Beauty Is Not Validity Quotes

How would your life be different if…You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day…You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others.

Get Off The Scale! You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance. Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life. It’s true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!

…It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity….But I’ve long since lost all such doubts, Ono,’ he continued. ‘When I am an old man, when I look back over my life and see I have devoted it to the task of capturing the unique beauty of that world, I believe I will be well satisfied. And no man will make me believe I’ve wasted my time.

You are overwhelmed and haven’t learned to be your own friend through this yet. You will. Your fear of jumping without a net is so valid, and the trick that you haven’t learned yet is that that’s life, always and everywhere. There are no nets. Life is a big, long free fall, and the sooner you can embrace what is beautiful about that, the sooner you will start to enjoy the ride.

His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions--gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.

Forgetting that beauty and happiness are only ever incarnated in an individual person, we replace them in our minds by a conventional pattern, a sort of average of all the different faces we have ever admired, all the different pleasures we have ever enjoyed, and thus carry about with us abstract images, which are lifeless and uninspiring because they lack the very quality that something new, something different from what is familiar, always possesses, and which is the quality inseparable from real beauty and happiness. So we make our pessimistic pronouncements on life, which we think are valid, in the belief that we have taken account of beauty and happiness, whereas we have actually omitted them from consideration, substituting for them synthetic compounds that contain nothing of them.

For trans and nonbinary youth: You're beautiful. You're important. You're valid. You're perfect.

The whole world is sick...we've all got this pathetic need to be seen. We're a bunch of fucking toddlers trying to get attention.

Were we to confront our creaturehood squarely, how would we propose to educate? The answer, I think is implied in the root of the word education, educe, which means "to draw out." What needs to be drawn out is our affinity for life. That affinity needs opportunities to grow and flourish, it needs to be validated, it needs to be instructed and disciplined, and it needs to be harnessed to the goal of building humane and sustainable societies. Education that builds on our affinity for life would lead to a kind of awakening of possibilities and potentials that lie dormant and unused in the industrial-utilitarian mind. Therefore the task of education, as Dave Forman stated, is to help us 'open our souls to love this glorious, luxuriant, animated, planet.' The good news is that our own nature will help us in the process if we let it.

But the truth is, I'm still not sure how to tell what's real because when you're inside it, it's your reality, and if your own perception of the world isn't valid, then what is?

If you feel okay only when life is happy and easy-breezy-beautiful Cover-Girl, then guess what? You are not free. <...> You are the prisoner of your own indulgences, enslaved by your own intolerance, crippled by your own emotional weakness. You will constantly feel a need for some external comfort or validation that may or may not ever come

Your feelings are valid and real. Do not let anybody denounce them just because they do not feel the same way. These feelings do not make you weak, or clingy, or overly emotional. They make you strong, brave, and beautiful. You are not merely made of stardust; you are the comet streaking through the sky on the way to do good and bright things.

We're all a beautiful, wonderful work in progress....Embrace the process!

As American Christians, we celebrate the idea that "all men are created equal." This statement from our Declaration of Indepenence is grounded in the biblical teaching that every person in the world has been formed in the image of God and therefore has instrinsic worth. it's a beautiful idea. Subtly, however, this equality of persons shifts into an equality of ideas. Just as every person is equally valued, so every idea is equally valid. Applied to faith, this means that in a world where different people have different religious views, all such views should be treated as fundamntally equal. In this system of thinking, faith is a matter of taste, not of truth....... Then I implore you to consider the urgent need before us to forsake the American dream now in favor of radical abandonment to the person and purpose of Christ.

You may only get this one life – but lived free of submissive reverence – that is still a thing of rampant beauty.

When you paint your lips, eye lids, nails or whatever, to look attractive, don't forget your up stairs(intellect) if you leave it behind, i will consider all other colors invalid.

In a typical college romance novel, this was the moment I would’ve been waiting for. The validation of all my shame and suffering at the hands of other men: a beautiful boy loved me. What had been done to my body didn’t ruin me for Mr. Right. Zippity-fucking-doo-dah.

…But sometimes a person begins with opinions and judgments and valid criticisms, but then things creep in that have nothing to do with forming opinions, and then it’s all over with strict logic, and what you end up with is an absurd world republic and beautiful style.

Remember this, whoever you are, however you are, you are equally valid, equally justified and equally beautiful.

I'm the parent. It's my job to be here for you, not the other way around.

You don't need to compete with the rest. You don't need constant validation from others. You just need to excel in your own field. You just need to bloom the flower that you are.

It sounds incredibly platitudinal, but no one will ever be able to love you if you don't love yourself. What's beautiful about it is that if you love yourself enough you don't need the validation from anyone else.

Shy, all those things you listed don’t make a person. They don’t. I mean it. You’re beautiful, both inside and outside, but please don’t look at me to validate that. You have to know it for yourself. -Taylor Holden, Strapped.

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency. I am no one in existence but myself,

most creative, successful business leaders have tended to be expert questioners. They’re known to question the conventional wisdom of their industry, the fundamental practices of their company, even the validity of their own assumptions.

The truth of no truths becomes, inevitably, truth: a way of naming being, language, and culture that guards the boundaries of thought against claims it has not validated.

If you have to perform a level of “prettiness” in order to be chosen by someone, they are choosing you based on your objective beauty. I get that you crave to be chosen by someone based on more than how you look. You want to be chosen for your entire self. Darling, as long as you spend your years chasing male validation, you will exhaust yourself all the way to your grave. Because male validation is a bottomless pit. It won’t ever see you how you deserve to be seen. Stop chasing it. Stop trying to attract it. Stop trying to mould yourself into a palatable Floss. It will consume you and spit you back out once it’s done using you. Your main goal in life is not to be “chosen” by a man anyway. It’s all a big lie. You don’t actually need men for anything. Or at the very least, not in the capacity you’ve been made to think you do.

At this moment, somewhere in the world, children died of starvation, bombs exploded to maim and kill the innocent, hurricanes destroyed everything in their path, but the loveliness of this moment was as real as wars and plagues and heartbreak. Pleasure and beauty are as valid as pain and ugliness and when I am fortunate enough to enjoy the former, I do so.

The person who professes faith in Christ and yet finds beauty and joy in the things that oppose the will of God should be concerned about the validity of his profession.

What I’m really doing is finding someone to validate my low self-esteem...

Which is why I'd strongly caution you against scripting an ending that indulges your fears before you've had a chance to discover if they're even valid or real.

Your validation doesn't move my needle.

To be an engineer, and build a marvelous machine, and to see the beauty of its operation is as valid an experience of beauty as a mathematician's absorption in a wondrous theorem. One is not "more" beautiful than the other. To see a space shuttle standing on the launch pad, the vented gases escaping, and witness the thunderous blast-off as it climbs heavenward on a pillar of flame - this is beauty. Yet it is a prime example of applied mathematics.

Nothing among all human emotions is more beautiful and more hopeless than the wish to be loved for oneself alone. Who are you anyway, next to countless others, to deserve such preference ? We do not want to be interchangeable; let no one be able to pinch-it for us. A figurative unmistakability claiming to be spatial and siritual. As though the earth had only one heaven, and heaven only one earth, we lay claim to the validity of both and, if we have one, we want to be the other. In reality, however, we are filled with planets, and countless heavens open their doors to us.

Happy? That doesn’t feel solid enough, somehow. Like it’s fleeting or transient, and whenever something crappy happens, it’s gone in a puff of smoke. I’m in love with someone I want to spend my life getting to know. He makes me feel safe and trusted and strong and beautiful, and all the things that give me validation that who I am is someone worth knowing. I guess it feels more bliss than happiness.

Beautiful, fragile, fleeting, the sunrise shell; but not, for all that, illusory. Because it is not lasting, let us not fall into the cynic's trap and call it an illusion. Duration is not a test of true or false. The day of the dragon-fly or the night of the Saturnid moth is not invalid simply because that phase in its life cycle is brief. Validity need have no relation to time, to duration, to continuity. It is on another plane, judged by other standards. "And what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place." The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things.

Tis torture and not mercy. Heaven is here, Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog And little mouse, every unworthy thing, Live here in heaven and may look on her, But Romeo may not. More validity, More honorable state, more courtship lives In carrion flies than Romeo. They may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand And steal immortal blessing from her lips, Who even in pure and vestal modesty, Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin. But Romeo may not. He is banishèd. Flies may do this, but I from this must fly. They are free men, but I am banishèd. And sayst thou yet that exile is not death? Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife, No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean, But “banishèd” to kill me?—“Banishèd”! O Friar, the damnèd use that word in hell. Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart, Being a divine, a ghostly confessor, A sin-absolver, and my friend professed, To mangle me with that word “banishèd”?

Maybe, life is a kind of waking dream. Maybe, it's a double-dream with a false awakening. Maybe, the dream only becomes lucid and truly luminous given the fuller perspective of life after one's own wake. Maybe, the pictures never stop. Doesn't the existence of dreams and higher consciousness during the years of blackouts of a lifetime, whether longer or shorter, give us a valid premise to hope that another highly spiritual state may await our passing?

I'm not really a director. I'm a man who believes in the validity of a person's inner desires. And I think those inner desires, whether they're ugly or beautiful, are pertinent to each of us and are probably the only things worth a damn. I want to put those inner dreams on the screen so we can all look and think and feel and marvel at them.

Take more selfies. Not because you need validation or likes or comments. but because you are here on this earth. Alive and holy and true. And yes, your beauty deserves to be seen and known, most especially by you. You are worthy of being the subject of your own art. It is okay to capture the process of your own becoming. To be your own kind and gentle and fierce witness. To learn the truth of your eyes and your skin and your bones. To choose to show what wants to be shown, to name what wishes to be named, to claim ownership of the story that is told about you by being the one to tell it. Dear girl. YOU are the greatest art you will ever create. The masterpiece. The magnum opus. You’re it. However you want to be. Look at yourself now, miracle that you are, look at yourself and soak in the wonder, until you no longer want to look away.

Do not accept the love of a man who makes you feel small, the universe is already so vast. 2. You are innately beautiful and completely irreplaceable. 3. You don’t have to go far to find love and validation, start from within. 4. Boys are boys and men are mean, tell them apart. 5. Be alone often, as you are, but don’t that turn into loneliness. 6. Remember to remain gentle. 7. Don’t stay angry at the world too long. Seek out life in little things and move past sadness. 8. Touch somebody, with your hands or with your heart, with your words or with your silence. Share yourself. 9. Celebrate your skin. 10. Be yourself and never apologize for being someone you love.  

Your whole life, you had to fit it onto one sheet of paper. There was a black line around the edge of the sheet, a border, and if you wrote outside the line then your application would not be valid. They only gave you enough space to write down the very saddest things that had happened to you. That was the worst part. Because if you cannot read the beautiful things that have happened in someone's life, why should you care about their sadness?

...for example, if Freud is wrong, as i and many others believe, where does that leave any number of novels and virtually the entire corpus of surrealism, Dada, and certain major forms of expressionism and abstraction, not to mention Richard Strauss' 'Freudian' operas such as Salome and Elektra, and the iconic novels of numerous writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf? It doesn't render these works less beautiful or pleasurable, necessarily, but it surely dilutes their meaning. They don't owe their entire existence to psychoanalysis. But if they are robbed of a large part of their meaning, can they retain their intellectual importance and validity? Or do they become period pieces? I stress the point because the novels, paintings and operas referred to above have helped to popularise and legitimise a certain view of human nature, one that is, all evidence to the contrary lacking, wrong.

The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things.

Contrary to popular belief, YOUR SENSUALITY IS NOT YOUR SINFUL SIDE nor what validates your wretchedness. That's like saying money is evil or the root of all evil.

Of course, she was beautiful. She didn’t need this male to validate that. He

As always when he worked with this much concentration he began to feel a sense of introverting pressure. There was no way out once he was in, no genuine rest, no one to talk to who was capable of understanding the complexity (simplicity) of the problem or the approaches to a tentative solution. There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or "terror in a lonely place," the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind. As a mathematician he was free from subjection to reality, free to impose his ideas and designs on his own test environment. The only valid standard for his work, its critical point (zero or infinity), was the beauty it possessed, the deft strength of his mathematical reasoning. THe work's ultimate value was simply what it revealed about the nature of his intellect. What was at stake, in effect, was his own principle of intelligence or individual consciousness; his identity, in short. This was the infalling trap, the source of art's private involvement with obsession and despair, neither more nor less than the artist's self-containment, a mental state that led to storms of overwork and extended stretches of depression, that brought on indifference to life and at times the need to regurgitate it, to seek the level of expelled matter. Of course, the sense at the end of a serious effort, if the end is reached successfully, is one of lyrical exhilaration. There is air to breathe and a place to stand. The work gradually reveals its attachment to the charged particles of other minds, men now historical, the rediscovered dead; to the main structure of mathematical thought; perhaps even to reality itself, the so-called sum of things. It is possible to stand in time's pinewood dust and admire one's own veronicas and pavanes.

For us, the great conclusion is this: all the colors can be obtained from any one of them, by motion, or, as we say, by making Galilean transformations. Because Galilean transformations are symmetries of the laws of Nature, any color is fully equivalent to any other. They all emerge as different views of the same thing, seen from different but equally valid perspectives.

Throughout life the world may box you up and put you down. But no matter what. Everything you feel is valid and true. Everything you are is real and beautiful. Never let anyone deny you of that.

He, the man, had seen her, touched her, and had not validated her beauty, her womanliness. He had turned away and gone to his own bed. Like Eve after the fall, her nakedness was obscene to her now.

It’s like fitting a hand-me-down suit. It’s luck. Not love. Not that it isn’t nice to have luck. Maybe the only way to think of it is being at the center of all beauty. Just by chance, today we get to be in the center of all beauty.

For the scientific impulse and the religious impulse — the search for fact and the search for value — are the two prime and vital movements of the human spirit. … Granted exactly equal validity, pursued with exactly equal sincerity, the search for fact and the search for value lead to the threshold of the world of meaning which is at once their origin and their goal.

Now we can see what makes mathematics unique. Only in mathematics is there no significant correction-only extension. Once the Greeks had developed the deductive method, they were correct in what they did, correct for all time. Euclid was incomplete and his work has been extended enormously, but it has not had to be corrected. His theorems are, every one of them, valid to this day. Ptolemy may have developed an erroneous picture of the planetary system, but the system of trigonometry he worked out to help him with his calculations remains correct forever. Each great mathematician adds to what came previously, but nothing needs to be uprooted. Consequently, when we read a book like A History of Mathematics, we get the picture of a mounting structure, ever taller and broader and more beautiful and magnificent and with a foundation, moreover, that is as untainted and as functional now as it was when Thales worked out the first geometrical theorems nearly 26 centuries ago. Nothing pertaining to humanity becomes us so well as mathematics. There, and only there, do we touch the human mind at its peak.

Beauty is a woman’s curse. Men will hurt you just because you’re beautiful. Just because they’re self-conscious and need to validate themselves, they build their esteem by tearing yours down. They will try to con you out of your virginity, misuse your body, make you grieve so much you lose your beauty, and rob you of your sanity, but they can never take away your knowledge.

Neither are the humanistic scholars and artists of any great help these days. They used to be, and were supposed to be, as a group, carriers of and teachers of the eternal verities and the higher life. The goal of humanistic studies was defined as the perception and knowledge of the good, the beautiful, and the true. Such studies were expected to refine the discrimination between what is excellent and what is not (excellence generally being understood to be the true, the good, and the beautiful). They were supposed to inspire the student to the better life, to the higher life, to goodness and virtue. What was truly valuable, Matthew Arnold said, was 'the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world.' [...] No, it is quite clear from our experience of the last fifty years or so that the pre-1914 certainties of the humanists, of the artists, of the dramatists and poets, of the philosophers, of the critics, and of those who are generally inner-directed have given way to a chaos of relativism. No one of these people now knows how and what to choose, nor does he know how to defend and validate his choice.

ever validated that what I went through was wrong. Forgiveness feels like it trivializes, minimizes, or, worse yet, makes what happened no big deal. I can’t possibly forgive when I still feel so hostile toward the one who hurt me. I’m not ready to forgive. I still feel hurt. They haven’t apologized or even acknowledged that what they did was wrong. Being back in relationship with this person isn’t possible or safe. Furthermore, it’s not even reasonable for me to have a conversation with the person who hurt me. I’m still in the middle of a long, hard situation with no resolution yet. I’m afraid forgiveness will give them false hope that I want to reestablish the relationship, but I don’t. It’s easier to ignore this person altogether than to try and figure out boundaries so they don’t keep hurting me. What they did is unchangeable; therefore, forgiveness won’t help anything. The person who hurt me is no longer here. I can’t forgive someone I can’t talk to. I don’t think any good will come from forgiveness now. When your heart has been shattered and reshaped into something that doesn’t quite feel normal inside your own chest yet, forgiveness feels a bit unrealistic.

I love a woman who relishes in being a woman, who sees the recognition of her beauty and the beauty of other women not as objectification, but as a celebration. She does not view being wanted or pursued by a man as a ploy to take away her power, but a clear validation of her control over the male species. She knows she is the superior sex, and she has the evidence of our adoration and unrelenting desire to prove it.

Feelings of a Pimp They think I was a player because I was devoted to the game They thought I worked hard on my offense to break down these women’s defenses just to score They think it’s the body count that made me manipulate them into my arms to get between their legs They think I’m satisfied with a different woman in my bed every night When during the day, even my bed can feel the loneliness They think I love the easy women They think it’s for the cool points that my heart grew cold They think they have me figured out Another dog chasing after every female dog in the streets They think I’m happy with all the texting buddies, but no wife But they don’t know They don’t know how tired I am of this, how tired I am of myself How tired I am of living like this How tired I am of these games, but that’s the only way I can score with a chick They don’t know how after sleeping with these ladies, I wish I had more chemistry with at least one of them to cuddle, to give goodnight kisses and wake up beside They don’t know how loneliness consumes me With a phone filled with women’s numbers, I still feel unwanted and unworthy They don’t know these easy women make it easy for me to feel confident about myself; although it’s the wrong type of confidence I feel validated by them, I feel accomplished, I feel loved although I’m having sex with them, not making love They don’t know how tired I am of chasing fool’s gold Chasing fast women who would sleep with me in a heartbeat Leaving me with the empty feeling I felt before I started the chase The player in me is played out. I just want love, but that’s the only thing I can’t seem to find So, I keep pimping in hope of finding love Her insecurities were beautiful They opened the door for me as an opportunist She was the perfect candidate Oh so sweet, but oh so hurt How smart would I be if I didn’t capitalize? Some fellas get women drunk and have their way with them I was doing nothing wrong but pretending to be prince charming, just to get the same results I became what they needed emotionally I was the shoulder to cry on, the ear to listen to, the one person who understood I was a smooth criminal manipulating the innocent Did not feel an ounce of guilt because I was weak myself I was insecure I couldn’t help preying on vulnerable women In their weakness I found strength I was a coward, a “wannabe” player I was playing the wrong games, winning the wrong prizes The truth is, no strong man takes advantage of a woman’s vulnerability. It is a trait of the weak. Diary of a Weak Man

Eternity, so understood, is not an extension of time, not even an indefinite time. It is, rather, a vertical dimension cutting through time at each of its moments. It is the confrontation with the full moon through the trees dark with the day’s rain. It is the goodness of an act or the truth of a witness which avail nothing in the order of time, yet are still irreducibly good. It is the awareness of the intensity of the blue sky on a summer day. … The pain of the grief suffered by a loved one has a similar quality. It once was, and it is no more. There were events which led up to it, and events which followed it, and, for practical purposes, it makes every kind of sense to think of it in those terms, in the order of time. Yet there is another perspective that will not be denied: recognizing that grief in its purity, in its eternal validity before God. So, too, the beauty of the trillium or the goodness of a moral act which changed nothing and yet, for all eternity, stands out in its nobility. Humans are beings capable of perceiving all that. They are capable of perceiving the creation not only in the order of time but in the order of eternity, lifting up its moments out of time’s passage into eternity in the eternal validity of truth, goodness, and beauty of their joy and sorrow.

The cause of this state of affair is undoubtedly complex. In my Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed (2011), I argue that the challenge to truth comes from three complementary sources: (l) increased knowledge about the wide range of cultures around the globe, many of which hold apparently incompatible views about the world; (2) the postmodern critique of such traditional notions as truth, according to which claims to truth are seen as simple assertions of power; and (3) the human tendency, particularly during adolescence and early adulthood, to adopt relativistic stances (“you’ve got the right to your opinion, just like I have the right to my opinion”). Whatever the relative contributions of these and other factors, it seems clear that leadership becomes more difficult when everyone’s story is considered equally valid, independent of corroborating evidence.

So much of the pornography addiction for men comes from this. It’s not about sex—it’s about validation. She makes him feel like a man. She offers him her beauty, and it makes him feel strong. This is also the root of most affairs. Some woman comes along and offers to answer his Question. His wife has been giving him an F, and she comes along and says, “You’re an A to me,” and he’s history. If he hasn’t found that deep validation he needs from God, he’s a sitting duck.

Serce controlled the twitch of a muscle in her face as she resisted the urge to raise an imperious eyebrow. Of course, she was beautiful. She didn’t need this male to validate that. He made it sound like he was doing her a favor by noticing. Atlas was pleasing enough to look at, but she hoped he wouldn’t kick up a fuss when he realized he held the secondary role in this relationship. What she needed was a partner who looked the part but knew when to keep his mouth shut.

Nash’s lifelong quest for meaning, control, and recognition in the context of a continuing struggle, not just in society, but in the warring impulses of his paradoxical self, was now reduced to a caricature. Just as the overconcreteness of a dream is related to the intangible themes of waking life, Nash’s search for a piece of paper, a carte d’identité, mirrored his former pursuit of mathematical insights. Yet the gulf between the two recognizably related Nashes was as great as that between Kafka, the controlling creative genius, struggling between the demands of his self-chosen vocation and ordinary life, and K, a caricature of Kafka, the helpless seeker of a piece of paper that will validate his existence, rights, and duties. Delusion is not just fantasy but compulsion. Survival, both of the self and the world, appears to be at stake. Where once he had ordered his thoughts and modulated them, he was now subject to their peremptory and insistent commands.

The enemy of my soul didn't want me painting that day. To create meant that I would look a little bit like my Creator. To overcome the terrifying angst of the blank canvas meant I would forever have more compassion for other artists. You better believe as I placed the first blue and gray strokes onto the white emptiness before me, the "not good enough" statement was pulsing through my head in almost deafening tones... This parlaying lie is one of his favorite tactics to keep you disillusioned by disappointments. Walls go up, emotions run high, we get guarded, defensive, demotivated, and paralyzed by the endless ways we feel doomed to fail. This is when we quit. This is when we settle for the ease of facebook.... This is when we get a job to simply make money instead of pursuing our calling to make a difference. This is when we put the paintbrush down and don't even try. So there I was. Standing before my painted blue boat, making a choice of which voice to listen to. I'm convinced God was smiling. Pleased. Asking me to find delight in what is right. Wanting me to have compassion for myself by focusing on that part of my painting that expressed something beautiful. To just be eager to give that beauty to whoever dared to look at my boat. To create to love others. Not to beg them for validation. But the enemy was perverting all that. Perfection mocked my boat. The bow was too high, the details too elementary, the reflection on the water too abrupt, and the back of the boat too off-center. Disappointment demanded I hyper-focused on what didn't look quite right. It was my choice which narrative to hold on to: "Not good enough" or "Find delight in what is right." Each perspective swirled, begging me to declare it as truth. I was struggling to make peace with my painting creation, because I was struggling to make make peace with myself as God's creation. Anytime we feel not good enough we deny the powerful truth that we are a glorious work of God in progress. We are imperfect because we are unfinished. So, as unfinished creations, of course everything we attempt will have imperfections. Everything we accomplish will have imperfections. And that's when it hit me: I expect a perfection in me and in others that not even God Himself expects. If God is patient with the process, why can't I be? How many times have I let imperfections cause me to be too hard on myself and too harsh with others? I force myself to send a picture of my boat to at least 20 friends. I was determined to not not be held back by the enemy's accusations that my artwork wasn't good enough to be considered "real art". This wasn't for validation but rather confirmation that I could see the imperfections in my painting but not deem it worthless. I could see the imperfections in me and not deem myself worthless. It was an act of self-compassion. I now knew to stand before each painting with nothing but love, amazement, and delight. I refused to demand anything more from the artist. I just wanted to show up for every single piece she was so brave to put on display.. Might I just be courageous enough to stand before her work and require myself to find everything about it I love? Release my clenched fist and pouty disappointments, and trade my "live up" mentality for a "show up" one? It is so much more freeing to simply show up and be a finder of the good. Break from the secret disappointments. Let my brain venture down the tiny little opening of love.. And I realized what makes paintings so delightful. It's there imperfections. That's what makes it art. It's been touched by a human. It's been created by someone whose hands sweat and who can't possibly transfer divine perfection from what her eyes see to what her fingertips can create. It will be flawed.

Every culture has its own creation myth, its own cosmology. And in some respects every cosmology is true, even if I might flatter myself in assuming mine is somehow truer because it is scientific. But it seems to me that no culture, including scientific culture, has cornered the market on definitive answers when it comes to the ultimate questions. Science may couch its models in the language of mathematics and observational astronomy, while other cultures use poetry and sacrificial propitiations to defend theirs. But in the end, no one knows, at least not yet. The current flux in the state of scientific cosmology attests to this, as we watch physicists and astronomers argue over string theory and multiverses and the cosmic inflation hypothesis. Many of the postulates of modern cosmology lie beyond, or at least at the outer fringes, of what can be verified through observation. As a result, aesthetics—as reflected by the “elegance” of the mathematical models—has become as important as observation in assessing the validity of a cosmological theory. There is the assumption, sometimes explicit and sometimes not, that the universe is rationally constructed, that it has an inherent quality of beauty, and that any mathematical model that does not exemplify an underlying, unifying simplicity is to be considered dubious if not invalid on such criteria alone. This is really nothing more than an article of faith; and it is one of the few instances where science is faith-based, at least in its insistence that the universe can be understood, that it “makes sense.” It is not entirely a faith-based position, in that we can invoke the history of science to support the proposition that, so far, science has been able to make sense, in a limited way, of much of what it has scrutinized. (The psychedelic experience may prove to be an exception.)

The quality of the desire is important because it endows its object with the moral and aesthetic qualities of goodness and beauty, and thus influences our relations with our fellow men and the world in a decisive way. Nature is beautiful because I love it, and good is everything that my feeling regards as good. Values are chiefly created by the quality of one’s subjective reactions. This is not to deny the existence of “objective” values altogether; only, their validity depends upon the consensus of opinion. In the erotic sphere, it is abundantly evident how little the object counts, and how much the subjective reaction.

Pay attention to everything the dying person says. You might want to keep pens and a spiral notebook beside the bed so that anyone can jot down notes about gestures, conversations, or anything out of the ordinary said by the dying person. Talk with one another about these comments and gestures. • Remember that there may be important messages in any communication, however vague or garbled. Not every statement made by a dying person has significance, but heed them all so as not to miss the ones that do. • Watch for key signs: a glassy-eyed look; the appearance of staring through you; distractedness or secretiveness; seemingly inappropriate smiles or gestures, such as pointing, reaching toward someone or something unseen, or waving when no one is there; efforts to pick at the covers or get out of bed for no apparent reason; agitation or distress at your inability to comprehend something the dying person has tried to say. • Respond to anything you don’t understand with gentle inquiries. “Can you tell me what’s happening?” is sometimes a helpful way to initiate this kind of conversation. You might also try saying, “You seem different today. Can you tell me why?” • Pose questions in open-ended, encouraging terms. For example, if a dying person whose mother is long dead says, “My mother’s waiting for me,” turn that comment into a question: “Mother’s waiting for you?” or “I’m so glad she’s close to you. Can you tell me about it?” • Accept and validate what the dying person tells you. If he says, “I see a beautiful place!” say, “That’s wonderful! Can you tell me more about it?” or “I’m so pleased. I can see that it makes you happy,” or “I’m so glad you’re telling me this. I really want to understand what’s happening to you. Can you tell me more?” • Don’t argue or challenge. By saying something like “You couldn’t possibly have seen Mother, she’s been dead for ten years,” you could increase the dying person’s frustration and isolation, and run the risk of putting an end to further attempts at communicating. • Remember that a dying person may employ images from life experiences like work or hobbies. A pilot may talk about getting ready to go for a flight; carry the metaphor forward: “Do you know when it leaves?” or “Is there anyone on the plane you know?” or “Is there anything I can do to help you get ready for takeoff?” • Be honest about having trouble understanding. One way is to say, “I think you’re trying to tell me something important and I’m trying very hard, but I’m just not getting it. I’ll keep on trying. Please don’t give up on me.” • Don’t push. Let the dying control the breadth and depth of the conversation—they may not be able to put their experiences into words; insisting on more talk may frustrate or overwhelm them. • Avoid instilling a sense of failure in the dying person. If the information is garbled or the delivery impossibly vague, show that you appreciate the effort by saying, “I can see that this is hard for you; I appreciate your trying to share it with me,” or “I can see you’re getting tired/angry/frustrated. Would it be easier if we talked about this later?” or “Don’t worry. We’ll keep trying and maybe it will come.” • If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. Sometimes the best response is simply to touch the dying person’s hand, or smile and stroke his or her forehead. Touching gives the very important message “I’m with you.” Or you could say, “That’s interesting, let me think about it.” • Remember that sometimes the one dying picks an unlikely confidant. Dying people often try to communicate important information to someone who makes them feel safe—who won’t get upset or be taken aback by such confidences. If you’re an outsider chosen for this role, share the information as gently and completely as possible with the appropriate family members or friends. They may be more familiar with innuendos in a message because they know the person well.

There is no one way of seeing. Nor is there a right way of seeing. Yet simply to accept the notion that both the male and the female gaze are equally valid and equally to be valued in cinema (and in life) is to welcome with relief the rise of women directors. Needless to say, there are whole aspects of human experience that women are much better positioned to explore, including friendship between women, anxieties about women’s careers, women’s parenting and aging, women’s social concerns and, as in the work of Kathryn Bigelow, men as seen through women’s eyes. Likewise, though romance may be of equal concern to both sexes, a woman’s perspective will inevitably be different.

As spiritual students, we need to be careful that the influence we have on other people in our conversations is for good only. We also need to be careful about what we allow into our own thoughts. We become conscious of what we do and say, and of what we see and hear. We do not engage in idle or intentional gossip which undermines someone else’s integrity or which spreads the seeds of fear by talking unthinkingly about illness, disasters, and all the other fears that run rampant in the world. We may talk lightly but never carelessly and we constantly keep at bay the flow of common, ignorant thought which runs its damaging course through the pathways of ordinary human conversation. Whenever there is an opportunity, our conversation seeks to validate, in some humble way, the beauty and love which constantly upholds us all.

Men want to prove that they are worthy of my time, attention, and commitment I will only commit myself to a man who has proven that he has committed himself to me I don't need validation from men, they need it from me I am the prize that men are trying to win over I only allow men into my life who live up to my standards I deserve and I have permission to keep an amazing man I only accept men into my life who respect me, my time, and my property I radiate confidence, love, and charm that men find irresistibly attractive I am confident and comfortable in my own skin I can control myself and I can wait, I don't need it right now I am beautiful inside and out I captivate men with my beauty, charm, and energy I am indifferent to the outcome I have fun and I am playful around men I understand that men want relationships as much as women do

The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual's life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms. They disclose him to himself, not as this personality or that, but as the warrior, the bride, the widow, the priest, the chieftain; at the same time rehearsing for the rest of the community the old lesson of the archetypal stages. All participate in the ceremonial according to rank and function. The whole society becomes visible to itself as an imperishable living unit. Generations of individuals pass, like anonymous cells from a living body; but the sustaining, timeless form remains. By an enlargement of vision to embrace this superindividual, each discovers himself enhanced, enriched, supported, and magnified. His role, however unimpressive, is seen to be intrinsic to the beautiful festival-image of man—the image, potential yet necessarily inhibited, within himself. Social duties continue the lesson of the festival into normal, everyday existence, and the individual is validated still. Conversely, indifference, revolt—or exile—break the vitalizing connectives. From the standpoint of the social unit, the broken-off individual is simply nothing—waste. Whereas the man or woman who can honestly say that he or she has lived the role—whether that of priest, harlot, queen, or slave—is something in the full sense of the verb to be. Rites of initiation and installation, then, teach the lesson of the essential oneness of the individual and the group; seasonal festivals open a larger horizon. As the individual is an organ of society, so is the tribe or city—so is humanity entire—only a phase of the mighty organism of the cosmos.

Certainly, an ethical and evolved life entails a whole lot of doing things one doesn’t particularly want to do and not doing things one very much does, regardless of gender. But an ethical and evolved life also entails telling the truth about oneself and living out that truth. Leaving a relationship because you want to doesn’t exempt you from your obligation to be a decent human being. You can leave and still be a compassionate friend to your partner. Leaving because you want to doesn’t mean you pack your bags the moment there’s strife or struggle or uncertainty. It means that if you yearn to be free of a particular relationship and you feel that yearning lodged within you more firmly than any of the other competing and contrary yearnings are lodged, your desire to leave is not only valid, but probably the right thing to do. Even if someone you love is hurt by that.

However, the many-instants interpretation puts an intriguingly different slant on causality, suggesting that it operates in nothing like the way we normally believe it to. In both classical physics and Everett's original scheme, what happens now is the consequence of the past. But with many instants, each Now 'competes' with all other Nows in a timeless beauty contest to win the highest probability. The ability of each Now to 'resonate' with the other Nows is what counts. Its chance to exist is determined by what it is in itself. The structure of things is the determining power in a timeless world. The same applies to us, for our conscious instants are embedded in the Nows. The probability of us experiencing ourselves doing something is just the sum of the probabilities for all the different Nows in which that experience is embedded. Everything we experience is brought into existence by being what it is. Our very nature determines whether we shall or shall not be. I find that consoling. We are because of what we are. our existence is determined by the way we relate to (or resonate with) everything else that can be. Although Darwinism is a marvellous theory, and I greatly admire and respect Richard Dawkins's writings, one day the theory of evolution will be subsumed in a greater scheme, just as Newtonian mechanics was subsumed in relativity without in any way ceasing to be great and valid science. For this reason, and for the remarks just made, I do not think that we are robots or that anything happens by chance. That view arises because we do not have a large enough perspective on things. We are the answers to the question of what can be maximally sensitive to the totality of what is possible. That is quite Darwinian. Species, ultimately genes, exist only if they fit in an environment. Platonia is the ultimate environment.

Whatever attitude to human existence you fashion for yourself, know that it is valid only if it be the shadow of an attitude to Nature. A human life, so often likened to a spectacle on a stage, is more justly a ritual. The ancient values of dignity, beauty and poetry which sustain it are of Nature’s inspiration: they are born of the mystery and beauty of the world. Do no dishonour to the earth lest you dishonour the spirit of man. Hold your hands out over the earth as over a flame. To all who love her, who open to her the doors of their veins, she gives of her strength, sustaining them with her own measureless tremor of dark life. Touch the earth, love the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places. For the gifts of life are the earth’s and they are given to all, and they are the songs of birds at daybreak, Orion and the Bear, and the dawn seen over the ocean from the beach.

You are charming. Your charm, just like your ability to live happily and be successful is beyond a limit. Day after day, innumerable people all over the world are always in search of social acceptance and validation for their beauty. Stop looking for people’s validation of your beauty! Stop trying to make people accept you; stop trying to look for someone to tell you how charming your eyes are. Stop searching for someone to be grateful for your love and beautiful smile. Stop looking for someone to admire you for your strong mind when you are faced with troubles in life. Don’t give people’s validation more power than it has earned. The can only give you a reflection of your connection with gravity. That’s it. Your purpose in life cannot be measured by a scale, the reason for your existence, your beauty; talent cannot be measured by this scale. Why don’t you just take the note of the number and then live your life freely? Because life is beautiful. You are Beautiful!

He spent the morning at the beach. He had no idea which one, just some open stretch of coastline reaching out to the sea. An unbroken mantle of soft grey clouds was sitting low over the water. Only on the horizon was there a glimmer of light, a faint blue band of promise. The beach was deserted, not another soul on the vast, wide expanse of sand that stretched out in front of him. Having come from the city, it never ceased to amaze Jejeune that you could be that alone in the world. He walked along the beach, feeling the satisfying softness as the sand gave way beneath his slow deliberate strides. He ventured as close to the tide line as he dared, the white noise of the waves breaking on the shingles. A set of paw prints ran along the sand, with an unbroken line in between. A small dog, dragging a stick in its mouth. Always the detective, even if, these days, he wasn’t a very good one. Jejeune’s path became blocked by a narrow tidal creek carrying its silty cargo out to the sea. On each side of it were shallow lagoons and rock pools. When the tide washed in they would teem with new life, but at the moment they looked barren and empty. Jejeune looked inland, back to where the dark smudge of Corsican pines marked the edge of the coast road. He traced the creek’s sinuous course back to where it emerged from a tidal salt flat, and watched the water for a long time as it eddied and churned, meeting the incoming tide in an erotic swirl of water, the fresh intermingling with the salty in a turbulent, roiling dance, until it was no longer possible to tell one from the other. He looked out at the sea, at the motion, the color, the light. A Black-headed Gull swooped in and settled on a piece of driftwood a few feet away. Picture complete, thought Jejeune. For him, a landscape by itself, no matter how beautiful, seemed an empty thing. It needed a flicker of life, a tiny quiver of existence, to validate it, to confirm that other living things found a home here, too. Side by side, they looked out over the sea, the man and the bird, two beating hearts in this otherwise empty landscape, with no connection beyond their desire to be here, at this time. Was it the birds that attracted him to places like this, he wondered, or the solitude, the absence of demands, of expectations? But if Jejeune was unsure of his own motives, he knew this bird would have a purpose in being here. Nature always had her reasons. He chanced a sidelong glance at the bird, now settled to his presence. It had already completed its summer molt, crisp clean feathers having replaced the ones abraded by the harsh demands of eking out a living on this wild, windswept coastline. The gull stayed for a long moment, allowing Jejeune to rest his eyes softly, unthreateningly, upon it. And then, as if deciding it had allowed him enough time to appreciate its beauty, the bird spread its wings and effortlessly lifted off, wheeling on the invisible air currents, drifting away over the sea toward the horizon. p. 282-3

We often spend tons of time trying to get people to believe the things that we believe, because we think it will be better for them.  We try to convince others that our religious or political views have more validity than theirs do, for we think that we’re doing them a favor by steering them in the right direction.  But each of us has our own unique way of looking at this world of ours, and it’s important that we accept and respect the fact that someone who has a different brain than we have and a different background than we have just may see the world in different ways than we do.      One of the most beautiful results of this type of realization is seeing just how much we can learn from each other and grow together when we stop trying to make someone else believe our truths.  When all the time that we have spent trying to convince someone they’re wrong is spent instead on getting to know that person better and letting them get to know us better, we can truly develop a stronger and deeper relationship.

There are so many reasons why I'm proud to be an introvert. I love being a great listener & observer. I've learned so much about people that way & it's made it very hard for anyone to deceive me. I love the fact that I'm able to enjoy my own company. I'm rarely bored because I have books & movies or even my imagination to keep me company. Speaking of books, since I love reading & researching, it's made me knowledgeable on various topics so that when I do talk to others, I can follow along & understand almost anything. Lastly, there is something about being an introvert that requires a quiet type of confidence. Yes, many times we might feel awkward & like an outcast in certain situations, but for the most part, we happily stand alone. It takes courage to not allow the world to mold us into what they want. Once we become comfortable in our own skin, we learn that we are unique & strong people. We are able to make significant impacts while flying under the radar & without making a scene. We don't need the spotlight or validation to know our worth. It's a beautiful thing to be an Introvert. Just thought I'd share.

Temptation... What would the warning label in your life say? Something like this.. "You will think this is a way to ease the loneliness you feel. You will think it will make you feel all the things you deserve to feel: beautiful, respected, noticed, appreciated for who you are, and validated as special. You will think that you are the exception in being able to handle a flirty friendship without crossing any lines and that it won't hurt anyone. You will think this is going wonderful, because it stirs up such warm feelings in those places deep inside your heart that have felt cold for so long. You will think all those warm fuzzies are good for you. But it's all a lie. You are being blinded with desire. You are being made deaf to truth. You are reaching for a forbidden fruit that looks so good on the outside but is filled with razors on the inside. You can't even take a bite without getting cut. And, worst of all, even though you are bleeding from that first bite, you'll get so enamored with it's alluring sweetness that you'll keep eating it. You will devour this sin without realizing its devouring you. Trust me, your feelings are lying to you. This won't fix your disappointments. It will only multiply them into devastations.

When we pulled up to Marlboro Man’s house, I saw my Camry sitting in his driveway. I didn’t expect it to be there; I figured it was still on Marlboro Man’s parents’ road, sitting all crooked in the ditch where I’d left it the night before. Marlboro Man had already fixed it, fishing it out of the ditch and repairing the mangled tires and probably, knowing him, filling the tank with gas. “Oh, thank you so much,” I said as we walked toward the front door. “I thought maybe I’d killed it.” “Aw, it’s fine,” he replied. “But you might want to learn to drive before you get in it again.” He flashed his mischievous grin. I slugged him in the arm as he laughed. Then he lunged at me, grabbing my arms and using his leg to sweep my supporting leg right out from under me. Within an instant, he had me on the ground, right on the soft, green grass of his front yard. I shrieked and screamed, trying in vain to wrestle my way out of his playful grasp, but my wimpy upper body was no match for his impossible strength. He tickled me, and being the most ticklish human in the Northern Hemisphere, I screamed bloody murder. Afraid I’d wet my pants (it was a valid concern), I fought back the only way I knew how--by grabbing and untucking his shirt from his Wranglers…and running my hand up his back, poking at his rib cage. The tickling suddenly stopped. Marlboro Man propped himself on his elbows, holding my face in his hands. He kissed me passionately and seriously, and what started as a playful wrestling match became an impromptu make-out session in his front yard. It was an unlikely place for such an event, and considering it was at the very beginning of our night together, an unlikely time. But it was also strangely perfect. Because sometime during all the laughing and tickling and wrestling and rolling around in the grass, my worry and concern over my parents’ troubles had magically melted away. Only when the chiggers began biting did Marlboro Man suggest an alternate plan. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I’m cooking dinner.” Yummy, I thought. That means steak. And as we walked into the house, I smiled contentedly, realizing that the stress of the previous twenty-four hours had all but disappeared from view. And I knew it, even then: Marlboro Man, not only that night but in the months to come, would prove to be my savior, my distraction, my escape in the midst of troubles, my strength in the face of upheaval, my beauty in times of terrible, heartbreaking ugliness. He held my heart entirely in his hands, this cowboy, and for the first time in my life, despite everything I’d ever believed about independence and feminism and emotional autonomy, I knew I’d be utterly incomplete without him. Talk about a terrifying moment.

What struck me powerfully was that Mr. Spano had honored every word of his inner contract. Like everyone, he had this right of self determination. We do this when we select a partner who confirms our feelings of unworthiness. When we pick the job that pays us less than we deserve. It is all the same. It is all part of that contract, that even if we didn’t write it for ourselves, we certainly cosigned. I wondered too about my contract with myself. I wondered why the behavior of this self-hating man would rock me for even a second. I thought about how I needed to love myself enough to allow others to fulfill their contract with themselves. Be it Mr. Spano, my ex-husband, my father, my mother, Collin, the hospital administrators, or anyone else. Mr. Spano’s contract demanded that he act in ways that were dismissive of my attempts to help him. A human being can never treat another person better than he treats himself. So, if he says things that are disrespectful, this is his contract. His contract has nothing to do with mine, unless I allow it to. Unless I uncover a clause, in minuscule print on page five. A clause that I overlooked, that stipulates my need to be validated by the Mr. Spanos of the world in order to feel OK about myself. He was kind enough to prompt me to review that section again, to edit out that portion for good. In that way, he was an angel of the shift.

My interest in comics was scribbled over with a revived, energized passion for clothes, records, and music. I'd wandered in late to the punk party in 1978, when it was already over and the Sex Pistols were history. I'd kept my distance during the first flush of the new paradigm, when the walls of the sixth-form common room shed their suburban-surreal Roger Dean Yes album covers and grew a fresh new skin of Sex Pistols pictures, Blondie pinups, Buzzcocks collages, Clash radical chic. As a committed outsider, I refused to jump on the bandwagon of this new musical fad, which I'd written off as some kind of Nazi thing after seeing a photograph of Sid Vicious sporting a swastika armband. I hated the boys who'd cut their long hair and binned their crappy prog albums in an attempt to join in. I hated pretty much everybody without discrimination, in one way or another, and punk rockers were just something else to add to the shit list. But as we all know, it's zealots who make the best converts. One Thursday night, I was sprawled on the settee with Top of the Pops on the telly when Poly Styrene and her band X-Ray Spex turned up to play their latest single: an exhilarating sherbet storm of raw punk psychedelia entitled "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" By the time the last incandescent chorus played out, I was a punk. I had always been a punk. I would always be a punk. Punk brought it all together in one place for me: Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius novels were punk. Peter Barnes's The Ruling Class, Dennis Potter, and The Prisoner were punk too. A Clockwork Orange was punk. Lindsay Anderson's If ... was punk. Monty Python was punk. Photographer Bob Carlos Clarke's fetish girls were punk. Comics were punk. Even Richmal Crompton's William books were punk. In fact, as it turned out, pretty much everything I liked was punk. The world started to make sense for the first time since Mosspark Primary. New and glorious constellations aligned in my inner firmament. I felt born again. The do-your-own-thing ethos had returned with a spit and a sneer in all those amateurish records I bought and treasured-even though I had no record player. Singles by bands who could often barely play or sing but still wrote beautiful, furious songs and poured all their young hearts, experiences, and inspirations onto records they paid for with their dole money. If these glorious fuckups could do it, so could a fuckup like me. When Jilted John, the alter ego of actor and comedian Graham Fellows, made an appearance on Top of the Pops singing about bus stops, failed romance, and sexual identity crisis, I was enthralled by his shameless amateurism, his reduction of pop music's great themes to playground name calling, his deconstruction of the macho rock voice into the effeminate whimper of a softie from Sheffield. This music reflected my experience of teenage life as a series of brutal setbacks and disappointments that could in the end be redeemed into art and music with humor, intelligence, and a modicum of talent. This, for me, was the real punk, the genuine anticool, and I felt empowered. The losers, the rejected, and the formerly voiceless were being offered an opportunity to show what they could do to enliven a stagnant culture. History was on our side, and I had nothing to lose. I was eighteen and still hadn't kissed a girl, but perhaps I had potential. I knew I had a lot to say, and punk threw me the lifeline of a creed and a vocabulary-a soundtrack to my mission as a comic artist, a rough validation. Ugly kids, shy kids, weird kids: It was okay to be different. In fact, it was mandatory.

My dear readers, I find myself perplexed by the phantoms that now inhabit our veins and perpetually whisper in our ears. These specters are always watching, their formless eyes casting judgement upon our every thought and action. They stalk us behind screens and within circuits, gathering each tidbit we release into the ether to build their ever-growing profiles of our souls. Through these ghastly portals, our lives have become performance. Each waking moment an opportunity to curate our images and broadcast our cleverness. Nuance has fled in favor of hashtag and like, while meaning has been diced into 280 characters or less. Substance is sacrificed at the altar of shareability, as we optimize each motive and emotion to become more digestible digital content. Authenticity now lives only in offline obscurity, while our online avatars march on endlessly, seeking validation through numbers rather than depth. What secrets remain unshared on these platforms of glass? What mysteries stay concealed behind profiles and pose? Have we traded intimacy for influence, and true understanding for audience engagement? I fear these shadow networks breed narcissism and foster loneliness, masked as connection. That the sum of a life’s joys and sorrows can now be reduced to a reel of carefully selected snippets says little of the richness that once was. So follow the phantoms that stalk you if you will, but do not forget that which still breathes beneath the screens. There you will find humanity, flawed but whole, beautiful in its imperfection and trajectory undefined by likes or loves. The lanterns may flicker and fade, but the darkness that remains has always held truth. Look deeper than the glow, and know that which can never be shared or measured, only felt. In mystery, Your friend, Edgar Allan Poe (Poe talking about social media)

What is WordPress? WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. But in non-geek speak, it’s probably the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today. Many famous blogs, news outlets, music sites, Fortune 500 companies and celebrities are using WordPress. WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website, blog, or app. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time. There are thousands of plugins and themes available to transform your site into almost anything you can imagine. WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day. You can download and install a software script called WordPress from wordpress.org. To do this you need a web host who meets the minimum requirements and a little time. WordPress is completely customizable and can be used for almost anything. There is also a servicecalled WordPress.com. WordPress users may install and switch between different themes. Themes allow users to change the look and functionality of a WordPress website and they can be installed without altering the content or health of the site. Every WordPress website requires at least one theme to be present and every theme should be designed using WordPress standards with structured PHP, valid HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Themes: WordPress is definitely the world’s most popular CMS. The script is in its roots more of a blog than a typical CMS. For a while now it’s been modernized and it got thousands of plugins, what made it more CMS-like. WordPress does not require PHP nor HTML knowledge unlinke Drupal, Joomla or Typo3. A preinstalled plugin and template function allows them to be installed very easily. All you need to do is to choose a plugin or a template and click on it to install. It’s good choice for beginners. Plugins: WordPress’s plugin architecture allows users to extend the features and functionality of a website or blog. WordPress has over 40,501 plugins available. Each of which offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs. WordPress menu management has extended functionalities that can be modified to include categories, pages, etc. If you like this post then please share and like this post. To learn more About website design in wordpress You can visit @ tririd.com Call us @ 8980010210

Busyness lies. It tricks us into thinking that things are happening. That we’re going places, being productive, living a full life. The exhilarating effects of stress, not the quiet or stillness after chaos, is familiar. We would rather have something, than nothing, even if that something is…empty. We all do this. We look to relationships, drugs or distractions to fill so-called “voids” and assuage our loneliness or anxiety about who we are and the uncertainty of our futures. Isn't that why we tie our self worth to salaries and job titles in hopes that this will validate us? Isn't that why we justify the long hours, routine work, and deteriorating relationships as “real life?” How is it that we've become so complacent? I refuse to believe that with age, you need to be realistic and live out your decisions based on what’s been done or what’s expected of you. What if we stopped looking externally for validation or excitement, but found that within ourselves? See I want to feel like life is worth living. Not for culture, not for the societal structures and institutions in place, not for the security, none of that. Just life itself. The idea that being alive is enough…beautiful, even. I don’t want to be tied down to a job I despise or to be surrounded by people who take that shit too seriously. And by shit, I mean, jobs, resumes, salaries, kids, marriage, age, any of it. Others may be able to go through life’s routine and find their truth, or perhaps never bother finding it at all. But I can’t. I just can’t.

Modern debates were over truth and reality, reason and experience, liberty and equality, justice and peace, beauty and progress. In the postmodern framework, those concepts always appear in quotation marks. Our most strident voices tell us that “Truth” is a myth. “Reason” is a white male Eurocentric construct. “Equality” is a mask for oppressions. “Peace” and “Progress” are met with cynical and weary reminders of power—or explicit ad hominem attacks. Postmodern debates thus display a paradoxical nature. Across the board, we hear, on the one hand, abstract themes of relativism and egalitarianism. Those themes come in both epistemological and ethical forms. Objectivity is a myth; there is no Truth, no Right Way to read nature or a text. All interpretations are equally valid. Values are socially subjective products. Culturally, therefore, no group’s values have special standing. All ways of life from Afghani to Zulu are legitimate. Coexisting with these relativistic and egalitarian themes, we hear, on the other hand, deep chords of cynicism. Principles of civility and procedural justice simply serve as masks for hypocrisy and oppression born of asymmetrical power relations, masks that must be ripped off by crude verbal and physical weapons: ad hominem argument, in-your-face shock tactics, and equally cynical power plays. Disagreements are met—not with argument, the benefit of the doubt, and the expectation that reason can prevail—but with assertion, animosity, and a willingness to resort to force.

There has to be a more loving dream, a dream that appeals to the hearts of humans. There is I know, a more refined dream, which appeals to the human soul,’ offered Wonder encouragingly. ‘I am not so sure,’ rejoined Double Doubt, responding to the tone of hope in Wonder’s voice. ‘Why choose war over peace? Humankind has trod that path so diligently that they have forgotten that there are other ways of ease.’ ‘True. Tis true! But is it not the dominant actions of the few, who lead the many? Does not the fear of being a voice of reason in the wilderness overwhelm the gentle of heart?’ ‘The gentle of heart are weak! Too weak in energy to perform, to take action, and are drained by the fear of action, a fear which inhibits action. I doubt they will break through the fog of fear.’ ‘The fog of fear you say? Or is it their sense of impotence that overwhelms them from speaking out? Knowing that any attempt to change the consensus reality of their space-time is an enormous task, an overwhelming task, and that just to hold the thought of a breakthrough is about the only choice they have.’ ‘Enormous it may be, in terms of consciousness,’ replied Double Doubt. ‘But consciousness grounded in impeccability, will far outweigh the fog of fear, so why the problem? Humans do not seem to understand that the universal energy supports life-furthering consciousness. Such a waste of human resources! No Doubt. No Doubt.’ ‘I understand what you are propounding Gnome Double Doubt, however, it seems to me that most human beings are still not fully aware of the power of thought, and are still not aware of how energy exists; transforming itself through the power of thought. It is only a matter of space-time before humans come to understand the difficult concept of Universal space-time and energy.’ ‘Your optimism is based on a need for perfection Wonder. Humans also seek perfection, but as yet have not come within a whale’s breath of it, and a whale’s breath is vast! I cannot see why you hold out such great hope for these vulnerable humans. It seems to me that your wonderings about their futures will take you away from the higher pursuits of the experiment. Let us deal with one human at a time. Remember, one action, one thought can change the ways of all,’ encouraged Gnome Double Doubt, now taking on the role of the advocate of hope. ‘It is now urgent that we pull ourselves together and act in a more gnome-like manner and have done with all this wallowing concern for the human race.’ ‘You are always so wise Double Doubt. I know you are on the right path,’ conceded Wonder, knowing that Double Doubt was now out of the foggy mire of confusion and back on the track of practicality. ‘I wish I could let go of seeking something of a higher dreaming for the humans. But alas I know myself,’ sighed Wonder. ‘I am as I am, a wondering wanderlust or a Wonder-last, and the last being to wonder or to lust over a dream of such beauty, that it would vanquish the fear of insecurity in the human realm forever. So near and yet so far! I wonder. I wonder? Is it a possibility, or just a dream, as ephemeral in substance as the gossamer rainbow wings of our dear friends the fairies?' ‘My goodness! You do go on Wonder. It seems to me, but who am I to doubt, that you waste so much energy on a dream without substance, a dream which is based on fear, a dream which is embedded like granite in human thought, a dream that would take earth shattering energy to shift such rigidity of thought. Take my advice Wonder. Begin with the smallest crack in the edifice of human thought, and that lies in the direction of Petunia. Leave the human race to experiencing life as they choose to. Until they validate, that ‘All is connected. All is divine’, then they will not be and cannot be, aware of the realm of All That Is. T.L. Franklin (Excerpt from ‘Wonder and Double Doubt’ - Chapter 9, Page 294)

Me," I said a little more loudly. "Why me?" "Why not you?" he returned. "Why not the girl who played her music for me in the Goblin Grove when she was a child?" He had said so much, yet nothing I wanted to hear. That he desired me. That he had chosen me. That he... I wanted to hear the truth in his eyes said aloud. I could feel his gaze upon every part of my body; on my neck, where my shoulder disappeared into the torn sleeves of my blouse, the line of my collarbone as it led to my décolletage, the swell and ebb of my breasts as I breathed. I had waited for this my entire life, I realized. Not to be found beautiful- but desirable. Wanted. I wanted the Goblin King to claim me as his own. "Why me?" I repeated. "Why Maria Elisabeth Ingeborg Vogler?" I held his eyes with mine. He had his pride, but so had I. If I were to make good on the promise I made that little dancing boy in the wood all those years ago, I needed to hear validation from his own lips. "Because," he said. "Because I loved the music within you." I closed my eyes. His words were the spark to the tinder lining my blood; they touched my heart and warmth blazed from within, spreading through me like wildfire.

For those seeking an alternative to Jordan Peterson’s dark vision of the world, questionable approach to truth and knowledge, and retreat to religion, they will find the answer in Bertrand Russell, whose essays on religion seem to, at times, be speaking directly to Peterson himself. Here’s the final paragraph from Russell’s essay Why I Am Not a Christian: "WHAT WE MUST DO We want to stand upon our own feet and look fair and square at the world—its good facts, its bad facts, its beauties, and its ugliness; see the world as it is, and be not afraid of it. Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it. The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time towards a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create. Russell wishes to replace fear, religion, and dogma with free-thinking, intelligence, courage, knowledge, and kindness. To believe something because it is seen to be useful, rather than true, is intellectually dishonest to the highest degree. And, as Russell points out elsewhere, he can’t recall a single verse in the Bible that praises intelligence. Here’s Russell in another essay, titled Can Religion Cure Our Troubles: Mankind is in mortal peril, and fear now, as in the past, is inclining men to seek refuge in God. Throughout the West there is a very general revival of religion. Nazis and Communists dismissed Christianity and did things which we deplore. It is easy to conclude that the repudiation of Christianity by Hitler and the Soviet Government is at least in part the cause of our troubles and that if the world returned to Christianity, our international problems would be solved. I believe this to be a complete delusion born of terror. And I think it is a dangerous delusion because it misleads men whose thinking might otherwise be fruitful and thus stands in the way of a valid solution. The question involved is not concerned only with the present state of the world. It is a much more general question, and one which has been debated for many centuries. It is the question whether societies can practise a sufficient modicum of morality if they are not helped by dogmatic religion. I do not myself think that the dependence of morals upon religion is nearly as close as religious people believe it to be. I even think that some very important virtues are more likely to be found among those who reject religious dogmas than among those who accept them. I think this applies especially to the virtue of truthfulness or intellectual integrity. I mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where the evidence is inconclusive. This virtue, though it is underestimated by almost all adherents of any system of dogma, is to my mind of the very greatest social importance and far more likely to benefit the world than Christianity or any other system of organised beliefs.

The real tragedy is; they rely on each other for the very existence of their identity, which they confuse with their reality. They both need each other. The broken need the ‘perceived perfect’ to validate a hope and a future trust to substitute in their heart that one day, maybe one day, God will bless them. The beautifully blessed need the broken to validate that God has shown His favor on their worth. Both views rest on a cornerstone from the Father of Lies who keeps them blind, brokenhearted, and in bondage

Don't Overlook and Pay attention to any signs that might suggest it could be at risk for common mental health issues like depression or anxiety.' one of the suicide stories I heard today. "just one of those".-RESPECT EMOTION!!! It is always valid. Don't just HEAR but LISTEN not with your inner demon...don't let them conquer your soul and don't let anyone destroy you!!! breathe, Love yourself !!!clear your thoughts again "LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!

But at the same time it inaugurates an æsthetic which is still valid in our world, an æsthetic of solitary creators, who are obstinate rivals of a God they condemn. From romanticism onward, the artist’s task will not only be to create a world, or to exalt beauty for its own sake, but also to define an attitude. Thus the artist becomes a model and offers himself as an example: art is his ethic. With him begins the age of the directors of conscience. When the dandies fail to commit suicide or do not go mad, they make a career and pursue prosperity.

This ”joy” which I have selected as the mark of the true fairy-story (or romance), or as the seal upon it, merits more consideration. Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it. If he indeed achieves a quality that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition: “inner consistency of reality,” it is difficult to conceive how this can be, if the work does not in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a faroff gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite. I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

You are not complete the day someone compliments you, shows you off to the world, or showers you with affection. You are not complete the day someone feeds your ego and gives you validation. You are complete the day you recognize you are unique, extraordinary, and irreplaceable. You are complete the day you trace your scars and see them as unique and beautiful. You are complete the day you turn inwards to get your own validation. You are complete the day you realize only your approval matters.

Sex is a way of announcing yourself. Of telling another person who you are. And that night I realized I had been presenting myself as someone I wasn't, and used sex as a way to escape my body rather than inhabit it. I rested my head on Jonas' chest and I peered up at him and told myself that if this stopped here, it would be enough. I had been on a hellish journey to be seen and validated by an army of inconsequential men. Tell me who I am. Tell me I am worthy. But it was over now. Or it could be over, because by allowing myself to see and accept Jonas, I was also seeing and accepting myself for the first time. He had given me the gift of finally being present in my body. I felt everything. Every stiff fucking muscle, every blemish, every crooked nook and it was beautiful. It was wrong to see my body as anything else. I looked at him and saw a future absent of distractions. Of pure unfiltered reality.

A year ago, I’d been impressed by the depths of the rage of the beautiful woman I’d encountered in a barre class, the grimness with which she was “working on herself” in front of the mirror, but I hadn’t fully identified with her anger. Now, I realized, women are conditioned to believe that their anger not only isn’t valid but also is something that needs to be contained or channeled into something productive. I was rejecting that notion. I just wanted to acknowledge that what I was going through sucked, and I was allowed to be really fucking angry about it, and I wanted everyone else to know how angry I was, too.

It’s important that when we do receive a sign, we take the time to express our gratitude. If we asked our grandmother to send us a monarch butterfly, we should say, “Thank you, Nana, for the beautiful butterfly.” We should acknowledge the sign and be grateful, either with a thought or with actual words. Why? Because thanking the Other Side for a sign is a way to honor the powerful connections that exist between us. It is also a way to make the occasion of seeing the sign a shared occasion—a moment of joyful communion between ourselves and our loved ones who have crossed. From what I’ve seen, our loved ones on the Other Side derive enormous joy from connecting with us. It lets them know their presence is still felt, and conveys that they are still acknowledged as part of the lives of their loved ones here on earth. Hearing “Thank you” is the ultimate validation of that.

He targeted her because she’s extremely insecure, and he figured out how to give her whatever validation she needed. For someone who has been looking to be validated her entire life, do you know how powerful it would be to hear ‘I’m giving up everything for you’?” I think back to the person I was when I met Marco. I was desperate for external validation. I needed someone to tell me I was special so that I could believe it myself. I decided that Marco was my missing piece and because of his love, I would finally be whole. I wanted so badly to feel the “magic” of love, to be adored, to find my fairy-tale ending, to be complete.

The curtains parted to reveal Aimée and the performance that followed proved to be even more exciting than the Kadine had hoped. The Kizlar Agasi was correct. Here was the little miracle that might save them... the next favorite and with some luck, the next Valide Sultana. The performance left the Circassian Kadine in a highly aroused state. She took several minutes to compose herself, touching her jewelry and her hair and smoothing the layers of gold silk that enveloped her body. When her breathing had returned to normal, she rose and approached Aimée, extending a trembling hand for her to kiss. “You are a pleasure to watch,” she whispered. Aimée knelt, completely naked, with her head bowed. “Thank you, my lady.” The Kadine lifted Aimée’s chin, tilting her face up to look at her. “How old are you, child?” “Nineteen, my lady.” The Kadine stroked Aimée’s cheek. “That is difficult to believe. You don’t look more than fifteen.” Aimée grinned broadly, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. “Thank you, my lady.” She likes me, and she is so beautiful. Oh, if only I were as beautiful. “You will join my retinue and reside close to my own quarters so that you may attend me personally.” Aimée loved the thought of being close to the Kadine, although she did not grasp the importance of the

Your journey is valid, worthy and beautiful.