, the reasons to be with a single mate for life are less urgent.”

This past spring a Rolling Stone feature explored this very topic in a story entitled “Tales From The Millennials’ Sexual Revolution,” underscoring a generational shift in thought regarding monogamy, sex, and relationships. 

The story points out that the new faces of the “open relationship” aren’t long-haired hippies in a cloud of patchouli, but, rather, successful young professionals “who do not view monogamy as any type of ideal.” These individuals often seek out a version of polyamory “in which the goal is to have one long-standing relationship and a willingness to openly acknowledge that the long-standing relationship might not meet each partner’s emotional and sexual needs for all time.”

Is non-monogamy the new sexual truism? 

Should we sit our partners down and tell them that it’s time to begin introducing some new faces to the bedroom? Well, for one thing, non-monogamy is not exactly new.

“There is an odd modern sense that sex for fun was invented in the mid-20th century and that before that, sex was acknowledged as fun but was only done within the confines of relationships,” Art Markman, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, tells Yahoo Health. “If you read the Bible, any old literature, or go to the opera, you discover that the world has always been just about as modern when it comes to sex as it is now.”

Indeed, the modern definition of marriage as between “one man and one woman” that is promoted by many religious conservative politicians flies in the face of the fact that most of the male characters in the early Bible had many wives. “All this means is that societies have debated what should qualify as normal for sex and relationships throughout recorded history,” adds Markman.

In other words, maybe Messina isn’t quite as radical as he thinks when he writes, “I’m in a monogamish relationship. We’re committed to each other, but have a porous boundary around our relationship, meaning we’ve agreed that it’s OK for either of us to express romantic feelings toward other people or to be physically intimate with other people, so long as we’re honest and transparent about our intentions with one another. These things don’t diminish the integrity of our relationship. Rather, they deepen our understanding of each other’s wants and desires, and give us the space to grow independently, without growing apart.”

Non-monogamy is not equivalent to “cheating” or adultery. 

Since the relationship is agreed upon, it’s not considered messing around. Elisabeth Sheff, PhD, author of The Polyamorists Next Door, uses the distinction “consensual non-monogamy” to refer to situations such as Messina’s. She notes that “not only do consensual non-monogamists try to tell each other the truth, but this greater communication has real impacts” such as reduced rates of sexually transmitted diseases as a result of the “honest communication needed to negotiate consensual agreements that allow a variety of ways to have multiple partners.”

Sheff herself is in a polyamorous relationship and was shocked to discover that she was not jealous when her partner had sex with other people. “I resisted it for 10 years because I anticipated feeling so threatened and jealous with my insecurity that I thought I would not be able to handle it,” she says.

Won’t non-monogamy undermine the bond within a couple? 

Research suggests that men and women both experience jealousy when their sex partners engage with another person. “There is a tendency for men to be a bit more jealous about sexual infidelity by their mate and for women to be more jealous about emotional infidelity,” notes Markman. “But sexual infidelity makes both men and women really jealous.” 

Messina argues that there is no need for such feelings to come into play in what he refers to as the era of “Big Dating.” He claims that “Big Dating unbundles monogamy and sex. It offers to maximize episodes of intimacy while minimizing the risk of rejection or FOMO [fear of missing out]” and that “Big Dating precipitates the rising ambivalence toward commitment,” proving that “that there’s now more than one option for building meaningful and satisfying relationships.” Messina goes so far as to argue that the new non-monogamy has the potential to revolutionize the modern world in much the same way that computers have, and that technology — and the advent of “hook-up” apps such as Tinder — are the key to such a revolution.

Why is monogamy considered to be so hard? 

“Ultimately, a difficulty in maintaining monogamous relationships is that people differ in how often they want to have sex, how much variety they want in sex partners, and in the level of emotional intimacy they need to want to have sex,” comments Markman, “These aspects differ for both men and women. They also differ within a person at different times of life and in different circumstances. So, what a person wants at 20 may be different than what that person wants at 30, 50, or 70. The idea that there is a one-size-fits-all format for relationships misses the complexity of human relationships. That is as true for monogamy as it is for non-monogamy.”

Can we want what we already have? 

The renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel, a professor at both New York University and Columbia University in New York, continuously addresses such issues in her work, including her now seminal book Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. In her TED Talk “The Secret To Desire In A Long-Term Relationship,” Perel asks the question at the core of all discussion of non-monogamy, that is: “Can we want what we already have?”

Perel notes in her talk that contemporary monogamy is under a great deal of pressure, as partners come into the relationship asking one another “to give …what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given.”

Furthermore, Perel points to the “paradox between love and desire” — that is “that the very ingredients that nurture love — mutuality, reciprocity, protection, worry, responsibility for the other — are sometimes the very ingredients that stifle desire.” 

A happy relationship is about commitment.

Perel concludes that maintaining an erotic connection in a relationship has nothing to do with monogamy or non-monogamy, but rather with a deeper understanding of the concept of commitment. Successful relationships of any length are committed.

“People need to communicate their expectations with their partners,” Markman adds. “That will not solve every problem, but it is a key ingredient to a healthy relationship of any form.”

Successful couples understand that passion waxes and wanes, like the moon. But those who have a good sex life know how to resurrect it. “They know how to bring it back, and they know how to bring it back because they have demystified one big myth, which is the myth of spontaneity,” says Perel. “They understood that whatever is going to just happen in a long-term relationship already has. Committed sex is premeditated sex. It’s willful. It’s intentional. It’s focus and presence.”

So heads up to Messina and his fellow non-monogamists: Call it what you will, but apparently commitment — both sexual and emotional — is key to any successful relationship. ( yahoo.com )