Bend Don T Break Quotes

Hearts are tough, Most times they don't break. Most times they are only bend

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as conventional love. Love is bending. Love is breaking. Love is constantly learning about the other person until you go crazy because it will never be perfect, but there’s no fault in trying. I’ve loved a boy who was extraordinary beyond words, in my eyes.

Those who can bend need not be taught how to stand tall.

You better stand tall when they're calling you out, don't bend, don't break, and don't back down!

my final piece We’re born into the world As just one small piece to the puzzle That makes up an entire life. It’s up to us throughout our years, to find all of our pieces that fit. The pieces that connect who we are To who we were To who we’ll one day be. Sometimes pieces will almost fit. They’ll feel right. We’ll carry them around for a while, Hoping they’ll change shape. Hoping they’ll conform to our puzzle. But they won’t. We’ll eventually have to let them go. To find the puzzle that is their home. Sometimes pieces won’t fit at all. No matter how much we want them to. We’ll shove them. We’ll bend them. We’ll break them. But what isn’t meant to be, won’t be. Those are the hardest pieces of all to accept. The pieces of our puzzle That just don’t belong. But occasionally . . . Not very often at all, If we’re lucky, If we pay enough attention, We’ll find a perfect match. The pieces of the puzzle that slide right in The pieces that hug the contours of our own pieces. The pieces that lock to us. The pieces that we lock to. The pieces that fit so well, we can’t tell where our piece begins And that piece ends. Those pieces we call Friends. True loves. Dreams. Passions. Beliefs. Talents. They’re all the pieces that complete our puzzles. They line the edges, Frame the corners, Fill the centers, Those pieces are the pieces that make us who we are. Who we were. Who we’ll one day be. Up until today, When I looked at my own puzzle, I would see a finished piece. I had the edges lined, The corners framed, The center filled. It felt like it was complete. All the pieces were there. I had everything I wanted. Everything I needed. Everything I dreamt of. But up until today, I realized I had collected all but one piece. The most vital piece. The piece that completes the picture. The piece that completes my whole life. I held this girl in my arms She wrapped her tiny fingers around mine. It was then that I realized She was the fusion. The glue. The cement that bound all my pieces together. The piece that seals my puzzle. The piece that completes my life. The element that makes me who I am. Who I was. Who I’ll one day be. You, baby girl. You’re my final piece.

And when I look around the apartment where I now am,—when I see Charlotte’s apparel lying before me, and Albert’s writings, and all those articles of furniture which are so familiar to me, even to the very inkstand which I am using,—when I think what I am to this family—everything. My friends esteem me; I often contribute to their happiness, and my heart seems as if it could not beat without them; and yet—if I were to die, if I were to be summoned from the midst of this circle, would they feel—or how long would they feel—the void which my loss would make in their existence? How long! Yes, such is the frailty of man, that even there, where he has the greatest consciousness of his own being, where he makes the strongest and most forcible impression, even in the memory, in the heart of his beloved, there also he must perish,—vanish,—and that quickly. I could tear open my bosom with vexation to think how little we are capable of influencing the feelings of each other. No one can communicate to me those sensations of love, joy, rapture, and delight which I do not naturally possess; and though my heart may glow with the most lively affection, I cannot make the happiness of one in whom the same warmth is not inherent. Sometimes I don’t understand how another can love her, is allowed to love her, since I love her so completely myself, so intensely, so fully, grasp nothing, know nothing, have nothing but her! I possess so much, but my love for her absorbs it all. I possess so much, but without her I have nothing. One hundred times have I been on the point of embracing her. Heavens! what a torment it is to see so much loveliness passing and repassing before us, and yet not dare to lay hold of it! And laying hold is the most natural of human instincts. Do not children touch everything they see? And I! Witness, Heaven, how often I lie down in my bed with a wish, and even a hope, that I may never awaken again! And in the morning, when I open my eyes, I behold the sun once more, and am wretched. If I were whimsical, I might blame the weather, or an acquaintance, or some personal disappointment, for my discontented mind; and then this insupportable load of trouble would not rest entirely upon myself. But, alas! I feel it too sadly; I am alone the cause of my own woe, am I not? Truly, my own bosom contains the source of all my pleasure. Am I not the same being who once enjoyed an excess of happiness, who at every step saw paradise open before him, and whose heart was ever expanded towards the whole world? And this heart is now dead; no sentiment can revive it. My eyes are dry; and my senses, no more refreshed by the influence of soft tears, wither and consume my brain. I suffer much, for I have lost the only charm of life: that active, sacred power which created worlds around me,—it is no more. When I look from my window at the distant hills, and behold the morning sun breaking through the mists, and illuminating the country around, which is still wrapped in silence, whilst the soft stream winds gently through the willows, which have shed their leaves; when glorious Nature displays all her beauties before me, and her wondrous prospects are ineffectual to extract one tear of joy from my withered heart,—I feel that in such a moment I stand like a reprobate before heaven, hardened, insensible, and unmoved. Oftentimes do I then bend my knee to the earth, and implore God for the blessing of tears, as the desponding labourer in some scorching climate prays for the dews of heaven to moisten his parched corn.

Hearts are tough. Most times they don't break. Most times they only bend.

Everything I have learned about love, I learned from my mother. For it is mothers who bend, twist, flex, and break most dramatically before our uninitiated eyes. Fathers bear, conceal, inflict, sometimes vanish, so the mythology of domestic union tells us. But mothers absorb, accept, give in, all to tutor daughters in the syntax, the grammar of yearning and love.

We bend. I bend to sweep crumbs and I bend to wipe vomit and I bend to pick up little ones and wipe away tears... And at the end of these days I bend next to the bed and I ask only that I could bend more, bend lower. Because I serve a Savior who came to be a servant. He lived bent low. And bent down here is where I see His face. He lived, only to die. Could I? Die to self and just break open for love. This Savior, His one purpose to spend Himself on behalf of messy us. Will I spend myself on behalf of those in front of me? And people say, “Don’t you get tired?” and yes, I do. But I’m face to face with Jesus in the dirt, and the more I bend the harder and better and fuller this life gets. And sure, we are tired, but oh we are happy. Because bent down low is where we find fullness of Joy.

Hearts are tough. Most times they don't break. Most times they only bend.

Better a spirit that does not quite fit in this world than one that is broken.

Who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or any of those things can’t have their positive aspects in the long run? … You have to be careful of taking a knee-jerk attitude. Having a knee-jerk attitude to anything is a mistake, especially in the case of women, where it adds up to this very limited and condescending thing of saying they’re fragile, breakable things that can be destroyed easily. Everybody gets hurt and violated and broken sometimes. Why are women so special? Not that anybody ought to be raped or abused, nobody’s saying that, but that’s what is going on. What about afterwards? All I’m saying is there are certain cases where it can enlarge you or make you more of a complete human being, like Viktor Frankl. Think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good that it happened? No, of course not. But did you read Viktor Frankl? Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning? It’s a great, great book, but it comes out of his experience. It’s about his experience in the human dark side. Now think about it, if there was no Holocaust, there’d be no Man’s Search for Meaning… . Think about it. Think about being degraded and brought within an inch of your life, for example. No one’s gonna say the sick bastards who did it shouldn’t be put in jail, but let’s put two things into perspective here. One is, afterwards she knows something about herself that she never knew before. What she knows is that the most totally terrible terrifying thing that she could ever have imagined happening to her has now happened, and she survived. She’s still here, and now she knows something. I mean she really, really knows. Look, totally terrible things happen… . Existence in life breaks people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time, trust me I know. I’ve been there. And this is the big difference, you and me here, cause this isn’t about politics or feminism or whatever, for you this is just ideas, you’ve never been there. I’m not saying nothing bad has ever happened to you, you’re not bad looking, I’m sure there’s been some sort of degradation or whatever come your way in life, but I’m talking Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning type violation and terror and suffering here. The real dark side. I can tell from just looking at you, you never. You wouldn’t even wear what you’re wearing, trust me. What if I told you it was my own sister that was raped? What if I told you a little story about a sixteen-year-old girl who went to the wrong party with the wrong guy and four of his buddies that ended up doing to her just about everything four guys could do to you in terms of violation? But if you could ask her if she could go into her head and forget it or like erase the tape of it happening in her memory, what do you think she’d say? Are you so sure what she’d say? What if she said that even after that totally negative as what happened was, at least now she understood it was possible. People can. Can see you as a thing. That people can see you as a thing, do you know what that means? Because if you really can see someone as a thing you can do anything to him. What would it be like to be able to be like that? You see, you think you can imagine it but you can’t. But she can. And now she knows something. I mean she really, really knows. This is what you wanted to hear, you wanted to hear about four drunk guys who knee-jerk you in the balls and make you bend over that you didn’t even know, that you never saw before, that you never did anything to, that don’t even know your name, they don’t even know your name to find out you have to choose to have a fucking name, you have no fucking idea, and what if I said that happened to ME? Would that make a difference?

I don't break the rules, I simply bend them in my favor.

Positive emotions and mental states may make people more resilient to stress, like sturdy tree branches that bend but don’t break when battered by a storm

I read and I forget anything else exists. And I don’t forgive anyone who isn’t careful with books. I hate people who tear out pages, who bend corners, who break the spines.

Reeds are strong, you know, Ulean whispered to me. They bend during storms, rather than break. I blinked. Yes, but reeds won’t hold up a house. They make a good raft, so don’t write them off so fast.

Have you ever thought,” he said after a moment, “that perhaps … all of this could have happened before? That the people of the Time Before, no matter how weak we think them, that they were only making the mistakes of their ancestors, and that we, in turn, are only making the same mistakes as them? Technology or no? That the time changes but people do not, and so we are never really moving forward, only around a bend? That the world only ever turns in circles. Do you think that could be so?” She met his gaze, fascinated. “I don’t know,” she said. “But even if that’s true, then don’t you think there is always someone who can change it? Who could break the pattern? Or who could try? If they chose to. Don’t you think that has to be true as well?” “Yes,” he said, “I do think that.” The tiny fire went out, leaving only the candles. “And I would help you.” “You are helping me,” she said, voice small. “Isn’t that our agreement?” “You know that is not what I mean. I would help you.

Miriam Elmahdy’s Guide to Staying the Fuck Alive: (1) Bend the rules—but don’t break them. (2) Stick to the truth. (3) Avoid notice. (4) Listen to your instincts. (5) Be brave.

No matter how our hearts break, we bend toward life, don’t we? We bend toward hope.

We bend, but we don’t break.

We are cooper, kanchi. They can bend us and twist us but they can't break us.

Stubborn breaks when it don’t bend,

Your confidence and self-esteem have withered away, but the very person you want to get away from is the one you rely on most. And you don’t know when it happened. Can’t pinpoint an exact day, week, or month, because it’s a gradual, subtle process. It creeps up on you slowly. So slowly that you don’t realize you’re bending, breaking, and becoming a different person. A woman who’s not happy, not living her own life, but the life her husband wants instead.

I don’t believe there’s such a thing as conventional love. Love is bending. Love is breaking. Love is constantly learning about the other person until you go crazy because it will never be perfect, but there’s no fault in trying.

Why do you think there aren’t rules to how sex will work? You didn’t want to talk to me about what you wanted. You pushed me into the room so I wouldn’t turn on the light because you knew damn well I would push back on that, didn’t you?” She stayed where she was. “Yes. I don’t want you to see me. I don’t look like one of those girls in a magazine.” He groaned, the sound coming from deep in his chest. “Those girls in the magazines are airbrushed and way too thin. The camera adds pounds so those girls are so skinny I wouldn’t be able to fuck them for fear I would break them. I want a woman, Avery, not some tiny freaking thing whose waistline only proves she doesn’t eat. I want a woman who can take me. I want a woman I can hold on to. So bend over because I want to see your ass. I want to look at it because I’ve been dreaming about it for days. It’s hot and round and so fucking juicy I can’t stand it. Get me hot, Avery. Show me your ass.

You want to know why I don’t have many friends here? At least not ones that count, according to your fucking standards handed down from on high, princess? Because I figured it out. What the difference is between friends and casual acquaintances. Between lovers and fuck buddies.

Everyday I rewrite her name across my ribcage so that those who wish to break my heart will know who to answer to later She has no idea that I’ve taught my tongue to make pennies, and every time our mouths are to meet I will slip coins to the back of her throat and make wishes I wish that someday my head on her belly might be like home like doubt to doubt resuscitation because time is supposed to mean more than skin She doesn’t know that I have taught my arms to close around her clocks so they can withstand the fallout from her Autumn She is so explosive, volcanoes watch her and learn terrorists want to strap her to their chests because she is a cause worth dying for Maybe someday time will teach me to pick up her pieces put her back together and remind her to click her heels but she doesn’t need a wizard to tell her that I was here all along Lady let us catch the next tornado home let us plant cantaloupe trees in our backyard then maybe together we will realize that we don’t like cantaloupe and they don’t grow on trees we can laugh about it then we can plant things we’ve never heard of I’ve never heard of a woman who can make flawed look so beautiful the way you do The word smitten is to how I feel about you what a kiss is to romance so maybe my lips to yours could be the penance to this confession because I am the only one preaching your defunct religion sitting alone at your altar, praising you out of faith I cannot do this hard-knock life alone You are all the softness a rock dreams of being the mistakes the rain makes at picnics when Mother Nature bears witness in much better places So yes I will gladly take on your ocean just to swim beneath you so I can kiss the bends of your knees in appreciation for the work they do keeping your head above water

I’m a willow. I bend but don’t break.

no person on this earth is worth sacrificing yourself for. Don’t ever stop being you and don’t ever bend so far to accommodate someone that you break.

Bend so they don't break me, keeping my eyes on the horizon.

No. I don’t bend.” Sikthand’s eyes drifted to the mirror. Truth rose like acid in his throat. “But I could break for her.

Okay, Harry. We can work cases. But we bend the rules. We don’t break them.

Bend yourself cause you love them and they will keep bending you until you break cause they probably don't.

If you don't eventually bend, Val, you'll break.

They say if you don't bend, you break. I say it's better to break for a purpose than to bend for nothing.

The trees in the storm don’t try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go,” continued the voice. “Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break. Now is not the time for you to be strong, Julia, or you, too, will break. Learn the power of the trees. Let it flow. Let it go. That is the way you are going to make it through this storm. And that is the way to make it through the storms of life.

She just...lets it happen. You don't grow up with my mother and not know all about power over men. How to get it. How to use it. How to keep it. And now she hasn't even lost it, she's given it to him on a silver platter because of love, and I'm reeling, because it's such a con. Most of the time, we're this shiny little Stepford family veneer to hide the criminal game. But it's like there's a net around the house, and every day, he hauls it tighter. I tell myself, at first, that she doesn't bend; she'll find a way to break him. But then.. She doesn't bend. She doesn't find a way to break him. She just keeps breaking. And then she does something that breaks me.

If you’re writing a full-length novel, you don’t need to bend over backward trying to be clever in the first line or two. Readers will understand that there’s a lot of story to tell, and they’ll give you some space to do that. Don’t rush the opening.

Stubborn breaks when it don’t bend, and his family had spent too much time with the kindly white folks in the north. Kindly in that they didn’t see fit to kill you fast. One thing about the south, it was not patient when it came to killing negroes. In

But there’s a problem: as you learn, you’re also falling down and getting scars. The pain repels you. You flinch so much that you start fearing and predicting pain. You combine it with the lessons you learned from other people. Finally, you start to protect yourself from things that haven’t even happened. At the end of this path, you go on the defensive. You give up on hurdles. Your world starts getting smaller, instead of bigger. You don’t adapt to what comes at you. You stop following your curiosity and you start being safe. From the inside, this feels like getting wise, but it isn’t. Avoiding the flinch withers you, like an old tree that breaks instead of bending in a storm. Unfortunately, this is where most adults end up. But there’s an antidote. You can make your world get bigger again. The instinct you have is the seed—you just have to cultivate it. The anxiety of the flinch is almost always worse than the pain itself. You’ve forgotten that. You need to learn it again. You need more scars. You need to live.

I think “adaptability” is one of the most important qualities an individual can possess, especially when it comes to hiking the trail. If you don’t know how to adapt, then you better learn to adapt! Bend and flow with your circumstances, don’t let them break you.

BOWLS OF FOOD Moon and evening star do their slow tambourine dance to praise this universe. The purpose of every gathering is discovered: to recognize beauty and love what’s beautiful. “Once it was like that, now it’s like this,” the saying goes around town, and serious consequences too. Men and women turn their faces to the wall in grief. They lose appetite. Then they start eating the fire of pleasure, as camels chew pungent grass for the sake of their souls. Winter blocks the road. Flowers are taken prisoner underground. Then green justice tenders a spear. Go outside to the orchard. These visitors came a long way, past all the houses of the zodiac, learning Something new at each stop. And they’re here for such a short time, sitting at these tables set on the prow of the wind. Bowls of food are brought out as answers, but still no one knows the answer. Food for the soul stays secret. Body food gets put out in the open like us. Those who work at a bakery don’t know the taste of bread like the hungry beggars do. Because the beloved wants to know, unseen things become manifest. Hiding is the hidden purpose of creation: bury your seed and wait. After you die, All the thoughts you had will throng around like children. The heart is the secret inside the secret. Call the secret language, and never be sure what you conceal. It’s unsure people who get the blessing. Climbing cypress, opening rose, Nightingale song, fruit, these are inside the chill November wind. They are its secret. We climb and fall so often. Plants have an inner Being, and separate ways of talking and feeling. An ear of corn bends in thought. Tulip, so embarrassed. Pink rose deciding to open a competing store. A bunch of grapes sits with its feet stuck out. Narcissus gossiping about iris. Willow, what do you learn from running water? Humility. Red apple, what has the Friend taught you? To be sour. Peach tree, why so low? To let you reach. Look at the poplar, tall but without fruit or flower. Yes, if I had those, I’d be self-absorbed like you. I gave up self to watch the enlightened ones. Pomegranate questions quince, Why so pale? For the pearl you hid inside me. How did you discover my secret? Your laugh. The core of the seen and unseen universes smiles, but remember, smiles come best from those who weep. Lightning, then the rain-laughter. Dark earth receives that clear and grows a trunk. Melon and cucumber come dragging along on pilgrimage. You have to be to be blessed! Pumpkin begins climbing a rope! Where did he learn that? Grass, thorns, a hundred thousand ants and snakes, everything is looking for food. Don’t you hear the noise? Every herb cures some illness. Camels delight to eat thorns. We prefer the inside of a walnut, not the shell. The inside of an egg, the outside of a date. What about your inside and outside? The same way a branch draws water up many feet, God is pulling your soul along. Wind carries pollen from blossom to ground. Wings and Arabian stallions gallop toward the warmth of spring. They visit; they sing and tell what they think they know: so-and-so will travel to such-and-such. The hoopoe carries a letter to Solomon. The wise stork says lek-lek. Please translate. It’s time to go to the high plain, to leave the winter house. Be your own watchman as birds are. Let the remembering beads encircle you. I make promises to myself and break them. Words are coins: the vein of ore and the mine shaft, what they speak of. Now consider the sun. It’s neither oriental nor occidental. Only the soul knows what love is. This moment in time and space is an eggshell with an embryo crumpled inside, soaked in belief-yolk, under the wing of grace, until it breaks free of mind to become the song of an actual bird, and God.

Now don't, please, be quite so single-minded, self-involved, or assume the world is wrong and you are right. Whoever thinks that he alone possesses intelligence, the gift of eloquence, he and no one else, and character too . . . such men, I tell you, spread them open--you will find them empty. No, it's no disgrace for a man, even a wise man, to learn many things and not to be too rigid. You've seen trees by a raging winter torrent, how many sway with the flood and salvage every twig, but not the stubborn--they're ripped out, roots and all. Bend or break. The same when a man is sailing: haul your sheets too taut, never give an inch, you'll capsize, and go the rest of the voyage keep up and the rowing-benches under. Oh give way. Relax your anger--change! I'm young, I know, but let me offer this: it would be best by far, I admit, if a man were born infallible, right by nature. If not--and things don't often go that way, it's best to learn from those with good advice.

went through a red light. While I don’t endorse breaking the law, there are mental health benefits to doing so. A psychological study demonstrated that cheating or breaking rules results in an unexpectedly good mood afterward. As well as a brief sense of freedom from all rules. So perhaps we should all bend the rules sometimes.

You’re a river, Bones,” he said, squeezing my hands hard to get my attention. “You don’t break, you bend. If someone tries to control you, you find a new way around. People might think you’re just water, might think they have you contained, but you’re strong enough to cut a path through mountain rock and wild enough to wash everythin’ away when you rage.

Both the fanatical believers and the fixed attitude people are loud in their scorn of what they call “woolly minds.”… [But it] is the woolly mind that combines scepticism about everything with credulity about everything. Being woolly it has no hard edges. It is easy, pliant, yet it has its own toughness. Because it bends, it does not break. … The woolly mind realizes that we live in an unimaginable gigantic, complicated, mysterious universe. To try to stuff the vast bewildering creation into a few neat pigeon-holes is absurd. We don’t know enough, and to pretend we do is mere intellectual conceit. … The best we can do is keep looking out for clues, for anything that will light us a step or two in the dark.

Let me assure you, the struggle is real. I clicked my tongue, ready to fire back a snarky comment about Captain Obvious, but the titanic clash of emotions in those emerald eyes rendered me speechless. Guarded yet exposed. Challenging yet submissive. Unwilling to bend yet impossibly vulnerable. “You’re allowed to stare,” his jaw twitched, “so long as you promise to break the golden rule.” “What golden rule?” “Look but don’t touch.

Is it true it takes thirteen months for a female to carry and give birth?” “Minimum.” He said it with such casual dismissal that Bella laughed. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to lug the kid around inside of you all that time. You, just like your human counterparts, have the fun part over with like that.” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. His dark eyes narrowed and he reached to enclose her hand in his, pulling her wrist up to the slow, purposeful brush of his lips even as he maintained a sensual eye contact that was far too full of promises. Isabella caught her breath as an insidious sensation of heated pins and needles stitched its way up her arm. “I promise you, Bella, a male Demon’s part in a mating is never over like this.” He mimicked her snap, making her jump in time to her kick-starting heartbeat. “Well”—she cleared her throat—“I guess I’ll have to take your word on that.” Jacob did not respond in agreement, and that unnerved her even further. Instinctively, she changed tack. “So, what brings you down into the dusty atmosphere of the great Demon library?” she asked, knowing she sounded like a brightly animated cartoon. “You.” Oh, how that singular word was pregnant with meaning, intent, and devastatingly blatant honesty. Isabella was forced to remind herself of the whole Demon-human mating taboo as the forbidden response of heat continued to writhe around beneath her skin, growing exponentially in intensity every moment he hovered close. She tried to picture all kinds of scary things that could happen if she did not quit egging him on like she was. How she was, she didn’t know, but she was always certain she was egging him on. “Why did you want to see me?” she asked, breaking away from him and bending to retrieve the book she had dropped. It was huge and heavy and she grunted softly under the weight of it. It landed with a slam and another puff of dust on the table she had made into her own private study station. “Because I cannot seem to help myself, lovely little Bella.

You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily. “If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!” He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver. “That’s…new,” she said with a strained attempt at humor. “It isn’t,” he corrected. “I’ve just never let you feel it before.” He kissed her slowly, savoring the submission of her soft, warm lips. His hands swept under the blouse and up under her breasts in their lacy covering. He was going over the edge. If he did, he was going to take her with him, and it would damage both of them. He had to stop it, now, while he could. “Is this what Colby gets when he comes to see you?” he whispered with deliberate sarcasm. It worked. She stepped on his foot as hard as she could with her bare instep. It surprised him more than it hurt him, but while he recoiled, she pushed him and tore out of his arms. Her eyes were lividly green through her glasses, her hair in disarray. She glared at him like a female panther. “What Colby gets is none of your business! You get out of my apartment!” she raged at him. She was magnificent, he thought, watching her with helpless delight. There wasn’t a man alive who could cow her, or bend her to his will. Even her drunken, brutal stepfather hadn’t been able to force her to do something she didn’t want to do. “Oh, I hate that damned smug grin,” she threw at him, swallowing her fury. “Man, the conqueror!” “That isn’t what I was thinking at all.” He sobered little by little. “My mother was a meek little thing when she was younger,” he recalled. “But she was forever throwing herself in front of me to keep my father from killing me. It was a long time until I grew big enough to protect her.” She stared at him curiously, still shaken. “I don’t understand.” “You have a fierce spirit,” he said quietly. “I admire it, even when it exasperates me. But it wouldn’t be enough to save you from a man bent on hurting you.” He sighed heavily. “You’ve been…my responsibility…for a long time,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No matter how old you grow, I’ll still feel protective about you. It’s the way I’m made.” He meant to comfort, but the words hurt. She smiled anyway. “I can take care of myself.” “Can you?” he said softly. He searched her eyes. “In a weak moment…” “I don’t have too many of those. Mostly, you’re responsible for them,” she said with black humor. “Will you go away? I’m supposed to try to seduce you, not the reverse. You’re breaking the rules.” His eyebrow lifted. Her sense of humor seemed to mend what was wrong between them. “You stopped trying to seduce me.” “You kept turning me down,” she pointed out. “A woman’s ego can only take so much rejection.

As I turn the corner, I hear Peter calling out, “Wait! Wait! Sir!” He’s following a security guard who is approaching a red backpack on the floor. The security guard bends down and picks it up. “Is this yours?” he demands. “Uh, yeah--” “Why did you leave it on the ground?” He unzips the backpack and pulls out a teddy bear. Peter’s eyes dart around. “Can you put that back inside? It’s for a promposal for my girlfriend. It’s supposed to be a surprise.” The security guard is shaking his head. He mutters to himself and starts looking in the backpack again. “Sir, please just squeeze the bear.” “I’m not squeezing the bear,” the security guard tells him. Peter reaches out and squeezes the teddy bear and the bear squeaks out, “Will you go to prom with me, Lara Jean?” I clap my hands to my mouth in delight. Sternly the security guard says, “You’re in New York City, kid. You can’t just leave a backpack on the ground for your proposal.” “It’s actually called a promposal,” Peter corrects, and the security guard gives him a look. “Sorry. Can I just have the bear back?” He spots me then. “Tell him Sleepless in Seattle is your favorite movie, Lara Jean!” I rush over. “Sir, it’s my favorite movie. Please don’t kick him out.” The security guard is trying not to smile. “I wasn’t going to kick him out,” he says to me. To Peter he says, “Just be more aware next time. In New York, we’re vigilant. If we see something, we say something, do you feel me? This is not whatever little country town you guys are from. This is New York City. We do not play around here.” Both Peter and I nod, and the security guard walks away. As soon as he’s gone, Peter and I look at each other and break out into giddy laughter. “Somebody reported my book bag!” he says. “My promposal got fucked.” I take the teddy bear out of his bag and hug it to my chest. I’m so happy I don’t even tell him not to cuss. “I love it.

Those are the moments I’m proud of. The times I saw through them. The times I made them work to break me, even though I knew they would. The times I questioned the lies being fed to me, though everyone around me believed. I learned early that if everyone around you has their head bowed, their eyes shut tight—keep your eyes open and look around. I’m reflexively suspicious of anyone who stands on a soapbox. Tell me you have the answers and I’ll know you’re trying to sell me something. I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves. I don’t have the answers. Maybe depression’s the natural reaction to a world full of cruelty and pain. But the thing I know about depression is if you want to survive it, you have to train yourself to hold on; when you can see no reason to keep going, you cannot imagine a future worth seeing, you keep moving anyway. That’s not delusion. That’s hope. It’s a muscle you exercise so it’s strong when you need it. You feed it with books and art and dogs who rest their head on your leg, and human connection with people who are genuinely interested and excited; you feed it with growing a tomato and baking sourdough and making a baby laugh and standing at the edge of oceans and feeling a horse’s whiskers on your palm and bear hugs and late-night talks over whiskey and a warm happy sigh on your neck and the unexpected perfect song on the radio, and mushroom trips with a friend who giggles at the way the trees aren’t acting right, and jumping in creeks, and lying in the grass under the stars, and driving with the windows down on a swirly two-lane road. You stock up like a fucking prepper buying tubs of chipped beef and powdered milk and ammo. You stock up so some part of you knows and remembers, even in the dark, all that’s worth saving in this world. It’s comforting to know what happens next. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that no one fucking knows. And it’s terrifying. I don’t dream of a home and a family, a career and financial stability. I dream of living. And my inner voice, defective though it may be, still tells me happiness and peace, belonging and love, all lie just around the next corner, the next city, the next country. Just keep moving and hope the next place will be better. It has to be. Just around the next bend, everything is beautiful. And it breaks my heart.

And, sincerely, we respect her stance. The Liberal Rednecks are all about standing up for your beliefs even when they’re hateful, bigoted, and go against everything your alleged Lord and Savior stood for. The thing is, doing that would have involved quitting her job—but that’s just something the four-times-married mother was not prepared to do for her faith. Go on TV and be called a hero by powerful politicians who agree with her and her “stand”? Sure, that’s fine. Have the Church pay for her legal bills and prop her up (instead of, oh we don’t know, giving that money to the poor)? Yes, sir. But actually quit instead of breaking an oath (which, by the way, is a sin)? That’s just something Jesus apparently wouldn’t do. Kim Davis is an analogy for Christians at large in the South. She was not oppressed. She was not forced to do anything. She could have quit. The truth is she did not want to quit her job as an elected official. She wanted to bend the political will of those around her so she could prevent other humans from marrying each other because she didn’t like the idea of it. That’s not oppression—that’s someone trying to use the inordinate amount of power they have (over the media and literally as the clerk) to affect the lives of strangers she disagrees with. Guess what that is? Yup. That is oppression.

This land will kill you, if it can. We Icelanders are forged of different metal from the soft foreigners – even the Barbary pirates did not stay long. Have you ever known a Danish trader to winter here from choice?’ I shrugged. How did this concern me, or the people’s morbid curiosity? ‘We seem strong, Jón, all of us, but we are like grass – we bend so the wind will not break us. You are like the sea: you surge forward again and again. See yourself now. Your parents are dead, your croft is falling apart and your boat is riddled with holes, yet you don’t stop.’ I spread my hands. ‘I don’t want to die.’ ‘You want to live. You want a better life than the one you were given.

was tempted to tell him the truth: “See here, sir, the reason is there’s so much misery in Spain that we have to dunk our bread in puddles, there are no cats left in my town because we’ve eaten all the rats, the Republicans killed my mother because she had a cousin who was a nun hiding in our house, and then the Nationalists killed my father because he refused to bend his knee before a portrait of the caudillo. I have no family left, but I don’t wanna spend the rest of my life breaking my back in the mines, devoured by lice, and I sold my grandmother’s wedding ring—may she rest in peace—so I could buy a third-class ticket on a ship and start from zero, with just the clothes on my back, on the other side of the world. The reason is I wanna survive.

Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on--which was just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some place where they expected to get something, I bet! For me it crawled toward Kurtz--exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the woodcutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. But suddenly, as we struggled round a bend, there would be a glimpse of rush walls, of peaked grass-roofs, a burst of yells, a whirl of black limbs, a mass of hands clapping, of feet stamping, of bodies swaying, of eyes rolling, under the droop of heavy and motionless foliage. The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. The prehistoric man was cursing us, praying to us, welcoming us--who could tell? We were cut off from the comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phantoms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would be before an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse. We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign--and no memories.

As a society we are only now getting close to where Dogen was eight hundred years ago. We are watching all our most basic assumptions about life, the universe, and everything come undone, just like Dogen saw his world fall apart when his parents died. Religions don’t seem to mean much anymore, except maybe to small groups of fanatics. You can hardly get a full-time job, and even if you do, there’s no stability. A college degree means very little. The Internet has leveled things so much that the opinions of the greatest scientists in the world about global climate change are presented as being equal to those of some dude who read part of the Bible and took it literally. The news industry has collapsed so that it’s hard to tell a fake headline from a real one. Money isn’t money anymore; it’s numbers stored in computers. Everything is changing so rapidly that none of us can hope to keep up. All this uncertainty has a lot of us scrambling for something certain to hang on to. But if you think I’m gonna tell you that Dogen provides us with that certainty, think again. He actually gives us something far more useful. Dogen gives us a way to be okay with uncertainty. This isn’t just something Buddhists need; it’s something we all need. We humans can be certainty junkies. We’ll believe in the most ridiculous nonsense to avoid the suffering that comes from not knowing something. It’s like part of our brain is dedicated to compulsive dot-connecting. I think we’re wired to want to be certain. You have to know if that’s a rope or a snake, if the guy with the chains all over his chest is a gangster or a fan of bad seventies movies. Being certain means being safe. The downfall is that we humans think about a lot of stuff that’s not actually real. We crave certainty in areas where there can never be any. That’s when we start in with believing the crazy stuff. Dogen is interesting because he tries to cut right to the heart of this. He gets into what is real and what is not. Probably the main reason he’s so difficult to read is that Dogen is trying to say things that can’t actually be said. So he has to bend language to the point where it almost breaks. He’s often using language itself to show the limitations of language. Even the very first readers of his writings must have found them difficult. Dogen understood both that words always ultimately fail to describe reality and that we human beings must rely on words anyway. So he tried to use words to write about that which is beyond words. This isn’t really a discrepancy. You use words, but you remain aware of their limitations. My teacher used to say, “People like explanations.” We do. They’re comforting. When the explanation is reasonably correct, it’s useful.

What I cannot understand is how your uncle could consider these two men suitable when they aren’t. Not one whit!” “We know that,” Elizabeth said wryly, bending down to pull a blade of grass from between the flagstones beneath the bench, “but evidently my ‘suitors’ do not, and that’s the problem.” As she said the words a thought began to form in her mind; her fingers touched the blade, and she went perfectly still. Beside her on the bench Alex drew a breath as if to speak, then stopped short, and in that pulsebeat of still silence the same idea was born in both their fertile minds. “Alex,” Elizabeth breathed, “all I have to-“ “Elizabeth,” Alex whispered, “it’s not as bad as it seems. All you have to-“ Elizabeth straightened slowly and turned. In that prolonged moment of silence two longtime friends sat in a rose garden, looking raptly at each other while time rolled back and they were girls again-lying awake in the dark, confiding their dreams and troubles and inventing schemes to solve them that always began with “If only…” “If only,” Elizabeth said as a smile dawned across her face and was matched by the one on Alex’s, “I could convince them that we don’t suit-“ “Which shouldn’t be hard to do,” Alex cried enthusiastically, “because it’s true!” The joyous relief of having a plan, of being able to take control of a situation that minutes before had threatened her entire life, sent Elizabeth to her feet, her face aglow with laughter. “Poor Sir Francis,” she chuckled, looking delightedly from Bentner to Alex as both grinned at her. “I greatly fear he’s in for the most disagreeable surprise when he realizes what a-a” she hesitated, thinking of everything an old roué would most dislike in his future wife-“a complete prude I am!” “And,” Alex added, “what a shocking spendthrift you are!” “Exactly!” Elizabeth agreed, almost twirling around in her glee. Sunlight danced off her gilded hair and lit her green eyes as she looked delightedly at her friends. “I shall make perfectly certain to give him glaring evidence I am both. Now then, as to the Earl of Canford…” “What a pity,” Alex said in a voice of exaggerated gloom, “you won’t be able to show him what a capital hand you are with a fishing pole. “Fish?” Elizabeth returned with a mock shudder. “Why, the mere thought of those scaly creatures positively makes me swoon!” “Except for that prime one you caught yesterday,” Bentner put in wryly. “You’re right,” she returned with an affectionate grin at the man who’d taught her to fish. “Will you find Berta and break the news to her about going with me? By the time we come back to the house she ought to be over her hysterics, and I’ll reason with her.” Bentner trotted off, his threadbare black coattails flapping behind him.

The thing I remember most vividly from that weekend is a small thing. We were walking, you and he and Julia and I, down that little path lined with birches that led to the lookout. (Back then it was a narrow throughway, do you remember that? It was only later that it became dense with trees.) I was with him, and you and Julia were behind us. You were talking about, oh, I don’t know—insects? Wildflowers? You two always found something to discuss, you both loved being outdoors, both loved animals: I loved this about both of you, even though I couldn’t understand it. And then you touched his shoulder and moved in front of him and knelt and retied one of his shoelaces that had come undone, and then fell back in step with Julia. It was so fluid, a little gesture: a step forward, a fold onto bended knee, a retreat back toward her side. It was nothing to you, you didn’t even think about it; you never even paused in your conversation. You were always watching him (but you all were), you took care of him in a dozen small ways, I saw all of this over those few days—but I doubt you would remember this particular incident. But while you were doing it, he looked at me, and the look on his face—I still cannot describe it, other than in that moment, I felt something crumble inside me, like a tower of damp sand built too high: for him, and for you, and for me as well. And in his face, I knew my own would be echoed. The impossibility of finding someone to do such a thing for another person, so unthinkingly, so gracefully! When I looked at him, I understood, for the first time since Jacob died, what people meant when they said someone was heartbreaking, that something could break your heart. I had always thought it mawkish, but in that moment I realized that it might have been mawkish, but it was also true. And that, I suppose, was when I knew.

We live in a world where we have to sacrifice our comfort for the sake of others. Where we have to go an extra mile to meet others' needs. Where we have to dig deep in our resources to please others. I have gone out of my comfort zone for some people. Some people have gone out of their comfort zone for me. And I'm grateful. It's life. It's a common thing. There is no right or wrong to this behaviour. We do it because either we want to or that we must. By the way, our self-sacrificing service can be unhealthy to us. Some people burn themselves down trying to keep others warm. Some break their backs trying to carry the whole world. Some break their bones trying to bend backwards for their loved ones. All these sacrifices are, sometimes, not appreciated. Usually we don't thank the people who go out of their comfort zone to make us feel comfortable. Again, although it's not okay, it's a common thing. It's another side of life. To be fair, we must get in touch with our humanity and show gratitude for these sacrifices. We owe it to so many people. And sometimes we don't even realise it. Thanks be to God for forgiving our sins — which we repeat. Thanks to our world leaders and the activists for the work that they do to make our economic life better. Thanks to our teachers, lecturers, mentors, and role models for shaping our lives. Thanks to our parents for their continual sacrifices. Thanks to our friends for their solid support. Thanks to our children, nephews, and nieces. They allow us to practise discipline and leadership on them. Thanks to the doctors and nurses who save our lives daily. Thanks to safety professionals and legal representatives. They protect us and our possessions. Thanks to our church leaders, spiritual gurus and guides, and meditation partners. They shape our spiritual lives. Thanks to musicians, actors, writers, poets, and sportspeople for their entertainment. Thanks to everyone who contributes in a positive way to our society. Whether recognised or not. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Mrs. Harris’s coach should be here any minute. I trek toward the curb, but just as I reach it, the latch on my bag drops open again, and the contents spill into the snow. Cursing, I bend to retrieve my things, but a violent gale whips me backward into the slush, snatching petticoats, chemises, and knickers into the air. “No!” I cry, scrambling after my clothes and stuffing them one by one back into my bag, glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one has caught a glimpse of my underthings dancing across the street. A man snores on a stoop nearby, but no one else is out. Relieved, I scuttle through the snow, jamming skirts and books and socks into the bag and gritting my teeth as the wind burns my ears. A clatter of hooves breaks through the howling tempest, and I catch sight of a cab headed my way. My stomach clenches as I snap my bag closed once more. That must be Mrs. Harris’s coach. I’m really going to do this. But as I make my way toward it, a white ghost of fabric darts in front of me. My eyes widen. I missed a pair of knickers. Panic jolting through my every limb, I sprint after it, but the wind is too quick. My underclothes gust right into the carriage door, twisting against its handle as the cab eases to a stop. I’m almost to it, fingers reaching, when the door snaps open and a boy about my age steps out. “Miss Whitlock?” he asks, his voice so quiet I almost don’t hear it over the wind. Trying not to draw attention to the undergarments knotted on the door just inches from his hand, I give him a stiff nod. “Yes, sir, that’s me.” “Let me get your things,” he says, stepping into the snow and reaching for my handbag. “Uh—it’s broken, so I’d—I’d better keep it,” I mumble, praying he can’t feel the heat of my blush from where he is. “Very well, then.” He turns back toward the coach and stops. Artist, no. My heart drops to my shoes. “Oh…” He reaches toward the fabric knotted tightly in the latch. “Is…this yours?” Death would be a mercy right about now. I swallow hard. “Um, yes.” He glances at me, and blood floods my neck. “I mean, no! I’ve never seen those before in my life!” He stares at me a long moment. “I…” I lurch past him and yank at the knickers. The fabric tears, and the sound of it is so loud I’m certain everyone in the world must have heard it. “Here, why don’t I—” He reaches out to help detangle the fabric from the door. “No, no, no, I’ve got it just fine,” I say, leaping in front of him and tugging on the knot with shaking hands. Why. Why, why, why, why, why? Finally succeeding at freeing the knickers, I make to shove them back into my bag, but another gust of wind rips them from my grasp. The boy and I both stare after them as they dart into the sky, spreading out like a kite so that every damn stitch is visible. He clears his throat. “Should we—ah—go after them?” “No,” I say faintly. “I—I think I’ll manage without…

We both know Dad was my parental trash can, the fatherly receptacle on whom I dumped my emotions. Does she think because she offered me a blanket and chocolate-covered whatever that I'll just hand over the keys to my inner diary? Uh, no. "I know you're eighteen now," she huffs. "I get it, okay? But you don't know everything. And you know what? I don't like secrets." My head spins. The first day of the Rest of My Normal Life is not turning out as planned. I shake my head. "I guess I still don't understand what you're asking me." She stomps her foot. "How long have you been dating him, Emma? How long have you and Galen been an item?" Ohmysweetgoodness. "I'm not dating Galen," I whisper. "Why would you even think that?" "Why would I think that? Maybe you should ask Mrs. Strickland. She's the one who told me how intimate you looked standing there in the hall. And she said Galen was beside himself when you wouldn't wake up. That he kept squeezing your hand." Intimate? I let my backpack slide off my shoulder and onto the floor before I plot to the table and sit down. The room feels like a giant merry-go-round. I am...embarrassed? No. Embarrassed is when you spill ketchup on your crotch and it leaves a red stain in a suspicious area. Mortified? No. Mortified is when you experiment with tanning lotion and forget to put some on your feet, so it looks like you're wearing socks with your flip-flops and sundress. Bewildered? Yep. That's it. Bewildered that after I screamed at him-oh yes, now I remember I screamed at him-he picked up my limp body, carried me all the way to the office, and stayed with me until help arrived. Oh, and he held my hand and sat beside me, too. I cradle my face in my hands, imagining how close I came to going to school without knowing this. How close I came to walking up to Galen, telling him to take his tingles and shove them where every girl's thoughts have been since he got there. I groan into my laced fingers. "I can never face him again," I say to no one in particular. Unfortunately, Mom thinks I'm talking to her. "Why? Did he break up with you?" She sits down next to me and pulls my hands from my face. "Is it because you wouldn't sleep with him?" "Mom!" I screech. "No!" She snatches her hand away. "You mean you did sleep with him?" Her lips quiver. This can't be happening. "Mom, I told you, we're not dating!" Shouting is a dumb idea. My heartbeat ripples through my temples. "You're not even dating him and you slept with him?" She's wringing her hands. Tears puddle in her eyes. One Mississippi...two Mississippi...Is she freaking serious?...Three Mississippi...four Mississippi...Because I swear I'm about to move out... Five Mississippi...six Mississippi...I might as well sleep with him if I'm going to be accused of it anyway... Seven Mississippi...eight Mississippi...Ohmysweetgoodness, did I really just think that?...Nine Mississippi...ten Mississippi...Talk to your mother-now. I keep my voice polite when I say, "Mom, I haven't slept with Galen, unless you count laying on the nurse's bed unconscious beside him. And we are not dating. We have never dated. Which is why he wouldn't need to break up with me. Have I missed anything?" "What were you arguing about in the hall, then?" "I actually don't remember. All I remember is being mad at him. Trust me, I'll find out. But right now, I'm late for school." I ease out of the chair and over to my backpack on the floor. Bending over is even stupider than shouting. I wish my head would just go ahead and fall off already.

The thing I remember most vividly from that weekend is a small thing. We were walking, you and he and Julia and I, down that little path lined with birches that led to the lookout. (Back then it was a narrow throughway, do you remember that? It was only later that it became dense with trees.) I was with him, and you and Julia were behind us. You were talking about, oh, I don’t know—insects? Wildflowers? You two always found something to discuss, you both loved being outdoors, both loved animals: I loved this about both of you, even though I couldn’t understand it. And then you touched his shoulder and moved in front of him and knelt and retied one of his shoelaces that had come undone, and then fell back in step with Julia. It was so fluid, a little gesture: a step forward, a fold onto bended knee, a retreat back toward her side. It was nothing to you, you didn’t even think about it; you never even paused in your conversation. You were always watching him (but you all were), you took care of him in a dozen small ways, I saw all of this over those few days—but I doubt you would remember this particular incident. But while you were doing it, he looked at me, and the look on his face—I still cannot describe it, other than in that moment, I felt something crumble inside me, like a tower of damp sand built too high: for him, and for you, and for me as well. And in his face, I knew my own would be echoed. The impossibility of finding someone to do such a thing for another person, so unthinkingly, so gracefully! When I looked at him, I understood, for the first time since Jacob died, what people meant when they said someone was heartbreaking, that something could break your heart. I had always thought it mawkish, but in that moment I realized that it might have been mawkish, but it was also true. And that, I suppose, was when I knew.

Isn't there something in Genesis about not looking back? A stupid glance over my shoulder showed her expression relaxing, glad I wasn't taking anything that couldn't be replaced and glad I didn't destroy anything that couldn't be repaired. "Do you care for me, Georgia?" I asked her. "Tell me you don't and I'm out of your life forever." She stood in the driveway with her arms wrapped around herself like she was freezing. "Andre is on his way." "I didn't ask you about no Andre." "He'll be here in a minute." My head hurt, but I pressed her. "It's a yes-or-no question." "Can we talk when Andre gets back? We can-" "Stop talking about him. I want to know if you love me." "Andre…" She said his name one time too many. For what happened next, she would have to take some of the blame. I asked her a simple question and she refused to give me a simple answer. I turned from her and made a sharp left turn, pounding across the yard, feeling the dry grass crunch under my shoes. Six long strides put me at the base of the massive tree. I touched the rough bark, an instant of reflection, to give Old Hickey the benefit of the doubt. But in reality, a hickory tree was a useless hunk of wood. Tall, and that's all. To break the shell of a hickory nut, you needed a hammer and an act of Congress, and even then you needed a screwdriver to get at the meat, which was about as tasty as a clod of limestone. Nobody would ever mourn a hickory tree except Celestial, and maybe Andre. When I was a boy, so little I couldn't manage much more than a George Washington hatcher, Big Roy taught me how to take down a tree. Bend your knees, swing hard and low, follow up with a straight chop. Celestial was crying like the baby we never had, yelping and mewing with every swing. Believe me when I say that I didn't slow my pace, even though my shoulders burned and my arms strained and quivered. With every blow, wedges of fresh wood flew from the wounded trunk peppering my face with hot bites. "Speak up, Georgia," I shouted, hacking at the thick grey bark, experiencing pleasure and power with each stroke. "I asked you if you loved me.

Sometimes the best way to relax, unwind, and get everything straightened out... is to curl up with a good book. – Douglas Pagels, from 100 Things to Always Remember and One Thing to Never Forget Give something of yourself to the day... even if it’s just a smile to someone walking the other way. – Douglas Pagels, from 100 Things to Always Remember and One Thing to Never Forget Even if you can’t just snap your fingers and make a dream come true, you can travel in the direction of your dream, every single day, and you can keep shortening the distance between the two of you. – Douglas Pagels, from 100 Things to Always Remember and One Thing to Never Forget Rest assured that, whenever you need them, your guardian angels are great about working overtime. – Douglas Pagels, from A Special Christmas Blessing Just for You Never forget what a treasure you are. That special person in the mirror may not always get to hear all the compliments you so sweetly deserve, but you are so worthy of such an abundance... of friendship, joy, and love. – Douglas Pagels, from You Are One Amazing Lady I love that I get to wake up every morning in a world that has people like you in it. – Douglas Pagels, from You Are One Amazing Lady Be someone who doesn’t make your guardian angel work too hard or worry too much. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Each day is a blank page in the diary of your life. Every day, you’re given a chance to determine what the words will say and how the story will unfold. The more rewarding you can make each page, the more amazing the entire book will be. And I would love for you to write a masterpiece. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Practice your tree pose. I want you to have a goal of finding a way to bring everything in your life into balance. Let the roots of all your dreams go deep. Let the hopes of all your tomorrows grow high. Bend, but don’t break. Take the seasons as they come. Stick up for yourself. And reach for the sky. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Remember that a new morning is good medicine... and one of the joys of life is realizing that you have the ability to make this a really great day. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Find comfort in knowing that “rising above” is something you can always find a way to do. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Look up “onward” in the thesaurus and utilize every one of those synonyms whenever you’re wondering which direction to go in. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Don’t judge yourself – love yourself. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! If you have a choice between a la-di-da life and an ooh-la-la! one, well... you know what to do. Choose the one that requires you to dust off your dancing shoes. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life! Write out your own definition of success. Fill it with a mix of stardust and wishes and down-to-earth things, and provide all the insight you can give it. Imagine what it takes to have a really happy, rewarding life. And then go out... and live it. – Douglas Pagels, from Wishing You a Happy, Successful, Incredible Life!

These world-class performers don’t have superpowers. The rules they’ve crafted for themselves allow the bending of reality to such an extent that it may seem that way, but they’ve learned how to do this, and so can you. These “rules” are often uncommon habits and bigger questions. In a surprising number of cases, the power is in the absurd. The more absurd, the more “impossible” the question, the more profound the answers. Take, for instance, a question that serial billionaire Peter Thiel likes to ask himself and others: “If you have a 10-year plan of how to get [somewhere], you should ask: Why can’t you do this in 6 months?” For purposes of illustration here, I might reword that to: “What might you do to accomplish your 10-year goals in the next 6 months, if you had a gun against your head?” Now, let’s pause. Do I expect you to take 10 seconds to ponder this and then magically accomplish 10 years’ worth of dreams in the next few months? No, I don’t. But I do expect that the question will productively break your mind, like a butterfly shattering a chrysalis to emerge with new capabilities. The “normal” systems you have in place, the social rules you’ve forced upon yourself, the standard frameworks—they don’t work when answering a question like this. You are forced to shed artificial constraints, like shedding a skin, to realize that you had the ability to renegotiate your reality all along. It just takes practice. My suggestion is that you spend real time with the questions you find most ridiculous in this book. Thirty minutes of stream-of-consciousness journaling (page 224) could change your life. On top of that, while the world is a gold mine, you need to go digging in other people’s heads to unearth riches. Questions are your pickaxes and competitive advantage. This book will give you an arsenal to choose from.

Keeping your personal goals firmly at the forefront ensures you are in the driver’s seat of your career. If you don’t know what you value and what the parameters of your dashboard are, others will define it for you. Breaking or even bending the rules you have established for yourself will always have its price.

To break the mummified silence, Reyha says, "Thank you, Mom, it is delicious." A gold-rimmed china bowl filled with lettuce, wheat sprouts, and beans. I have requested a massacre of plants for lunch. The sound of the lettuce crunching between my teeth echoes in my ears... "Lettuce and carrots love human teeth," I say. They don't know that they should laugh. Mother's skin is so fair. Her lips bitterly curved downward, just like Reyhaneh's, show no sign of her usual naive smile. "It's great that you all eat meat. If everyone was a vegetarian, the sheep would die of hunger." I laugh at my own inane joke, dig out the unchewable lettuce string stuck between my teeth, and I put it on the side of the bowl. "At the front they used to tell us that if we were martyred, we would go to heaven. I have heard that in heaven, the instant you crave grapes or apples, the tree branches bend down to you. But the Quran doesn't say if there are carrots in heaven or not. Our house is better than heaven. It has lettuce, it has carrots. And I crave these every day...

Here are the Top 9 Paradoxes I believe will rule the next two decades: Do little large. Move up by bending down. Learn to fail so you can succeed—success requires the sacrament of failure. Your only control is learning how to be out of control. Creativity needs constraints—the more you break the mold, blow up the box, and rip up the templates, the more you need to create new tools (or better, dynamic frames) to design your thinking.33 The more global we become, the more local we need to live—only locavores can globalize. Go slowly with the Holy—the faster the world gets, the more we will need to walk softly, go slowly, and rediscover the “off” button. Cultivate both/and mentalities, as well as and/also modalities. It’s more important to know what you don’t know than what you know.

You can do what you like with the law; bend it, twist it, hide behind it... just don't break it.

But why? You keep telling me it won’t work, but you haven’t explained why. Am I…too shy? Too weird? Not pretty or interesting enough?” His eyes widen. “Of course you’re interesting enough. You’re amazing and so special. And you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met.” Tears prick my eyes. “Then why did you break my heart?” He bends forward, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “It’s just…you deserve so much better than me.

Don't pressure the bent tree down otherwise it will break, if a tree from it's base wasn't bend, it will be sraight slowly slowly, and a tree which was originally bend will never be straight.

Why can’t we be like that frail stem, laden with roses and rose-buds?” the philosopher said, pointing at a beautiful rosebush. “The wind blows, it shakes, and it bends, as if it were trying to protect its precious charge. If the stem were to remain upright, it would break, the wind would scatter the flowers, and the buds would rot. The wind passes by and the stem straightens anew, proud of its treasures. Who would accuse it of folding in the face of such need? Look over there, at that giant kupang,170 whose high leaves sway majestically, up where the eagle makes his nest. I brought it from the forest when it was still a fragile cutting, with thin bamboo poles supporting its trunk for months. Had I brought it here when it was large and full of life, it would certainly not have survived. The wind would have shaken it before its roots could sink into the earth, before it could establish itself in its surroundings and develop the nourishment it needed for its size and stature. That’s how you’ll end up, a plant transplanted from Europe to this rocky soil, if you don’t find support and develop humility. You are alone, highborn, in terrible conditions. The ground shakes, the sky portends a storm, and the tree canopy of your family attracts lightning. To fight against everything that exists today is not

drag her to my mouth and bite gently, just enough to fill her blood with blinding euphoria, to drive her mad when we finally break. The cry that rips from her chest when I carry her to orgasm is a living thing set free in the night. Again, she begs and pleads and so do I—never stop, don’t stop, fuck me, please fuck me—and I do. We do. For the longest minutes, she endures her orgasm and mine, my swollen cock throbbing with every long spurt of cum into her body, her pussy clenching tight with each load until we are both trembling from the aftershocks, finally spent and drained of months of yearning. We lie side by side, coming down from the high of it all, her shaking, me caressing. When she stills, I push up on the small bed and lift her knee. She eyes me curiously but then realizes what I need. I have him tamed, but the wolf in me marks his mate, and I need to see it, need to see myself in her. I slip my finger inside her, eliciting a gasp. When I spill from her body, it only makes me hard again. This time, she lets me bend her over, and after a long look at our pleasure, slick on her thighs, I plunge deep, and take her again. Until she screams my name.

Epilogue: "I don't need these. Not any of this." "I want this camel. This is all I'm taking just to remember him by." "Sometimes you hold on to a big thing, an overwhelming thing because you believe if you let it go you'll use the memories tucked into its walls, its boxes, its cushions and seams. You can't see the way out from under it and so you ignore the idea of parting with it and let it bend and break even further. What if you let the thing go and you lose a piece of the person who left it to you? Then circumstances tip or you get a push and you gather the courage to do it and it's easier than you anticipate. You hang on to something small. You tuck a camel in a rolling cart, some fabric scraps in a garbage bag, and you promise to find a place for it. You keep what you can carry and you make it enough.

Diesel saw that before any of us. The rest of us lived in ignorance, unwilling to bend and break. Not him, he ripped open those walls inside me, refusing to hide from the truth. Some might call him crazy, but maybe he’s just enlightened… and, okay, a little crazy. Kenzo… fuck, Kenzo. It will kill him if I die. He already lost his mum, and he’s got such a caring heart, even if you don’t always see it. When he loves, he loves hard. He’s all in. Ryder will blame himself. He thinks it’s his job to protect everyone, to see everything coming, but he’s only human. It won’t stop him from hating himself however. Garrett is so close to the edge anyway, this might push him over. My scarred enforcer will become lost in his demons until it gets him killed.

Will you beg if I don't give it to you, Dina?" he whispered in her ear, sending a tremble right to her core. She would, she'd beg. With one rough tug he pulled her underwear off. "Yes," she hissed as he caressed the seam of her pussy, his fingers rubbing against her clit with just the right amount of friction. She wasn't sure how long she could last. When he plunged his fingers inside of her, Dina cried out. How could it feel so good? Had it ever felt this good with anyone else? "Tell me, Dina. Is this all for me?" Scott growled against her throat. "Yes, take it. Take me." She shuddered as his fingers pressed deeper, as she rode the palm of his hand. "So fucking wet," he groaned. The hard press of his cock against her ass cheeks nearly sent her into a frenzy as he continued to fuck her with his fingers. "Bend over for me so I can see you," he said, and Dina bent forward, resting her arms on the bed. Scott was gone for a split second, and as his fingers left her she already felt bereft. "Please, please," she moaned again, now on all fours. "Such a pretty cunt," Scott said, his voice breaking apart behind her. Then suddenly the emptiness ended, and Scott's mouth was there, licking, sucking at her pussy. Drinking her in. Dina let out a cry of pleasure as the tickle of Scott's beard brushed against her folds. He buried his face in her pussy, his tongue pushing inside her, flicking back and forth. And then his fingers were there as his mouth found her clit and sucked and kissed and then the orgasm broke through Dina, arching her back in pleasure, and she grabbed fistfuls of the bedsheets. Scott didn't let up; he continued to hold her there, burying his face deeper into her seam. "Good girl," he said, lifting Dina back up as if she weighed nothing. She was glad to have his hands on her. She wasn't sure she'd be able to use her legs at that moment. She faced Scott, looking up at him through half-closed eyes. The aftermath of the orgasm still rippled through her in electric shockwaves. But she still wanted more, needed more. She needed to be filled by him.

I like books too much.” He paused mid-kiss. “What?” “You don’t know me. So I’m telling you about me. So you’ll know me and why it’s better if I leave. I read and I forget anything else exists. And I don’t forgive anyone who isn’t careful with books. I hate people who tear out pages, who bend corners, who break the spines.” “Unforgivable,” he agreed. She pulled back and frowned at him. “Are you laughing at me?” “Yes. These aren’t flaws. They’re just . . . you. And I like you. Very much.

Look, you’re like a branch on a mighty oak tree. If you don’t bend with the wind sometimes, you will break.

Sometimes, Gerald, people break the law so clearly you can hear it crack like a tree branch snapped in two. But other times, like a baker twisting a roll of dough into a pretzel, you only bend the law. You don’t tear it. You don’t break it. You end up with something better than the ingredients you started with. And the final result is beautiful to behold.

Let me tell you something, Johnny. And don't you ever forget this. Men make their own puny little laws for the courts. Men bend those laws, break them, change them, corrupt them, turn them to their own use. But there are other laws. Basic laws. And the strongest law of all is survival. When your honor, your family, your home, your privacy, are threatened, you have to think of how you'll answer to your God. And to hell with men's chickenshit little laws.

They sat in a sphere of quiet, save the sound of their breathing and the carriage’s creaks and sways. Outside, the coachman yelled his encouragement to the steeds moving them forward. The whole carriage cocooned them in a peculiar world with the heaven’s wool-thick mists pressing against the windows. Her hand didn’t stop rubbing his neck, but she shifted her leg, bending her knee to rest her leg on his thigh. Her patten slipped off, dropping to the floor with a thud. Cyrus’s head moved off the squab. “Are you undressing for my benefit?” His smile’s wicked curve played on her. From her stays to her drawers, everything was too tight, too much against her skin. Cyrus reached for her hand working his neck muscles. He brought it to his lips and kissed her knuckles thrice with slow adoration. “We don’t have to stop,” she said, her voice breathy and quick. “I’m sure you have more aches and pains.” Mid-kiss, he smiled against the back of her hand, his warm breath brushing her skin. “There are so many ways a man could go with that.” Humor lightened his voice. “But I’m sure you mean to provide tender care to my neck only.” She grinned at her unintended innuendo. This was the experience she craved—to flirt and tease, to kiss and touch. Cyrus put his lips to her wrist, marking her with hot kisses. A spangle of pleasure shot up her arm. “You would break down the meanest soul with your soft heart.” He set her hand on the blanket’s scratchy folds, his thumb caressing her wrist. “High praise, indeed, sir.” Tinseled sparks danced across her skin, not letting her recover from those gentle touches, his lips to her arm. He stroked a lone finger on her hand that rested between them. “And you don’t care one bit that I’m the son of a Midland swine farmer, do you?” Cyrus asked the unexpected question, but his voice conveyed confidence in her answer. Was her chivalrous brawler showing a hidden spot? She peered at him, wanting a better view of his shadowed features. How was she to decipher this latest turn? The carriage bumped and rocked, and the outside candle lantern swung another shaft of light inside. His quicksilver stare pinned her. “Miss Mayhew, have you ever wondered how a freehold farmer got to be in such a fine place?

She wet her lips, clenching her fists against my shoulders. “Im afraid of giving you control again. And, I’m afraid of how I’ll react, but I want it. It is what it is.” I can be reasonable, but you need to stop considering the impossible. You can’t go home, you can’t escape, and I can’t let you go. It is what it is. How dare she use those words against me? My anger swelled, vibrating through my muscles, but Rose didn’t move-she didn’t even look worried. Her head shook slightly, then she pressed her lips against mine. Coaxing me past the anger, and back to sanity. I felt like a hundred pound weight sat on my chest by the time she finished. “Where’d all that come from?” She dragged her hand through her hair. “I figured it was about time I give you a little reminder that I’m not so easily broken. Whatever it is you need, I’m game-I do like… watching you. The look you get when you’re up to no good and can’t hold back. I could get off on that.” With a nervous giggle, she dropped her hear forward, her hair creating a curtain around her face. I brushed it back, then pushed her to the floor again, pinning her under me. "God, I love you.

You want to borrow my girlfriend?” Carson shouted later that afternoon, promptly dropping the box in his hands. The cardboard smashed onto the floor of Carson and Holly’s new glorious kitchen with a resounding thunk and the distinct sound of glass shattering. “My new plates!” Holly wailed, immediately sinking to her knees. She ripped open the tape closing the two flaps together and peered into the box then looked up at Carson in horror. “You’re a monster!” Carson scowled at her. “I’ll buy you new plates.” The scowl deepened. “That is, if I decide not to break up with you. I can’t believe this was your idea. I told Garrett you and Shelby shouldn’t hang out. The two of you are trouble together.” “They’re just trying to help me out,” Will pointed out, experiencing a jolt of sympathy at the despair on Holly’s face. He swiftly knelt down and tried to pry her hands out of the box. “Quit sticking your fingers in there, Hol. It’s filled with broken glass.” Carson let out an enraged roar. “Don’t you dare console my girlfriend. My girlfriend!” Holly got to her feet, planting her hands on her hips. “Now I’m definitely going,” she shot out. “You broke my plates.” “So you’re going to play house with my lieutenant as punishment?” “He’s in love with another woman!” “Well, I’m in love with you!” Holly’s eyes softened. “Doesn’t it make you love me more, knowing I’m willing to help out one of your friends?” A sigh slid out of Carson’s mouth. “What is it with you and helping people? Didn’t we just decide you’re not going to drop everything for your family anymore?” “This isn’t my family. It’s yours.” “Will and I aren’t related.” “You’re SEALs. Of course you’re related.” Another sigh. “Yeah, you’re right.” Carson took a step forward and pulled Holly into his arms. “Fine, you can go.” “Really?” “I just said it, didn’t I?” Holly threw her arms around her boyfriend. The two proceeded to make out as if Will wasn’t in the kitchen. He shook his head to himself. He wasn’t quite certain how they’d gone from furious to calm to horny in a matter of seconds, but he wasn’t complaining. Ever since Holly and Shelby had burst into his house this morning, he’d been warming up to the plan, starting to believe it might actually work. He was glad Carson hadn’t put up more of a fight. Slipping his hands in the pockets of his khakis, he let the couple smooch a while longer, then cleared his throat. “Uh, guys?” The two pulled apart sheepishly. “Sorry,” Holly said. “Forgot you were here.” Story of his life, women forgetting he was standing right in front of them. Hopefully not for much longer, though. “So how is this going to work?” Carson asked, bending down to retrieve the fallen box. He glanced at his girlfriend. “I’m sorry about the plates, sweetheart. We’ll go out and buy some tomorrow, ’kay?” “I’m holding you to that.” With a stern look, she headed for the fridge and grabbed a can of soda. Flicking the tab, she raised the can to her lips, sipped, and then said, “Will and I are going to Hunter Ridge tomorrow. Apparently there’s some fair going on this weekend.

**Verse 1:** When the storms roll in, and the skies turn black, I plant my feet, ain't no turning back. The winds may howl, the floods may rise, But I've got a fire that never dies. **Chorus:** Resilience, it's my middle name, Through the thunder and the rain. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll weather it all. **Verse 2:** Life's thrown curves, knocked me off my track, But like a boomerang, I always come back. Scars on my skin, stories they tell, Of a survivor's heart that knows no farewell. **Chorus:** Resilience, it's the song I sing, In the face of everything. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll outlast it all. **Bridge:** There's a strength that grows, with every fall, A voice that rises, above it all. I'm not just a number, I'm not just a name, I'm resilience, in this life's game. **Chorus:** Resilience, it's the path I choose, With every challenge, I refuse to lose. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll conquer it all. **Outro:** So let the records show, let the story be told, Of a spirit unbroken, a will untold. With resilience, I'm uncontainable, Unstoppable, and unbreakable. May this song inspire strength and determination in anyone facing adversity. Keep standing tall!

I want to see you,” I demand. Her eyes widen, surrounded by thick, dark lashes. “Open your legs wide and bend over the desk.” She tightens the belt around my neck. “I don’t take orders.” “You do if you want that sweet cunt of yours eaten out and to be dripping down my fingers. No sex.” She rolls her eyes, and I squeeze her cheeks again. “Stop being so defiant all the time, and let me break you into a million pieces.

World is My Brotherhood (Sonnet 1616) No neighborhood without brotherhood, No sainthood without martyrdom. Martyrdom doesn't mean dying in body, but to be lost in others' ascension. You're born with a human backbone, Don't let it be vilified by cowardice. Backbone responsible is backbone honored, Backbone responsible is antidote to malice. World is in your care, carry it with grace. No bigger disgrace than backbone bending! Find a cause that honors your human backbone, Humans can break, while animals bend for nothing. Stars-n-stripes, union jack, all trivial, for the world is my neighborhood. I got no brotherhood of cult or creed, for the world is my brotherhood.

Don't bend, don't break, baby don't back down.

[Verse] I got the blues settin' in Life dealt a hand real tough But I'll face the day my friend Even when it feels real rough [Verse 2] Storm and strife all around Hard times knockin' at my door But they won't steal my ground I'll fight them More and more [Chorus] It's okay Not to be okay To feel lost in the light I'll find my way someday Through the dark of the night [Verse 3] Resilience is my chosen path Challenges I won't lose Even when they bring the wrath I bend I don't break I choose [Bridge] Though the road feels long And the night feels cold I know where I belong With a heart that's bold [Verse 4] Standin' tall through the pain When life turns out to be cruel I dance in the rain Bend Not break That's my rule

And I don't forgive anyone who isn't careful with books. I hate people who tear out pages, who bend corners, who break the spines

I've got the blues, they're settin' in, Life's dealt a hand, and it ain't good. But I'll find the strength to face the day. But I'll keep on fighting through the storm and the strife, Hard times may bend me, but they won't take my life. It's okay, not to be okay, To feel lost, in the light of day. I'll find my way through the dark somehow, But it's okay, to not be okay right now. Resilience, it's the path I choose, With every challenge, I refuse to lose. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll conquer it all. I'll keep moving on to where I need to be. With every step, I'll find my way, For every broken heart, for every goodbye, Hurt me with the truth, but never comfort me with a lie.

I've got the blues I've got the blues, they're settin' in, Life's dealt a hand, and it ain't good. But I'll find the strength to face the day. But I'll keep on fighting through the storm and the strife, Hard times may bend me, but they won't take my life. It's okay, not to be okay, To feel lost, in the light of day. I'll find my way through the dark somehow, But it's okay, to not be okay right now. Resilience, it's the path I choose, With every challenge, I refuse to lose. I bend, I don't break, I stand tall, With resilience, I'll conquer it all. I'll keep moving on to where I need to be. With every step, I'll find my way, For every broken heart, for every goodbye, Hurt me with the truth, but never comfort me with a lie.

It’s ok to laugh when you’re in pain. Some people seem to have forgotten that that’s the whole point of humor. To soften and bend, so that we don’t break.

You were born in the wrong country, Sashenka. You’re naive and uncompromising. You don’t bend, and sooner or later, our motherland will break you. It breaks everyone.

You won't miss me anyway," I tell Sebastian, my voice breaking on the last word. "You have each other." I turn on my heels, leaving Carole and Keith to reason with a still-arguing Lucia. I keep my head down as I descend the hill toward Rockford Manor, not noticing that I'm being followed until I feel a hand on my shoulder. "It's not true, what you said." I turn around at Sebastian's voice, feeling a strange swooping in my stomach as I face him. "What isn't true?" "That I won't miss you. Because I will. I'll miss you every summer and every holiday if you don't come back," he says, looking at me earnestly. "I'll miss you every time I see a bellflower or anything else that reminds me of my friend Ginny Rockford." Tears prick at the back of my eyelids as he speaks. He can't know how much his words mean to me; how they make everything simultaneously better and worse. But before I can answer, Sebastian bends down and brushes his lips against my cheek. I gasp, reaching up to touch my face in awe. Nothing should be able to make me feel happy after all I've just lost--- but this kiss, platonic though it may be, gives me a moment of pure joy. "Goodbye, Ginny," he says softly. "Till we meet again." "Goodbye," I echo, still touching my cheek as he walks back to rejoin Lucia. When he's no longer within earshot, I whisper, "I'll never forget you.

The Department is wary of fanatics. [They] don’t bend; they break.

So why are medics here? Because panic and death, near death, even your own, is a peculiar drug, and whether or not it’s what the injured and the sick and the desperate want to hear, the people who show up do so because they like it. Disasters, even the small ones, mean freedom. Freedom to bend the rules, break the rules, disregard the rules. Maybe I don’t even know the rules, just make them up as I go along. The people who stay are the ones who like those moments and all that comes with them, even the hard parts.

I love how easily you bend for me.” “Just don't expect me to break,” I counter breathlessly. He hums, as if that's yet to be determined. “But that's my favorite part,” he croons against my lips.

I love how easily you bend for me.” “Just don't expect me to break,” I counter breathlessly.

Digital Transformation is like a Bamboo Plantation-Bend but don't break. Be flexible yet firmly rooted. Show resilience while highly sustainable!

His face paled, and he stroked a hand down the mare's cobweb-coloured mane. 'I was forced to watch as my father butchered the female I loved. My brothers forced me to watch.' My heart tightened for him- for the pain that haunted him. 'There was no magic spell, no miracle to bring her back. There were no gathered High Lords to resurrect her. I watched, and she died, and I will never forget that moment when I heard her heart stop beating.' My eyes burned. 'Tamlin got what I didn't,' Lucien said softly, his breathing ragged. 'We all heard your neck break. But you got to come back. And I doubt that he will ever forget that sound, either. And he will do everything in his power to protect you from that danger again, even if it means keeping secrets, even if it means sticking to rules you don't like. In this, he will not bend. So don't ask him to- not yet.' I had no words in my head, my heart. Giving Tamlin time, letting him adjust... It was the least I could do.