Bill Joy Quotes

What a joy walking is. All the cares of life, all the hopeless, inept fuckwits that God has strewn along the Bill Bryson Highway of Life suddenly seem far away and harmless, and the world becomes tranquil and welcoming and good.

Don't put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.

Dysfunctional Belief: Happiness is having it all. Reframe: Happiness is letting go of what you don’t need.

Set goals so big that unless God helps you, you will be a miserable failure.

A big group of daily friends or a white painted house with bills and mirrors, are not a necessity to me—but an intelligent conversation while sharing another coffee, is.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, where you think you are going, what job or career you have had or think you should have. You are not too late, and you’re not too early.

Bill Joy famously pointed out: “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.

[L]ife is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten.

Our minds are generally lazy and like to get rid of problems as quickly as possible, so they surround first ideas with a lot of positive chemicals to make us “fall in love” with them. Do not fall in love with your first idea.

Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps. All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future-dreams that sometimes come true. Such is life. Yet life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath.

A coherent life is one lived in such a way that you can clearly connect the dots between three things: who you are, what you believe, what you are doing.

She was the kind of elegance That would never tarnish. A mixture of lace and mesh, Like a classic heirloom that begged to be worn. She was sharp intellect and quick wit. The type of woman that spoke her mind, Even if it shook. (Or even if no one was listening.) She was beautiful. But not someone you’d see in magazines, Her hips were too wide, her hair a mess of wispy tendrils, (Rather, she was actually very ordinary.) My, was she stubborn! She’d drive you mad! (Sometimes, you’d probably call her crazy.) But mostly, her laughter was a joyful moments. Like a warm towel fresh from the dryer, Or finding a twenty-dollar bill in your winter coat. And that was the true revelation. That magic does exist, It ran through her like a wild, fiery current.

All this good fortune, all this fierce joy ... it was wrong. Surely the universe could not allow this amount of happiness in one man, not without presenting a bill. Somewhere a big dark wave was cresting, and when it broke over his head it would wash everything away. Some days, he was sure he could hear its distant roar ...

In the midst of aches in the joints, anxiety over the payment of bills, concern for the safety of those you love, envy of the rich, fear of robbers, dog-weariness at the end of a long day, and the unacceptable slipping away of youth, there does occasionally appear, like a ray of light piercing the clouds, a moment of joy. Perhaps you have entered the house and sat down before removing your boots. A friend has pressed a drink into your hands, and is telling you the latest news. You see from his face that he's glad you've come in; and you are glad too. Glad to be sitting down, glad of the warming glow of the dirnk, glad of your friend's furrowed brow and eager speech. For this moment, nothing more is required. It is in its way unimprovable. This is what I mean by the Great Enough.

We don’t want to be uncomfortable. We want a quick and dirty “how-to” list for happiness. I don’t fit that bill. Never have. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to skip over the hard stuff, but it just doesn’t work. We don’t change, we don’t grow, and we don’t move forward without the work. If we really want to live a joyful, connected, and meaningful life, we must talk about things that get in the way.

Well, limbo is not a good place to be.

A well-designed life is a life that is generative—it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise. You get out of it more than you put in. There is a lot more than “lather, rinse, repeat” in a well-designed life.

You can’t change employers’ perceptions. Instead of changing how they think, how about working on changing how you appear to them?

As a life designer, you need to embrace two philosophies: 1. You choose better when you have lots of good ideas to choose from. 2. You never choose your first solution to any problem.

Many people operate under the dysfunctional belief that they just need to find out what they are passionate about. Once they know their passion, everything else will somehow magically fall into place. We hate this idea for one very good reason: most people don’t know their passion.

What a joy walking is. All the cares of life, all the hopeless, inept fuckwits that God has strewn along the Bill Bryson Highway of Life, suddenly seem far away and harmless, and the world becomes tranquil and welcoming and good. And to walk with old friends multiplies the pleasure a hundredfold.

Dysfunctional Belief: To be happy, I have to make the right choice. Reframe: There is no right choice—only good choosing.

It is our responsibility to make adjustments so we can live within God’s provision and be joyfully content whether He provides a little or a lot in any given season.

This is one of the reasons I get such joy from studying evolution. This kind of science is amazing and sexy.

Dysfunctional Belief: I should already know where I’m going. Reframe: You can’t know where you are going until you know where you are.

Inside the envelope was a second envelope with two hundred and forty dollars wrapped inside a carbon copy of a bill marked paid and signed by the previous owner’s wife. I counted it thrice to be accurate. Again for the pleasure. Then just to feel joy. Oh my, sweet goddamn. Sweetest goddamn. I sat for a few minutes doing nothing but feeling the money in my hands.

We are being propelled into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes…. The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge. —BILL JOY, “WHY THE FUTURE DOESN’T NEED US

Yesterday it was sun outside. The sky was blue and people were lying under blooming cherry trees in the park. It was Friday, so records were released, that people have been working on for years. Friends around me find success and level up, do fancy photo shoots and get featured on big, white, movie screens. There were parties and lovers, hand in hand, laughing perfectly loud, but I walked numbly through the park, round and round, 40 times for 4 hours just wanting to make it through the day. There's a weight that inhabits my chest some times. Like a lock in my throat, making it hard to breathe. A little less air got through and the sky was so blue I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. Packed orders, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the desk tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind, but anxiety eats you up and I just want to be fine. This is not beautiful. This is not useful. You can not do anything with it and it tries to control you, throw you off your balance and lovely ways but you can not let it. I cleaned up. Took myself for a walk. Tried to keep my eyes on the sky. Stayed away from the alcohol, stayed away from the destructive tools we learn to use. the smoking and the starving, the running, the madness, thinking it will help but it only feeds the fire and I don't want to hurt myself anymore. I made it through and today I woke up, lighter and proud because I'm still here. There are flowers growing outside my window. The coffee is warm, the air is pure. In a few hours I'll be on a train on my way to sing for people who invited me to come, to sing, for them. My own songs, that I created. Me—little me. From nowhere at all. And I have people around that I like and can laugh with, and it's spring again. It will always be spring again. And there will always be a new day.

These are all gravity problems—meaning they are not real problems. Why? Because in life design, if it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. Let’s repeat that. If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved. Here

Since you types wouldn't be happy unless you're unhappy, I wouldn't dare try to take your joy away by solving your problems.

In fact, in the United States, only 27 percent of college grads end up in a career related to their majors.

And do you know who wrote much of the software that allows you to access the Internet? Bill Joy.

His father asked Ethan in a raspy voice, “You spend time with your son?” “Much as I can,” he’d answered, but his father had caught the lie in his eyes. “It’ll be your loss, Ethan. Day’ll come, when he’s grown and it’s too late, that you’d give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn’t see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won’t last, so you revel in it while it’s here.” Ethan thinks often of that conversation, mostly when he’s lying awake in bed at night and everyone else is asleep, and his life screaming past at the speed of light—the weight of bills and the future and his prior failings and all these moments he’s missing—all the lost joy—perched like a boulder on his chest.

We believe that people actually need to take time to develop a passion. And the research shows that, for most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery—not before. To put it more succinctly: passion is the result of a good life design, not the cause.

we have developed a series of emotional thermostats as well, by far the most potent of which is television itself. instead of really experiencing the highs and lows, pains and joys, that make up a life, many of us use TV just as we use central heating- to flatten our variations, to maintain a constant "optimal" temperature.

Decision making is stressful, so the best time to prepare for good choosing is when there’s no choice at stake. That’s when you can invest in your emotional intelligence and spiritual maturity so that those muscles are strong and trained when it’s decision or game time. The best time to get ready for step three is months or years before the choosing. That means the best time is right now—today is the best day to start making that investment.

What a joy walking is. All the cares of life, all the hopeless, inept fuckwits that God has strewn along the Bill Bryson Highway of Life, suddenly seem far away and harmless, and the world becomes tranquil and welcoming and good.

Monet’s “Waterlilies” (for Bill and Sonja) Today as the news from Selma and Saigon poisons the air like fallout, I come again to see the serene great picture that I love. Here space and time exist in light the eye like the eye of faith believes. The seen, the known dissolve in iridescence, become illusive flesh of light that was not, was, forever is. O light beheld as through refracting tears. Here is the aura of that world each of us has lost. Here is the shadow of its joy.

Only one thing is inarguable: without a body of convictions, life becomes a series of events in futile pursuit of utopia on earth, or of endless material possessions, or of sybaritic comfort, or of self-satisfied mastery of a narrow series of intellectual disciplines.... If you choose faith, then you move beyond ritual to search for your own individual path. You become engaged in a process of remaking yourself--by what you do, what values you adopt, what you teach your children, how closely you listen to a neighbor, how good a steward you are for future generations, how sincerely you try to understand another persons suffering and joy, and how loving you are, not only to those who you love but also to strangers.

We also tend to get mired in what we call gravity problems. “I’ve got this big problem and I don’t know what to do about it.” “Oh, wow, Jane, what’s the problem?” “It’s gravity.” “Gravity?” “Yeah—it’s making me crazy! I’m feeling heavier and heavier. I can’t get my bike up hills easily. It never leaves me. I don’t know what to do about it. Can you help me?” This

When you finally get down to making a choice from your narrowed-down list of alternatives, and you’ve cognitively evaluated the issues, and emotionally and meditatively contemplated the alternatives, it may be time to grok it. To grok a choice, you don’t think about it—you become it. Let’s say you’ve got three alternatives. Pick any one of them and stop thinking about it. Choose to think for the next one to three days that you are the person who has made the decision to pick Alternative A.

It may be the first day of your life, the prime of youth or several decades in, when Medicine Woman calls you. Your name on her list. Her new initiate. She crept in whilst you were sleeping, when you over-exerted, when you kissed him, or ate that, or lived there or pushed too hard just one time too many. She crept in and curled up in your cells, your heart, waiting to meet you. Longing to know you. Longing for you to know her, at last. And what feels like the end is in fact a beginning, of a new road, an unknown path of pain and healing. She will show you how to slow down, she will run her fingers roughly through your life and help you sort the busyness from what matters, she will show you how to find support… and who you really are, beyond your roles and expectations… and even more beyond the System the world has forced you into. She transports you into the timelessness of big pains and tiny joys. Initiates you into your strength. Into your love. Into your courage. Into a world beyond your control. She has sent me an invitation. I see yours too, tucked in your bag, amongst all the receipts and bills, the pens and detritus of life. Take it out. It is time.

The most universal expression of all is a smile, which is rather a nice thought. No society has ever been found that doesn’t respond to smiles in the same way. True smiles are brief—between two-thirds of a second and four seconds. That’s why a held smile begins to look menacing. A true smile is the one expression that we cannot fake. As the French anatomist G.-B. Duchenne de Boulogne noticed as long ago as 1862, a genuine, spontaneous smile involves the contraction of the orbicularis oculi muscle in each eye, and we have no independent control over those muscles. You can make your mouth smile, but you can’t make your eyes sparkle with feigned joy.

What?” he asked in a low voice. “You looked like you spent your last joy bill.” He hissed, “What does that even mean?” “I don’t know. I was just trying it out.” “Well, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. And anyway, I’ve got plenty of joy bills. Loads.” Helen said, “What’s happening there on your phone?” “A very small joy debit.” His older sister’s smile shone brightly. “You see, it does work. Now, did you or did you not need to get out of that room?” Gansey inclined his head in slight acknowledgment. Gansey siblings knew each other well. “You’re so welcome,” Helen said. “Let me know if you need me to write a joy check.” “I really don’t think it works.

Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation--who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him--but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope--qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

Joy is a well-made object, equalled only by the joy of making it.

Character is that which reveals moral purpose. —ARISTOTLE

The key is to reframe your idea of options by realizing that if you have too many options, you actually have none at all. If

And what a joy it is to walk in it. England and Wales have 130,000 miles of public footpaths, about 2.2 miles of path for every square mile of area.

Jesus described a disciple as one who abides in Him, is obedient, bears fruit, glorifies God, has joy, and loves (see John 15:7–17).

I want to live in a society where people are intoxicated with the joy of making things.

The secret of success is constancy of purpose. —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Dysfunctional Belief: I should know where I’m going! Reframe: I won’t always know where I’m going—but I can always know whether I’m going in the right direction.

What a joy it is to arrive after dark at a snug-looking house, its windows filled with welcoming light, and know that it is yours and that inside is your family.

the table is among the most important activities in civilization. It is about intimacy, convivium, creativity, appetites, desire, euphoria, culture, and the joys of being alive.

Dysfunctional Belief: You should focus on your need to find a job. Reframe: You should focus on the hiring manager’s need to find the right person.

It’s not hard to imagine that if we added up all the hours spent trying to figure out life, for some of us they would outweigh the hours spent actually living life. Really. Living. Life. We

life is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten.

Did you know this is how other families are?...What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or living room. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here who knows the inside bloody leg measurement of his great-grandfather. And you know why they don't know? Because it doesn't fucking matter. As far as they're concerned, it's the past. This is what it's like in other families. They're not self-indulgent. They don't run around relishing, relishing the fact that they are utterly dysfunctional. They don't spend their time trying to find ways to make their lives more complicated. They just get on with it.

Let us have it plain: my society is comprised of metal-worshipers. They pray to metal, are owned by metal, and metal uses them; it shoots them, it stabs them. I witness its sycophants, grave zombies, moved about humorlessly as its agents. My minions are spiritually rapt as the ages climaxes in gunpowder. One notes that, upon first being handed a rifle -- by Burton or Speke? -- a chieftain blithely shot one of his own lackeys, expressing radiant joy as the man tumbled dead. Do not stop there, happy Klansman, but watch with me early in the morning as I come in from work: across the street here in the clean "burbs" your white policeman goes reverently to his car with a deer rifle coddled in his right arm like a precocious, beautiful child. This man lives with a pistol on his hip all week, but that is not enough, no, he is devout and it is the Christmas season. His own cowardice, affirmed by the use of guns, would not occur to him any more than the cowardice of God. The gun lobby, oh my peaceful friends, you may hate, but first you had better understand that it is a religion, only secondarily connected to the Bill of Rights. The thick-headed, sometimes even close to tearful, gaze you get when chatting with one of its partisans emanates from the view that they're holding a piece of God. There is no persuading them otherwise, even by a genus, because a life without guns implies the end of the known world to them. Any connection they make to our " pioneer past" is also a fraud, a wistful apology. Folks love a gun for what it can do. A murderer always thinks it was an accident, he says, as if a religious episode had passed over him.

At 2 P.M., two long, cold hours after starting, Everett concluded his speech to thunderous applause—motivated, one is bound to suspect, more by the joy of realizing it was over than by any message derived from the content—and

Oh, I do. I love it.’ Matt might not be able to see his sergeant, but he knew he was smiling. ‘Great! Why is that?’ ‘Because, in the dark, I’m equally as frightening as any other nasty bastard that’s lurking out there.’ ‘You like frightening people? Aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?’ ‘Oh, I love scaring the shit out of people, Mattie, but only the bad guys.’ Bill chuckled softly. ‘That’s reassuring.’ He was about to say more but heard a sharp intake of breath from his colleague.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

That’s the problem with letting go—it’s more of an inaction than an action, and your brain just hates that, the same way nature abhors a vacuum. So the key to letting go is to move on and grab something else. Put your attention on something—not off something.

Think of how similar this is to the stories of Bill Joy and Bill Gates. Both of them toiled away in a relatively obscure field without any great hopes for worldly success. But then -- boom! -- the personal computer revolution happened, and they had their ten thousand hours in. They were ready. Flom had the same experience. For twenty years he perfected his craft at Skadden, Arps. Then the world changed and he was ready. He didn't triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity.

Fun is the cheapest and best medicine in the world for your children as well as for yourself. Give it to them in good large doses. It will not only save you doctors' bills, but it will also help to make your children happier, and will improve their chances in life.

Because in life design, if it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. Let’s repeat that. If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. It’s a situation, a circumstance, a fact of life. It may be a drag (so to speak), but, like gravity, it’s not a problem that can be solved.

A well-designed life is a life that is generative—it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise. You get out of it more than you put in. There is a lot more than “lather, rinse, repeat” in a well-designed life. How

But Pauline would not take advice, She lit a match, it was so nice! It crackled so, it burned so clear,— Exactly like the picture here She jumped for joy and ran about, And was too pleased to put it out. Now see! Oh see! What a dreadful thing The fire has caught her apron-string; Her apron burns, her arms, her hair; She burns all over, everywhere.

No death, no suffering. No funeral homes, abortion clinics, or psychiatric wards. No rape, missing children, or drug rehabilitation centers. No bigotry, no muggings or killings. No worry or depression or economic downturns. No wars, no unemployment. No anguish over failure and miscommunication. No con men. No locks. No death. No mourning. No pain. No boredom. No arthritis, no handicaps, no cancer, no taxes, no bills, no computer crashes, no weeds, no bombs, no drunkenness, no traffic jams and accidents, no septic-tank backups. No mental illness. No unwanted e-mails. Close friendships but no cliques, laughter but no put-downs. Intimacy, but no temptation to immorality. No hidden agendas, no backroom deals, no betrayals. Imagine mealtimes full of stories, laughter, and joy, without fear of insensitivity, inappropriate behavior, anger, gossip, lust, jealousy, hurt feelings, or anything that eclipses joy. That will be Heaven.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities, and at this point, after examining the lives of Bill Joy and Bill Gates, pro hockey players and geniuses, and Joe Flom, the Janklows, and the Borgenichts, it shouldn't tbe hard to figure out where the perfect lawyer comes from. This person will have been born in a demographic trough, so as to have had the best of New York's public schools and the easiest time in the job market. He will be Jewish, of course, and so, locked out of the old-line downtown law firms on account of his "antecedents". This person's parents will have done meaningful work in the garment business, passing on to their children autonomy and complexity and the connection between effort and reward. A good school -- although it doesn't have to be a great school -- will have been attended. He need not have been the smartest in the class, only smart enough.

All at once, something wonderful happened, although at first, it seemed perfectly ordinary. A female goldfinch suddenly hove into view. She lighted weightlessly on the head of a bankside purple thistle and began emptying the seedcase, sowing the air with down. The lighted frame of my window filled. The down rose and spread in all directions, wafting over the dam’s waterfall and wavering between the tulip trunks and into the meadow. It vaulted towards the orchard in a puff; it hovered over the ripening pawpaw fruit and staggered up the steep faced terrace. It jerked, floated, rolled, veered, swayed. The thistle down faltered down toward the cottage and gusted clear to the woods; it rose and entered the shaggy arms of pecans. At last it strayed like snow, blind and sweet, into the pool of the creek upstream, and into the race of the creek over rocks down. It shuddered onto the tips of growing grasses, where it poised, light, still wracked by errant quivers. I was holding my breath. Is this where we live, I thought, in this place in this moment, with the air so light and wild? The same fixity that collapses stars and drives the mantis to devour her mate eased these creatures together before my eyes: the thick adept bill of the goldfinch, and the feathery coded down. How could anything be amiss? If I myself were lighter and frayed, I could ride these small winds, too, taking my chances, for the pleasure of being so purely played. The thistle is part of Adam’s curse. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake, in sorrow shalt thou eat of it; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” A terrible curse: But does the goldfinch eat thorny sorrow with the thistle or do I? If this furling air is fallen, then the fall was happy indeed. If this creekside garden is sorrow, then I seek martyrdom. I was weightless; my bones were taut skins blown with buoyant gas; it seemed that if I inhaled too deeply, my shoulders and head would waft off. Alleluia.

Holy One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but there have been errands to run, bills to pay, arrangements to make, meetings to attend, friends to entertain, washing to do . . . and I forget what it is I wanted to say to you, and mostly I forget what I’m about or why. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Eternal One, there is something I wanted to tell you, but my mind races with worrying and watching, with weighing and planning, with rutted slights and pothole grievances, with leaky dreams and leaky plumbing and leaky relationships I keep trying to plug up; and my attention is preoccupied with loneliness, with doubt, and with things I covet; and I forget what it is I want to say to you, and how to say it honestly or how to do much of anything. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Almighty One, there is something I wanted to ask you, but I stumble along the edge of a nameless rage, haunted by a hundred floating fears of terrorists of all kinds, of losing my job, of failing, of getting sick and old, having loved ones die, of dying . . . I forget what the real question is that I wanted to ask, and I forget to listen anyway because you seem unreal and far away, and I forget what it is I have forgotten. O God, don’t forget me, please, for the sake of Jesus Christ . . . O Father . . . in Heaven, perhaps you’ve already heard what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to ask is forgive me, heal me, increase my courage, please. Renew in me a little of love and faith, and a sense of confidence, and a vision of what it might mean to live as though you were real, and I mattered, and everyone was sister and brother. What I wanted to ask in my blundering way is don’t give up on me, don’t become too sad about me, but laugh with me, and try again with me, and I will with you, too. What I wanted to ask is for peace enough to want and work for more, for joy enough to share, and for awareness that is keen enough to sense your presence here, now, there, then, always.27

We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask. What is prayer like for you? Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit? Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the best Christian you possibly can be? Is it a mechanism by which you can bring your “shopping list” to God in order to have your needs met? Or are you running to meet your Lover, to commune with Him, hungering to find your joy in Him, and to be fulfilled in His presence?

Working in God’s field, by the way, is not meant to be a metaphor for how hard it is to follow God. Jesus is actually saying the opposite: that following God is about his generosity and grace, not about what we do or don’t do. It is a joy to follow God. It is rewarding to obey him. His goodness toward us is far beyond anything we could earn or deserve. We relate to God according to his rich measures of grace and generosity. We don’t have to worry about whether we measure up or whether we are working hard enough to please him. We don’t have to stress out about the future. We don’t have to waste our energy envying other people. We can simply enjoy God and trust God and love God. By the way, this will completely change the way we relate to others. It will make for great friendships. When we trust God to give us what is right, we can celebrate the good things God does for other people. That’s where we really begin to enjoy life. Instead of complaining that you got a cat and Bill got an Escalade, take your cat over for a ride in Bill’s Escalade.

When you think of yourself as an actual business, you shift your perspective from “I collect a paycheck” to “I am on a mission.” A mission not only to earn money to pay your bills, but a mission to stay healthy so you can do that, a mission to inspire others, a mission to leave things better than you found them, a mission to do work that matters, and a mission to hustle for joy over stress. A badass CEO Fear Boss doesn't do basic. Basic is still in bed. You are awake and ready. Ready to do the work required to protect your assets.

We've all read articles and seen comments online that claim poor people are poor because they're terrible at saving and planning. I don't believe that. No one wants to live in poverty, and saving is way easier when you have enough to pay your bills and then some. And let's be real: Forgoing that new barbeque isn't going to get any of these families out of poverty. Are we really saying that poor people shouldn't be angle to have things in their lives that bring them joy, just because there's always going to be something they 'should' be spending their money instead? That attitude sucks.

We've all read articles and seen comments online that claim poor people are poor because they're terrible at saving and planning. I don't believe that. No one wants to live in poverty, and saving is way easier when you have enough to pay your bills and then some. And let's be real: Forgoing that new barbeque isn't going to get any of these families out of poverty. Are we really saying that poor people shouldn't be able to have things in their lives that bring them joy, just because there's always going to be something they 'should' be spending their money on instead? That attitude sucks.

In 1684 Dr Halley came to visit at Cambridge [and] after they had some time together the Dr asked him what he thought the curve would be that would be described by the Planets supposing the force of attraction towards the Sun to be reciprocal to the square of their distance from it. This was a reference to a piece of mathematics known as the inverse square law, which Halley was convinced lay at the heart of the explanation, though he wasn’t sure exactly how. Sr Isaac replied immediately that it would be an [ellipse]. The Doctor, struck with joy & amazement, asked him how he knew it. ‘Why,’ saith he, ‘I have calculated it,’ whereupon Dr Halley asked him for his calculation without farther delay. Sr Isaac looked among his papers but could not find it. This was astounding – like someone saying he had found a cure for cancer but couldn’t remember where he had put the formula. Pressed by Halley, Newton agreed to redo the calculations and produce a paper. He did as promised, but then did much more. He retired for two years of intensive reflection and scribbling, and at length produced his masterwork: the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica or Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, better known as the Principia.

Every day I see or I hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It is what I was born for — to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world — to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant — but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these — the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass? — MARY OLIVER, “MINDFUL

Every time you break through a quitting point, you prove to yourself that quitting points are not as solid as some people think they are. With God’s help you can go through them more often than not. Every time you break through one, a victory is gained in heaven and in your life. Endurance has grown stronger in your spirit. The next time, even if the mountain is higher, you will have more endurance to help you climb it. Quitting points are painful—Jesus knows that even better than we do. He endured all the way to the cross. Every time the soldiers plucked his beard or someone slapped his face or the whip tore open his back, all hell screamed, “Quit!” When the nails went through his hands, bystanders ridiculed him and he couldn’t feel his Father’s presence anymore, his whole soul screamed, “Quit!” But by strength from above and by his own resolve, Jesus Christ crashed through his quitting points and died the death that makes salvation possible for every human being. I’m glad we follow a Savior who “for the joy set before him he endured the cross,” as Hebrews 12:2 attests. I’m glad that endurance, even though it will never be offered by the state lottery, can be developed. And I’m glad the Holy Spirit says to us every time we come to a quitting point, “Crash through it—I will give you the strength.

You'd make a lot of people feel better if you'd just wake," Kevis hung the new bag on the pole beside Breanne's bed. "You're safe where you are, I promise. I talked with Graegar—he came to see me. He says that he loves you. Barrigar does, too. You've never really talked with Barrigar. He's one of the best Larentii I know. Doesn't say much, but he sees everything around him." Kevis took a chair beside the bed with a sigh. "I think Barry's talent for noticing everything around him makes him a really good Protector. I know Conner loves him a lot—just like she loves Graegar. Connegar is Barrigar's son, you know. Barrigar is a wonderful parent. Connegar was Conner's first Larentii child, so he was named after her. Garegar is Graegar's child with Conner, and since he was second-born, he took a variation of his father's name for himself. Are you cold?" Kevis leaned forward and pulled the blanket up a little, covering Breanne's body up to her chin. "Now," he said, "Pheligar is Renegar's father. Kiarra is Renegar's mother. Renegar is Graegar's father; Grace is Graegar's mother. Graegar is Garegar's father, Conner is Garegar's mother." "If you don't shut up with Larentii lineage, I may punch you," Breanne's cobalt-blue eyes opened and she blinked in the light filtering through a nearby window. Even Bill heard Kevis' whoop of joy and popped out of his deck chair at a run.

Thich Nhat Hanh. a venerated Vietnamese Buddhist, speaks of a solution that is so utterly simple it seems profane. Be, body and mind, exactly where you are. That is, practice a mindfulness that makes you aware of each moment. Think to yourself, "I am breathing" when you're breathing; "I am anxious" when you're anxious; even, "I am washing the dishes" when you're washing the dishes. To be totally into this moment is the goal of mindfulness. Right now is precious and shall never pass this way again. A wave is a precious moment, amplified: a dynamic natural sculpture that shall never pass this way again. Out interaction with waves - to be fully in the moment, without relationship troubles, bills, or worries - is what frees us. Each moment that we are fully with waves is evidence of our ability to live in the here and now. There is nothing else in the universe when you're making that elegant bottom turn. Here. Now. Simple, but so elusive. A wave demands your attention. It is very difficult to be somewhere else, in your mind, when there is such a gorgeous creation of nature moving your way. Just being close to a wave brings us closer to being mindful. To surf them is the training ground for mindfulness. The ocean can seem chaotic, like the world we live in. But somehow we're forced to slice through the noise - to paddle around and through the adversities of life and get directly to the joy. This is what we need for liberation.

Inherent in this rejection of evolution is the idea that your curiosity about the world is misplaced and your common sense is wrong. This attack on reason is an attack on all of us. Children who accept this ludicrous perspective will find themselves opposed to progress. They will become society’s burdens rather than its producers, a prospect that I find very troubling. Not only that, these kids will never feel the joy of discovery that science brings. They will have to suppress the basic human curiosity that leads to asking questions, exploring the world around them, and making discoveries. They will miss out on countless exciting adventures. We’re robbing them of basic knowledge about their world and the joy that comes with it. It breaks my heart.

The real loser in the eastern forests has been the songbird. One of the most striking losses was the Carolina parakeet, a lovely, innocuous bird whose numbers in the wild were possibly exceeded only by the unbelievably numerous passenger pigeon. (When the first pilgrims came to America there were an estimated nine billion passenger pigeons—more than twice the number of all birds found in America today.) Both were hunted out of existence—the passenger pigeon for pig feed and the simple joy of blasting volumes of birds from the sky with blind ease, the Carolina parakeet because it ate farmers’ fruit and had a striking plumage that made a lovely ladies’ hat. In 1914, the last surviving members of each species died within weeks of each other in captivity. A similar unhappy fate awaited the delightful Bachman’s warbler. Always rare, it was said to have one of the loveliest songs of all birds. For years it escaped detection, but in 1939, two birders, operating independently in different places, coincidentally saw a Bachman’s warbler within two days of each other. Both shot the birds (nice work, boys!), and that, it appears, was that for the Bachman’s warbler. But there are almost certainly others that disappeared before anyone much noticed. John James Audubon painted three species of bird—the small-headed flycatcher, the carbonated warbler, and the Blue Mountain warbler—that have not been seen by anyone since. The same is true of Townsend’s bunting, of which there is one stuffed specimen in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. Between the 1940s and 1980s, the populations of migratory songbirds fell by 50 percent in the eastern United States (in large part because of loss of breeding sites and other vital wintering habitats in Latin America) and by some estimates are continuing to fall by 3 percent or so a year. Seventy percent of all eastern bird species have seen population declines since the 1960s. These days, the woods are a pretty quiet place.

Silence. Ah (...) Isn't that something? Did you know this is how other families are? They're quiet. Ask one of these people sitting here. They'll tell you. They've got famillies. This is how some families are all the time. And some people like to call these families repressed, or emotionally stunted or whatever, but do you know what I say? (...) I say, lucky fuckers. Lucky, lucky fuckers. (...) What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or a lounge. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here who knows the inside bloody leg measurement of his great-grandfather. And you know why they don't know? Because it doesn't fucking matter. As far as they're concerned, it's the past. This is what it's like in other families. They're not self-indulgent. They don't run around, relishing, relishing the fact that they are utterly dysfunctional. They don't spend their time trying to find ways to make their lives more complex. They just get on with it. Lucky bastards. Lucky motherfuckers.

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare, And the dark ribbons of the chimneys Veer downward; flicked by whips of air. Torn posters flutter; coldly sound The boom of trams and the rattle of hooves, And the clerks who hurry to the station Look, shuddering, over the eastern rooves, Thinking, each one, "Here comes the winter! "Please God I keep my job this year!" And bleakly, as the cold strikes through Their entrails like an icy spear, They think of rent, rates, season tickets, Insurance, coal, the skivvy's wages, Boots, school-bills and the next installment Upon the two twin beds from Drage's. For if in careless summer days In groves of Ashtaroth we whored, Repentant now, when winds blow cold, We kneel before our rightful lord; The lord of all, the money-god, Who rules us blood and hand and brain, Who gives the roof that stops the wind, And, giving, takes away again; Who spies with jealous, watchful care, Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways, Who picks our words and cuts our clothes, And maps the pattern of our days; Who chills our anger, curbs our hope. And buys our lives and pays with toys, Who claims as tribute broken faith, Accepted insults, muted joys; Who binds with chains the poet's wit, The navvy's strength, the soldier's pride, And lays the sleek, estranging shield Between the lover and his bride.

The historian Michael Walzer has argued that modern revolution was a task for the kind of ascetic, single-minded, self-denying personality that Calvinism sought to inculcate, and certainly some of the successful revolutionaries of the West would seem to fill the bill. As we have seen, the English revolutionary leader Oliver Cromwell, a Calvinist himself, railed perpetually against the festive inclinations of his troops. The Jacobin leader Robespierre despised disorderly gatherings, including “any group in which there is a tumult”—a hard thing to avoid during the French Revolution, one might think.73 His fellow revolutionary Louis de Saint-Just described the ideal “revolutionary man” in terms that would have been acceptable to any Puritan: “inflexible, but sensible; he is frugal; he is simple … honorable, he is sober, but not mawkish.”74 Lenin inveighed against “slovenliness … carelessness, untidiness, unpunctuality” as well as “dissoluteness in sexual life,”75 seeing himself as a “manager” and “controller” as well as a leader.76 For men like Robespierre and Lenin, the central revolutionary rite was the meeting—experienced in a sitting position, requiring no form of participation other than an occasional speech, and conducted according to strict rules of procedure. Dancing, singing, trances—these could only be distractions from the weighty business at hand.

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out—My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendant in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth still walks barefoot.

However, Rothschild was easily the most scientific collector of his age, though also the most regrettably lethal, for in the 1890s he became interested in Hawaii, perhaps the most temptingly vulnerable environment Earth has yet produced. Millions of years of isolation had allowed Hawaii to evolve 8,800 unique species of animals and plants. Of particular interest to Rothschild were the islands’ colorful and distinctive birds, often consisting of very small populations inhabiting extremely specific ranges. The tragedy for many Hawaiian birds was that they were not only distinctive, desirable, and rare—a dangerous combination in the best of circumstances—but also often heartbreakingly easy to take. The greater koa finch, an innocuous member of the honeycreeper family, lurked shyly in the canopies of koa trees, but if someone imitated its song it would abandon its cover at once and fly down in a show of welcome. The last of the species vanished in 1896, killed by Rothschild’s ace collector Harry Palmer, five years after the disappearance of its cousin the lesser koa finch, a bird so sublimely rare that only one has ever been seen: the one shot for Rothschild’s collection. Altogether during the decade or so of Rothschild’s most intensive collecting, at least nine species of Hawaiian birds vanished, but it may have been more. Rothschild was by no means alone in his zeal to capture birds at more or less any cost. Others in fact were more ruthless. In 1907 when a well-known collector named Alanson Bryan realized that he had shot the last three specimens of black mamos, a species of forest bird that had only been discovered the previous decade, he noted that the news filled him with “joy.

up with work I found meaningful. As a young person, I’d explored exactly nothing. Barack’s maturity, I realized, came in part from the years he’d logged as a community organizer and even, prior to that, a decidedly unfulfilling year he’d spent as a researcher at a Manhattan business consulting firm immediately after college. He’d tried out some things, gotten to know all sorts of people, and learned his own priorities along the way. I, meanwhile, had been so afraid of floundering, so eager for respectability and a way to pay the bills, that I’d marched myself unthinkingly into the law. In the span of a year, I’d gained Barack and lost Suzanne, and the power of those two things together had left me spinning. Suzanne’s sudden death had awakened me to the idea that I wanted more joy and meaning in my life. I couldn’t continue to live with my own complacency. I both credited and blamed Barack for the confusion. “If there were not a man in my life constantly questioning me about what drives me and what pains me,” I wrote in my journal, “would I be doing it on my own?” I mused about what I might do, what skills I might possibly have. Could I be a teacher? A college administrator? Could I run some sort of after-school program, a professionalized version of what I’d done for Czerny at Princeton? I was interested in possibly working for a foundation or a nonprofit. I was interested in helping underprivileged kids. I wondered if I could find a job that engaged my mind and still left me enough time to do volunteer work, or appreciate art, or have children. I wanted a life, basically. I wanted to feel whole. I made a list of issues that interested me: education, teen pregnancy, black self-esteem. A more virtuous

You need to make sure you always have a reserve of willpower available for the on-the-fly decision making and controlling your reactions. If you run your willpower tank too low, you’ll end up making poor choices or exploding at people. The following are some ways of making more willpower available to you: --Reduce the number of tasks you attempt to get done each day to a very small number. Always identify what your most important task is, and make sure you get that single task done. You can group together your trivial tasks, like replying to emails or paying bills online, and count those as just one item. --Refresh your available willpower by doing tasks slowly. My friend Toni Bernhard, author of How to Wake Up: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide to Navigating Joy and Sorrow, recommends doing a task 25% slower than your usual speed. I’m not saying you need to do this all the time, just when you feel scattered or overwhelmed. Slowing down in this way is considered a form of mindfulness practice. --Another way to refresh your willpower is by taking some slow breaths or doing any of the mindfulness practices from Chapter 5. Think of using mindfulness as running a cleanup on background processes that haven’t shut down correctly. By using mindfulness to do a cognitive cleanup, you’re not leaking mental energy to background worries and rumination. --Reduce decision making. For many people, especially those in management positions or raising kids, life involves constant decision making. Decision making leeches willpower. Find whatever ways you can to reduce decision making without it feeling like a sacrifice. Set up routines (like which meals you cook on particular nights of the week) that prevent you from needing to remake the same decisions over and over. Alternatively, outsource decision making to someone else whenever possible. Let other people make decisions to take them off your plate. --Reduce excess sensory stimulation. For example, close the door or put on some dorky giant headphones to block out noise. This will mean your mental processing power isn’t getting used up by having to filter out excess stimulation. This tip is especially important if you are a highly sensitive person.

We mostly use cognitive knowing—all that good, objective, organized, informational kind of knowing—the sort of knowing that gets you A’s in school. But we also have other ways of knowing, including the affective forms of intuitive, spiritual, and emotional knowing. Add to those both social knowing (with others) and kinesthetic knowing (in our bodies).

The key to step three is to make discerning decisions by applying more than one way of knowing, and in particular not applying just cognitive judgment by itself, which is informed but not reliable on its own. We aren’t suggesting making only emotional decisions, either. We all have examples of emotions getting people in trouble (though usually those are impulse emotions, and that’s a very different thing), so we’re not saying to swap your brain for your heart or your gut. We’re inviting you to integrate all your decision-making faculties, and to be sure you make space so your emotional and intuitive ways of knowing can surface in the process. In other words, don’t forget to listen to your knee or your gut or your heart, too.

Dysfunctional Belief: I am looking for a job. Reframe: I am pursuing a number of offers.

A well-designed life is a life that is generative—it is constantly creative, productive, changing, evolving, and there is always the possibility of surprise.

Ah yes, the joys of free enterprise, which is never free of anything be it taxes, bills, or stress.

You should be able to have joy in making the words. You do it for the same reason that God created the duck-billed platypus. A Hemingway God would not build the duck-billed platypus. It is too ridiculous, and too redundant, and too unlikely. But it makes so much more interesting a world having duck-billed platypuses everywhere.

Most of us have to make some trade-offs and compromises along the way, including some we may not like. If your Lifeview is that art is the only thing worth pursuing, and your Workview tells you that it’s critical to make enough money so your kids have everything they need, you are going to make a compromise in your Lifeview while your children are dependent and at home. But that will be okay, because it’s a conscious decision, which allows you to stay “on course” and coherent. Living coherently doesn’t mean everything is in perfect order all the time. It simply means you are living in alignment with your values and have not sacrificed your integrity along the way. When you have a good compass guiding you, you have the power to cut these kinds of deals with yourself. If you can see the connections between who you are, what you believe, and what you are doing, you will know when you are on course, when there is tension, when there might need to be some careful compromises, and when you are in need of a major course correction. Our experience with our students has shown that the ability to connect these three dots increases your sense of self, and that helps you create more meaning in your life and have greater satisfaction.