Audit Life Quotes

My life has been one big audition.

Wish my life were inside a book So I could turn to the ending, See if it is a love story Or a gothic disaster.

To distort our faces with joy, or wail and weep with sorrow, or collapse in agony, or wallow in sentimentality – wasn’t an inviolable human trait but something we can lose simply by leading dull and dreary lives. ‘A rich emotional life,’ she’d written, ‘is a privilege reserved only for the daring few’.

Your whole life, she says, you're searching for disaster—you're auditioning disasters—so you'll be well rehearsed when the ultimate disaster finally arrives.

The young people nowadays – men and women, amateurs and pros – generally fall into one of two categories: either they don’t know what it is that’s most important to them, or they know but don’t have the power to go after it. But this girl’s different. She knows what’s most important to her and she knows how to get it, but she doesn’t let on what it is. I’m pretty sure it’s not money, or success, or a normal happy life, or a strong man, or some weird religion, but that’s about all I can tell you. She’s like smoke: you think you’re seeing her clearly enough, but when you reach for her there’s nothing there. That’s a sort of strength, I suppose. But it makes her hard to figure out.

She has carefully audited her life and found she has no requirement for a husband.

All year I've felt like I had to be on my best behavior, like I was auditioning for new friendships, new identities, a new life.

But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar.

Karma is a balance sheet of life which debits and credit all your deeds.YourWhich is audited by our creator and actions are based on what we accumulated in it.

She had seen early in life that there was none in this world to audit one's soul. A man could deform himself into the most miserable of creatures, and no holy hand would descend from the clouds and cry Halt. And if there was no auditor, then one must audit one's own soul, tenaciously and without mercy.

Just doing the audition was going to be an experience, and I am a true collector of life experiences. I live for life experiences. I put them in my pocket like shiny rocks, and take them out every now and then to appreciate and reflect on them. I once read an article that the Eastern Indian culture considers those with AD(H)D to be old, wise souls that are coming to the end of their reincarnations, so they must pack as many life experiences and lessons into their few remaining lifetimes as possible. Makes sense to me--that's why we always have so much shit going on!

It takes such a long time to realize that it’s worth it. I wonder why we’re engineered that way. We’re sleep-deprived to the point of madness those first couple of years and then one day you wake up and you see the little person you’ve created and she says a sentence to you and you realize that everything in your life has been an audition for the creation of that specific person. That you’re sending freestanding beings off into the world and it’s entirely on your shoulders.

I needed no convincing of the fatal possibilities of government overreach, of the way the fatalities told the story of who the nation considered expendable, but, even after the low points of the previous decade, I believed in government, or at least believed in it more than the alternative. That my country might always expect me to audition for my life I accepted as fact, but I trusted the public charter of national government more than I trusted average white citizens acting unchecked.

Le Requiem de Mozart. Un souffle de l'au-delà y plane. Comment croire, après une pareille audition, que l'univers n'ait aucun sens? Il faut qu'il en ait un. Que tant de sublime se résolve dans le néant, le coeur, aussi bien que l'entendement, refuse de l'admettre. Quelque chose doit exister quelque part, un brin de réalité doit être contenu dans ce monde. Ivresse du possible qui rachète la vie. Craignons le retombement et le retour du savoir amer...

Does it matter that people and things Have words, Have names? If not, Why read any book? A litany of useless letters Detached from bone, muscle. Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement, Person Real?

Karma is the balance sheet of life which debits and credit all your deeds.YourWhich is audited by our creator and actions are based on what we accumulated in it.

It has been conquered, razed, and rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood.

It had been a heedless moment. I had entered the stage of life where there is a certain amount of immutability, in middle age, change is experienced primarily as a kind of attrition.

Learn to love being single and being alone. It can be tough, but it can also be brilliant. It's down to you to make it work. If you don't love yourself, you're going to spend the rest of your life auditioning people to do it for you. We all know how crazy it is to leave your emotions in someone else's hands.

Before I met Isaac, before I auditioned for Hamlet, before I had anything else that was good here, I had you. You were the first person to break through the walls I’d built up around myself from all that shit with Xavier, and I just want to thank you for that.” “Dammit, Holloway,” Angie said, swiping her fingertips under her eyes. “You’re a life saver, McKenzie, okay?” I said. “You’re a fucking life saver.

What touched me the most about the Dalai Lama was his definition of the purpose of life. It was, he said, “to be happy." How does one accomplish that? I asked. "I think warm-heartedness and compassion," he replied. "Compassion give you inner strength, more self-confidence. That can really change your attitude.

Gone are the days of buying stamps and mailing audition submissions. Today we have the internet. No more post office.

life is the way we audition for god. let us pray that we all get the job

List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true.         ■

If you receive a ‘certified’ message in a bottle with an audit notice, be sure to have the most complete records and do not forget those receipts before the IRS boards your vessel for inspection.

listen, i appreciate the story. i get that he's a goody guy. but these audits are random. it's not personal. see, that's where you're wrong, the man said. everything you do in life is personal.

My name is Linda Symcox—and I’m a lie-oholic. I came to Hollywood to work as an actress, but soon found out that I couldn’t get a decent audition, let alone a job. It seems I didn’t stand out enough.

I see that you have come to the last stage of human life; you are close upon your hundreth year, or even beyond: come now, hold an audit of your life. Reckon how much of your time has been taken up by a money-lender, how much by a mistress, a patron, a client, quarreling with your wife, punishing your slaves, dashing about the city on your social obligations. Consider also the diseases which we have brought on ourselves, and the time too which has been unused. You will find that you have fewer years than you reckon. Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days have passed as you had planned; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face wore its natural expression; when your mind was undisturbed; what work you have achieved in such a long life; how many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your own was left to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely.

In Los Angeles, moments were fortune cookies ready to be cracked open, and in them you might find a movie star, or a successful audition, or a chance encounter with a powerful person who, with a snap of his fingers, would change your life, like a wizard.

In real life, we don't get to return to our twenties and step onto the airplane we were afraid to fly; or audition for the play that excited and scared us; or ask the beauty to dinner; or take the job in Boston, despite logistical concerns. What's done is done and all we can do is tell ourselves the intuitively well-crafted stories of what might have been. But in fiction, what has been done can be undone and what hasn't been done can be done -- and very often should be. No limitations. No excuses. And no regrets.

Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more

But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you’ve worked towards, the life you’ve carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you’re left with a wound you can’t heal on your own and can’t believe you’ll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that – a lot of time – and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory.

Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more things.

Kaya makapal ang mukha ko at matigas ang bituka,e. Hindi kilala ang pagsuko dahil hangga't wala akong inaapakang tao, inilalaban ko ang magpapasaya sa puso ko- kahit mabasted nang ilang libong beses, 500 doon ay sa text pa; kahit hindi matanggap sa audition para sa role ni Pilosopo Tasyo sa El Fili; kahit madalas palakol sa exam; kahit hindi ako laging nakakapasa sa kung ano ang tingin ng iba na disente at tama, go pa rin. Sabi nga ng paborito kong mga philosophers, "Laban, laban!" [Sexbomb Girls]. Bawal bumawi kung ang gusto mo lang naman mapalanunan ay ligaya at pagmamahal.

When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop? In earlier, more rigid, less encouraging (and ultimately, more helpful) decades, things would be much clearer: you would stop when you turned forty, or when you got married, or when you had kids, or after five years, or ten years, or fifteen. And then you would go get a real job, and acting and your dreams for a career in it would recede into the evening, a melting into history as quiet as a briquette of ice sliding into a warm bath. But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. Would Willem work for year upon year at Ortolan, catching the same trains to auditions, reading again and again and again, one year maybe caterpillaring an inch or two forward, his progress so minute that it hardly counted as progress at all? Would he someday have the courage to give up, and would he be able to recognize that moment, or would he wake one day and look in the mirror and find himself an old man, still trying to call himself an actor because he was too scared to admit that he might not be, might never be? According

I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conqured, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiary in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.

It was easy to tell who at Ortolan was once an actor and was now a career waiter. The careerists were older, for one, and precise and fussy about enforcing Findlay’s rules, and at staff dinners they would ostentatiously swirl the wine that the sommelier’s assistant poured them to sample and say things like, “It’s a little like that Linne Calodo Petite Sirah you served last week, José, isn’t it?” or “Tastes a little minerally, doesn’t it? This a New Zealand?” It was understood that you didn’t ask them to come to your productions—you only asked your fellow actor-waiters, and if you were asked, it was considered polite to at least try to go—and you certainly didn’t discuss auditions, or agents, or anything of the sort with them. Acting was like war, and they were veterans: they didn’t want to think about the war, and they certainly didn’t want to talk about it with naïfs who were still eagerly dashing toward the trenches, who were still excited to be in-country. Findlay

I hope it's that she simply doesn't figure large enough in his life to be worth mentioning, Vita thought. And then she thought, if that was the case. It was therefore rather pathetic that Suzie loomed larger for her than for Tim, that Suzie was in some ways a more real presence in her life than in his. What she thought it boiled down to was that she really didn't want the woman he left her for to be the true, profound love of his life. I auditioned for that role. I put so much effort into it, I loved it. I'm not ready to let it go to someone else. But you keep forgetting he didn't leave you, Vita - you left him. And then she thought, is this a slewed version of Aesop's dog in the manger? I don't want him - but I don't want him wanting anyone else? And then she thought, For God's sake, shut up! This is doing me no good at all. All this thinking and wondering that I do isn't going to change him or the past. What a waste of quarter of an hour - sifting through all that emotional JUNK. She knew there was nothing of value in it- she'd been through it with a fine toothcomb over and again.

sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you’ve worked toward, the life you’ve carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you’re left with a wound you can’t heal on your own and can’t believe you’ll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that

When I did finally come to, I reported to Patrick that Valentino (not the dress designer but the silent movie star) had auditioned Patrick and me. At the climactic moment we had to twirl pantless, go into splits, and leave on the floor an inked impression of our anuses. Valentino had liked my impression more than Patrick’s and called me back for a second audition, which didn’t go so well.

When he was barely 14, he auditioned on one of the most prestigious reality shows in South Korea, known as Superstar K. A show designed to find raw talent in the Korean music industry. The show achieved just that with the discovery of Jungkook. Interestingly, Jungkook did not win the show; neither was he part of the individuals who were selected. But his difference was evident to most of the individuals in the room, and before the show was over, he had received more than seven offers from seven different entertainment companies. The decision he made appeared to be the best decision he made all his life. He chose Big Hit Entertainment and started a 36-month training program with them.  Years later, he was quoted to have said that his present bandmate, Rap Monster, in the label was what influenced his decision.

Perhaps the best way to slip through a system unnoticed is through confusion and disorganization. Where could I find both in one place? The Department of Motor Vehicles. Before I went down to The Most Miserable Place on Earth, I decided to prep for it. I treated it like an audition. I spent an hour on my hair and makeup, and an additional twenty minutes picking out the perfect short dress. Now it was time for some Irish charm.

He had, for a few days, forgotten that wherever he traveled, he must take his own familiar self along, and that that self would loom up between him and new skies, however rosy. It was a good self. He liked it, for he had worked with it. Perhaps it could learn things. But would it learn any more here, where it was chilled by the unfamiliarity, than in his quiet library, in solitary walks, in honestly auditing his life, back in Zenith?

the health care industry makes Wall Street look honest. It’s a $2-trillion-a-year business with no controls and with limited auditing. On Wall Street the crooks at least have the decency to try to hide their frauds, but those people cheating Medicare don’t even bother doing that. Wall Street is only taking your life savings, but in health care they may be stealing your life. I was surprised to discover how little “care” there is in health care.

I would like to fasten on someone from the older generation and say to him: ‘I see that you have come to the last stage of human life; you are close upon your hundredth year, or even beyond: come now, hold an audit of your life. Reckon how much of your time has been taken up by a money-lender, how much by a mistress, a patron, a client, quarrelling with your wife, dashing about the city on your social obligations. Consider also the diseases which we have brought on ourselves, and the time too which has been unused.

But sometimes things happen that no one hpes for. Events that cause everything you've worked toward, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day as a victory.

The fact that I had killed a man was really putting a crimp in my love life. Well, okay, to be strictly accurate, I hadn't killed him. But I had helped. And I had watched enough of the Emmy Award-winning cops-andlawyers drama Crime and Punishment on TV to know that cops weren't very understanding about that sort of thing. I had even auditioned for the role of a murderess in a C&P episode the previous year, but I didn't get the part. So, since I had never even played a killer, actually being one now was something of a novelty.

No market or type of drug was exempt, including antiretrovirals purchased by the United States and the World Health Organization to fight HIV in Africa. In Europe, the company used ingredients from unapproved sources, invented shelf-life data, tested different formulations of the drug than the ones it sold, and made undocumented changes to the manufacturing process. The PowerPoint also noted that the fallout from the Vimta audit, which had initially taken Kumar to South Africa, was already drawing the attention of regulators and could do further damage to the company’s reputation.

HOW TO KNOW IF SOMEONE CAN BE TRUSTED Use this expanded checklist to audit your relationship with regard to your partner toward you and you toward him or her. Show this list and your responses to it to your partner. Ask him or her to use the same list regarding you. If you or your partner are not truly described by this list of positive qualities, discuss what action you can take to change things for the better. MY PARTNER   Shows integrity and lives in accord with standards of fairness and honesty in all his or her dealings. (There is a connection between integrity and trust in the Webster’s Dictionary definition: “Trust is the assured reliance on another’s integrity.”)   May operate on the basis of self-interest but never at my expense or the expense of others.   Will not retaliate, use the silent treatment, resort to violence, or hold a grudge.   Predictably shows me the five A’s.   Supports me when I need him or her. Keeps agreements. Remains faithful.   Does not lie or have a secret life. Genuinely cares about me.   Stands by me and up for me.   Is what he or she appears to be; wants to appear just as he or she is, no matter if at times that is unflattering.

The Life of Riley in its best-known version evolved from a prospective Groucho Marx vehicle called The Flotsam Family. The Marx series failed at audition when the would-be sponsor wouldn’t accept Groucho in what was, for him, a straight role—as head of a family. Then producer Irving Brecher saw a film, The McGuerins of Brooklyn, with a rugged-looking and typically American blue-collar man, William Bendix, in one of the leading roles. There, on the screen, was his character. A new audition was recorded, with Bendix as star and the character renamed Chester A. Riley. It became a solid midlevel hit.

A wide diversity of treatment and social support models needs to be made available to drug users, ranging from one-strike-you’re-out abstinence to harm reduction, methadone maintenance, buprenorphine detox, heroin prescription, and subsidized employment initiatives. Treatment programs also need to take advantage of the moments of life crisis that drive long-term injectors to seek treatment. Most of the spur of the moment, crisis-driven windows of opportunity for changing the lives of street addicts are missed because underfunding, exacerbated by neoliberal audit culture, forces treatment programs to exclude risky patients.

I knew that my auditioning for a hearing role would probably shock some casting directors or producers. It might make them uncomfortable, but was necessary. A role was written for a hearing character because creators and writers likely hadn’t even imagined the possibility of having a Deaf character in their story. Just by showing up, I might stretch the boundaries of their imagination a little bit, push them outside the box, make them consider adding different dimensions to the role. In the end I might not get the job, but at the very least I’d plant an idea in their heads to consider including Deaf characters in that or a future production.

have been walking away from institutional religion for a long time now—half my life, at this point, fifteen years dismantling what the first fifteen built. But I’ve always been glad that I grew up the way I did. The Repentagon trained me to feel at ease in odd, insular, extreme environments, a skill I wouldn’t give up for anything, and Christianity formed my deepest instincts. It gave me a leftist worldview: a desire to follow leaders who feel themselves inseparable from the hungry, the imprisoned, and the sick. Years of auditing my own conduct in prayer gave me an obsession with everyday morality. And Christian theology convinced me that I had been born in a compromised situation. It made me want to investigate my own ideas about what it means to be good.

All that day we went about stunned – we, the small town of real people behind the corporate logo of a ringed blue planet spinning through starry space. In the studio's Corner Store, in small groups that met on the company streets and in a hundred offices, we pieced our own experiences together with what was coming to light in the media. The suspect: a deranged, 43-year-old drifter who two days earlier had allegedly killed three people in Albuquerque, NM. He had fled to California where for reasons unknown he had been trying to contact actor-producer Michael Landon on the day of the shootings. The employees he had approached had repeatedly turned him away, since Landon had no particular connection with our studio. But just after dark the man had come back to the main gate again. He had walked up to a young actress waiting for her ride after an audition, said "hello" to her and then stepped over to the guardhouse. "I heard a shot and looked up," a secretary who had been passing nearby told me. "I saw Jeren fall and heard him groan. And there was this guy in a gray jacket just standing over him, pointing down at him with a gun. Then he raised the gun and pointed it at the other guard and shot again, and I saw Armando fall out the other side of the guardhouse. For a split second – just because we're at a movie studio – I thought it must be a movie they were filming. But there weren't any lights or cameras, and I realized it was real, and I thought, ‘He's gonna come after us because we saw it!' So I ran. I felt I was running for my life.

Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. ■​The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. ■​Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. ■​Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. ■​List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. ■​Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics

■​Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. ■​The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. ■​Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. ■​Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. ■​List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. ■​Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

Tristan Mack Wilds: One of the conversations from Ed that I remember the absolute most, it was during my audition. We've had deep, intellectual conversations and we've had ones where he'll say a few words that will stick with you for the rest of your life. This is one of the joints that stick with you for the rest of your life. I was in the middle of auditions, and i twas kind of the last audition for the character of Michael ... Ed pulled me out. He's kind of sitting there, kind of just thinking. He said, 'Less is more. Remember that for the rest of your life. ... The less you do, the more everybody will feel it. Because we're so prone to seeing so much. With acting, with life, whatever. W'ere so prone to seeing so much more more. But when there's less, the mystery behind it, it leaves people guessing. It feels so much more. (227)

He knew how the audition was going to affect their lives for the next ten weeks as she slowly lost her mind from nerves and the strain of trying to scrounge precious practice time from an already jam-packed life. No matter how much time poor Sam gave her, it would never be quite enough, because what she actually needed was for him and the kids to just temporarily not exist. She needed to slip into another dimension where she was a single, childless person. Just between now and the audition. She needed to go to a mountain chalet (somewhere with good acoustics) and live and breathe nothing but music. Go for walks. Meditate. Eat well. Do all those positive-visualization exercises young musicians did these days. She had an awful suspicion that if she were to do this in reality, she might not even miss Sam and the children that much, or if she did miss them, it would be quite bearable.

I needed no convincing of the fatal possibilities of government overreach, of the way the fatalities told the story of who the nation considered expendable, but, even after the low points of the previous decade, I believed in government, or at least believed in it more than the alternative. That my country might always expect me to audition for my life I accepted as fact, but I trusted the public charter of national government more than I trusted average white citizens acting unchecked. I believed in government, I had come to understand, the way that agnostics who hadn’t been to service in decades sometimes hedged their bets and brought their babies to be baptized or otherwise welcomed into the religions of their parents’ youth. I had abandoned the actual religion I was raised with as soon as I got to college, but when in moments of despair I needed the inspiration of a triumphant martyr figure who made me believe in impossible things, I thought not of saints or saviors but of my mother.

But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. Would Willem work for year upon year at Ortolan, catching the same trains to auditions, reading again and again and again, one year maybe caterpillaring an inch or two forward, his progress so minute that it hardly counted as progress at all? Would he someday have the courage to give up, and would he be able to recognize that moment, or would he wake one day and look in the mirror and find himself an old man, still trying to call himself an actor because he was too scared to admit that he might not be, might never be?

Is more committed to being honest about his or her mistakes and apologizing when necessary than in defending his or her ego. A partner who can’t admit he was wrong but instead loudly insists he was justified in his unkind behavior is not a good candidate for intimacy. Imagine that same kind of ego in a doctor—or a president. (I recall an interview in which Henry Kissinger said that Richard Nixon did not end the war in Vietnam early on in his terms because “he did not want to be remembered as the president who lost a war.” Imagine having a son in the army with that attitude in the White House.) We can take both trustworthiness and untrustworthiness as information about whether a relationship can go on but never as an incentive to hurt back if we are betrayed or to stay put if we are hurt. We can also do an audit of our sex life:   How interested am I in being sexual with you?   How delighted am I by seeing you, being with you, or thinking about you?   How is our sexuality contributing to our intimacy?   Can we be intimate without having to be sexual every time?

In the movie La La Land, Mia has to put on a brave face at auditions, then put on her best clothes and go out on the town with the little money she could scrounge up, trying to find a way to meet the difference-makers in Hollywood. Even when she was about ready to give up, she ultimately came back for one more reading, the one that made her a big star. Almost every Hollywood actor who is successful today has a real-life story like that. Their goal was the same as everyone in the business world: to land a big fish. People noticed Natalie Portman and John Wayne the way they eventually noticed Mia. No one would have bought what she was selling if she hadn’t presented herself like a winner, even when she was on the verge of moving back into her parents’ place in Boulder City. My mom will tell you I wanted to be a millionaire by seven years old. It was always on my mind. So from day one of my business career I acted the part. I had no money but I dressed like a professional. I wore a suit, which was the thing to do back then. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was pressed and clean. Bottom line is, if you’re shooting for the moon, you better act like an astronaut.

Dude, the world is your oyster now,” Seth said. “Lick it up.” It’s crazy that the friends you’re fondest of from your youth sometimes resemble people you would cross the street to avoid as an adult. An idea came to Seth. “Go back to your apartment and put on shorts.” “Why?” “Yoga.” “It’s Saturday night.” “It’s actually late afternoon. Just do it, Tobe.” “I just had a drink.” “Trust me, dude. I go to a place right near my apartment owned by a guy who trained under Bikram and started a splinter group that nearly brought the political system of India to its knees.” When Seth was single, he said, this was where the majority of his dating life came from. You could be generous and like Seth and still think of what he called his “dating life” as a series of auditions, mostly successful, for sex partners. He explained to Toby that presence in a yoga class, no matter your ability, was a shortcut to showing a woman how evolved you were, how you were strong, how you were not set on maintaining the patriarchy that she so loathed and feared. “Does Vanessa go to yoga with you?” Seth shooed this away. “Yoga isn’t for us. It’s for me.” Meaning he still liked to go to yoga and see if there were better prospects.

I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conquered, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiarity in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.

Back then, Japan as a nation aspired to something in which each individual seemed invested. And that "something"wasn't just about economic growth, or transforming the yen into an international currency. It had more to do with accessing information. Information was indispensable, and not only as a means of obtaining necessities like food and clothing and medicine. Within two or three years of World War II's end, starvation had been basically eliminated in Japan, and yet the Japanese had continued slaving away as if their lives depended on it. Why? To create a more abundant life? If so, where was the abundance? Where were the luxurious living spaces? Eyesores dominated the scenery wherever you went, and people still crammed themselves into packed commuter trains each morning, submitting to conditions that would be fatal for any other mammal. Apparently what the Japanese wanted wasn't a better life, but more things. And things, of course, were a form of information. But as things became readily available and information began to flow smoothly, the original aspiration got lost in the shuffle. People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born. Mix loneliness with stress and enervation, and all sorts of madness can occur. Anxiety increases, and in order to obliterate the anxiety people turn to extreme sex, violence, and even murder.

Staying at Home during this lockdown period is the right time to find your life purpose within Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan. This is an opportunity to know yourself better and to understand what motivates and feeds your mind and your soul, and also to find out as to where you fit in the bigger Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan. All members of each family/clan possess characteristics, abilities, and qualities specific to that family/clan. It is up to the family/clan to distinguish itself amongst other families/clans. Ba Ga Mohlala has become an institution to build cooperation in order to build and forge unity for social and economic benefits for Ba Ga Mohlala and Banareng in general. An institution is social structure in which people cooperate and which influences the behavior of people and the way they live. intelligence and assertiveness comes to us as our nature, it is in our blood (DNA) and all there is for us to do is to nature it and it will shine, otherwise it will gather dust and rust in us. The key of brotherhood and sisterhood is that brothers and sisters carry the same genetic code. Together, united, they carry the legacy of their forefathers. Our bond (through our shared blood/DNA) as Ba Ga Mohlala family/clan is our insurance for the future. As Ba Ga Mohlala we can have our own Law firms, Auditing Firms, Doctors's Medical Surgeries, Private School, Private Clinics or Private Hospital, farms and lot of small to medium manufacturing, service, retail and wholesale companies and become self relient. All it takes to achieve that is unity, willpower and commitment.

Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined. On the terrace of the Bundesterrasse is a striking view: the river Aare below and the Bernese Alps above. A man stands there just now, absently emptying his pockets and weeping. Without reason, his friends have abandoned him. No one calls any more, no one meets him for supper or beer at the tavern, no one invites him to their home. For twenty years he has been the ideal friend to his friends, generous, interested, soft-spoken, affectionate. What could have happened? A week from this moment on the terrace, the same man begins acting the goat, insulting everyone, wearing smelly clothes, stingy with money, allowing no one to come to his apartment on Laupenstrasse. Which was cause and which effect, which future and which past? In Zürich, strict laws have recently been approved by the Council. Pistols may not be sold to the public. Banks and trading houses must be audited. All visitors, whether entering Zürich by boat on the river Limmat or by rail on the Selnau line, must be searched for contraband. The civil military is doubled. One month after the crackdown, Zürich is ripped by the worst crimes in its history. In daylight, people are murdered in the Weinplatz, paintings are stolen from the Kunsthaus, liquor is drunk in the pews of the Münsterhof. Are these criminal acts not misplaced in time? Or perhaps the new laws were action rather than reaction? A young woman sits near a fountain in the Botanischer Garten. She comes here every Sunday to smell the white double violets, the musk rose, the matted pink gillyflowers. Suddenly, her heart soars, she blushes, she paces anxiously, she becomes happy for no reason. Days later, she meets a young man and is smitten with love. Are the two events not connected? But by what bizarre connection, by what twist in time, by what reversed logic? In this acausal world, scientists are helpless. Their predictions become postdictions. Their equations become justifications, their logic, illogic. Scientists turn reckless and mutter like gamblers who cannot stop betting. Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who can say which, in an acausal world? In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective. Most people have learned how to live in the moment. The argument goes that if the past has uncertain effect on the present, there is no need to dwell on the past. And if the present has little effect on the future, present actions need not be weighed for their consequence. Rather, each act is an island in time, to be judged on its own. Families comfort a dying uncle not because of a likely inheritance, but because he is loved at that moment. Employees are hired not because of their résumés, but because of their good sense in interviews. Clerks trampled by their bosses fight back at each insult, with no fear for their future. It is a world of impulse. It is a world of sincerity. It is a world in which every word spoken speaks just to that moment, every glance given has only one meaning, each touch has no past or no future, each kiss is a kiss of immediacy.

The actor Mark Ruffalo went to six hundred auditions before he got his first break. Six hundred NOs before the first YES.

True to her word, Iris began getting me meatier auditions. Working in Romania had given me a taste of what it was like to make a movie; I hoped it would be the start of something more. With that expectation came a lot of scary internal pressure. I was shocked to realize how much more pleasant it was to feel like an underdog.

So someone got the even brighter idea to put up a curtain between the people who are auditioning and the judges. And that simple device almost overnight led to women showing up in symphony orchestras in numbers.

Imagine yourself in your counterpart’s situation. The beauty of empathy is that it doesn’t demand that you agree with the other person’s ideas (you may well find them crazy). But by acknowledging the other person’s situation, you immediately convey that you are listening. And once they know that you are listening, they may tell you something that you can use. The reasons why a counterpart will not make an agreement with you are often more powerful than why they will make a deal, so focus first on clearing the barriers to agreement. Denying barriers or negative influences gives them credence; get them into the open. Pause. After you label a barrier or mirror a statement, let it sink in. Don’t worry, the other party will fill the silence. Label your counterpart’s fears to diffuse their power. We all want to talk about the happy stuff, but remember, the faster you interrupt action in your counterpart’s amygdala, the part of the brain that generates fear, the faster you can generate feelings of safety, well-being, and trust. List the worst things that the other party could say about you and say them before the other person can. Performing an accusation audit in advance prepares you to head off negative dynamics before they take root. And because these accusations often sound exaggerated when said aloud, speaking them will encourage the other person to claim that quite the opposite is true. Remember you’re dealing with a person who wants to be appreciated and understood. So use labels to reinforce and encourage positive perceptions and dynamics.

Brittney, our firstborn, is married with three children. My husband and I are extroverts, and Brittney is an introvert. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She was shy, and I wondered how much to push her socially. My instincts told me she would eventually grow out of her shyness, and I wasn’t going to make a problem out of something that really wasn’t one. I regularly engaged her in conversation, encouraged her to talk about her ideas, her interests, her feelings, and what was going on inside, but I tried not to push. We did the things that happened naturally for our family. She attended classes once a week at a homeschool co-op, we went to church, and we got together with friends. I modeled what good conversation looks like, but I never really made it a topic of conversation because I felt it might make her self-conscious. Brittney made friends along the way. She loved drama class, and one of the reasons she enrolled in it was because she wanted to challenge herself to grow. When she was fifteen, she auditioned for and got the lead role in the spring play. Suddenly, she blossomed and took on a leadership role that defied all evidence she was an introvert at heart. She’s never been the same. She continued to grow in confidence and is a strong, gracious soul who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks when the situation calls for it. As a thirty-year-old mom who is homeschooling her kids, she tells me that pushing an introvert is the worst thing a parent can do. She believes she would never have grown so naturally into her own skin if we had not given her permission to do so at her own pace. After high school, she worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, and the patients there loved her. Not only can Brittney easily talk with people her own age, but with anyone she meets regardless of their age.

Most people would rather be mugged than audited.

And for this drama of life, Neither make-up, nor false emotions Suffice. What is necessary Is simply being truthful To your own self.

I still miss those days of putting on an actual costume to sing, dance, and be someone else. I have thought about going back and doing theater, or even starting a drama club at whatever school I end up at long term. I occasionally look up approaching auditions while I toy with those thoughts.

And aren’t you leaving the life of a Chagga? Five years from now, your plan is to become an American citizen, audition for the American Idol TV singing competition series, be a contestant, win, and become a famous pop singer.

It’s astonishing, he said. What is? The things that happen down there. I have no idea what you’re talking about. He couldn’t begin to tell her. Life. Four billion years of chance had written a score of inconceivable intricacy into every living cell. And every cell was a variation on that same first theme, splitting and copying itself without end through the world. All those sequences, gigabits long, were just waiting to be auditioned, transcribed, arranged, tinkered with, added to by the same brains that those scores assembled. A person could work in such a medium—wild forms and fresh sonorities. Tunes for forever, for no one.

There are some great dancers in our grade; even some of the boys are particularly good. One boy named Alex has been dancing pretty much his entire life and is probably the best dancer in the whole school. When he was younger, he said that the other kids had bullied him and called him a girl as well as a heap of horrible names that he really didn’t want to mention. But I could see that everyone had finally developed a huge amount of respect for Alex and those who were still unaware of his talents were in for a big surprise. Hip hop is his specialty and he’s so cool to watch. I kept telling him that when he’s old enough, he should audition for “So You Think You Can Dance” and he told me that he’d really like to. As well as Alex, there’s another kid in our grade who is kind of overweight and dorky looking. But it turns out that he has an awesome voice. I had no idea that our school has so much talent and it certainly came as a huge surprise to find out that Liam can actually sing really well. The look of amazement when we heard his audition pretty much spread like wild fire. I even caught the teachers raising their eyebrows in astonishment. It just goes to show you that you can’t judge a book by its cover! I never really understood what that meant until hearing Liam sing. Now, I don’t think I’ll ever look at him in the same way again. It’s also a really big lesson for me. From now on, I will never judge a person by their looks alone. I’ll wait till I get to know them because I’ve found out that until you do get to know people, you really don’t know what type of person they are or what hidden talents they might have. Anyway, the musical was shaping up to be a huge success. The dance troupe we had put together was really coming along and we rehearsed during every lunch break and sometimes even after school. Then one afternoon, an amazing thing happened; Blake Jansen, who I’ve had a secret crush on since the fourth grade, turned up at rehearsals with his friend, Jack.

She’s kryptonite. She’s killing me. I would do anything for her. It hits like a sucker punch. All my life I’ve been dodging fists. I thought I was past the days of being taken by surprise. But this? This is true shock. Down to the bone. Down to the marrow.

I stroke down the length of his lifeline. “Long. Deep. You’ll live a long time.” “If you’re going to curse me, couldn’t you do it with locusts instead?” Too intimate. His hand feels abruptly intimate, as if I’m cradling some more sensitive part of him—his heart, maybe. “It’s not a curse.” “For someone who’s been trying to die his whole life, it is.

That’s the only reason I pull him close enough to see—not because I want to touch him. Coarse hair and callused skin. Muscle and tendon. Joshua North always seemed larger than life. The effect should fade up close. Instead he looms even larger. He’s a mythical creature. Hercules, half immortal, doomed to live through endless fights, to feel the pain and suffering in each and every one.

I acknowledge the lithe body wrapped in leotard and tights, my gaze meandering all the way down to her worn ballet shoes. On the outside they look merely frayed. On the inside, it’s another story. I imagine she’s bruised, maybe bleeding. No doubt there’s tape to hold her feet together. The life of a professional athlete isn’t pretty. Much like that of a professional soldier.

My life has been exhausting, and it’s spilled over in this moment. I thought loving her would crush me before. Now it’s grinding my bones to nothing. Loving her made me weak. Now it’s made me dust.

Tonight was supposed to be proof that she still had something to love in her life, even if I wasn’t worthy of her heart.

Bethany stands in graceful stillness next to me. People take stillness for granted. They think dance is all about movement. That life is all about movement. Bethany proves otherwise. The scent of her skin taunts me. Her stillness is a call to action.

Bethany relaxes. She thinks I’m going to pull her in for more. I know it from her hungry sigh. As if she hasn’t had enough to eat all her life. For once, we’re not prodding at the other’s open wounds. We’re pulling together.

Finding the right people for your team starts with a continual self-audit. Examine yourself in the mirror. Figure out who you are and who you aren’t. Then look at your friend group, the people who are around you all the time. Who’s building you up? Who’s bringing you down? The people in your circle, they’re either adding to you or subtracting from you. Maybe they’re helping to multiply your blessings. Or maybe they’re dividing you from things that are really important. To get the results you want in the MATHEMATICS OF LIFE, you’ve got to surround yourself with the right kind of folks.

If you audit your life, skip the bullshit, and use backstops, you’ll find time to do everything you need and want to do.

PERSONAL IDENTITY AUDIT How do you think the world views you? How do you view yourself? How is the “public you” different from the “private you”? What conditions produce the BEST VERSION OF YOU? (The version of you who competes and gets the highest results.) Competition Fear of loss A setback A victory Having someone believe in you A point to prove Name a ninety-day period of your career during which you were the hungriest to succeed. What drove you? How do you handle a public loss? Do you feel you’re entitled to things without earning them? How difficult a personality do you have? Do you have a tendency of blaming others for your lack of effort or discipline? If yes, why? Very difficult Difficult Somewhat difficult Easygoing Very easygoing Do you get along with people like yourself or can there be only one of you in the room? Who do you speak to the most when you’re losing? People ahead of you People at the same level as you People not yet at your level No one Who are you secretly envious of that no one knows about?Don’t worry about writing this one down. No one will know youranswer but you. How is your relationship with the person you’remost envious of? How much of that envy is due to your not willing to do the work that the other individual is willing to do? What type of people annoy you the most and why? What type of people do you like the most and why? Who do you collaborate with the most? What qualities and traits do you admire most in others? How do you handle pressure? How often do you challenge your own vision to help improve your perspective? What brings out the worst side of you? Why? What brings out the best side of you? Why? What do you value the most in business and in life? What do you fear the most in your line of business? What accomplishment are you most proud of and why? Who do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live?

Audit your adult years. Can you mark any moments where your view of (and hope for) the future changed the course of your life, whether for good or bad? Try to come up with five. Create a plan to mark every moment throughout this next week where God’s promised future of glory, goodness, and resurrected life enters your thoughts. I want you to see how often or seldom you allow God’s good future to make its way into your daily life.

But Rebecca grew up in a city on the East Coast, where she was extremely isolated from people who looked like her. That made her instinctively competitive when, all of a sudden, she finally was surrounded by women that looked exactly like her only because they were waiting to audition for the role of the wet-haired ghost from The Ring or Angry Waitress with Fake-Ass Accent #2. The “specialness” she was used to feeling from looking different vanished instantly.

You think once you've gotten into the company, you've made it. It's all over. The struggle and the suffering. The longing and the dreams. Part of it is just the way we treat life, like there's this dividing line between childhood and adulthood that we'll arrive at, pass through. But you never do cross over, because it doesn't actually exist. Officially entering the company was the greatest achievement of my life, I'd done it. Alone among our classmates, Margo, Lindsey and I had realized our dream. Our peers had to put themselves through the grueling, dispiriting process of auditioning for other, lesser countries throughout France and Europe. But after all of that, then, I was just there in the company, and I had the lowest possible rank. As always, another hoop to jump through, another step to climb, when I was a student, I thought I wouldn't care that being part of POB would be enough. Of course it wasn't, I wanted to be the best.

The job interview is perhaps the most obvious example of this sort of unpaid emotional labour: here the candidate must appear sufficiently confident and enthusiastic to satisfy a selection panel assessing "presentation" and "personality", as if these were objective scientific criteria. So the interview, regardless of the job, becomes a kind of talent show audition hinging on generic questions about change, teamwork etc. (the equivalents of the standard repertoire of X Factor ballads), while the interviewee must project an all-purpose positivity by extemporising around this script without revealing its artificiality. The candidate must project the right image and hit the right notes, and must put his 'heart and soul' into every performance, even for the most dreary role.

After the show Humphrey Barclay, a highly talented Harrovian Head Boy who could act, direct, and draw cartoons, introduced me to John Cleese, a very tall man with black hair and piercing dark eyes. They were very complimentary and encouraged me to audition for the Footlights. I had never heard of this University Revue Club, founded in 1883 to perform sketches and comedy shows, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and a month later Jonathan Lynn and I were voted in by the Committee, after performing to a packed crowd of comedy buffs in the Footlights’ Club Room. Jonathan, a talented actor, writer, and jazz drummer, would go on to direct Pass the Butler, my first play in the West End, and also write and direct Nuns on the Run, a movie with me and Robbie Coltrane. The audition sketch I had written for us played surprisingly well and, strange details, in the front row, lounging on a sofa, laughing with some Senior Fellows, was the author Kingsley Amis, next to the brother of the soon-to-be-infamous Guy Burgess, who would shortly flee the country, outed as perhaps the most flamboyant of all the Cambridge spies—for whenever he was outrageously drunk in Washington, which was every night, he would announce loudly to everybody that he was a KGB spy. Nobody believed him

In line at the bank, the man behind me wears no socks with his boat shoes and auditions for the role of killer.

They never explained in those early auditions that your life would cease to be your own or that you gave up your right to be treated like an actual person in favor of becoming a character in everyone else’s fantasy the day you picked the role that launched you into the firmament with the rest of the stars. They didn’t tell you how muddled the whole thing would become.

Staying healthy is like playing the long game in Monopoly. You've got to make those strategic moves now if you want to build those fancy hotels on Park Place later. So, instead of Boardwalk, think salad bowl. Swap out those late-night snacks for some shut-eye, hydrate like you're a plant on the verge of wilting, and get those steps in like you're auditioning for 'Dancing with the Stars.' And hey, if all else fails, remember: laughter is the best medicine. Stay healthy, stay happy!

She has carefully audited her life and found she has no requirement for a husband.

A rugged-looking fellow with long, curly black hair loosened his jaw by repeating the phrase, “red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather.” I wondered if that was a secret exercise actors did before kissing scenes [Cram, Cusi, "‘One Life to Live’ and 14 Beautiful Boys to Kiss," Cafe, January 14, 2015].

To some persons nowadays, mindfulness might seem to be just another short course. After auditing it for only a few weeks, they could thereafter meditate casually, whenever … This isn’t where Living Zen Remindfully is coming from. Authentic Zen training means committing oneself to a process of regular, ongoing daily life practice. This preparation enables one to unlearn old unfruitful habits, retrain more wholesome ones, and lead a more genuinely creative life. Currently,