Loneliness in the Crowd: Why We Feel Disconnected in the Age of Connection
By Stefano Maroni, New York It is a strange paradox of our time: we are more connected than ever, yet loneliness seems to be everywhere. Social media allows us to peek into the lives of friends, family, and strangers across the globe, while messaging apps promise instant communication. Yet the more we reach out, the […]
Inheritance Beyond Wealth: How Family Stories Become Our Hidden Legacy
By Stefano Maroni, of New York When we think of inheritance, we often picture money, property, or heirlooms passed down through generations. Yet the most enduring legacies are rarely tangible. They live in stories—small, quiet, often overlooked narratives that shape who we are long before we even realize it. These stories are the hidden inheritance […]
The Art of Paying Attention: Rediscovering Depth in a Shallow Age
We live in a time when attention has become the rarest of commodities. It’s not just that there are more distractions around us—it’s that distraction itself has become the default setting of our lives. Phones buzz, feeds refresh, videos autoplay, and before we know it, we’ve scrolled through an hour without remembering a single thing […]
The Forgotten Towns: What America’s Vanishing Main Streets Tell Us About Ourselves
I often find myself driving through small towns, the kind you only end up in if you’ve missed an exit or taken a wrong turn. You know the ones—rows of empty storefronts with faded awnings, a diner with a “For Sale” sign in the window, the old movie theater now boarded up, its marquee frozen […]
The Weight of Inheritance: How Family Stories Shape Who We Become
The Stories We’re Born Into Long before we tell our own stories, we’re living inside someone else’s. We’re born into family narratives — shaped by the choices, sacrifices, failures, and silences of those who came before us. Some of these stories are passed down through words, in the form of bedtime tales, kitchen-table recollections, or […]
The Distance Between Us: Writing Through the Fracture of the American Dream
What We Were Promised I grew up in the shadows of a promise. It was never stated outright, but it was everywhere — in commercials, in classrooms, in the way my parents talked about the future. Work hard. Follow the rules. Be grateful. And in return, you’d make it. That was the agreement. That was […]