Closing Chapters In Life Quotes

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And it is a beautiful one!

It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn't matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.

I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.

I write short stories because I am one. I wish I was a novel. Breaths away from midnight, I know my final chapter is close. I look up at Valentino, wondering what life could’ve offered if I had more pages in me.

Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag.

It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over. Slowly, I began to realize that I could not go back and force things to be as they once were: those two years, which up until then had seemed an endless inferno, were now beginning to show me their true meaning.

Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

Perhaps it’s time, I muse, to close those chapters and remember the enduring lesson of my entrapment: that relationships, not accomplishments, are what’s important in life.

Men and women who come to the closing chapter of life disappointed because they did not attain the goal which they had set their hearts upon achieving, they teach you what not to do.

Your contributions will be remembered forever, even after you bid adieu to your earthly self. So consider making at least one meaningful contribution before the chapter of life closes.

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life.

I've learned that life is like a book. Sometimes we must close a chapter and begin the next one." —Hanz, Age 13, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, December 8

People say, "I have heart disease," not "I am heart disease." Somehow the presumption of a person's individuality is not compromised by those diagnostic labels. All the labels tell us is that the person has a specific challenge with which he or she struggles in a highly diverse life. But call someone "a schizophrenic" or "a borderline" and the shorthand has a way of closing the chapter on the person. It reduces a multifaceted human being to a diagnosis and lulls us into a false sense that those words tell us who the person is, rather than only telling us how the person suffers.

I write short stories because I am one. I wish I was a novel. Breaths away from midnight, I know my final chapter is close. I look up at Valentino, wondering what life could’ve offered if I had more pages in me.

I will build queendoms out of wreckages, and navigate through the chaos with nothing but the certainty of my inner voice. I've often found when one chapter closes another will open, no matter how long the final pages seem.

Every year you close a new chapter in your story. Please, please, please don't write the same one seventy-five times and call it a life.

A cool breeze lifted the hem of my nightgown. The birds began to chirp and sing and the first sparks of sunlight brought the dew drops to life.... When my fingers touched the back door, something inside me shifted - I could actually feel it. I knew Mrs. Odell was right. I felt the flutter of a page turn deep within me as a chapter in my Life Book came to a close.

Even in the most terrible chapters of my life I have always known a certain, savage beauty— in the color of the sky, the sense of birds flying close to my ear, the feel of the soft-loam earth and the joy of running through the untended woods until I became more animal than spirit.

No,” I hear myself say. “You’re not supposed to be here.” She’s sitting on my bed. She’s leaning back on her elbows, legs outstretched in front of her, crossed at the ankles. And while some part of me understands I must be dreaming, there’s another, overwhelmingly dominant part of me that refuses to accept this. Part of me wants to believe she’s really here, inches away from me, wearing this short, tight black dress that keeps slipping up her thighs. But everything about her looks different, oddly vibrant; the colors are all wrong. Her lips are a richer, deeper shade of pink; her eyes seem wider, darker. She’s wearing shoes I know she’d never wear. And strangest of all: she’s smiling at me. “Hi,” she whispers. It’s just one word, but my heart is already racing. I’m inching away from her, stumbling back and nearly slamming my skull against the headboard, when I realize my shoulder is no longer wounded. I look down at myself. My arms are both fully functional. I’m wearing nothing but a white T-shirt and my underwear. She shifts positions in an instant, propping herself up on her knees before crawling over to me. She climbs onto my lap. She’s now straddling my waist. I’m suddenly breathing too fast. Her lips are at my ear. Her words are so soft. “Kiss me,” she says. “Juliette—” “I came all the way here.” She’s still smiling at me. It’s a rare smile, the kind she’s never honored me with. But somehow, right now, she’s mine. She’s mine and she’s perfect and she wants me, and I’m not going to fight it. I don’t want to. Her hands are tugging at my shirt, pulling it up over my head. Tossing it to the floor. She leans forward and kisses my neck, just once, so slowly. My eyes fall closed. There aren’t enough words in this world to describe what I’m feeling. I feel her hands move down my chest, my stomach; her fingers run along the edge of my underwear. Her hair falls forward, grazing my skin, and I have to clench my fists to keep from pinning her to my bed. Every nerve ending in my body is awake. I’ve never felt so alive or so desperate in my life, and I’m sure if she could hear what I’m thinking right now, she’d run out the door and never come back. Because I want her. Now. Here. Everywhere. I want nothing between us. I want her clothes off and the lights on and I want to study her. I want to unzip her out of this dress and take my time with every inch of her. I can’t help my need to just stare; to know her and her features: the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the line of her jaw. I want to run my fingertips across the soft skin of her neck and trace it all the way down. I want to feel the weight of her pressed against me, wrapped around me. I can’t remember a reason why this can’t be right or real. I can’t focus on anything but the fact that she’s sitting on my lap, touching my chest, staring into my eyes like she might really love me. I wonder if I’ve actually died. But just as I lean in, she leans back, grinning before reaching behind her, never once breaking eye contact with me. “Don’t worry,” she whispers. “It’s almost over now.” Her words seem so strange, so familiar. “What do you mean?” “Just a little longer and I’ll leave.” “No.” I’m blinking fast, reaching for her. “No, don’t go—where are you going—” “You’ll be all right,” she says. “I promise.” “No—” But now she’s holding a gun. And pointing it at my heart.

Are you sad?” she asked him. Sincerely. “Do you need to go home and listen to all your mixed tapes and think about this chapter of your life closing?

This morning, I woke up different. I accepted that life goes on... I might still love you, I might still miss you, but I'm better off without you. So, I'm closing this chapter of hurt because I deserve to be happy. And the only way I'll reach that is by letting go of toxic people who don't want to see me grow. Holding on doesn't make me strong, but letting go does.

Are there any two words in all of the English language more closely twinned than courage and cowardice? I do not think there is a man alive who will not yearn to possess the former and dread to be accused of the latter. One is held to be the apogee of man's character, the other its nadir. An yet, to me the two sit side by side on the circle of life, removed from each other by the merest degree of arc. (MARCH - Chapter 11 - page 168)

An Afternoon in the Stacks Closing the book, I find I have left my head inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound, words adjusting themselves to their meaning. Long passages open at successive pages. An echo, continuous from the title onward, hums behind me. From in here the world looms, a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences carved out when an author traveled and a reader kept the way open. When this book ends I will pull it inside-out like a sock and throw it back in the library. But the rumor of it will haunt all that follows in my life. A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

If this is where this chapter ends, I wouldn’t really mind, because now I know I have plenty more chapters to write. I thought my story ended when my mom died—because I didn’t think there was a book without her. Because I know it was just the ending of a chapter. It was the close of part one. Even though Mom is gone, she’s still in every word of my story, because hers lives on in me. It lives on in the books that she read, and the ones she shared, and the people she met. Like mine will. There is a whole universe out there waiting to tell our stories. And for the first time since she left, life doesn’t feel like the end of a sentence. It feels like a prologue, and I have my two best friends beside me to follow wherever that adventure takes me. And that, I decide, is what my

There will be times in your life when you will have to stand alone in your pain and choke back all the injustice done to you. Letting go will be the hardest thing you have ever had to do because it means losing something you wish you didn't have to lose--the person that you care for. However, to be authentic--one person, it requires standing for truth as you know it to be, instead of having your dignity destroyed by another. It is a fire you have to walk through, in order to truly live. Sometimes, practicing faith by letting go is the most painful chapter of your life that will take every bit of courage for you to close, before you can be reborn.

Our life’s work is far greater than any individual container. The works we do are at most chapters. There will always be a new chapter, and another after that. Though some might be better than others, that is not our concern. Our objective is to be free to close one chapter and move on to the next, and to continue that process for as long as it pleases us.

After closing a bad chapter in life, allow your soul to heal your old and new wounds. Otherwise the script of next chapter will be the same, only characters will change.

I have tried so to write the first chapter that those who can't bear such a story will see at once what they are in for and close the book with the least waste of time.

All of our lives are a living, breathing story, and each heartbeat means a new page has been turned; chapters don't close, they continue.

Close the chapter of each day with hope in your heart. Though today may have tested your strength, tomorrow opens as a new page waiting to be written better.

As the orchestra lifted into "Darling Nikki," I took small breaths to keep tears from coming. I had not expected this --to feel the close of a chapter. The girlhood of my life over now.

I forgive you.’ This statement suggests attachment. If you have forgiven someone to close their chapter from your life, you won’t feel the need of saying it to them. They will just stop existing for you.

I write short stories because I am one. I wish I was a novel. Breaths away from midnight, I know my final chapter is close. I look up at Valentino, wondering what life could've offered if I had more pages in me.

No, this is not the beginning of a new chapter in my life; this is the beginning of a new book! That first book is already closed, ended, and tossed into the seas; this new book is newly opened, has just begun! Look, it is the first page! And it is a beautiful one!” ― C. JoyBell C.

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side…

Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter.

And I know, deep down, that it was the right thing to do, but my chest still hurts the same way it does on the last day of school or New Year's Eve or the night before my birthday. It's the end of a chapter in my life. And, yes, another one will eventually open where this one closed, but it's scary, taking away that piece of comfort. Of routine.

She picked up the book she was reading, Beyond the Ice Limit, found her dog-eared place at the beginning of chapter six, and began to read. The sea horizon lay against the sky, blue against perfect blue, and it seemed to beckon the ship southward, ever southward. She closed the book, put it down again. Not bad, but it lacked the punch of the original.

Close your eyes after having read this chapter to this point, and try to sense within yourself the source of power from which your own breathing and life forces come.

Close the chapter of each day with hope in your heart. Though today may have tested your strength, tomorrow opens as a new page, ready to be written with grace.

Taking your life closes one chapter, but leaves countless stories unfinished.

Before I go to sleep tonight; I will speak a nice prayer, I will let my worries leave my mind as silence fills the air. If I have a bed; to curl between the sheets, I am an inch more blessed; than the man, on the street. If I have a love to cuddle; in the comfort of my home, I am grateful, I still have their presence to tell them, I love them so. If I have healthy eyes, that I can choose to close; I am grateful for my sight, because some will never know. If I have a voice & glistening ears to listen; Than in all my glory, I am grateful for this livin' All that really matters; is what, most don't have the courage to see, Who you became; from the day of your birth, the dash and the final chapter that makes your story complete.

But then he came across a long chapter that he read from the first word to the last, with his lips tightly closed, his eyebrows pursed, concentrating—his face registering a total, almost deathlike look of earnest concentration—oblivious to every trace of life stirring around him. This chapter was entitled: “Concerning Death and Its Relation to the Indestructibility of Our Essential Nature.” He

My Eva. After all these years, I am still his, and he is still mine. "Épouse-moi. Je t'aime. That's what I wrote. I---I love you. Rémy. I always have." "I love you, too, Eva. And if the offer is still open, my answer is yes." And then he closes the final inches between us, and his lips are on mine, and I'm twenty-five again, my whole life ahead of me rather than behind, all the chapters still unwritten.

These changes, I believe, can be the basis of a true Islamic Reformation, one that progresses to the twenty-first century rather than regresses to the seventh. Some of these changes may strike readers as too fundamental to Islamic belief to be feasible. But like the partition walls or superfluous stairways that a successful renovation removes, they can in fact be modified without causing the entire structure to collapse. Indeed, I believe these modifications will actually strengthen Islam by making it easier for Muslims to live in harmony with the modern world. It is those hell-bent on restoring it to its original state who are much more likely to lead Islam to destruction. Here again are my five theses, nailed to a virtual door: 1. Ensure that Muhammad and the Qur’an are open to interpretation and criticism. 2. Give priority to this life, not the afterlife. 3. Shackle sharia and end its supremacy over secular law. 4. End the practice of “commanding right, forbidding wrong.” 5. Abandon the call to jihad. In the chapters that follow, I will explore the source of the ideas and doctrines in question and evaluate the prospects for reforming them. For now, we may simply note that they are closely interrelated.

I write short stories because I am one. I wish I was a novel. Breaths away from midnight, I know my final chapter is close. I look up at valentino, wondering what life could have offered if I had more pages in me.

Orion 11:59 p.m. I write short stories because I am one. I wish I was a novel. Breaths away from midnight, I know my final chapter is close. I look up at Valentino, wondering what life could’ve offered if I had more pages in me.

Instead, she closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and thinks of Remy, not his words, but the soft pleasure in his voice when he spoke of reading, the delight in his eyes, the joy, the hope. It will be a grueling journey, full of starts and stops and myriad frustrations. To decipher this first novel will take her almost a year—a year spent laboring over every line, trying to make sense of a sentence, then a page, then a chapter. And still, it will be a decade more before the act comes naturally, before the task itself dissolves, and she finds the hidden pleasure of the story. It will take time, but time is the one thing Addie has plenty of. So she opens her eyes, and starts again.

He is an incredible man, she thought. A chapter of his life comes to a close, Atticus tears down the old house and builds a new one in a new section of town. I couldn’t do it. They built an ice cream parlor where the old one was. Wonder who runs it?

One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing. Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused. Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life-shattering.

Each time we open a new chapter, we must close the previous one. Yet sometimes we are running so fast into what's next that we overlook the magnitude of honoring what was. We underestimate the potency of saying "thank you" or the power of ritualizing closure.

Life is too short, we are here for a reason to meet someone new to be part of our new life chapter/adventure. Stop being the prisoner of your past but be the builder of the future and or the present. Time to unlock the door and let the new one to enter. It is time to close the door of the past forever.

Almost any tasking man at Lockless would have traded his life for mine. But there was a weight of being so close to them, the weight that Thena had tried to warn me about, but something more, the crushing weight of seeing how the Quality truly lived, in all their luxury, and how much they really took from us.

Because as long as Spring is there, the windows shall always walk open! Each time a chapter closes by, my heart sinks in a whirlpool of emotions. Walking through a canvas of moments I smile with a bunch of happy tunes, often shunning my foolish heart for being too emotional too caring and too loving. But then a breeze clutches me in a smile of being alive, after all my heart feels and that spark of Life is all that Life is about. I warmly wrap them up in my heart, tucking every moment, every character in pages of a mulberry leaf! And walk on to a path of unknown, in a journey yet to be found, in a page yet to be written. I sit with my book and sip my heart's flow through my soul and with a smile embrace the morn of another beginning as the door closes a chapter only to find another. I inhale an experience and all along open my heart to walk ahead in a journey to find another part of my journey, to give my soul's part to another voyage in Life's amazing maze where each turn makes me wonder in awe of Him, who walks beside us when Strength goes dimming and Courage goes faltering, holding our head up against a burst of Sunshine, to wrap us on our Stardust of Self. I drink in the Sunshine, in the halo of a starry journey, some of it already lived while some yet to behold! Because as long as Spring is there, the windows shall always walk open!

Penny's story is more tragic than mine because there is very little goodness or love in it. Even in the most terrible chapters of my life I have always known a certain, savage beauty - in the color of the sky, the sense of birds flying close to my ear, the feel of the soft-loam earth and the joy of running through the untended woods until I become more animal than spirit.

So even though Grandpa's life has closed its final chapter, the story that he embodied continues each time we take a handful of dirt to check moisture levels or turn our head at the sound of the wind shifting directions before a storm. It lives on as we give thanks for the abundance that we have, whatever it looks like. It lives on in every decision we make that puts someone else first.

For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them. But I must close. I can only take up the actual story in the next chapter.   M.K. Gandhi The Ashram, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad 26th November, 1925

Stand up for 1 to 2 minutes, and thank God for the many blessings in your day and life. (Chapter 6 will inspire you even more with the power of gratitude for your mental health.) Stretch your shoulders and arms, but close your eyes to worship God in silence. Squat up and down 5 to 10 times while thinking about how you are becoming Daniel Strong. With each repetition, thank God for a strong, healthy body and the ability to move.

One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing. Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused. Severe illness wasn’t life-altering, it was life-shattering. It felt less like an epiphany—a piercing burst of light, illuminating What Really Matters—and more like someone had just firebombed the path forward. Now I would have to work around it.

To hell with that rotten century! Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life. A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. It’s a fair thing ahead. There’s no rot on this clean new hundred years. It’s not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years— why, we’ll crucify him head down over a privy.

I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all. When Dad was tucking me in that night and we were talking about the book, I asked if he could think of a solution to that problem. "Which problem?" "The problem of how relatively insignificant we are.

When I came out into the outside room again, I saw her shoe still lying there, where it had come off in the course of our brief wrestle. It looked so pathetic there by itself without an owner, it looked so lonely, it looked so empty. Something made me pick it up arid take it in to her. Like when someone's going away, you help them on with their coat, or their jackboots, or whatever it is they need for going away. I didn't try to put it back on her, I just set it down there beside her close at hand. You're going to need this, I said to her in my mind. You're starting on a long walk. You're going to keep walking from now on, looking for your home. I stopped and wondered for a minute if that was what happened to all of us when we crossed over. Just keep walking, keep on walking, with no ahead and no in-back-of; tramps, vagrants in eternity. With our last hope and horizon - death - already taken away. In the Middle Ages they had lurid colors, a bright red hell, an azure heaven shot with gold stars. They knew where they were, at least. They could tell the difference. We, in the Twentieth, we just have the long walk, the long walk through the wispy backward-stringing mists of eternity, from nowhere to nowhere, never getting there, until you're so tired you almost wish you were alive again. ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" - first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER)

Grief is like a storm. It can be calm and refreshing, a way to finally close one chapter of your life. Or it can be as unforgiving as a hurricane. It can bring our world into the abyss of darkness and turmoil. But just like with the most perilous of storms, it will soon pass. We never truly forget the helplessness and fear we felt during the eye of the storm, but we learn to move on and rebuild our lives. We never forget the loss, but the loss no longer consumes us.

Sometimes life can shake you up & break you down & challenge you in ways you never could have predicted. It can make you question who you are and where you are going. This is just one chapter in your story, a moment of writers block. You are stronger than you think. There are places you haven’t been and dreams to chase. So close this chapter take your pen & start afresh. Don’t forget, you are the author. You may have your scene set but you get to decide the path of your hero(ine).

He tasted like summertime - of wicked thunderstorms, fresh clover, and wild honeysuckle - and I had the sensation of falling, my stomach tumbling over and over again until calm finally reached in, rooting deep and stretching out to encompass everything: my mind, my body. And my soul - whatever that was. The same clean, almost scentless breeze whipped over us again, just like it had the first night we’d met, and I could physically feel one chapter of my life closing and another beginning.

You’re pretty sensitive to all the reasons not to be sexually aroused. You need a setting of trust and relaxation in order to be aroused, and it’s best if you don’t feel rushed or pressured in any way. You might be easily distracted from sex. High SIS, regardless of SES, is the most strongly correlated factor with sexual problems, so if this is you, pay close attention to the “sexy contexts” worksheets in the chapters that follow. About a quarter of the women I’ve asked fall into this range.

Instructions Before Reading Chapter 1. Find a piece of cloth 10 feet long and 2 inches wide 2. Find a pair of children’s shoes 3. Bend all toes except the big one under and into the sole of the foot. Wrap the cloth around these toes and then around the heel. Bring the heel and toes as close together as possible. Wrap the full length of the cloth as tightly as possible 4. Squeeze foot into children’s shoes 5. Walk 6. Imagine that you are 5 years old 7. Imagine being like this for the rest of your life

Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life. A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. It’s a fair thing ahead. There’s no rot on this clean new hundred years. It’s not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years— why, we’ll crucify him head down over a privy. Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

Eliot's understanding of poetic epistemology is a version of Bradley's theory, outlined in our second chapter, that knowing involves immediate, relational, and transcendent stages or levels. The poetic mind, like the ordinary mind, has at least two types of experience: The first consists largely of feeling (falling in love, smelling the cooking, hearing the noise of the typewriter), the second largely of thought (reading Spinoza). The first type of experience is sensuous, and it is also to a great extent monistic or immediate, for it does not require mediation through the mind; it exists before intellectual analysis, before the falling apart of experience into experiencer and experienced. The second type of experience, in contrast, is intellectual (to be known at all, it must be mediated through the mind) and sharply dualistic, in that it involves a breaking down of experience into subject and object. In the mind of the ordinary person, these two types of experience are and remain disparate. In the mind of the poet, these disparate experiences are somehow transcended and amalgamated into a new whole, a whole beyond and yet including subject and object, mind and matter. Eliot illustrates his explanation of poetic epistemology by saying that John Donne did not simply feel his feelings and think his thoughts; he felt his thoughts and thought his feelings. He was able to "feel his thought as immediately as the odour of a rose." Immediately" in this famous simile is a technical term in philosophy, used with precision; it means unmediated through mind, unshattered into subject and object. Falling in love and reading Spinoza typify Eliot's own experiences in the years in which he was writing The Waste Land. These were the exciting and exhausting years in which he met Vivien Haigh-Wood and consummated a disastrous marriage, the years in which he was deeply involved in reading F. H. Bradley, the years in which he was torn between the professions of philosophy and poetry and in which he was in close and frequent contact with such brilliant and stimulating figures as Bertrand Russell and Ezra Pound, the years of the break from his family and homeland, the years in which in every area of his life he seemed to be between broken worlds. The experiences of these years constitute the material of The Waste Land. The relevant biographical details need not be reviewed here, for they are presented in the introduction to The Waste Land Facsimile. For our purposes, it is only necessary to acknowledge what Eliot himself acknowledged: the material of art is always actual life. At the same time, it should also be noted that material in itself is not art. As Eliot argued in his review of Ulysses, "in creation you are responsible for what you can do with material which you must simply accept." For Eliot, the given material included relations with and observations of women, in particular, of his bright but seemingly incurably ill wife Vivien(ne).

Government exists to protect the product of men’s labor, their property, and therewith life and liberty. The notion that man possesses inalienable natural rights, that they belong to him as an individual prior, both in time and in sanctity, to any civil society, and that civil societies exist for and acquire their legitimacy from ensuring those rights, is an invention of modern philosophy. Rights, like the other terms discussed in this chapter, are new in modernity, not a part of the common-sense language of politics or of classical political philosophy." from "Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom, Saul Bellow, Andrew Ferguson

It is not that modern people are less intelligent than their grandparents: only that, being busier, they are less careful. They must learn to take short cuts, skimming through the columns of a newspaper, flicking over the pages of a book or magazine, deciding at each new paragraph or page whether to read it either attentively or cursorily, or whether to let it go unread. There is a running commentary in the mind. For example, in reading a Life of Napoleon: ‘page 9 … yes, he is still talking about Napoleon’s childhood and the romantic scenery of Corsica … something about James Boswell and Corsican independence … tradition of banditry … now back to the family origins again … wait a minute … no … his mother … more about her … yes … French Revolution … page 24, more about the French Revolution … still more … page 31, not interested … ah … Chapter 2, now he’s at the military school … I can begin here … but oughtn’t to waste time over this early part … in the artillery, was he? … but when do we get to the Italian campaign?’ And even when the reader does get to the Italian compaign and settles down comfortably to the story, he seldom reads a sentence through, word by word. Usually, he takes it in either with a single comprehensive glance as he would a stream or a field of cows that he was passing in the train, or with a series of glances, four or five words to a glance. And unless he has some special reason for studying the narrative closely, or is in an unusually industrious mood, he will not trouble about any tactical and geographical niceties of the campaign that are not presented with lively emphasis and perfect clarity. And, more serious still from the author’s point of view, he will not stop when the eye is checked by some obscurity or fancifulness of language, but will leave the point unresolved and pass on. If there are many such obstructions he will skim over them until his eye alights on a clear passage again.

Why are the fundamental laws as we have described them? The ultimate theory must be consistent and must predict finite results for quantities that we can measure. We’ve seen that there must be a law like gravity, and we saw in Chapter 5 that for a theory of gravity to predict finite quantities, the theory must have what is called supersymmetry between the forces of nature and the matter on which they act. M-theory is the most general supersymmetric theory of gravity. For these reasons M-theory is the only candidate for a complete theory of the universe. If it is finite—and this has yet to be proved—it will be a model of a universe that creates itself. We must be part of this universe, because there is no other consistent model. M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. The fact that we human beings—who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature—have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph. But perhaps the true miracle is that abstract considerations of logic lead to a unique theory that predicts and describes a vast universe full of the amazing variety that we see. If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design.

We can say all the right things about the Bible, and even read it regularly, but when life gets difficult, or just a bit boring, we look for new words, new revelation, and new experiences to bring us closer to God. We feel rather ho-hum about the New Testament’s description of heaven, but we are mesmerized by the accounts of school-age children who claim to have gone there and back. From magazine articles about “My Conversation with God” (see chapter 2), to best-selling books where God is depicted as giving special, private communications, we can easily operate as if the Bible were not enough. If we could only have something more than the Scriptures, then we would be really close to Jesus and know his love for us.

The wholeness of Davy. That wholeness can only be gained by death, I believe. In writing to Lewis of my understanding of this astonishing phenomenon, I used the analogy of reading a novel like David Copperfield that covers many years. In that book one follows the boy David running away to his Aunt Betsey Trotwood, the youth David loving Dora, the mature David with Agnes. While one reads, chapter by chapter, even as one lives one’s own life week by week, David is what he is at that particular point in the book’s time. But then, when one shuts the book at the end, all the Davids—small boy, youth, man—are equally close: and, indeed, are one. The whole David. One is then, with reference to the book’s created time, in an eternity, seeing it all in one’s own Now, even as God in His eternal Now sees the whole of history that was and is and will be.

Every deal can be closed. Every prospect can become a buyer. Every no can turn into a yes. In any market. In any economy. There is always an angle. There is always another attempt. There is no law against how much you can prospect, or how many times you can try to close a deal. There are more than enough ideas and millions of resources and billions of people out there to make any dream that you want, a reality. The only mental chain that will ever imprison you in a life of scarcity, is a belief that there is not enough, or that there is not a way to make what you want possible.   This chapter is going to awaken and stir up a monster of influence and achievement inside you. This monster works by being totally aware of all the resources that you have at your disposal, and not being afraid to any means to influence. ” Excerpt From: “Unlimited Influence: Sell Any Idea One On One - Chapter: Gun To Your Head

When we live intensely, we run more risks and we become more fragile. We already know that people who do nothing suffer nothing. But avoiding doing things out of fear of getting hurt is not a path to growth. When we mix our fears with reality, we are limiting ourselves. Don’t forget that the decisions we don’t make also cause us pain. Be careful about how you interpret what happens to you. If you don’t have an explanation that brings you peace, don’t make one up. What causes one kind of emotional pain to be more intense than another? Well, it depends on the emotional attachment to the source of the pain. What hurts more intensely is what directly affects us or the people we love. What hurts more is what affects our greatest aspirations and objectives. We are more easily hurt by what affects our desires or fears, and the more intense our desire, the more painful our frustration when we do not achieve it. The emotional involvement determines and explains the intensity of our pain. The greater the emotional involvement, the greater the pain. When pain comes in the door, perspective goes out the window, taking with it our ability to reason properly, to analyze events, and to make good decisions. Each time you remember what happened you transform what happened. None of our experiences is in vain if we are capable of learning from what happened to us and from the suffering and pain it caused us. But we won’t be able to learn from what happened if we don’t look back and review our experiences. Carrying your past is like carrying a huge backpack full of stones that prevents you from walking freely. But to walk through life all you need is a bit of water and food, a dream, and a destination—and, in a pinch, you can probably do without a destination. Let bygones be bygones, learn from what happened, and bring that chapter to a close. Your beliefs feed your decisions, your fears, and your desires. Knowledge will set you free, so make an effort to learn, study, read, travel.

Eliot's own reflections on the primitive mind as a model for nondualistic thinking and on the nature and consequences of different modes of consciousness were informed by an excellent education in the social sciences and philosophy. As a prelude to our guided tour of the text of The Waste Land, we now turn to a brief survey of some of his intellectual preoccupations in the decade before he wrote it, preoccupations which in our view are enormously helpful in understanding the form of the poem. Eliot entered Harvard as a freshman in 1906 and finished his doctoral dissertation in 1916, with one of the academic years spent at the Sorbonne and one at Oxford. At Harvard and Oxford, he had as teachers some of modern philosophy's most distinguished individuals, including George Santayana, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim; and while at the Sorbonne, he attended the lectures of Henri Bergson, a philosophic star in Paris in 1910-11. Under the supervision of Royce, Eliot wrote his dissertation on the epistemology of F. H. Bradley, a major voice in the late-nineteenth-, early-twentieth-century crisis in philosophy. Eliot extended this period of concentration on philosophical problems by devoting much of his time between 1915 and the early twenties to book reviewing. His education and early book reviewing occurred during the period of epistemological disorientation described in our first chapter, the period of "betweenness" described by Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, the period of the revolt against dualism described by Lovejoy. 2 Eliot's personal awareness of the contemporary epistemological crisis was intensified by the fact that while he was writing his dissertation on Bradley he and his new wife were actually living with Bertrand Russell. Russell as the representative of neorealism and Bradley as the representative of neoidealism were perhaps the leading expositors of opposite responses to the crisis discussed in our first chapter. Eliot's situation was extraordinary. He was a close student of both Bradley and Russell; he had studied with Bradley's friend and disciple Harold Joachim and with Russell himself. And in 1915-16, while writing a dissertation explaining and in general defending Bradley against Russell, Eliot found himself face to face with Russell across the breakfast table. Moreover, as the husband of a fragile wife to whom both men (each in his own way) were devoted, Eliot must have found life to be a kaleidoscope of brilliant and fluctuating patterns.

The book of Job, based on an ancient folktale, may have been written during the exile. One day, Yahweh made an interesting wager in the divine assembly with Satan, who was not yet a figure of towering evil but simply one of the “sons of God,” the legal “adversary” of the council.19 Satan pointed out that Job, Yahweh’s favorite human being, had never been truly tested but was good only because Yahweh had protected him and allowed him to prosper. If he lost all his possessions, he would soon curse Yahweh to his face. “Very well,” Yahweh replied, “all that he has is in your power.”20 Satan promptly destroyed Job’s oxen, sheep, camels, servants, and children, and Job was struck down by a series of foul diseases. He did indeed turn against God, and Satan won his bet. At this point, however, in a series of long poems and discourses, the author tried to square the suffering of humanity with the notion of a just, benevolent, and omnipotent god. Four of Job’s friends attempted to console him, using all the traditional arguments: Yahweh only ever punished the wicked; we could not fathom his plans; he was utterly righteous, and Job must therefore be guilty of some misdemeanor. These glib, facile platitudes simply enraged Job, who accused his comforters of behaving like God and persecuting him cruelly. As for Yahweh, it was impossible to have a sensible dialogue with a deity who was invisible, omnipotent, arbitrary, and unjust—at one and the same time prosecutor, judge, and executioner. When Yahweh finally deigned to respond to Job, he showed no compassion for the man he had treated so cruelly, but simply uttered a long speech about his own splendid accomplishments. Where had Job been while he laid the earth’s foundations, and pent up the sea behind closed doors? Could Job catch Leviathan with a fishhook, make a horse leap like a grasshopper, or guide the constellations on their course? The poetry was magnificent, but irrelevant. This long, boastful tirade did not even touch upon the real issue: Why did innocent people suffer at the hands of a supposedly loving God? And unlike Job, the reader knows that Job’s pain had nothing to do with the transcendent wisdom of Yahweh, but was simply the result of a frivolous bet. At the end of the poem, when Job—utterly defeated by Yahweh’s bombastic display of power—retracted all his complaints and repented in dust and ashes, God restored Job’s health and fortune. But he did not bring to life the children and servants who had been killed in the first chapter. There was no justice or recompense for them.

There’s a related quartet of views concerning the relationship between free will and moral responsibility. The last word obviously carries a lot of baggage with it, and the sense in which it is used by people debating free will typically calls forth the concept of basic desert, where someone can deserve to be treated in a particular way, where the world is a morally acceptable place in its recognition that one person can deserve a particular reward, another a particular punishment. As such, these views are: There’s no free will, and thus holding people morally responsible for their actions is wrong. Where I sit. (And as will be covered in chapter 14, this is completely separate from forward-looking issues of punishment for deterrent value.) There’s no free will, but it is okay to hold people morally responsible for their actions. This is another type of compatibilism—an absence of free will and moral responsibility coexist without invoking the supernatural. There’s free will, and people should be held morally responsible. This is probably the most common stance out there. There’s free will, but moral responsibility isn’t justified. This is a minority view; typically, when you look closely, the supposed free will exists in a very narrow sense and is certainly not worth executing people about.

In the chapter entitled “You Can’t Pray a Lie” in Twain’s beloved novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Huck Finn has helped hide Miss Watson’s runaway slave, Jim. But Huck thought he was committing a sin in helping a runaway slave. Huck had learned in Sunday school “that people that acts as I’d been acting … goes to everlasting fire.” So in an act of repentance in order to save his soul, Huck wrote a note to Miss Watson and told her where she could find her runaway slave. Now Huck was ready to pray his “sinner’s prayer” and “get saved.” I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off but laid the paper down and set there thinking—thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world and the only he’s got now; and then I happened to look around and see the paper. It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”—and tore it up. It was awful thoughts and awful words but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming.1 Huck Finn had been shaped by the Christianity he’d found in his Missouri Sunday school—a Christianity focused on heaven in the afterlife while preserving the status quo of the here and now. Huck thought that helping Jim escape from slavery was a sin, because that’s what he had been taught. He knew he couldn’t ask God to forgive him until he was ready to “repent” and betray Jim. Huck didn’t want to go to hell; he wanted to be saved. But Huck loved his friend more, so he was willing to go to hell in order to save his friend from slavery.

According to Felicitas Goodman, the hunter-gatherers arrived on the scene no earlier than 200,000 years ago. She explains: In a very real way, the hunters and gatherers open the first chapter of our human history. And fittingly, this dawning was as close to paradise as humans have ever been able to achieve. The men did the hunting and scavenging, working for about three hours a week, and the women took care of daily sustenance by gathering vegetal food and small animals. It was such a harmonious existence, such a successful adaptation, that it did not materially alter for many thousands of years. This view is not romanticizing matters. Those hunter-gatherer societies that have survived into the present still pursue the same lifestyle, and we are quite familiar with it from contemporary anthropological observation. Despite the unavoidable privations of human existence, despite occasional hunger, illness and other trials, what makes their life way so enviable is the fact that knowing every nook and cranny of their home territory and all that grows and lives in it, the bands make their regular rounds and take only what they need. By modern calculations, that amounted to only about 10 percent of the yield, easily recoverable under undisturbed conditions. They live a life of total balance, because they do not aspire to control their habitat; they are a part of it.

This is the part of the book where the author usually sums it all up in a conclusion chapter and announces, “I did it!” I suppose I could have titled it “The Finale,” but that’s just not me. I don’t think you ever reach a point in life (or in writing!) where you get to say that. It ain’t over till it’s over. I want to be an eternal student, always pushing myself to learn more, fear less, fight harder. What lies in the future? Truthfully, I don’t know. For some people, that’s a scary thought. They like their life mapped out and scheduled down to the second. Not me. Not anymore. I take comfort in knowing not everything is definite. There’s where you find the excitement, in the unknown, uncharted, spaces. If I take the lead in my life, I expect that things will keep changing, progressing, moving. That’s the joy for me. Where will I go next? What doors will open? What doors will close? All I can tell you is that I will be performing and connecting with people--be it through dance, movies, music, or speaking. I want to inspire and create. I love the phrase “I’m created to create.” That’s what I feel like, and that’s what makes me the happiest. I’m building a house right now--my own extreme home makeover. I love the process of tearing something down and rebuilding it, creating something from nothing and bringing my artistic vision to it. I will always be someone who likes getting his hands dirty. But the blueprint of my life has completely changed from the time I was a little boy dreaming about fame. It’s broadened and widened. I want variety in my life; I like my days filled with new and different things. I love exploring the world, meeting new people, learning new crafts and art. It’s why you might often read what I’m up to and scratch your head: “I didn’t know Derek did that.” I probably didn’t before, but I do now.

OTHER RELAXATION TECHNIQUES There are many other stress management techniques that can help you to “bring yourself down” quickly when you are highly stressed. You can use them before a situation where anticipation raises tensions that do not automatically subside after a few minutes. You also can use them during an interaction or when a surprise threatens to escalate your stress out of control. Or use them after an encounter has raised your stress level, if it is not subsiding naturally. Mental Imagery You experimented with mental imagery in the previous chapter on goal-setting. The use of mental imagery also can be an effective tool for anxiety control. Think of it as a new application of skills you already have: memory and imagination. When I asked you earlier to recall how many windows there are in your bedroom, you used imagery to retrieve the information. Mentally, you went into the room, looked from wall to wall, and counted. That process is mental imagery. From a relaxation perspective, your nervous system cannot distinguish between reality and imagery. Material passed from the body to the senses, whether real or imagined, is processed the same way. Therefore, imagery can play an important role in inducing internal self-regulation and relaxation. If there is a particular image—such as the warm, sandy beach of the previous exercise, a cool forest clearing covered with a blanket of pine needles, or even a clear blue sky—that represents relaxation to you, it would be valuable for you to be able to tune in to it whenever stress threatens to interfere with your life. Be sure to conjure up the reactions of all five senses: Imagine the look, sound, smell, taste, and feel of your surroundings. Mental gateways are a valuable part of the relaxation exercise we just went through. And it is important to be aware that your nervous system—which is what overreacts in a stressful situation—cannot distinguish between reality and imagination. Here’s how to use mental imagery to create a mental getaway: (a) Choose a favorite place, a pleasant, relaxing setting that you have enjoyed in the past or one you would enjoy visiting in the future. (b) Close your eyes and think about the scene. Use your senses of hearing, smell, sight, taste, and touch to develop the scene. Put yourself there. If your mind wanders a bit, that’s okay. You’ll drift back to the scene after a short while.

I am in no rush. Let Life happen to me just as Life has planned. Because at the end of the day, when the sun sets there is always a horizon somewhere waiting to call forth another sun, in a paradox of Time. Because at the end of each chapter, the story walks towards its culmination. But just like it is not in the setting or rising of the sun but in the sunshine that one basks, just like it is not the finishing line but the voyage through the storyline where one finds the true understanding of the book, Life is about exploring the voyage all the while knowing full well that each chapter shall find its beginning middle and end just how it's meant to be. It is about the truth that Life is but a dream in Time's illusion and the only sharp truth is to love and be loved, and through that assemble moments in Time that smile beyond Time, to make a garden of experiences through lessons and understandings that Life puts at our journey only to walk us closer to our destination. It is not about the destination rather about the journey, and perhaps about who we share the journey with at each crossroad. And no matter how Time walks by, until and unless we cross all the alleys along the way, until and unless we climb up the peak bit by bit, we cannot reach that destination where we belong. But if we tread along the mountain peak or a winding alley soaking in all the freshness of the air enjoying the crispness of our walk, the journey becomes even more enriching not just to our soul but to all of our senses and our very heart. While if we try to run along the way, we might actually topple down a bad turn, taking in a scar that might demand another cup of our soul's portion to heal. Such is Life. A journey that takes smiles and tears, a voyage that bathes in hope and hopelessness, but in all of it, it never stays stagnant, always tiptoeing to exactly where we are meant to be, at any point of our journey. So when something seems to go stagnant or few things make no sense, I tell myself to pause and pat my soul acknowledging each and every decision or detour of mine as part and parcel of Life's plan. I close my eyes and breathe in the freshness of air that flows in every part of my soul to know, to feel alive to all that this journey has shared with me, while believing in the grace and magnanimity of Time who takes Time but eventually shows and leads us to where we belong. And I hear my heart smiling, Let Life happen to me just as Life has planned. I am in no rush.

The remaining part of the first description consist of low-energy open strings moving on the three-branes. We recall from Chapter 4 that low-energy strings are well described by point particle quantum field theory, and that is the case here. The particular kind of quantum field theory involves a number of sophisticated mathematical ingredients (and it has an ungainly characterization: conformally invariant supersymmetric quantum gauge field theory), but two vital characteristics are readily understood. The absence of closed strings ensures the absence of the gravitational field. And, because the strings can move only on the tightly sandwiched three-dimensional branes, the quantum field theory lives in three spatial dimensions (in addition to the one dimension of time, for a total of four spacetime dimensions). The remaining part of the second description consists of closed strings, executing any vibrational pattern, as long as they are close enough to the black branes' event horizon to appear lethargic-that is, to appear to have low energy. Such strings, although limited in how far they stray from the black stack, still vibrate and move through nine dimensions of space (in addition to one dimension of time, for a total of ten spacetime dimensions). And because this sector is built from closed strings, it contains the force of gravity. However different the two perspectives might seem, they're describing one and the same physical situation, so they must agree. This leads to a thoroughly bizarre conclusion. A particular nongravitational, point particle quantum field theory in four spacetime dimensions (the first perspective) describes the same physics as strings, including gravity, moving through a particular swath of ten spacetime dimensions (the second perspective). This would seem as far-fetched as claiming...Well, honestly, I've tried, and I can't come up with any two things int he real world more dissimilar than these two theories. But Maldacena followed the math, in the manner we've outlined, and ran smack into this conclusion. The sheer strangeness of the result-and the audacity of the claim-isn't lessened by the fact that it takes but a moment to place it within the line of thought developed earlier in this chapter. As schematically illustrated in Figure 9.5, the gravity of the black brane slab imparts a curved shape to the ten-dimensional spacetime swath in its vicinity (the details are secondary, but the curved spacetime is called anti-de Sitter five-space times the five sphere); the black brane is itself the boundary of this space. And so, Maldacena's result is that string theory within the bulf of this spacetime shape is identical to a quantum field theory living on its boundary. This is holography come to life.

A different approach was taken in 1972 by Dr. Walter Mischel, also of Stanford, who analyzed yet another characteristic among children: the ability to delay gratification. He pioneered the use of the “marshmallow test,” that is, would children prefer one marshmallow now, or the prospect of two marsh-mallows twenty minutes later? Six hundred children, aged four to six, participated in this experiment. When Mischel revisited the participants in 1988, he found that those who could delay gratification were more competent than those who could not. In 1990, another study showed a direct correlation between those who could delay gratification and SAT scores. And a study done in 2011 indicated that this characteristic continued throughout a person’s life. The results of these and other studies were eye-opening. The children who exhibited delayed gratification scored higher on almost every measure of success in life: higher-paying jobs, lower rates of drug addiction, higher test scores, higher educational attainment, better social integration, etc. But what was most intriguing was that brain scans of these individuals revealed a definite pattern. They showed a distinct difference in the way the prefrontal cortex interacted with the ventral striatum, a region involved in addiction. (This is not surprising, since the ventral striatum contains the nucleus accumbens, known as the “pleasure center.” So there seems to be a struggle here between the pleasure-seeking part of the brain and the rational part to control temptation, as we saw in Chapter 2.) This difference was no fluke. The result has been tested by many independent groups over the years, with nearly identical results. Other studies have also verified the difference in the frontal-striatal circuitry of the brain, which appears to govern delayed gratification. It seems that the one characteristic most closely correlated with success in life, which has persisted over the decades, is the ability to delay gratification. Although this is a gross simplification, what these brain scans show is that the connection between the prefrontal and parietal lobes seems to be important for mathematical and abstract thought, while the connection between the prefrontal and limbic system (involving the conscious control of our emotions and pleasure center) seems to be essential for success in life. Dr. Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, concludes, “Your grades in school, your scores on the SAT, mean less for life success than your capacity to co-operate, your ability to regulate your emotions, your capacity to delay your gratification, and your capacity to focus your attention. Those skills are far more important—all the data indicate—for life success than your IQ or your grades.

You should date a girl who reads. Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve. Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn. She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice. It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does. She has to give it a shot somehow. Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world. Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two. Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series. If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are. You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype. You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots. Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads. Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

DAY FIVE: ESTHER 1:20-22 At the end of the week, remember that God is still present — but beyond His presence, He is active and working in your life! Trust Him with the details of your day today!   FRIEND TO FRIEND... In Daniel chapter 3, we have a wonderful history about three determined young men and an equally determined king. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were Jews in Babylon, serving under the heathen King Nebuchadnezzar. One day, Nebuchanezzar commissions a statue to be built and worshiped by the inhabitants of the city. He gives an order that everyone is to bow down and worship this statue at the sound of an orchestra, threatening death by fire for those who do not bow. The account of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego does not suggest that there was any conflict in these young men’s minds. In obeying Nebuchadnezzar, they would be disobeying their true King. They would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments: ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image...you shall not bow down to them nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4,5). This was unimaginable. They would refuse to bow, and in doing so, they would trust the Lord in whatever consequences would follow their obedience to His commandments. When Nebuchadnezzar is informed of their refusal to bow, he has the young men brought to him. The king reminds them of his order, and the consequence of not obeying the order: they will be burned alive in a fiery furnace. Even finding themselves faced with dire consequences, these three young men remain determined to serve God and fulfill His purposes. They are prepared with an answer for him: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego acknowledge that they are not bowing as Nebuchadnezzar wants them to, but they do not try to defend themselves. There was no need to get into an argument when their minds were already made up. My favorite part of this response, however, comes next: “But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:18). In other words, “Even if our God decides NOT to rescue us, we still will not serve your idol.” That’s determination! Truly, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had made their minds up long before Nebuchanzzar even had his idol commissioned. The true reason they were able to face such a threat with such tenacity was that they had long ago decided to follow the Lord with their whole heart. The decision of this day was not whether to begin serving the Lord and refusing to bow; these young people already knew what they stood for, and they remained steadfast in their faithfulness to the Lord. Whether the Lord came to their rescue on this day was of little matter to them. They intended to serve the Lord. In order for you to fulfill the call that God has placed on your life, you will have to find yourself DETERMINED and TENACIOUS in following that call. On terrific days, you must be faithful. On terrible days, you must be faithful. When you display this kind of determination, you can be confident that God will show up every day. In Daniel 3:19-25, the history continues. At the close of this conversation with Nebuchadnezzar, things did not seem to go in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s favor. As the king had threatened, these three were in fact thrown in the fire. What Nebuchadnezzar did not yet realize was that they would not go into the fire alone. Who was there in the midst of them? Three were thrown into the fire, but when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, he told his guards, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). The Son of God was in the furnace with them! Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were confident

Hopeful people reach out for support and help. One key component, the hope researcher Lopez found, was that hopeful people spread hope, so it is important to surround yourself with hopeful people. Consider your own dark situations. When you cannot see a positive way forward, you might be tempted to close the doors and drapes on the world, so to speak. You might want to suffer alone. Yet as the stories in this chapter illustrate, moments of wonder expand your world.

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, which threatened to increase communist influence in East Asia, was a decisive factor in distracting the Americans from completing the denazification process and pursuing their former enemies. But denazification could not go on indefinitely because at some point the need to build the future outweighed the need to expunge the past. In May 1951 the new democratic government of West Germany passed the Law to End Denazification and in doing so closed the darkest chapter in German history.

Has we close the chapter on yet another year, let this be a reminder to us all that life is what we make it. Love and show appreciation to the people around us. Live life to the fullest and always remember to thank God in all things. Good bye 2023, welcome 2024!

Watering dead plants is exhausting, and it never brings them back to life. Instead, close that chapter and start a new one.

Life arises from that inner source and spreads into the sky outside. There has to be a balance—I am always for balance. So I will not say that your life should be an open book, no. A few chapters open, okay. And a few chapters completely closed, a complete mystery. If you are just an open book you will be a prostitute, you will just be standing in the marketplace naked, with just the radio on. No, that won’t do.

Where does a story end? It’s a lie, the last page of a book, because it masquerades as a conclusion. A real conclusion—the culmination of something—when what you’re being offered is an arbitrary line in the sand. This story ends here. Pick a random event. Ignore whatever comes after it, or write a sequel. Pretend the world stops when the book closes, or that a final chapter isn’t simply another random moment on a curated timeline. But life isn’t like that, so books are dishonest. Maybe that’s why humans like them.

The past is not a finished, done, and closed chapter of our existence; it is very much alive and active. We live it in every moment. We create it in our present.

Consider the sun above you, centered in the middle of the sky, radiating upon you. That ray is your source of power, a place to grow and become. Receive those rays: let them flow from above over you, over your head, over your shoulders, over your arms and over your hands. Close your eyes, and be nourished by the sun's connection. In this moment all the powers of light are with you. They're here to reinforce you and remind you of your own competence and power. You have the knowledge and experience in your life that you need to step on confidently, make good choices and choices, and manifest what you are doing. •       By actively binding the Solar Plexus Chakra to your own personal power, you are also inspiring those around you to fulfill their potential. As each person finds his or her strength in this existence, the entire collective is motivated to grow in this way. Feel how your own inner sense of monarchy, your own inner sense of supremacy, is now becoming involved. You are so ready to unfold in the next chapter of your life. Feel that excitement before you, and step boldly through the door. It's your turn. Everything was giving you help here. •       Invite any elders or spirit guides who want to accompany you until you feel fully prepared to walk through this door of possibility. Feel their energy as they surround you, and believe they will give whatever advice you need to comfortably proceed to the next stage of your evolution. With universal blessing close your induction: Amen. SUMMARY • Where is it: Manipura chakra is found in the spine behind the navel. •       What is it: It's the seat of power and confidence. It's what pushes you through your life and is responsible for your personal and professional growth. The solar plexus in the physical body is the core which regulates digestion and the metabolism of food. •       When it’s blocked: A blockage in this chakra could make you feel anxious and insecure. Digestive problems can also be symptoms of an unbalanced chakra in the solar plexus. •       How to balance this chakra: If you want to combine this chakra with yoga, select asanas that reflect on the core strength. Warrior pose is the easiest asana to get this chakra open. Every morning, you can just hold it for a few minutes and your chakra will balance out. Since the chakra of the solar plexus is linked to the sun and flames, simply going outside can help. The therapeutic effects of your exercise can be maximized by meditating or doing yoga outdoors. Even going for a walk in the sunshine will still do the trick, though.

Life is full of chapters. When you close one, you open another.

Hope is the faint glimmer on the distant horizon. It keeps you moving on the journey of love. The closing scene of the first chapter of Ruth ends with a hint of hope: “And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22).

As Jonathan Haidt and others have demonstrated, people are at their worst when they’re allowed to lob jabs at others behind a shield of anonymity. When their real-world reputations are at risk, they may take more care. I argued in chapter 2 that embracing transparency is a core part of how the Internet can motivate generous behavior. Indeed, I believe it played a key role in Facebook’s early astonishing growth story, gaining its first million users within just a year and then a further six million in the following two. This was not only in spite of being closed off to the general public but likely because of it, too. At that time, every profile was attached to an email address linking to an educational institution, which brought with it a layer of identity authentication. People were accountable to their real-life reputations and suddenly able to build on them in ways unlike ever before. But as this feature slipped by the wayside, and now without a real reputation to uphold, Joe Bloggs switched to User94843 and trolled toward this more toxic future. Bringing back this social dynamic, by requiring users to prove who they are, is perhaps the biggest single step big tech can make toward fostering a genuinely social media environment. There are definitely cases where people living under repressive regimes need ways to use the Internet anonymously. But the mainstream usage of social media should not.

As he got older, Zig realized that the very last thing you want in life is a spectacular death. Indeed, the more mundane your closing chapter

As he got older, Zig realized that the very last thing you want in life is a spectacular death. Indeed, the more mundane your closing chapter is, the luckier you’ll likely be.

He was awake; it seemed like a long time, all dressed, sitting deep in the armchair, small with a grey face. I stopped ast the room entrance in silence, swallowed my words, and thought that maybe he didn’t even go to sleep that night. His facial colour reminded me of a teacher, dying from cancer. ‘Grandpa, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you? Mother is coming home, did you hear?’ I came closer and touched his hand. It was colder than usual, and the frost went down my back. ‘Do you hear me? What’s wrong with you?’ I asked, and he was silent. Suddenly, I understood everything.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 5: University of Life) “‘Let me tell you this way. In the academy, we were told to marry early, before we go on the first shift. My first shift starts in a few months in July. I shall be half a year under the water in the submarine, carrying nuclear weapons. They advise us to marry and to make children as soon as possible because who knows what will be on that shift. Also, I told you about the radiation. I know submariners’ who cannot make children because of the radiation on the ship,’ said Prohor. ‘How to explain to you, my girl? To make children, a man needs an erection but the radiation kills it. I am afraid until I reach the rank of admiral, I shall be impotent … unable to make children …,’ Prohor told sadly from his bed.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 6: Fiance from Submarine) “So, it happened there; between the two biggest islands of two big enemies, Japan and the USSR. ‘Now I recall that Prohor praised that they can attack unexpectedly from a submarine, from under the water, with nuclear rockets.’ I was astonished that I knew all these things, which earlier had never interested me.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 7: Between Two Men) “‘Do you remember what I told you before I died? You promised me to think big! My little star, if you think big, you will become big! Use my diamonds and the wall clock to become big! Dream big, Anfisa—and you will be more than just a wife to a man. ‘But remember, you have to take diamonds and the clock outside the USSR, where they value these things.’ I heard my grandfather’s voice live, close, but I didn’t see him.” (-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 8: Earner Marriage No. 1)

Chapter 2: The Blinders of the Senses: Awakening from the Sensory Dream Close your eyes and imagine standing in a garden. The air is fragrant with the scent of flowers, and the sun's warmth kisses your skin. You hear the rustle of leaves, the chirping of birds, and the distant hum of life. This sensory symphony envelops you, defining your experience of the world around you. But what if I told you that this symphony is both a blessing and a limitation? Welcome to the chapter where we pull back the curtain on the senses—the windows through which we perceive reality. These senses are our gateways to the world, allowing us to touch, taste, hear, see, and smell. They are our connection to the external, the bridge that links us to the physical universe. However, in their splendor lies a trap—a trap that keeps us tethered to the surface of existence. Picture this: you're in a theater, engrossed in a captivating movie. The screen and the story before you are so compelling that you forget you're sitting in a theater, watching a mere projection. In the same way, our senses project a vivid reality that captivates us, making us forget that they're just a means of perception, not the ultimate truth. Our senses act as both guides and misguides. They offer us a glimpse into the world, but they also distort reality. They're like a paintbrush in the hands of an artist, creating a beautiful but partial picture. We become so focused on this picture that we overlook the canvas on which it's painted—the canvas of consciousness. Consider the blind spots in your eyes. These are spots where you literally cannot see, yet your brain fills in the gaps seamlessly, creating a complete image. Similarly, our senses have "blind spots" when it comes to the inner world of thoughts, emotions, and consciousness. They excel at perceiving the external, but they struggle to illuminate the internal. Herein lies the paradox: while our senses are our windows to the world, they can also be our blinders, keeping us from seeing the whole picture. Just as a map provides information about the terrain but not the essence of a place, our senses provide data about the world but not the essence of our being. So, how do we escape this sensory dream and peer beyond the blinders? The answer lies in a shift of focus. We must turn our attention inwards, away from the dazzling spectacle of the external world. It's here, in the quietude of introspection, that we can begin to untangle the threads of our consciousness from the threads of sensation. In the coming pages, we'll delve into the paradox of perception and introspection. We'll journey through the ways our senses illuminate the external and yet leave us in the dark about the internal. And most importantly, we'll explore the profound power of looking beyond the surface, awakening to a reality that transcends the sensory landscape. So, get ready to peel back the layers of perception, to unveil the subtle dance between our senses and our consciousness. As we journey through this chapter, remember: just as a photograph captures a moment in time, our senses capture a moment in reality. But to grasp the essence of existence, we must go beyond the snapshot and embrace the living, breathing symphony of

A month later Dr. Cartwright sends me a note of congratulations. He has been able to make an arrangement with Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, for access to the immunotherapy drug here at Duke, and the news fills me with a bright hope. No more 3:45 a.m. wakeups. No more hours on the phone with airline companies, trying to fix a haywire flight--- or relying on donations to afford the flights in the first place. A painful chapter of my life will finally close.

Don't live in the past, thinking about mistakes or changes you made. Think of your life as a book, move forward, close one chapter and open another. Learn from your mistakes, but focus on your future, not on your past.~JVS

The challenge in seeing a person, therefore, is to adopt the kind of double vision I mentioned in the chapter on hard conversations. It means stepping back to appreciate the power of group culture and how it is formed over generations and then poured into a person. But it also means stepping close and perceiving each individual person in the midst of their lifelong project of crafting their own life and their own point of view, often in defiance of their group’s consciousness. The trick is to hold these two perspectives together at the same time.

As it was written about Abraham, “A father of many nations I have made you.” That is future. But in the present, he was father of no one. You can be honest about what the situation looks like. But you then must find yourself speaking more about what God says to your situation in the Word of God. Staying close to God’s Word will help you speak into future instead of complaining about your present circumstances. Fill your mouth with what He promised, His Word. Finally, the God you believe in will determine your faith level. There is a biblical phrase used many times about Abraham: “Abraham believed God.” It is used all over the Bible—from Genesis to Romans, Galatians to James. But what makes the phrase valid is that there is another phrase associated with Abraham in the Bible just like this one. It’s in 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, and James. And I think it has something to do with the first phrase. The second phrase determined his faith level. It is friend of God. Friend of God makes belief in God easy. Abraham could say, “Regardless of what circumstances I am facing, my Friend is with me.” The God Abraham believed in was his Friend. He trusted his Friend. That’s why when you connect Abraham’s raw circumstances with his faith in his Friend, you get these verses that The Passion Translation makes come alive: In spite of being nearly one hundred years old when the promise of having a son was made, his faith was so strong that it could not be undermined by the fact that he and Sarah were incapable of conceiving a child. He never stopped believing God’s promise, for he was made strong in his faith to father a child. And because he was mighty in faith and convinced that God had all the power needed to fulfill his promises, Abraham glorified God! (Romans 4:19-20, TPT)

The Mexican War did two good things though. We got a lot of western land, damn near doubled our size, and besides that it was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murder settled on us the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible. And then the arguments: Can you keep a slave? Well if you bought him in good faith, why not? Next they’ll be saying a man can’t have a horse. Who is it wants to take my property? And there we were, like a man scratching at his own face and bleeding into his own beard. Well, that was over and we got slowly up off the bloody ground and started westward. There came boom and bust, bankruptcy, depression. Great public thieves came along and picked the pockets of everyone who had a pocket. To hell with that rotten century! Let’s get it over and the door closed shut on it! Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! New chapter, new life. A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. It’s a fair thing ahead. There’s no rot on this clean new hundred years. It’s not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years—why, we’ll crucify him head down over a privy. Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

Score Your Sexual Temperament Questionnaire Low SI (0–6) You’re not so sensitive to all the reasons not to be sexually aroused. You don’t tend to worry about your own sexual functioning, and body image issues don’t interfere too much with your sexuality. When you’re sexually engaged, your attention is not very distractible, and you wouldn’t be inclined to describe yourself as “sexually shy.” Most circumstances can be sexual for you. You may find that your main challenge around sexual functioning is holding yourself back, reining yourself in. Staying aware of potential consequences can help with this. Around 15 percent of the women I’ve asked fit in this range. Medium SI (7–13) You’re right in the middle, along with more than half the women I’ve asked. This means that whether or not your brakes engage will be largely dependent on context. Risky or novel situations, such as a new partner, might increase your concerns about your own sexual functioning, shyness, or your distractibility during sex. Contexts that easily arouse you are likely to be low risk and more familiar, and anytime your stress—which includes anxiety, depression, overwhelm, and exhaustion—escalates your brakes will reduce your interest in and response to sexual signals. High SI (14–20) You’re pretty sensitive to all the reasons not to be sexually aroused. You need a setting of trust and relaxation in order to be aroused, and it’s best if you don’t feel rushed or pressured in any way. You might be easily distracted from sex. High SI, regardless of SE, is the most strongly correlated factor with sexual problems, so if this is you, pay close attention to the “sexy contexts” worksheets in the chapters that follow. About a quarter of the women I’ve asked fall into this range.

Rebuilding Your Life: Accepting the Reality of Divorce Divorce is undeniably one of life's most challenging and emotionally charged experiences. The decision to end a marriage can be accompanied by a rollercoaster of emotions, such as sadness, anger, and uncertainty about the future. During this difficult time, it is important to seek support and guidance from professionals, such as divorce lawyers in St George, Utah, and family law attorneys who can offer the expertise and guidance needed to navigate the complexities of divorce. Acceptance: The First Step Towards Rebuilding When a marriage is no longer working, acceptance becomes the crucial first step towards moving forward and rebuilding your life. It is essential to recognize that divorce is not a failure, but rather a decision made in the best interest of both parties involved. Divorce lawyers in St George, Utah, and family law attorneys in St George, Utah, can provide the legal support and guidance necessary to ensure a fair and amicable settlement, assisting in the overall acceptance process. Embracing the Grieving Process Divorce can be likened to a grieving process, as you mourn the loss of a relationship and the dreams that accompanied it. It is crucial to understand that it is natural to experience a wide range of emotions during this period, and it is essential to allow yourself the space and time to grieve. Seeking the assistance of a supportive network, including family, friends, and a qualified family law attorney in St George, Utah, can be beneficial during this challenging time. Navigating the Legal Maze Divorce involves various legal procedures, including property division, child custody arrangements, and spousal support. These complexities can be overwhelming and confusing for those going through a divorce. Consulting with a knowledgeable family law attorney in St George, Utah, is crucial to ensure that your rights are protected and that you receive a fair settlement. By working closely with divorce lawyers in St George, Utah, you can navigate the legal maze with confidence, knowing that you have a qualified advocate fighting on your behalf. Prioritizing Your Well-being Throughout the divorce process, it is essential to prioritize your emotional, mental, and physical well-being. Self-care activities, such as seeking therapy, joining support groups, and engaging in healthy lifestyle choices, can be immensely beneficial during this challenging time. By taking care of yourself, you can remain strong, focused, and resilient as you navigate the path towards rebuilding your life. Creating a New Vision for the Future Divorce marks the end of a chapter, but it can also be the beginning of a new, fulfilling life. As you begin the process of rebuilding, it is important to create a new vision for your future. Set personal goals, discover new passions, and surround yourself with positive influences. Remember, with the support of divorce lawyers in St George, Utah, and family law attorneys, you have the opportunity to start afresh and build the life you deserve. Conclusion: Rebuilding your life after divorce is undoubtedly a challenging journey, but it is also an opportunity to rediscover yourself and create a brighter future. By accepting the reality of divorce, seeking professional legal guidance from family law attorneys in St George, Utah, and embracing the support of your loved ones, you can navigate through this transition with resilience and strength. Remember, you are not alone, and with each step, you move closer towards a life filled with happiness, fulfillment, and new beginnings.

Third, a message always brings the greatest benefit when I teach it or go through it with a group of friends. Choose some close friends and work through this together. After you complete the chapter on your own, with just you and the Holy Spirit, get together with your friends to share what He showed you. Do this on a regular basis.

You are seated in church when you hear the words, “Please bow your head and worship the Lord in the quietness of your own heart.” You close your eyes and think to yourself, What am I supposed to do now? Worshiping God is a skill seldom taught and infrequently practiced. The root meaning of worship involves recognizing the “worth” of another. It is a response to God’s greatness. People in the Bible worshiped God both for who he was (his person) and what he did (his works). If you had been standing with the Israelites on the banks of the Red Sea as the waters drowned the Egyptian army, you would have had no trouble responding in worship! Even today you can join in their chorus of praise. Read through their song in chapter 15, making one list of God’s actions (conduct) and a second list of God’s attributes (character). Now you, too, should be ready to praise your God and Savior today.

Smith in his book and with his life is telling us how to live. Seek wisdom and virtue. Behave as if an impartial spectator is watching you. Use the idea of an impartial spectator to step outside yourself and see yourself as others see you. Use that vision to know yourself. Avoid the seductions of money and fame, for they will never satisfy. How to be virtuous is not so obvious, and that comes next. But I want to close this chapter with Peter Buffett, the man who ended up selling his Berkshire Hathaway stock for $90,000 and giving up the $100 million he could have had in order to pursue a career as a musician. A few years ago, Peter Buffett reflected on his decision to sell his Berkshire Hathaway stock to pursue his dreams in his memoir, Life Is What You Make It. He claims to have no regrets. But could a life as a successful musician possibly be worth giving up $100 million? Wouldn’t $100 million be even more pleasant? Then you ask yourself—what could he have with the extra millions? A nicer car? He could have a Lamborghini Veneno Roadster that retails for about $4 million. Or he could settle for the lovely Ferrari Spider, at $300,000; he could have a couple of those. He could have a mansion you and I can only imagine, anywhere in the world. Like Onassis, he could own an island or two rather than enduring the indignity of visiting an island in the Mediterranean, say, and having to share it with others while staying at a nice hotel. Could those physical pleasures possibly be worth sacrificing the life in music that he dreamed of and ultimately achieved? I think Peter Buffett got a bargain. He gave up $100 million and got something—hard as it is to imagine—that was even more precious. A good life. I think Adam Smith would agree with me.

We will close this chapter with a lengthy quote from Tim Keller about how we should read the Bible and think about Christ even in the Old Testament: Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden and whose obedience is imputed to us. Jesus is the true and better Abel who, though innocently slain, has blood now that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for acquittal. Jesus is the true and better Abraham who answered the call of God to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go out into the void not knowing whither he went to create a new people of God. Jesus is the true and better Isaac who was not just offered up by his father on the mount but was truly sacrificed for us. And when God said to Abraham, “Now I know you love me because you did not withhold your son, your only son whom you love from me,” now we can look at God taking his Son up the mountain and sacrificing him and say, “Now we know that you love us because you did not withhold your Son, your only Son, whom you love from us.” Jesus is the true and better Jacob who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserved, so we, like Jacob, only receive the wounds of grace to wake us up and discipline us. Jesus is the true and better Joseph who, at the right hand of the king, forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his new power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant. Jesus is the true and better Rock of Moses who, struck with the rod of God’s justice, now gives us water in the desert. Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer, who then intercedes for and saves his stupid friends. Jesus is the true and better David whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. Jesus is the true and better Esther who didn’t just risk leaving an earthly palace but lost the ultimate and heavenly one, who didn’t just risk his life, but gave his life to save his people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah who was cast out into the storm so that we could be brought in. Jesus is the real Rock of Moses, the real Passover Lamb, innocent, perfect, helpless, slain so the angel of death will pass over us. He’s the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice, the true lamb, the true light, the true bread. The Bible’s really not about you—it’s about him.51

When she closed her eyes, he let his gaze travel over her. She lay on her side and he marveled at the perfect slopes of her shoulders, her waist, her hips. This woman was not only caring, courageous, and selfless, she was bewitchingly beautiful. He never knew such a person existed. If he were ever to marry, she would be . . . He shook his head and exhaled. She had a life in Boston to return to, and his home would be in Sandwich. This episode would be but a small chapter in the book of her life. Thomas

I couldn't read SAY MY NAME immediately. There was no Larry for me but it was far too close to the bones of a chapter of my own life, so I put it to down for another time when I would feel more able to tackle it. Planning to read a chapter a day, I sat down with the book yesterday. I devoured it in one sitting. It is the most beautiful book. I knew the writing would be exquisite but the authenticity of the story, the characters and their responses is indisputable. It's an odd turn of phrase to use about a novel, but you've conjured up a piece of reality. It's an important book for many reasons that I'm sure you know including its understanding of the nature of Love, about not allowing the fetters of Society to prevent us living Life to the full despite the risks and that Great Love is never really over. It will be an inspiration to those who have not experienced such things yet and a comfort to those who have. Not just a great read, SAY MY NAME will be magical bounty for many.

could have sworn that she saw the tip of Douglas’s tail wag. She left Bomber to his odious sister and tripped downstairs into the bright afternoon sunshine. The last thing she heard as she closed the door behind her was from Portia, in an altogether changed, but still unpleasant, wheedling tone: ‘Now, darling, when are you going to publish my book?’ At the corner of Great Russell Street she stopped for a moment, remembering the man she had smiled at. She hoped that the person he was meeting hadn’t left him waiting for too long. Just then, in amongst the dust and dirt at her feet, the glint of gold and glass caught her eye. She stooped down, rescued the small, round object from the gutter and slipped it safely into her pocket. Chapter 4 It was always the same. Looking down and never turning his face to the sky, he searched the pavements and gutters. His back burned and his eyes watered, full of grit and tears. And then he fell; back through the black into the damp and twisted sheets of his own bed. The dream was always the same. Endlessly searching and never finding the one thing that would finally bring him peace. The house was filled with the deep, soft darkness of a summer night. Anthony swung his weary legs out of bed and sat shrugging the stubborn scraps of dream from his head. He would have to get up. Sleep would not return tonight. He padded down the stairs, their creaking wood echoing his aching bones. No light was needed until he reached the kitchen. He made a pot of tea, finding more comfort in the making than the drinking, and took it through to the study. Pale moonlight skimmed across the edges of the shelves and pooled in the centre of the mahogany table. High on a shelf in the corner, the gold lid of the biscuit tin winked at him as he crossed the room. He took it down carefully and set it in the shimmering circle of light on the table. Of all the things that he had ever found, this troubled him the most. Because it was not a ‘something’ but a ‘someone’; of that he was unreasonably sure. Once again, he removed the lid and inspected the contents, as he had done every day for the past week since bringing it home. He had already repositioned the tin in the study several times, placing it higher up or hidden from sight, but its draw remained irresistible. He couldn’t leave it alone. He dipped his hand into the tin and gently rolled the coarse, grey grains across his fingertips. The memory swept through him, snatching his breath and winding him as surely as any punch to the gut. Once again, he was holding death in his hands. The life they could have had together was a self-harming fantasy in which Anthony rarely indulged. They might have been grandparents by now. Therese had never spoken about wanting children, but then they had both assumed that they had

Life is the ultimate gift of experience and if you are not impressed by the blessing the Lord has given you every awaking day to make a difference, I say your stuck in the mud and you need to call AAA which is code for "Say A Prayer" and get pulled out. Love life and create positive SYNERGY with others while you can before this chapter closes.

Look at this leaf. When you’re standing close to it you can see every single detail of the leaf. You may think that it’s important to see things, like this leaf, up close but that is an incorrect notion because it is also important to view things from afar. That’s why it is necessary to look at all perspectives of an issue or of an object. --The Unnamed Samurai (Chapter 5)

Study Guide for Chapter 1 The Way to Freedom Overview Everything around us operates on the principle of submission, and to the extent that submission is heeded, to the same extent that way is prospered. Submission is a choice toward life. Adam chose death, and we are born into this curse. Submission to God includes submission to delegated authority.* It is out of God’s love for us that He asks us to submit. Authority is and flows from God Himself, and the principle of submission to authority is eternal, sacred and foundational.* Where is your heart? Are you fighting, or are you surrendered? Adam’s curse is broken as we surrender and choose the way of the cross as Christ did.* Just as Christ manifests absolute submission and surrender, Satan manifests absolute rebellion.* God created us to depend on Him, and only what is done in His Spirit will last. Through the mystery of submission to authority, God is restoring creation back to innocence. When we submit, we become part of that work.* * These topics are developed more fully in later chapters. Reflection and Action 1. Reflect on your day. Write down some of the many different ways you saw the principle of submission to authority at work in nature, in society and in your personal life. How might your day have been different if the response in each of those cases was defying submission? What was the result of submission in each of those cases? 2. Note each time that the words “choice” or “choose” were used in this chapter. What are we choosing between? And what is the outcome of the choices made? In the Garden of Eden, what did the two trees represent? What was God’s purpose in allowing Adam and Eve to choose between them? Can you recall an incident recently in which you were faced with the same kind of choice? How did you respond? 3. Prayerfully review all of the Scripture passages related to submission within the Trinity itself. How does this glimpse into the very heart of God change the way you think about submission? Meditate on Isaiah 43:10–11. How would you explain to someone else the concept of God and authority? Why is this principle so important and holy? 4. It can be painful to admit, even to ourselves, that we may imitate Lucifer, rather than Christ, in our attitude toward authority. However, by allowing God to reveal truth to us, we are taking our first steps toward godliness. With that perspective, review these questions from the text and ask the Lord to speak to you through them in any way He chooses. 5. What are the reasons why we find it difficult to submit to authority? And how is it possible for us to remain in rebellion for years after having received Jesus as our Savior? Write down specific times you can look back and see how you remained in rebellion. How would you want to handle those times now? 6. The author writes: “Nothing will remain in eternity that is not of the Spirit.” Explain what this means to you and how it applies to your own ministry. 7. What does God want to accomplish through giving us the freedom to choose submission? Write down any changes in your thoughts and attitude toward submission as you’ve studied this chapter. Close your time by thanking God for His kindness to open your eyes to the things He showed you through this chapter.

Many of the features of the Calvary Atonement are in this frightening chapter, because all that was fulfilled by Calvary is now to be consummated. The blood, the darkness, and the fierce heat of the sun—emblematic of the wrath of God—and demons incite men to their last conflict with God. Why are they here? Their presence is to warn men that if they reject Christ’s Atonement they too will endure the Cross. After probation’s close, when terrible wars with their blood-shedding erupt, and nature testifies to man’s rebellion by drought and famine, when evil angels control the thoughts of men, then will Calvary be reenacted, but this time on the rejecters of God’s love. All must sacrifice. Either we sacrifice our all for Christ our Saviour, or we sacrifice true joy, contentment, and the life to come.

Have you ever dared to imagine what life could be like … if we used our skills to transform conflict, to clean up the environment, and to invent a financial system that is fair? How it would be if we set up systems for wise governance, if we kicked out the cynics and gave medals to people who outlaw corruption? What would life be like if we were to bring the feminine and masculine into balance, to free women from millennia of oppression and release their creativity? What if we were able to have a pace of life that suited the soul? This book is your invitation. How This Book Works The foundation of this book is the leap in human consciousness. This first chapter introduces the ideas that propelled me to write it and describes my own journey. Chapter 2 will try to get as close as possible to a vision of what this leap is. Chapter 3 then takes us to meet some living examples of people who have done this—great people who have developed their self-awareness, shifted their consciousness, and become able to work for change in the world in a powerfully effective way. These are individuals who have dealt with the doubts and challenges of being a pioneer, such as speaking truth to power and picking yourself up when things fall apart. They have also, crucially, learned when skepticism is useful

That message made me more excited and aroused than before my questioning. The clicking soon stopped, and my lover assisted me out of the tub. He dried me off and wrapped us both in large towels. Taking my hand, he guided me to my room. As soon as I heard the door close, my mystery lover released my mask. In bed, snuggled under the duvet, was my sexy roommate John, naked and ready for a night of unbridled sex with Oscar and me. Needless to say, we had a fun filled evening with little sleep and lots of play. By the time Friday rolled round, I had unwittingly plunged myself into a muddy pool of forbidden love. During the course of my Christmas vacation, which followed, it created much uneasiness which I had not anticipated. This is the nature of life. Just when we believe we have it all, life throws us a surprise, so we can learn valuable lessons in another chapter of life, making us stronger and more resilient than before.

PERSONAL PROFILE FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION Consider the following list of twelve characteristics that are central to communicating both in an interview and on the job. If you feel you are lacking in a particular category, you can use the explanations and suggestions given to enhance your interactive ability in the workplace. 1. Activation of PMA. Use positive thinking techniques such as internal coaching. 2. Physical appearance. Make sure to dress appropriately for the event. In most interviews, business attire (a suit or sport coat and tie for men; a suit, dress, or tailored pants for women) is recommended. What you wear to the interview communicates not only how important the event is to you but your ability to assess a situation and how you should behave in it. Appropriate grooming is essential, both in an interview and on the job. 3. Posture. Carry yourself with confidence. Let your posture communicate that you are a winner. Keep your face on a vertical plane, spine straight, shoulders comfortably back. By simply straightening up and using the diaphragmatic breathing you learned in Chapter 6 (which proper posture encourages), you will feel much better about yourself. Others will perceive you in a more positive light as well. 4. Rate of speech. Your rate of speech ought to be appropriate for the specific situation and person or persons it is intended for. Too fast is annoying, and too slow is boring. A good way to pace your speech is to speak at close to the rate of the person who is talking to you. 5. Eye contact. Absolutely essential for successful communication. Occasionally, you should avert your gaze briefly in order to avoid staring. But try not to look down at your lap or let your eyes wander all around the room as you speak. This suggests a lack of confidence and an inability to stay on track. 6. Facial expressions. You gain more credibility when you are open and expressive. The warmer personality will seem stronger and more confident. And perhaps most important, remember to smile in conversation. If you seem interested and enthusiastic, it will enhance the chemistry between you and the interviewer or your supervisor. You can develop the ability to use facial expressions to your advantage through a kind of biofeedback that makes use of the mirror and continuously experimenting in real life. Look at your reflection for several minutes. Practice being relaxed and create the expressions that are appropriate. Do you look interested? Alert? Motivated? Practice responding to an interviewer. Impress the “muscle memory” of these expressions into your mind.

AUTHOR’S NOTE The First Assassin is a work of fiction, and specifically a work of historical fiction—meaning that much of it is based on real people, places, and events. My goal never has been to tell a tale about what really happened but to tell what might have happened by blending known facts with my imagination. Characters such as Abraham Lincoln, Winfield Scott, and John Hay were, of course, actual people. When they speak on these pages, their words are occasionally drawn from things they are reported to have said. At other times, I literally put words in their mouths. Historical events and circumstances such as Lincoln’s inauguration, the fall of Fort Sumter, and the military crisis in Washington, D.C., provide both a factual backdrop and a narrative skeleton. Throughout, I have tried to maximize the authenticity and also to tell a good story. Thomas Mallon, an experienced historical novelist, has described writing about the past: “The attempt to reconstruct the surface texture of that world was a homely pleasure, like quilting, done with items close to hand.” For me, the items close to hand were books and articles. Naming all of my sources is impossible. I’ve drawn from a lifetime of reading about the Civil War, starting as a boy who gazed for hours at the battlefield pictures in The Golden Book of the Civil War, which is an adaptation for young readers of The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War by Bruce Catton. Yet several works stand out as especially important references. The first chapter owes much to an account that appeared in the New York Tribune on February 26, 1861 (and is cited in A House Dividing, by William E. Baringer). It is also informed by Lincoln and the Baltimore Plot, 1861, edited by Norma B. Cuthbert. For details about Washington in 1861: Reveille in Washington, by Margaret Leech; The Civil War Day by Day, by E. B. Long with Barbara Long; Freedom Rising, by Ernest B. Ferguson; The Regiment That Saved the Capitol, by William J. Roehrenbeck; The Story the Soldiers Wouldn’t Tell, by Thomas P. Lowry; and “Washington City,” in The Atlantic Monthly, January 1861. For information about certain characters: With Malice Toward None, by Stephen B. Oates; Lincoln, by David Herbert Donald; Abe Lincoln Laughing, edited by P. M. Zall; Lincoln and the Civil War in the Diaries of John Hay, edited by Tyler Dennett; Lincoln Day by Day, Vol. III: 1861–1865, by C. Percy Powell; Agent of Destiny, by John S. D. Eisenhower; Rebel Rose, by Isabel Ross; Wild Rose, by Ann Blackman; and several magazine articles by Charles Pomeroy Stone. For life in the South: Roll, Jordan, Roll, by Eugene D. Genovese; Runaway Slaves, by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger; Bound for Canaan, by Fergus M. Bordewich; Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, written by himself; The Fire-Eaters, by Eric H. Walther; and The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, by Robert E. May. For background on Mazorca: Argentine Dictator, by John Lynch. This is the second edition of The First Assassin. Except for a few minor edits, it is no different from the first edition.

learning—we have learned how to increase productivity, the outputs that can be produced with any inputs. There are two aspects of learning that we can distinguish: an improvement in best practices, reflected in increases in productivity of firms that marshal all available knowledge and technology, and improvements in the productivity of firms as they catch up to best practices. In fact, the distinction may be somewhat artificial; there may be no firm that has employed best practices in every aspect of its activities. One firm may be catching up with another in some dimension, but the second firm may be catching up with the first in others. In developing countries, almost all firms may be catching up with global best practices; but the real difference between developing and developed countries is the larger fraction of firms that are significantly below global best practices and the larger gap between their productivity and that of the best-performing firms. While we are concerned in this book with both aspects of learning, it is especially the learning associated with catching up that we believe has been given short shrift in the economics literature, and which is central to improvements in standards of living, especially in developing countries. But as we noted in chapter 1, the two are closely related; because of the improvements in best practices by the most innovative firms, most other firms are always engaged in a process of catching up. While the evidence of Solow and the work that followed demonstrated (what to many seems obvious) the importance of learning for increases in standards of living, to further explicate the role of learning, the first three sections of this chapter marshal other macro- and microeconomic evidence. In particular, we stress the pervasive gap between best practices and the productivity of most firms. We argue that this gap is far more important than the traditional allocative inefficiencies upon which most of economics has focused and is related to learning—or more accurately, the lack of learning. The final section provides a theoretical context within which to think about the sources of sustained increases in standards of living, employing the familiar distinction of movements of the production possibilities curve and movements toward the production possibilities curve. Using this framework, we explain why it is that we ascribe such importance to learning. Macroeconomic Perspectives There are several empirical arguments that can be brought to bear to support our conclusion concerning the importance of learning. The first is a simple argument: In theory, leading-edge technology is globally available. Thus, with sufficient capital and trained labor (or sufficient mobility for capital and trained labor), all countries should enjoy comparable standards of living. The only difference would be the rents associated with ownership of intellectual property rights and factor supplies. Yet there is an enormous divergence in economic performance and standards of living across national economies, far greater than can be explained by differences in factor supplies.1 And this includes many low-performing economies with high levels of capital intensity (especially among formerly socialist economies) and highly trained labor forces. Table 2.1 presents a comparison of formerly socialist countries with similar nonsocialist economies in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the state-controlled model of economic activity. TABLE 2.1 Quality of Life Comparisons, 1992–1994 (U.S. $) Source: Greenwald and Khan (2009), p. 30. In most of these cases, at the time communism was imposed after World War II, the subsequently socialist economies enjoyed higher levels of economic development than

the French fries were fantastic, they weren’t enough, not even close, to forget about the man she couldn’t have. The problem was she didn’t have any room in her life for him, and if she let him linger any more in her heart, she’d surely lose the game tonight. Tonight was for winning. CHAPTER TWO The venture capitalist with the laughing tell was back, and he spent most of the game staring at Julia. But Hunter must have gotten a tip to strike that laugh from his repertoire because the first time he chuckled Julia went all in, and lost a cool grand. He’d really had three kings. No bluffing. He’d likely snagged himself a poker tutor, some former pro player who now trained eager wannabe card sharks in the ways of the game, or a grizzled old veteran needing to earn a dime or two after he’d retired. She’d seen it before among the hotshots. A pivot here, a change-up there–all

This very morning she’d browsed her favorite chapter in Ephesians, which reminded her that the Lord had a plan for her life, with good works prepared like footsteps she should walk in. But the harder she sought direction, the more cagey the Lord seemed. The more tantalizingly distant and unfathomable. She couldn’t doubt what He’d said—but she did doubt what she’d heard out there in the praying field. Did He really promise that He was trustworthy and following Him would bring her closer? Because this wasn’t close at all.

Suddenly, there was a noise from the front door. Dr. Dave turned away, toward the sound. And all hell broke loose.   Chapter Forty-seven   “NO!” Ryan bellowed, barreling into the kitchen with Pam at his heels. “No” was all Jake could whisper, horrified they were in harm’s way. Ryan took a flying leap at Dave and tackled him heavily to the ground. They both yelled and grunted, struggling for the gun. Suddenly a shot fired. Pam screamed. Tears of fright sprang to Jake’s eyes. He didn’t know whether Ryan or Dave had been shot. He prayed to God for Ryan’s life. Pam burst into tears, covering her head with her hands. Suddenly Ryan staggered to his feet, supporting himself on the kitchen island. Pam ran to his side, crying with relief. Dr. Dave remained on the floor, moaning and holding his shoulder. Jake thanked God. He could’ve died a happy man at that moment, but Ryan and Pam rushed together at him. “Jake, Jake!” Pam sobbed, throwing herself to the floor beside him. “Honey, the police will be here! I worried you got in a fight, when you didn’t answer! An ambulance is on the way! They should be here any minute!” “Dad, don’t die, please don’t die!” Ryan bent over him, distraught. “I love you, Dad! I love you!” Jake looked up at them, feeling weaker by the second. He wanted to tell them he loved them. He wanted to tell them to be happy without him, that nothing else mattered to him as much, on the face of the earth. “Pam,” he tried to say, but it came out fainter than a whisper. “Honey, stay with us!” Pam embraced him, beginning to sob. “The ambulance will be here any minute!” “Dad, don’t die, please, please!” Jake could barely hear them. He felt himself slipping away. He flashed on the bag that Dr. Dave had put in the trunk of his car, with Voloshin’s laptop and phone. It contained the only evidence that connected Ryan to the hit-and-run. If Ryan and Pam disposed of it, nobody would ever know what had happened. If they gave it to the police, they would go to jail. He tried to say, “Ryan … trunk…” “What, Dad?” Ryan bent over him, crying. “The trunk? Of the car?” Jake managed a smile, closing his eyes. They would figure it out when they opened the trunk. They would decide what to do. Jake knew what he would do, if he had a second chance. But he couldn’t say, and he’d have to leave the decision to them. Because he was gone.

The whole thing boils down to this paradox: if you are going to be a hero then you must give a gift. If you are the average man you give your heroic gift to the society in which you live, and you give the gift that society specifies in advance. If you are an artist you fashion a peculiarly personal gift, the justification for your own heroic identity, which means that it is always aimed at least partly over the heads of your fellow men. After all, they can't grant the immortality of your personal soul. As Rank argued in the breathtaking closing chapters of Art and Artist, there is no way for the artist to be at peace with his work or with the society that accepts it. The artist's gift is always to creation itself, to the ultimate meaning of life, to God. We should not be surprised that Rank was brought to exactly the same conclusion as Kierkegaard: that the only way out of human conflict is full renunciation, to give one's life as a gift to the highest powers. Absolution has to come from the absolute beyond. As Kierkegaard, Rank showed that this rule applied to the strongest, most heroic types-not to trembling and empty weaklings. To renounce the world and oneself, to lay the meaning of it to the powers of creation, is the hardest thing for man to achieve-and so it is fitting that this task should fall to the strongest personality type, the one with the largest ego. The great scientific world-shaker Newton was the same man who always carried the Bible under his arm.

You cannot start a new chapter until you close the last one.

Many situations in your life will re-open what's been shut off or down, forcing you to see what's been left behind and the emotions that come with that. That's natural and necessary for processing and healing. Meeting all of your experiences with resistance keeps you stuck in the past. You live and die with the closing of each chapter.

I was now able to logically decipher my behavior and analyze my actions. I understood all the conditioning that the exploitation and disgrace had in creating the different personality parts and behavioral traits that dwelt in my depths. I started to understand how criticism and insults painfully intensified my ignominious impression of myself, causing me to take everything personally. The numb, confused, and skeptic defender parts now made sense to me. I could see how they contributed to the various problems I incurred throughout my life. I comprehended why I mistrusted and did pernicious things to loved ones—for fear they would do them to me first. The need to self-medicate made sense. I began to recognize the urge for porn. The need to commit acts of perversion was a result of my adolescent mind being manipulated and programmed to believe it was acceptable. I perceived that the reason why I wanted to be humiliated sexually was because the shameful part from the humiliation of the maltreatment wanted to be reinforced. The logic of it all—how all the parts fit together, their roles and reasons for being—became apparent to me. I opened my eyes for a brief moment. Keith was leaning forward with his right elbow resting on his leg, his hand supporting his chin, staring at me as if he was trying to analyze my thoughts. I gazed off in a distance, remembering my numerous misbehaviors. I could trace the main contributing factor for why I acted the way I did to the resulting ignominy from the desecration. But the most significant understanding I had was, that even though it wasn’t my fault, I was still responsible for my behavior. My lengthy musings came to a halt when Keith said, “Marco? Where are you now ... tell me what you’re seeing, thinking.” I proceeded to explain to him my current revelation. “Excellent work, Marco,” Keith said, cracking a smile. “Now think about your next step.” My next step was to cleanse and reprogram the inadequate part. I closed my eyes again and began to concentrate. The only way to accomplish this was to create a tangible picture in my mind of the inadequate part being exorcised of all its imperfect characteristics. Once I was able to concentrate on this step, I looked up into his gaze. “I see myself overlooking a canyon during a sunset. As the sun descends, I envision its rays reflecting off the sparse layers of cloud cover, creating a beautiful multi-layer spectrum of blazing colors. I imagine a cool breeze flowing across my body, as a warm illuminating light from above shines on me and creates a white-out effect that is the cleanest, brightest white I can imagine. I picture the whiteness as a soothing cleansing treatment for the blackness within. I’m feeling as pure and clean as the brilliant color itself.” "And now how do you want to orchestrate the inadequate part?" I stood up and puffed out my chest. "I want it to be the exact opposite—confident, strong, and stable. It should be at peace with itself and not paranoid about what other people think.” Sitting back down, I folded my hands over my crossed knees. “I don't want to feel as if I have to worry about working to exhaustion in my personal life. On the job, or in the gym, I shouldn’t feel I have to be perfect in order to be accepted in society. I want to move past that. I want to feel good and proud of myself. But most of all, I want to feel morally acceptable." I now had a better understanding of the inadequate part, its defender parts, and what they wanted. I was able to see the un-blending taking place within me. The unburdening and bearing witness process got me to the point of reprogramming the misconception that the inadequate part thought about itself. I could go straight to the visualization technique of cleansing and reprogramming the part whenever I felt its symptoms coming on. CHAPTER

Miranda was a closed chapter in my life and I wanted to keep it that way.

Today is the first day in the next chapter of my life.  My best friend, Ivy, and I are leaving home to finish college. We will be roommates and have the time of our lives. She has been staying at our house since November of our senior year in high school.  My parents agreed to help us both with college if we would take two years of basic courses at the local junior college.  Now we are moving to Springfield, Missouri to attend Missouri State University. 

And so that chapter of our hero’s life was closed and a new chapter opened. He moved into his early forties and the end of his second marriage, which also, by this time, had produced a child—his third daughter—another love of his life who could not, as no child can ever do, repair a broken marriage. During the years that followed, he became about the best anyone could be in his now chosen profession. He learned the secrets he thought were hidden. He married a woman far bigger than the others, had two more children, fought battles with his ignorance at times titanic in scope, moved through one obstacle after another, wrote books, spoke throughout the world, built a great business, only to watch it almost fail, persisted in building it up again, lanced, jabbed, wrestled, grappled, laughed, sang, loved, and roared, and through it all, remembered one simple thing that meant more to him than anything else he had ever thought: the curtain, the curtain. Keep the curtain up at all cost.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking (Edward B. Burger;Michael Starbird) - Your Highlight on page 17 | location 251-270 | Added on Monday, 6 April 2015 03:03:56 Understand simple things deeply The most fundamental ideas in any subject can be understood with ever-increasing depth. Professional tennis players watch the ball; mathematicians understand a nuanced notion of number; successful students continue to improve their mastery of the concepts from previous chapters and courses as they move toward the more advanced material on the horizon; successful people regularly focus on the core purpose of their profession or life. True experts continually deepen their mastery of the basics. Trumpeting understanding through a note-worthy lesson. Tony Plog is an internationally acclaimed trumpet virtuoso, composer, and teacher. A few years ago we had the opportunity to observe him conducting a master class for accomplished soloists. During the class, each student played a portion of his or her selected virtuosic piece. They played wonderfully. Tony listened politely and always started his comments, “Very good, very good. That is a challenging piece, isn’t it?” As expected, he proceeded to give the students advice about how the piece could be played more beautifully, offering suggestions about physical technique and musicality. No surprise. But then he shifted gears. He asked the students to play a very easy warm-up exercise that any beginning trumpet player might be given. They played the handful of simple notes, which sounded childish compared to the dramatically fast, high notes from the earlier, more sophisticated pieces. After they played the simple phrase, Tony, for the first time during the lesson, picked up the trumpet. He played that same phrase, but when he played it, it was not childish. It was exquisite. Each note was a rich, delightful sound. He gave the small phrase a delicate shape, revealing a flowing sense of dynamics that enabled us to hear meaning in those simple notes. The students’ attempts did not come close—the contrast was astounding. The fundamental difference between the true master and the talented students clearly occurred at a far more basic level than in the intricacies of complex pieces. Tony explained that mastering an efficient, nuanced performance of simple pieces allows one to play spectacularly difficult pieces with greater control and artistry. The lesson was simple. The master teacher suggested that the advanced students focus more of their time on practicing simple pieces intensely—learning to perform them with technical efficiency and beautiful elegance. Deep work on simple, basic ideas helps to build true virtuosity—not just in music but in everything. ==========

And so,the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live? We will see the import of this at the close of this chapter, but right now we must remind ourselves that when we talk about the need for illusion we are not being cynical. True, there is a great deal of falseness and self-deception in the cultural causa-sui project, but there is also the necessity of this project. Man needs a "second" world, a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. "Illusion" means creative play at its highest level. Cultural illusion is a necessary ideology of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. To lose the security of heroic cultural illusion is to die-that is what "deculturation" of primitives means and what it does. It kills them or reduces them to the animal level of chronic fighting and fornication. Life becomes possible only in a continual alcoholic stupor. Many of the older American Indians were relieved when the Big Chiefs in Ottawa and Washington took control and prevented them from warring and feuding. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of death for their loved ones, if not for themselves. But they also knew, with a heavy heart, that this eclipse of their traditional hero-systems at the same time left them as good as dead.

Old Testament poetry and especially Old Testament wisdom evoke a world charged with God’s grandeur as the Creator and redeemer. In the process of evoking this world, Old Testament wisdom invites, cajoles and even commands us to live our lives consciously in this world. Biblical poetry is never poetry for poetry’s sake. Yet it is still aesthetic and to be savored as such. Its creativity with words, sounds and images gives it its evocative and memorable powers. All of these wisdom books naturally became a part of the traditions in the home, the community and at festival gatherings. Each book thus generated a formative presence in the cultural consciousness of God’s people. In sum, we simply will not hear God’s address through Old Testament wisdom if we fail to attend closely to its poetic character. Here is a brief look at each of the books studied in the following chapters. Proverbs. Proverbs 1–9 is a highly symbolic collection of sayings from two very different sources: Woman Wisdom and the parents of a maturing son. The son is a realistic but fictional character entering the actual world adults encounter day to day. Woman Wisdom, however, is a fictional and cosmic character who, as wisdom personified, beckons the son to desire her ways and paths. This may be a complex way of getting at what’s going on in all of the imagery, but it alerts us to the great power of biblical art. The mysterious woman character creates the symbolic and allusive points of view introduced above. The point is not for the young man to believe that this woman is a human; rather, he is drawn to make the theological and experiential connections between God’s created purpose and the world he will soon enter as an adult. The woman’s cosmic, feminine character attaches urgency and emotion to the simple actions of life in this world, for they will be played out before God within the deep, mysterious, cosmic order he has formed.

Classic analysts prefer to work on their own and rarely deviate from their goals. They rarely show emotion, and they often use what is very close to the FM DJ Voice I talked about in Chapter 3, slow and measured with a downward inflection. However, Analysts often speak in a way that is distant and cold instead of soothing.

Salary increases in terms of percentage are too close between the top performers and those who are not. There’s not enough differentiation in bonus, or in stock options, or in stock grants. Leaders need the confidence to explain to a direct report why he got a lower than expected reward. A good leader ensures that the organization makes these distinctions and that they become a way of life, down throughout the organization. Otherwise people think they’re involved in socialism. That isn’t what you want when you strive for a culture of execution. You have to make it clear to everybody that rewards and respect are based on performance. In chapter 4, we’ll explain why so many companies don’t reward the doers, and how those that execute do.

Life would be more straightforward if we knew what we needed to find out, if we were told at birth exactly what we need to know to be happy. But in a complex world, it’s impossible to know what might be useful in the future. It’s important, therefore, to spread our cognitive bets. Curious people take risks, try things out, allow themselves to become productively distracted. They know that something they learn by chance today may well come in useful tomorrow or spark a new way of thinking about an entirely different problem. The more unpredictable the environment, the more important a seemingly unnecessary breadth and depth of knowledge become. Humans have always had to deal with complexity; felling a woolly mammoth is not simple. But now that we live in larger, more varied, faster-changing societies than ever before, curiosity is more important—and more rewarding—than it has ever been. This applies to who we need to know, as well as what. Another striking thing about Leonardo’s list is how many house visits he will have to make. His curiosity makes him highly sociable. Montaigne wrote of how travel to different regions and countries allows us to “rub and polish our brains” against others, and Leonardo seems keen to polish his brain against as many others as possible. Out of the fifteen tasks in the complete list, at least eight involve consultations with other people, and two involve other people’s books. It is easy to imagine Leonardo eagerly approaching each expert, intent on drawing out their knowledge, beginning each conversation with “Dimmi. . . .” People who are deeply curious are more likely to be good at collaboration. They seek out new acquaintances and allies in the process of building their stock of cultural knowledge. In the next chapter we’ll look more closely at the curiosity of babies and children and at why some of them are more likely than others to grow into adults who share Leonardo’s passionate curiosity. * Perceptual curiosity, which diversive curiosity encompasses, refers specifically to the seeking out of physical experience—it is what drives people up mountains and down rivers, just to see what’s there. * Of course, one obvious way to reduce the danger of firearms is to restrict their availability, but that debate is beyond the scope of this book. I use guns here simply as an extreme example of the power of diversive curiosity.

for the rest of the night. Other than to refuel with holiday leftovers. “Would you still love me if I told you I didn’t know what tasted better, Christmas leftovers or you?” Jana cocked her eyebrow with a sexy smile on her face. Damn, she was beautiful. “No but I will be mad unless you do some very thorough research and come up with a satisfying answer…” I grinned. This Christmas was unlike any of the others Jana and I had spent together. This time we had two little boys, a bigger family and we’d faced our biggest threat yet and come out on top. “If it’s for the sake of research, consider me in babe.” And I spent the rest of the night doing science. Between the gorgeous legs of my beautiful wife. I was pretty sure in that moment, life for the Reckless Bastard’s couldn’t get any better. Merry friggin’ Christmas to us! * * * * If you think the Reckless Bastards are spicy bad boys, they’re nothing compared to the steam in my next series Reckless MC Opey, TX Chapter where Gunnar and Maisie move to Texas! There’s also a sneak peek on the next page.   Don’t wait — grab your copy today!  Copyright © 2019 KB Winters and BookBoyfriends Publishing Inc Published By: BookBoyfriends Publishing Inc Chapter One Gunnar “We’re gonna be cowboys!” Maisie had been singing that song since we got on the interstate and left Nevada and the only family we’d had in the world behind. For good. Cross was my oldest friend, and I’d miss him the most, even though I knew we’d never lose touch. I’d miss Jag too, even Golden Boy and Max. The prospects were cool, but I had no attachment to them. Though I gave him a lot of shit, I knew I’d even miss Stitch. A little. It didn’t matter that the last year had been filled with more shit than gold, or that I was leaving Vegas in the dust, we were all closer for the hell we’d been through. But still, I was leaving. Maisie and I’d been on the road for a couple of days. Traveling with a small child took a long damn time. Between bathroom breaks and snack times we’d be lucky to make it to Opey by the end of the month. Lucky for me, Maisie had her mind set on us becoming cowboys, complete with ten gallon hats, spurs and chaps, so she hadn’t shed one tear, yet. It wasn’t something I’d been hoping for but I was waiting patiently for reality to sink in and the uncontrollable sobs that had a way of breaking a grown man’s heart. “You’re not a boy,” I told her and smiled through the rear view mirror. “Hard to be a cowboy if you’re not even a boy.” Maisie grinned, a full row of bright white baby teeth shining back at me right along with sapphire blue eyes and hair so black it looked to be painted on with ink. “I’m gonna be a cowgirl then! A cowgirl!” She went on and on for what felt like forever, in only the way that a four year old could, about all the cool cowgirl stuff she’d have. “Boots and a pony too!” “A pony? You can’t even tie your shoes or clean up your toys and you want a pony?” She nodded in that exaggerated way little kids did. “I’ll learn,” she said with the certainty of a know it all teenager, a thought that terrified the hell out of me. “You’ll help me, Gunny!” Her words brought a smile to my face even though I hated that fucking nickname she’d picked up from a woman I refused to think about ever again. I’d help Maisie because that’s what family did. Hell, she was the reason I’d uprooted my entire fucking life and headed to the great unknown wilds of Texas. To give Maisie a normal life or as close to normal as I was capable of giving her. “I’ll always help you, Squirt.” “I know. Love you Gunny!” “Love you too, Cowgirl.” I winked in the mirror and her face lit up with happiness. It was the pure joy on her face, putting a bloom in her cheeks that convinced me this was the right thing to do. I didn’t want to move to Texas, and I didn’t want to live on a goddamn ranch, but that was my future. The property was already bought and paid for with my name

When the only hope is a boat and there is no boat, I will be the boat. I close my eyes and settle in for the three hours it takes us to travel there. This is neither a beginning nor an end. If all life on earth is one chapter in the story of the universe, each cosmic night four billion years long, then am I allowed to write a page in the tale of existence, am I to be granted a single word? Does the story even matter or is the witnessing enough, the being aware of each moment of beauty and hardship along the path? And why do we need to believe our lives must add up to some grand narrative, and what happens when we stop believing this?

Aristotle said that the best activities are the most useless. This is because such things are not simply means to a further end but are done entirely for their own sake. Thus watching a baseball game is more important than getting a haircut, and cultivating a friendship is more valuable than making money. The game and the friendship are goods that are excellent in themselves, while getting a haircut and making money are in service of something beyond themselves. This is also why the most important parts of the newspaper are the sports section and the comics, and not, as we would customarily think, the business and political reports. In this sense, the most useless activity of all is the celebration of the Liturgy, which is another way of saying that it is the most important thing we could possibly do. There is no higher good than to rest in God, to honor him for his kindness, to savor his sweetness—in a word, to praise him. As we have seen in chapter three, every good comes from God, reflects God, and leads back to God, and, therefore, all value is summed up in the celebration of the Liturgy, the supreme act by which we commune with God. This is why the great liturgical theologian Romano Guardini said that the liturgy is a consummate form of play. We play football and we play musical instruments because it is simply delightful to do so, and we play in the presence of the Lord for the same reason. In chapter one I spoke of Adam in the garden as being the first priest, which is another way of saying that his life, prior to the fall, was entirely liturgical. At play in the field of the Lord, Adam, with every move and thought, effortlessly gave praise to God. As Dietrich von Hildebrand indicated, this play of liturgy is what rightly orders the personality, since we find interior order in the measure that we surrender everything in us to God. We might say that the Liturgy bookends the entire Scripture, for the priesthood of Adam stands at the beginning of the sacred text and the heavenly Liturgy of the book of Revelation stands at the end. In the closing book of the Bible, John the visionary gives us a glimpse into the heavenly court, and he sees priests, candles, incense, the reading of a sacred text, the gathering of thousands in prayer, prostrations and other gestures of praise, and the appearance of the Lamb of God. He sees,

We all die of something, and if you are following my argument in this chapter skeptically—as you should—that includes physically active people who eat sensibly and do everything else they are supposed to. In fact, despite being told to exercise, more inactive people like Donald Trump are living longer and in better health today than ever before. To evaluate this conundrum, let’s look closely at the probabilistic relationship between death (mortality) and illness (morbidity). Too often, statistics on aging focus on life span without also considering health span (the length of time spent in good health without morbidity). A useful way to think about both life span and health span is to graph functional capacity (a measure of health) on the y-axis versus time on the x-axis, as shown in figure 28. Someone who is generally healthy is at nearly 100 percent functional capacity most of the time, despite occasional, temporary illnesses. Then, at some point, age-related senescence commences and functional capacity declines because of serious illness, eventually leading to death.

I have to choose at some point, don’t I? Look here- The pages will turn; the chapters will open and close, as I, myself own a book of life, ha- I think I read my own story without ever knowing, yet Liv did that why she read it in front of me to see if I would see the way, to my own life. Some of the text, which was written, will fade away, and a broken heart will mend.

As we have seen, enzymes are minute but powerful molecular machines, machines that carry out various sorts of chemistry at phenomenal speed and with extraordinary accuracy. Chapter 1 closed with a quotation from Frederick Gowland Hopkins, who suggested almost ninety years ago that it was ‘difficult to exaggerate the importance to biology, and to chemistry no less, of extended studies of enzymes and their action’. A prophetic statement indeed, but even Hopkins could not have dreamt of the sweeping impact of these amazing molecules on science, technology, medicine, and our understanding of life itself.

KEEP IT SIMPLE Offering to close a story loop is much more simple than you think. Even the inclusion of smiley, happy people on your website is a strong way to offer the closing of a story loop. People want to be happy, and those images promise your product will deliver. If you sell rugs, a successful resolution might be a beautiful floor or a room that finally feels finished. If you sell ice cream, a successful resolution might be a rich, creamy taste of heaven. Camping gear? An adventure to remember. While I’ve been slightly philosophical in this chapter, try not to overthink it. What problem are you resolving in your customer’s life, and what does that resolution look like? Stick to basic answers because basic answers really do work. Then, when you get good, start diving deeper into the levels of problems your brand resolves. The important idea in this section is that we need to show repeatedly how our product or service can make somebody’s life better. If we don’t tell people where we’re taking them, they won’t follow. A story has to go somewhere. Have you told your customers where you want to take them?

The perfect salesperson will naturally attract prospects, set a polished first impression, keep prospects engaged as well as educate them, follow up with them at just the right time and handle any objections with expert salesmanship, skillfully close the sale while simultaneously looking for upsell opportunities, and get referrals while retaining them as customers for life. Whether your top salesperson is you or someone on your team, that person will inevitably have a bad day, take vacations, and need benefits. The ASP™ takes the perfect version of your sales process and permanently stamps it into a technology system that works for you 24/7/365, never having a bad day, never needing a vacation, and never requiring benefits. The ASP™ is the growth-hacking framework we implement for our clients that range from traditional brick-and-mortar businesses to venture-backed technology start-ups. It’s a framework that can be applied to any type of business, and in the next several chapters, we’ll dive into ASP™ and its six individual components and show you how best to implement them for your business.

Learn to allow some chapters in your life to close so you can start new, beautiful chapters.

Trust God no matter the circumstances. David completely trusted his Lord to bring him victory. You should trust that God is going to help you close this chapter in your life.

11. Lack of controlled sexual urge. Sex energy is the most powerful of all the stimuli which move people into action. Because it is the most powerful of the emotions, it must be controlled, through transmutation, and converted into other channels. 12. Uncontrolled desire for “something for nothing.” The gambling instinct drives millions of people to failure. Evidence of this may be found in a study of the Wall Street crash of ’29, during which millions of people tried to make money by gambling on stock margins. 13. Lack of a well defined power of decision. Men who succeed reach decisions promptly, and change them, if at all, very slowly. Men who fail reach decisions, if at all, very slowly, and change them frequently, and quickly. Indecision and procrastination are twin brothers. Where one is found, the other may usually be found also. Kill off this pair before they completely “hog-tie” you to the treadmill of failure. 14. One or more of the six basic fears. These fears have been analyzed for you in a later chapter. They must be mastered before you can market your services effectively. 15. Wrong selection of a mate in marriage. This is a most common cause of failure. The relationship of marriage brings people intimately into contact. Unless this relationship is harmonious, failure is likely to follow. Moreover, it will be a form of failure that is marked by misery and unhappiness, destroying all signs of ambition. 16. Over-caution. The person who takes no chances generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing. Over-caution is as bad as under-caution. Both are extremes to be guarded against. Life itself is filled with the element of chance. 17. Wrong selection of associates in business. This is one of the most common causes of failure in business. In marketing personal services, one should use great care to select an employer who will be an inspiration, and who is, himself, intelligent and successful. We emulate those with whom we associate most closely. Pick an employer who is worth emulating. 18. Superstition and prejudice. Superstition is a form of fear. It is also a sign of ignorance. Men who succeed keep open minds and are afraid of nothing. 19. Wrong selection of a vocation. No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like. The most essential step in the marketing of personal services is that of selecting an occupation into which you can throw yourself wholeheartedly. 20. Lack of concentration of effort. The jack-of-all-trades seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one definite chief aim.

I take a drink of my coffee and close my eyes and cry because life can be so fucking cruel and hard, and I’ve wanted to quit living it so many times, but then moments like these remind me that happiness isn’t some permanent thing we’re all trying to achieve in life, it’s merely a thing that shows up every now and then, sometimes in tiny doses that are just substantial enough to keep us going. CHAPTER FOUR LEDGER

Life is like a book that never ends. Chapters close, but not the book itself. The end of one physical incarnation is like the end of a chapter, on some level setting up the beginning of another. — Marianne Williamson

Embrace the peaks and valleys of life, for within each challenge lies the opportunity to write the extraordinary chapters of your journey." - Jay J.P. Peak, National Best Selling Author

The closing of the door signified the closing of a complete chapter from her life

14. ONE OR MORE OF THE SIX BASIC FEARS. These fears have been analyzed for you in a later chapter. They must be mastered before you can market your services effectively. 15. WRONG SELECTION OF A MATE IN MARRIAGE. This a most common cause of failure. The relationship of marriage brings people intimately into contact. Unless this relationship is harmonious, failure is likely to follow. Moreover, it will be a form of failure that is marked by misery and unhappiness, destroying all signs of AMBITION. 16. OVER-CAUTION. The person who takes no chances, generally has to take whatever is left when others are through choosing. Over-caution is as bad as un-der-caution. Both are extremes to be guarded against. Life itself is filled with the element of chance. 17. WRONG SELECTION OF ASSOCIATES IN BUSINESS. This is one of the most common causes of failure in business. In marketing personal services, one should use great care to select an employer who will be an inspiration, and who is, himself, intelligent and successful. We emulate those with whom we associate most closely. Pick an employer who is worth emulating. 18. SUPERSTITION AND PREJUDICE. Superstition is a form of fear. It is also a sign of ignorance. Men who succeed keep open minds and are afraid of nothing. 19. WRONG SELECTION OF A VOCATION. No man can succeed in a line of endeavor which he does not like. The most essential step in the marketing of personal services is that of selecting an occupation into which you can throw yourself wholeheartedly. 20. LACK OF CONCENTRATION OF EFFORT. The "jack-of-all-trades" seldom is good at any. Concentrate all of your efforts on one DEFINITE CHIEF AIM.

Garden of the Dragons (The ’Halla, Vol. # 3) Chapter Ten Excerpt (original editing) ... Hachiman, surveys he the woe, Wipes his brow, hate does flow. A ruined life, heh, a loss of face, He must have her now, to his disgrace (Wed to Kari now, locked in time and place). Battle over, moon still shines, Lilies float soft in quiet time. Scented visions and memories sear remains, Of this terrible night of what was feigned. Visuals lithe, of sword and blade, Disguise the carnage and the pain. Petals soft, they hide our gaze, And cover the ground and its grave. Flowers and moon in water light, T'winkills the calm of a zen-burst night. Now to life, the poem to seek repose, And bury beneath those riddles she holds. Nectars sweet, precious flowers, A fragranted grave that allures and empowers. Heart~beat, heart~beat, tells the way, Of things long remembered and a far lost day. How many memories, Kari knew, That stain with age, being so few. Samurai remembers - feels it as a man, Clutches he his fist; wind in hand. . . . ". . .I have searched for you a very long time." "Do not waste breath, kill. It is our way here." "Not before I have my say, Corpse-eater." "No wonder you took so long to find me." "I have had a lot of time for thought," quietly he, "- T'is a shame we could not agree." "No more room for that," forcefully he snapped, "You dishonored me twice and now, I will take one back." "- Not enough? Hachi," said cordially she, "If you are going to - cut the artery, please." Tilt she her neck, exposed but her vein, Samurai frowned, decidedly vain. Looked he at his hands - "They're already too bloody for today." "Hummph. Such trite man'ers are atrocious. For yourself you are much too engaged." ("Yet, a moment and it is done," thought he, "But to gain it thus, a hollow travesty. I must face her in all her strength, The bladed Valkyrie, the one called great"). "I could kill you now, but I'd rather not, This room is too unbecoming for the proper job." "Charmed that you still think so highly of me." "- Only then of your haunted beauty, I shall be free." Feeling that weight, slowly dropped he his blade, Time enough - rituals to cleanse and to pray. Tossed his sword, pined her down - Smooshed her face to the floor, Pinching it to a frown. "Oh no, my little angel, you have it all wrong! I mean only to kill you when you are strong. Do not fear, I won't let anyone harm you in strife, In the meantime, try not to flirt with your life. Stay healthy - then we shall settle our love, unrequite." A biting grin creased Samurai's scarved face, "Let us fix it properly, according to my r'ace." "Bushido," mouthed Kari, her voice empty as the word. "And there will be no running away this time - Rest assured." Slowly withdrew he and left the room, "Bastard," spit Kari, caustic of his doom. The girl breathing vexiously, then calmly in the dark, The door closed, silent, the light dribbling out. Sounds below, drip mute in time, Reality presses, she makes her fate thind. And Skuld drinking, contemplates she her sibylline, It was her hour now, the night of the wolverine.

Yes, bad things happened to you—really bad things. But you survived them! Now that chapter’s closed, and you can… well, you don’t have to forget any of it. You don’t have to pretend it never happened. But you’ve got the whole rest of your life to live, so how are you gonna live it?

Our modern lives are very different from those of early humans, who hunted and gathered to survive. Their reverence for the natural world is evident in the early murals of wildlife they painted on cave walls and in the stylized visions of life they sculpted from bone and ivory. Our lives reflect remnants of our ancestral attachment to nature and the diversity of life - the concept of biophilia that was introduced early in this chapter. We evolved in natural environments rich in biodiversity, and we still have a biophilia for such settings. Indeed, our biophilia may be innate, an evolutionary product of natural selection acting on a brainy species who survival depended on a close connection to the environment and a practical appreciation of plants and animals. Our appreciation of life guides the field of biology today. We celebrate life by deciphering he genetic code that makes each species unique. We embrace life by using fossils and DNA to chronicle evolution through time. We preserve life through our efforts to classify and protect the millions of species on Earth. We respect life by using nature responsibly and reverently to improve human welfare. Biology is the scientific expression of our desire to know nature. We are most likely to protect what we appreciate, and we are mostly likely to appreciate what we understand. By learning about the processes and diversity of life, we also become more aware of ourselves and our place in the biosphere. We hope this text has served you well in this lifelong adventure.

at the other end of the bar, I take a drink of my coffee and close my eyes and cry because life can be so fucking cruel and hard, and I’ve wanted to quit living it so many times, but then moments like these remind me that happiness isn’t some permanent thing we’re all trying to achieve in life, it’s merely a thing that shows up every now and then, sometimes in tiny doses that are just substantial enough to keep us going. CHAPTER FOUR LEDGER I know what to do when a child cries, but I don’t know what to do when a grown woman cries.

The problem for this very sensible point of view that seems in accord with everyday experience, and is in agreement with mainstream scientific theory and practice, is that there are thousands of carefully checked and validated experiences where a person apparently ‘sees’, in dream or during everyday life, a completely unexpected mental picture of a future event that corresponds in all its major detail to what actually occurs. Sometimes it is an apparent prevision of a horrifyingly dramatic scene as it will appear later to an observer from that position, sometimes it is quite a trivial experience marked by the fact that you remember ‘seeing’ it before (see Chapter 19 for examples and extended discussion) The term ‘precognition’ is given to this apparent preview of what will happen that is confirmed when details of the later event and the preview are compared in retrospect. To be classified as a precognition the precognised events must match very closely the actual events as they occur, rather like a tick list. Not ‘an aeroplane crash’, but specific details that apply to that predicted crash and that crash only. The evidence is strengthened if there is reliable evidence that others knew of the details contained in the precognition and could compare its accuracy with details of the apparently precognised event (see Osborne, 1961, Mackenzie 1974, Rhine 1961, 1981, Hearne, 1989, Dossey,2009, Rhine-Feather & Schmicker 2005, Wargo, 2018, Taylor, 2020).

Remember from Chapter 1 that when I say “killing you,” I mean it literally. When you are mentally and emotionally at war with yourself, it changes your physiology. It takes years off your life and makes you so much more susceptible to disease. How? Your immune cells are closely related to your nerve cells and there is instant communication between the two types of cell. For every thought you have, you have an instantaneous change in your physical body. If you are thinking negative and self-defeating thoughts about yourself, you will have a corresponding negative and defeating physiology. It might take the form of increased endocrine activity, chronic adrenaline arousal, elevated blood pressure, or even a heart attack.

Where does such forsaking of the self come from? “Type C,” Lydia Temoshok pointed out, “is not a personality, but rather a behavior pattern that can be modified.”[10] I completely agree with her view. Precisely because no one is born with such traits ingrained, we can unlearn them. That’s a pathway toward healing—not an easy road by any means, and one we will take up later in detail. But first, let’s see if we can trace the origins of these patterns. A recurring theme—maybe the core theme—in every talk or workshop I give is the inescapable tension, and for most of us an eventual clash, between two essential needs: attachment and authenticity. This clash is ground zero for the most widespread form of trauma in our society: namely, the “small-t” trauma expressed in a disconnection from the self even in the absence of abuse or overwhelming threat. Attachment, as defined by my colleague and previous co-author, the psychologist Dr. Gordon Neufeld, is the drive for closeness—proximity to others, in not only the physical but the emotional sense as well. Its primary purpose is to facilitate either caretaking or being taken care of. For mammals and even birds, it is indispensable for life. For the human infant especially—at birth among the most immature, dependent, and helpless animals, and remaining that way for by far the longest period of time—the need for attachment is mandatory. Without reliable adults moved to take care of us, and without our impulse to be close to these caregivers, we simply could not survive—not for a day. As we’ll see in the next chapter, we each arrive in the world “expecting” attachment, just as our lungs expect oxygen. Hardwired into our brains, our drive for attachment is mediated by vast and complex neural circuits governing and promoting behaviors designed to keep us close to those without whom we cannot live. For many people, these attachment circuits powerfully override the ones that grant us rationality, objective decision-making, or conscious will—a fact that explains much about our behavior across multiple realms. In infancy our dependence is an obligatory and long-haul proposition. Everything from crying to cuteness—two unignorable cues babies transmit—is an inbuilt behavior tailored by Nature to keep our caregivers giving and caring. But the need for attachment does not expire once we’re out of diapers: it continues to motivate us throughout our lifespan. As we saw in chapter 3, unsatisfactory attachments can wreak havoc even with adult physiology. What distinguishes our earliest attachment relationships—and, crucially, the coping styles we develop to maintain them—is that they form the template for how we approach all our significant relationships, long after we have grown out of the do-or-die phase. We carry them into interactions with spouses, partners, employers, friends, colleagues: into all aspects of our personal, professional, social, and even political lives.

You may tear the petals, but the scent still remains. You may close the chapter, but the ink still remains. The unfinished melodies keep playing in the breeze.

With those words, it felt like a chapter of my life closed perhaps more unexpectedly than I had imagined.

Once again, I closed a chapter of my life Stepping into the next phase,I felt profoundly alone. The world seemed a more daunting place than ever. Even though the prospect of solitude pressed on me with longing and anxiety, I felt a glimmer of hope emerge - a stubborn flame that wouldn't die out,

Maybe it hasn’t sunk in that my dad dying is the closing of a chapter in my life I’d honestly barely read yet.

A moving story of shattered dreams in which Barbara March achieved international stardom adored for her dramatic soprano voice of unique beauty and passion. At the peak of her considerable powers adverse circumstances closed that chapter in her life and living with this regret haunted her deeply and emotionally throughout her life As her thoughts centred on the tragic death of her husband Edward feeling somewhat saddened as she approached her sixtieth birthday. Still glamourous and beautiful she decides to go on a cruise and another phase in her life was beginning and what that might hold for her she could only imagine and that was where she befriends Lord Marcus Logan the laird of Glen Haven Castle on the cruise ship Queen Elizabeth 2nd and in the weeks to come on-board ship the emotional attraction was established and strong. Her life was not over a new chapter had begun, a year later they were married. It soon becomes apparent to Marcus that in the shadows of Barbara's life going back into the past and having to recall the loss of her career had hurt her deeply and emotionally, that chapter was one subject on which she found it painful to cope with and she avoided it whenever she could. Glen Haven will take you on an enchanting journey with dear friends with heart-warming thoughts of all times and a great deal of nostalgia, you will never want to lose the stories spell or bid farewell to its wonderful characters. All that I could say of the story to any purpose I have endeavoured to say it.

Your past follows you wherever you go. You must leave your heavy baggage behind in order to start afresh. Before you are ready to start the next chapter in your life, make sure the old ones are closed for good.

In the closing of this chapter, Lutzer describes the choice of forgiveness in more detail: 'Without both honesty and forgiveness, there can be no freedom from the fits of rage.' What happens through the years when such anger is left unattended or is unresolved (or forgiveness is not pursued)? Without forgiveness, does the anger dissipate or possibly fade away? I don’t think so; but instead, anger continues in one’s life and is carried into their adulthood. What kind or level of control can manifest (or grow) in this unresolved anger; and as for the person or carrier, what can be expected of their heart and soul?

hands. Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter.

Life isn’t a destination where, at some point, everything will be better, forever. It’s not a series of mountains and valleys. It’s more like a two-way street where there are beauties and mishaps, conveniences, and inconveniences, constantly coming and going. It’s our attitude and our responses that make or break us. Things don’t always go as we plan, but that’s okay. Sometimes life is just closing some old chapters and opening some new ones.

age of computers and programming, and he couldn’t understand either. Sure, he could send emails, had even mastered Word and Excel, but apart from that, the complexities of the machine left him baffled. There was unemployment, but he had never taken the dole, or he could go overseas, try his luck on an oil rig. Even if that were possible, he didn’t want to go, but these were desperate times, and now, to add confusion, there was a solution. Betty Galton, his former sister-in-law, had in her possession a million pounds in gold. He opened his laptop and switched it on. How does one melt gold? How does one dispose of it? he thought. He entered the search terms, fingering one key at a time, and pressed enter. If a criminal act was committed during the planning stage, then he was guilty as charged. And for once, he did not care. He hummed a tune to himself. It had been some time since he had been contented. For that night, he would forget what would be required and envisage what his life could be like with money in his pocket. Maybe a small place in the country, a dog, possibly a woman. How long had it been since he had enjoyed the closeness of another’s skin? He picked up his phone and made a call. It was a special treat for himself and for once the budget was going to be blown. He knew she’d look after him, the way she looked after so many others. Chapter 11 Clare woke early the next day; her phone was ringing. She leant over and picked it up. ‘Yarwood, I’m at the hospital,’ Tremayne said. She could tell by his voice that something was amiss. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen.’ ‘Thanks, and don’t tell anyone.’ A quick shower, some food for her cat, and Clare was out of her cottage. A murder enquiry was serious; her boss being ill, more so. Parking at the hospital, she soon found her way to outpatients, meeting someone she knew. ‘It’s Tremayne, he’s not well,’ Clare said. ‘And please, not a word to anyone.’ The woman, a friend, understood. Inside, behind some screens, Tremayne was lying flat on his back. His shoes had been removed, and his tie had been loosened. ‘How long have you been here?’ Clare said. She knew Tremayne would not appreciate lashings of sympathy, although he looked dreadful. ‘Since last night. I’d had a few drinks, a few cigarettes, and all of a sudden I’m in the back of an ambulance.’ ‘Does Jean know?’ ‘Not yet. Maybe you can phone her. She went to see her son for a few days, left me on my own.’ ‘Off the leash and into trouble, that’s you, guv.’ ‘Not today, Yarwood. Maybe Moulton’s right about me retiring.’ ‘Having you feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help, is it?’ The nurse, standing on the other side of the bed, looked over at Clare disapprovingly. ‘It’s how we work,’ Clare said. ‘That may be the case, but Mr Tremayne has had a bit of a scare. He needs to be here for a few days while we conduct a few checks.’ ‘What’s the problem?’ ‘It’s not for me to say. That’s for the doctor.’ ‘He told me to cut down on the beer, quit smoking, and take it easy.’ ‘Retire, is that it?’ Clare said. ‘They don’t get it, do they?’ Tremayne looked over at the nurse who was monitoring his condition. ‘Sorry. We’ve got a murder to deal with, nothing personal.’ ‘Don’t worry about me. We get our fair share of people, men mainly, who think they’re invincible. You’re not the first, not the last, who thinks they know more

I belong to Jesus. I am His son/daughter and depression/anxiety, you are trespassing on private property. Today is a great day. Jesus is Lord of my life. The Blood of Jesus has rescued me from the power of darkness. I am well. I am whole because Jesus made me whole. The Lord forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. Jesus has redeemed me from the pit, and He crowns me with love and compassion. I am healed because He told us in Matthew Chapter Eight that He took my sickness and disease. He bore my sins and all my diseases on the cross. I get to say this, ‘By His stripes, I am healed’ because His word says so. My God has delivered me from the power of darkness and brought me into the kingdom of His Son. I am filled to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in me.  The Bible says, ‘Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.’  I command my mind to obey JESUS CHRIST. I take authority over my mind and command it to obey you Lord Jesus. You are LORD of my thoughts and my mind. I have the Mind of Christ” (Psalm 103:3, Isaiah 53, 1 John 4:4, 2 Cor 10:5, 1 Cor 2:

Every year you close a new chapter in your story. Please, please, please don’t write the same one seventy-five times and call it a life.

This means - and religious people might find this a useful argument - that there was only one creation, one single event when life was born. Of course, that life might have been born on a different planet and seeded here by spacecraft, or there might even have been thousands of kinds of life at first, but only Luca survived in the ruthless free-for-all of the primeval soup. But until the genetic code was cracked in the 1960s, we did not know what we now know: that all life is one; seaweed is your distant cousin and anthrax one of your advanced relatives. The unity of life is an empirical fact. Erasmus Darwin was outrageously close to the mark: 'One and the same kind of living filaments has been the cause of all organic life.

A few months ago, presented with the knowledge that life wasn't going to be what I'd planned, I wanted to check out, close the book. But now, it's like suddenly I've found a few more pages. And it feels like, against all likelihood, the last chapter might be the best one of all. The last chapter, in fact might be something great.

Although making decisions by testing God with fleeces is generally a bad idea, sometimes it can look similar to setting reasonable goals. For example, suppose you are considering running a marathon. But you decide that you won’t sign up for the 26.2 mile race unless you first lose fifteen pounds and finish a half-marathon. In a way this sounds like laying out a fleece, but it is really just prudence and good goal setting. Humble goals and loosely held plans are good. Expecting God to do tricks for us is bad. Don’t pray: “God, if You want me to go out on this date, then make my professors cancel all their assignments for the weekend. If You don’t do that, I’ll just tell Josh that it wasn’t the Lord’s will that we go out.” The whole fleece approach to life is dangerously close to violating Jesus’ admonition, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7). Now, I know Gideon asked God for some special dew. But there are good reasons to think Gideon’s request is not a normative example. For starters, Gideon didn’t have a Bible. More than likely, he didn’t have a single page of God’s inspired Word of his own. More importantly, the book of Judges generally does not provide a good example of much of anything. When the theme of the book is “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25), we should think twice before copying whatever practices or attitudes we find in its chapters. Gideon’s request was probably an indication of cowardice and unbelief more than faithful, wise decision making.

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.

This chapter has shown you how the decisions you make in your day-to-day are closely linked to avoidance of pain or seeking of pleasure in your life. This is of utmost importance because by changing your pain/pleasure associations in your mind, you can change your actions and therefore the outcomes in your life: your destiny.

This, then, is ultimately kingdom-of-God language; it is Passover language; it has to do with the defeat of the powers of the “present evil age” that have held people captive, as Pharaoh had held ancient Israel captive in Egypt. The theme of the defeat of the “powers” remains vital throughout chapters 5–8, and Paul returns to it at the close, declaring that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor the present, nor the future, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in King Jesus our Lord” (8:38–39). Victory over hostile powers and the rescue of people from their deadly grip is clearly the “big picture”—the Passover picture, the kingdom-of-God picture. So how is this accomplished?

Day Thirty-Five – “It is Finished” When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, “It is finished.”  And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.  John 19:30 These words are of great relief to Jesus, His dear mother, and hopefully to all of us.  “It is finished.”  Jesus’ suffering had come to an end.  His “thirst” was quenched by sour wine, a symbol of fallen humanity entering His very body.  He had entered into all suffering, both interiorly and exteriorly, and now He was ready to enter into death itself.  He spoke His final words and handed over His spirit to the Father. As our Blessed Mother looked on, heard her Son speak His final words, and breathe His last, she would have felt a sense of relief.  Jesus’ long mission of salvation had been accomplished.  Death was destroyed and now she only had to wait for His Resurrection. Our Blessed Mother knew this was not the end.  She knew that her Son would rise.  He had taught many times “that the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days” (Mark 8:31).  Though the Apostles and other disciples did not understand this teaching, our Blessed Mother did.  She witnessed His rejection, His death, and now turned her eyes toward His promised Resurrection. This passage also states that Jesus “handed over His spirit.”  His life was not taken from Him.  His death was a free choice by which He gave Himself over to death.  He chose to enter into the ultimate effect of sin, death itself, so as to redeem death and make it the door to eternal life.  The destruction of death was accomplished by God, the source of life, subsuming it into Himself. God wanted to come close to us by becoming man.  He came so close to us that He allowed man to do Him violence.  But the last chapter of Christ’s life was yet to be written.  His entrance into new life was about to begin. These words of Jesus must take on great significance in our own lives.  We must see ourselves standing by the Cross with our Blessed Mother and hear Jesus speak these words to us, personally.  We must allow our Lord to look into our souls and say to us, “It is finished.”  Jesus speaks these words to each one of us.  He says, “Your salvation is accomplished.  My death has destroyed your own eternal death.  My final word of victory has been spoken.” As we ponder this sacred scene and hear these final words, we must seek to allow them to transform our very lives.  Reflect, today, upon whether you are attentive to these words of our Lord in your own life.  Do you allow Him to apply His saving Sacrifice to your sins?  Have you internalized this statement of promise from our Lord?  Have you allowed the finality of His death to unite with your own sin?  Reflect upon these three little words, this day, and allow the handing over of our Lord’s Spirit to take hold of you and transform your life. My dearest Mother, as you gazed intently at your Son, you heard Him announce that He had accomplished His mission.  It was finished.  He was faithful to the end.  And though your heart was filled with sorrow as He died before your eyes, your spirit once again rejoiced as you witnessed the gift of salvation being accomplished for all humanity. My loving Mother, pray for me that I may listen attentively to your Son as He speaks these sacred words.  May I hear Him say to me, “It is finished!  I have destroyed the effect of your sin.  Death is no more.” My saving Lord, from the Cross You announced the fulfillment of Your divine mission.  You proclaimed that You had destroyed death itself by the free offering of Your life.  Help me to listen to You speak these words to my heart and to be open to the unfathomable gift of new life accomplished by Your willing Sacrifice. Mother Mary, pray for me.  Jesus, I trust in You.

IF THIS CONCLUSION had signaled the end of Arendt’s thinking on the subject, American readers of On Revolution could close the book basking in a feeling of self-satisfaction, offering a hymn of praise to their country’s exceptionalism, singing a chorus of “God Bless America” and retiring to their beds secure in the conviction that theirs was a nation unlike all others. But this was not the German-Jewish immigrant’s complex understanding of the United States, where gratitude was inevitably tempered by ambivalence and pessimism. Arendt was not one to close on so optimistic a note. The book’s last chapter, bringing the narrative up to the present, takes a sharp turn toward the ominous. It exhibits what one commentator calls a “particularly bleak and embattled tone.” It is a bucket of cold water thrown on the warm glow of the earlier exuberance. Political freedom, Arendt insisted in the book’s final pages, “means the right ‘to be a participator in government,’ or it means nothing.” The colonial townships and assemblies, building pyramidally to the constitutional conventions, were paradigms of citizen participation, but the popular elections that Americans today consider the hallmark of their democratic republic are hardly the same thing. Voting is not what Arendt meant by participation. The individual in the privacy of the voting booth is not engaged with others in the public arena, putting one’s opinions to the test against differing views and life experiences, but instead is choosing among professional politicians offering to promote and protect his or her personal interests through ready-made formulas, mindless banalities, blatant pandering, and outlandish promises cobbled together as party programs. (And heaven help the elected official who, in the manner of Edmund Burke, tries to argue against the personal interest of his or her constituents or to communicate bad news.) Leaders are selected on the basis of private, parochial concerns, not the public welfare, producing a mishmash of self-interested demands, or what Arendt called “the invasion of the public realm by society.” This was almost the opposite of genuine participation. Instead of the kind of intimate interchange of views and the deliberation that might be expected to resolve conflict, which was the practice of the townships and assemblies, isolated voters left to their own devices and with no appreciation of any larger good or of people different from themselves demand an affirmation of their particular prejudices and preconceptions. They have no opportunity, or desire, to come together with the aim of reaching mutual understanding and agreement on shared problems. Centrifugality prevails. American democracy, Arendt writes, had become a zero-sum game of “pressure groups, lobbies and other devices.” It is a system in which only power can prevail, or at best the blight of mutual backscratching to no greater end than mere political survival, lending itself to lies and demagoguery, quarrels and stalemates, cynical deal-making, not public exchange and calm deliberation.

ACTION ITEMS TO INCREASE YOUR EHR Install time management software on your computer. Monitor how you’re spending your time. Adjust your workflow based on the report. Turn off all social media notifications (both emails and push notifications on your phone). Switch your phone to silent. Unsubscribe from any email newsletter that isn’t taking your business forward. Get support emails out of your inbox by using dedicated help desk software. Block ‘deep work’ time into your calendar (at whatever time suits you) so you have uninterrupted work time. Make portions of your time available to others using a scheduler tool. (The rest of the week is yours.) Purge unwanted things and people from your life. Set a 12-week goal and stick to it. Hint: Actioning items in this book will change your life. Commit 12 weeks to actioning the key elements at the end of each chapter. Prioritise sleep. Get eight hours a night for a week (even if it means not getting as much ‘work’ done) and see how it feels. Clean up your diet. Eat food that’s as close to the source as possible (i.e. not out of packets). Find a type of exercise or daily movement you enjoy, and carve out time to do it every day.

You can never move to the next chapter of your life if you focus on the past. Close that not-so-sweet chapter and focus on a chapter that leads to success, because genuine success is a game changer.

Vincent wanted a life mate. He wanted someone to share his hopes and dreams and even his sorrows with. His parents’ relationship had been full of love and support and caring. They’d been true life mates, bonded and inseparable until his mother’s death. He wanted that. He wanted someone to laugh with and cry with and to hold close in the dark of night and the harsh light of day. It was why he’d traveled so far and wide during his life. Vincent had been actively seeking his life mate.

In this closing section of chapter 2, Peter continues his condemnation of the false teachers. It is part two of the charges against them. But we can also recognize in these verses a counterpoint to the opening of the letter. Whereas 1:3–11 presents the life of glory and virtue lived in Christ, 2:17–22 displays the exact opposite: a life of slavery and corruption cut off from the life and power of God.

I can wish you well without wishing you back into my life. I have closed that chapter. Now the future looks bright.

Tell us a story, Daddy,” Chrissy said as I collapsed again. “Okay, honey,” I said with my eyes closed. “Once upon a time, there was a poor old detective who lived in a shoe.” Chapter 54 “BENNETT? YOU THERE?!

Turning Pages in Life: Why an MBA in Malaysia is the Next Chapter for Ambitious Minds Every great book tells a story of transformation — a character stepping into the unknown, facing challenges, and emerging stronger. In many ways, pursuing higher education is the same. For professionals seeking to redefine their careers, choosing to study abroad becomes that pivotal chapter. And increasingly, the story is being written in Malaysia. An MBA in Malaysia is more than just a degree; it’s an experience of growth, cultural immersion, and global opportunity. A Journey Beyond the Classroom Studying in Malaysia isn’t limited to textbooks and lectures. The country itself becomes a classroom. With its mix of modern cities and rich traditions, students are exposed to diverse perspectives that shape how they approach leadership and business. This global outlook is what makes Malaysian MBA graduates highly competitive in international markets. Affordable, Yet World-Class One of the standout reasons students choose Malaysia is its affordability without compromise on quality. Tuition fees and living costs are significantly lower compared to Western countries, yet universities in Malaysia maintain strong international recognition. This makes an MBA here not just a career decision but also a wise financial choice. Writing Your Own Success Story Whether your dream is to climb the corporate ladder, pivot into entrepreneurship, or gain the skills to lead in an ever-changing global economy, Malaysia offers the tools to make it happen. The networks you build and the experiences you gather during an MBA in Malaysia can be the foundation of your future chapters. Closing Thoughts Every reader knows the thrill of turning the page, eager to see what happens next. If your career feels like it’s at a turning point, maybe it’s time to write your next chapter in Malaysia. With its blend of opportunity, affordability, and global relevance, an MBA here could be the story you’ve been waiting to tell.

I will not ignore you. l will just close your chapter like you were never part of the story.

An interview with Writer and Authors Honoring a Torah Giant: A Conversation with Amrom Gottesman on Preserving a Sacred Legacy In a heartfelt and profoundly personal interview with Writers and Authors, Amrom Gottesman opens up about the creation of his book, The Life and Legacy of Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Gottesman ZT”L—a work that goes beyond biography to become a bridge between generations, faith traditions, and historical understanding. Through emotional recollection and meticulous research, Gottesman captures the enduring spirit of his father—a Holocaust survivor, Torah scholar, and humble man of unwavering devotion—and brings to light stories that deserve to be known by far more than just family. A Son’s Mission: Preserving Memory with Purpose Gottesman, who was uniquely close to his father both in Torah study and life, felt a powerful responsibility to pass on his father’s legacy—not only to his own children and grandchildren, but to a broader Torah-observant audience. His father’s humility often masked the depth of his kindness, wisdom, and spiritual strength, but Amrom saw it firsthand. “I felt I had the obligation to commit to this project,” Gottesman explains, “thus affording future generations the full picture of who their Zaidy was.” Faith in the Face of Unimaginable Horror One of the most stirring elements of the book is the recounting of Rabbi Gottesman’s survival of the Holocaust, particularly the largely undocumented train transport from Dachau—a chapter of history nearly lost to time. By incorporating firsthand testimony from a fellow survivor, this moment becomes a powerful new contribution to Holocaust history and memory. Gottesman also shares insights from his father’s teachings that illuminate the human spirit’s ability to rebuild even after devastation, drawing comparisons between the Midrashic tale of Noah and the rebirth of Torah life after the Holocaust. More Than a Survivor: A Life of Torah and Love Far beyond recounting suffering, the biography paints a portrait of Rabbi Aryeh Leibish Gottesman as a man of remarkable discipline, perseverance, and love of Torah. From studying 18 hours a day post-war, to working by day and learning by night, he embodied spiritual tenacity and unwavering faith in God’s goodness—even when the world seemed shattered. As one reader review on Amazon movingly shared: “I found myself inspired to reflect on my own faith and the legacy that I want to leave behind.” The Foundations of a Legacy: Ancestry an

However, neurologists have identified as many as twenty-one senses! They include: Equilibrioception: The perception of balance. Proprioception: In Chapter Two, we introduced the sense of proprioception, which essentially amounts to body awareness (for instance, being able to close your eyes and touch your ear) and being aware of where your body is in space. Nociception: The detection of painful stimuli. Thermoception: The sense that enables us to perceive heat. Interoception: The process of sensing signals from the body such as those indicating we are hungry, our heart is beating, we need to go to the bathroom, and similar. The vestibular sense: Also known as the movement, balance, or gravity sense, the vestibular sense enables us to move smoothly and maintain our balance while we are moving. It is easy to see how having to process information from so many senses can be overwhelming for us. When any one of these senses is misaligned, it can transform a day, or a moment, from wonderful to unbearable. TIPS FOR

One chapter of my life seemed to have ended; perhaps the whole book was closing. Instead of being the pastoral figure aiding a life transition, I found myself the sheep, lost and confused. Severe illness wasn't life-altering, it was life shattering.

Transformation is not an abrupt explosion, but a journey that unfolds over time, revealing light in the hardest hours of despair. It is about the closing and opening of new chapters in the book of life. It is about finding light in darkness, to keep the candle burning.

Why should I forgive you…Why should I even think about you…The book’s already closed, the chapter’s already over… So why would I open it again and waste my time on you?