Closure Happens Quotes

It is not love that keeps us stuck in the past. Love fades over time. What introspective hearts seek is simply unanswered questions about why terrible things can happen to very good people. Closure never comes from reflection. It only comes from God's guidance and promptings.

Closure is an illusion, the winking of the eye of a storm. Nothing is completely resolved in life, nothing is perfect. The important thing is to keep living because only by living can you see what happens next." - on Murakami's ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage' in The New York Times

Avoiding problems doesn't make them go away - you think it does, but it really doesn't. They're just postponed. Those problems just stay inside your subconscious and brew until your body gets to a point where it's had enough and decides to release some of the stress itself. That's what an anxiety attack is! It happens when you don't know how to vent your frustration, fears, stress, sadness, madness, whatever it is that bothers you, the things you should be confronting and getting closure with. If you don't confront these things and deal with them, your body does it for you.

I couldn't help but suspect something he'd seen or encountered had changed his view of what had happened between them. It had somehow set him free. And he'd let it fly, that gorgeous blackbird of a love he'd been keeping in a cage. What was it like for him, every day standing outside in the wind and rain to stare at the ocean, yearning for some sign of her, never giving up hope? At The Peak perhaps she'd finally come into view, a ship coming neither toward him nor away, only riding that perfect line between heaven and earth, long enough for him to know that she had loved him, that what they had was real, before slipping out of sight, probably forever.

I wanted something seismic to happen at the end. I wanted him to wake up so we could somehow forgive each other, say we loved each another, move on with some sense of closure, for I knew this would be the last time I saw him, but he didn’t wake up, and nothing was said.

There are certain memories I'd never write down or tell anyone. I know what happens when you write things down. They change shape. Some of the feeling goes away. Things on the page are never as rich as they are in your head, as they were in real life.

When all else fails, try and figure out what's to be gained or learned if this was the way it absolutely needed to happen. When all else fails, accept that this is the way it is. When all else fails, walk away.

You know what happens at any magic show? When the magician says ‘look here, look here,’ the audience looks only there and nowhere else. And that’s exactly what happened at the earnings conference today.

The universe - fate - is cruel and random. Things happen for many reasons. Things happen for no reason. To shoulder the burden of the universe's caprice is too much for anyone. And it's not fair to you.

Perhaps we become accustomed to our grief and, as it becomes increasingly familiar, increasingly part of the emotional landscape, it becomes a dullness. But there is no closure, no forgetting. One mourns those one has loved who have died until one joins them. It happens soon enough.

Dear Jack: I have no idea who he was. But he saved me. From you. I watched from the doorway as he smacked, punched, and threw you against the wall. You fought back hard- I'll give you that- but you were no match for him. And when it was over- when you'd finally passed out- the boy made direct eye contact with me. He removed the rag from my mouth and asked me if I was okay. 'Yes. I mean, I think so,' I told him. But it was her that he was really interested in: the girl who was lying unconscious on the floor. Her eyes were swollen, and there looked to be a trail of blood running from her nose. The boy wiped her face with a rag. And then he kissed her, and held her, and ran his hand over her cheek, finally grabbing his cell to dial 911. He was wearing gloves, which I thought was weird. Maybe he was concerned about his fingerprints, from breaking in. But once he hung up, he removed the gloves, took the girl's hand, and placed it on the front of his leg- as if it were some magical hot spot that would make her better somehow. Tears welled up in his eyes as he apologized for not getting there sooner. 'I'm so sorry,' he just kept saying. And suddenly I felt sorry too. Apparently it was the anniversary of something tragic that'd happened. I couldn't really hear him clearly, but I was pretty sure he'd mentioned visiting an old girlfriend's grave. 'You deserve someone better,' he told her. 'Someone who'll be open and honest; who won't be afraid to share everything with you.' He draped his sweatshirt over her, kissed her behind the ear, and then promised to love her forever. A couple minutes later, another boy came in, all out of breath. 'Is she alright?' he asked. The boy who saved me stood up, wiped his tearful eyes, and told the other guy to sit with her until she woke up. And then he went to find scissors for me. He cut me free and brought me out to the sofa. 'My name's Ben,' he said. 'And help is on the way.' When the girl finally did wake up, Ben allowed the other guy to take credit for saving her life. I wanted to ask him why, but I haven't been able to speak. That's what this letter is for. My therapist says that I need to tell my side of things in order to regain my voice. She suggested that addressing my thoughts directly to you might help provide some closure. So far, it hasn't done the trick. Never your Jill, Rachael

Ambiguous loss is considered by social scientists to be one of the most stressful kinds of loss owing to its nature: it is the loss that happens without possibility for closure.

Wilco and I would find a body, a young soldier, nothing more than a boy or girl really, and I’d see the marriage that would never be, the kids and grandkids that would never happen, a family tree altered forever. I grew to understand that there was no closure for the heart-wrenching grief felt by those who have loved and lost. They’d hold their sorrow for a lifetime of milestones that would never be. And that realization slowly ate away at me.

Tragedy happens to lots of people. You can decide to let it destroy you, or you can decide to move on.

I expected some relief, something inside me to change, to fall in place. Nothing happened. If anything, I felt empty and exhausted. Apparently, closure is overrated.

Diomedes kept talking as if she hadn’t spoken. He kept looking at me. “You think you can get her to talk?” Before I could reply, a voice said from behind me, “I believe he can, yes.” It was Indira. I’d almost forgotten she was there. I turned around. “And in a way,” Indira said, “Alicia has begun to talk. She’s communicating through Theo—he is her advocate. It’s already happening.” Diomedes nodded. He looked pensive for a moment. I knew what was on his mind—Alicia Berenson was a famous patient, and a powerful bargaining tool with the Trust. If we could make demonstrable progress with her, we’d have a much stronger hand in saving the Grove from closure.

The imitation lives we see on TV and in the movies whisper the idea that human existence consists of revelations and abrupt changes of heart; by the time we’ve reached full adulthood, I think, this is an idea we have on some level come to accept. Such things may happen from time to time, but I think that for the most part it’s a lie. Life’s changes come slowly…the whole idea of curious cats attaining satisfaction seemed slightly absurd. The world rarely finishes its conversations.

After a while – minutes, hours, I didn’t know – the reprieve tapered off and half-ideas slipped in with the conviction of plans. Promises. Reeve’s cousins. His guest room. Get to his ranch. His staff. The common thread always him. He was my only chance for finding out what happened to Amber. He might not have all the answers, but he had some. By the time I turned the Jag toward his house, he was pulling me in other ways. Distraction. Comfort. Reason. Preoccupation. He was the source of everything I needed now. The path to closure, an asylum for pain, a place to find truth, a place to hide. For good or bad, all roads led back to him. Perhaps that’s what it meant to really be his.

In the power of my newfound strength, I saw clearly—even though I’d been empowered to have my old college finally address my “horrific trauma,” make me finally feel heard, this event would never have happened had I not first given myself my own voice, the permission to call my rape rape and not shame. In telling, I forced the school that silenced me, that minimized my trauma, that blamed me for the rape, to finally respect my voice and give me the platform they should have given me in the first place. I did not need the school to call it by its name; I did it myself, and they listened. I was the powerful party that brought the closure and empowerment I’d hoped, in first finding their invitation, that Colorado College would bring.

Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her.

Now, describe, in a single written sentence, your intended successful outcome for this problem or situation. In other words, what would need to happen for you to check this project off as “done”? It could be as simple as “Take the Hawaii vacation,” “Handle situation with customer X,” “Resolve college situation with Susan,” “Clarify new divisional management structure,” “Implement new investment strategy,” or “Research options for dealing with Manuel’s reading issue.” All clear? Great. Now write down the very next physical action required to move the situation forward. If you had nothing else to do in your life but get closure on this, what visible action would you take right now? Would you call or text someone? Write an e-mail? Take pen and paper and brainstorm about it? Surf the Web for data? Buy nails at the hardware store? Talk about it face-to-face with your partner, your assistant, your attorney, or your boss? What? Got the answer to that?

DEUTSCH: Yes, but you have to distinguish between hardware and software when you’re thinking about how this cognitive closure manifests itself. Like I said, it seems plausible that the hardware limitation is not relevant even for chimpanzees. I imagine that with nanosurgery, one could implant ideas into a chimpanzee’s brain that would make it able to create further knowledge just as humans can. I’m questioning the assumption that if everybody with an IQ of over a hundred died, then in the next generation nobody would have an IQ of over a hundred. I think they well might. It depends on culture. HARRIS: Of course. This wasn’t meant to be a plausible biological or cultural assumption. I’m just asking you to imagine a world in which we had seven billion human beings, none of whom could begin to understand what Alan Turing was up to. DEUTSCH: That nightmare scenario is different. It’s something that actually happened—for almost the whole of human existence. Humans had the ability to be creative and to do everything we’re doing. They just didn’t, because their culture was wrong. It wasn’t their fault. Cultural evolution has a nasty tendency to suppress the growth of what we would consider science or anything important that would improve their lives. So yes, that’s possible, and it’s possible that it could happen again. Nothing can prevent it except our working to prevent it.

Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance

Knowing when to detach yourself from an unhealthy situation can be healthy, but the kind of detachment that is negative is called “premature closure.” This occurs when you detach yourself from a situation at the first sign of trouble. You leave even before you see whether or not the problem can be worked out. When this happens you never learn conflict resolution, you only learn how to leave.

You don't wake up in the morning with a thought of "Suicide"... it happens when less closure happens between humans, you don't have exit points... and you create your own loop hole.

Nina King was last seen outside her home in Los Angeles on November 19, 1952. She was reported missing by a neighbor. The murder of Nina King now appears to be tied to the disappearance of Los Angeles Police Detective Frank Bogle, who vanished on March 14, 1953, while investigating Miss King’s missing-person case. All of Detective Bogle’s files remain in the archives. The LAPD does not close unsolved cases, and we do not forget our own. We will follow every lead to bring closure to the family of Miss King and to determine what happened to Detective Bogle. We believe that answers in one case could lead to both cases being solved.’” The station switched to commercial as I stared at Frank, my mouth gaping. He looked up for a heartbeat, and then he was gone.

I'm slowly learning that even if I react,it won't change anything, it won't make people suddenly love and respect me,it won't magically change their minds. Sometimes it's better to just let things be,let people go, don't fight for closure, don't ask for explanations, don't chase answers and don't expect people to understand where you're coming from. I'm slowly learning that life is better lived when you don't center it on what's happening around you and center it on what's happening inside you instead. Work on yourself and your inner peace.Its still okay.they care less anyway

There’s no closure for us, for this. There wasn’t then, and there isn’t now. We can only choose to accept it. Everything that happened between us, after us. All the time that’s passed, I didn’t know what I was missing. It was you. It was all of this.

Over the span of the decade since I first turned my attention to precognitive dreaming, it has gone from being a perplexity I didn’t quite believe in to a fascinating intellectual exploration to (now) something a little bit like a personal religion. The original meaning of religion is re-linking—that is, linking back to some spiritual source from which we feel ourselves sundered. In Sanskrit, yoga has the same root: to yoke, as one yokes a cart to the cow pulling it. What precognitive dreamwork yokes me to, repeatedly and with always unexpected force, is my own biography, my life as a single, more-unified-than-I-ever-knew landscape. It has led me to believe that biography, not psychology, should be the operative term in the humanistic science—or scientifically informed humanism—of the twenty-first century. To characterize our inner self as a psyche is to slightly miss what is really happening, the nature of this thing, this source in us. This source “in” us is really the completeness of us, our wholeness . . . which means our whole story, from birth to death, as it is refracted through that moment-to-moment cursor consciousness. Bringing to light the hidden ways our biography—including our future biography—shapes the landscape of our lives now, and the way our lives now shaped our past, even perhaps our childhoods, is a truly sublime and awesome project of conscious, and conscientious, self-care. It is indeed a path of gnosis. And like any other gnosis, there’s an ecstatic component to it. Every precognitive dream hit is a bit like a hit from a kind of psychedelic drug, an exhilarating, vertiginous, spiritual and life affirmation. It’s like zooming in on a fractal, where the fractal is your life. Every day can bring new discoveries about the precognitive significance of a perplexing symbol in an old dream, if not the full-on closure of a time loop that began a day, a year, or even decades in your past. It’s always something unexpected, but it will be something that adds to the wonder and strangeness of your existence. The trick—and what precognitive dreamwork teaches—is focusing on and learning to be amazed by the haphazard, trivial details of your life that most people overlook,

The day of Mia’s first surgery was not only a big day for her; it was a big day for me, too. Handing my three-month-old daughter to the anesthesiologist and watching her walk away with my baby was one of the most heart-wrenching things I have ever done. I knew that Mia was in someone else’s care and that I had absolutely no control over what happened to her until after the procedure. I tried my hardest not to cry, but after the anesthesiologist walked through the secure doors, I broke down in Jase’s arms. He was very emotional about the situation, too, but the two of us handled our intense feelings in different ways. I went to join our family in a large foyer area, where about fifteen of them had gathered to support us, and Jase headed outside to a small grove of trees near the parking lot. As I mentioned earlier, being outdoors makes Jase feel closure to the Creator, who he knows can do mighty things. That grove of trees, which was surrounded by such a large concrete jungle, became a special place for Jase, a place where he said many heartfelt prayers.

God,” he choked out. “This can’t happen.” “Oh, yes it can.” Breathless, she worked the buttons of his trouser falls. “It will. It must.” Having freed the closures of his trousers and smallclothes, she snaked her hand through the opening and brazenly took him in hand. Of course, now that she had him in hand, she wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. She tentatively skimmed one fingertip over the smooth, rounded crown of his erection. In return, he pressed a single finger into her aching core. “Cecily.” He shut his eyes and grit his teeth. “If I don’t stop this now . . .” “You never will?” She pressed her lips to his earlobe. “That’s my fondest hope. You say you’re done with fighting, Luke? Then stop fighting this.” He sighed deep in his chest, and she felt all the tension coiled in those powerful muscles release. “Very well,” he said quietly, resting his chin on her shoulder. “Very well. To you, I gratefully surrender.

MT: These texts are at one and the same time very beautiful and obscure; they need to be explicated, clarified. “What is hidden will be revealed.” Why must Revelation be hidden? RG: It's not that it must be hidden, actually it's not hidden at all. It's mankind that is blind. We're inside the closure of representation, everyone is in the fishbowl of his or her culture. In other words, mankind doesn't see what I was saying earlier, the principle of illusion that governs our viewpoint. Even after the Revelation, we still don't understand. MT: Does that mean that things are going to emerge gradually, but that at first they're incomprehensible? RG: They seem incomprehensible because mankind lives under the sign of Satan, lives a lie and lives in fear of the lie, in fear of liars. The reversal performed by the Passion has yet to occur. MT: Insofar as the Church itself has been mistaken for two thousand years and has been practicing a sacrificial reading of the Passion of the Christ, that reading is a way of hiding Revelation. RG: I'm not saying that the Church is mistaken. The reading that I'm proposing is in line with all the great dogmas, but it endows them with an anthropological underpinning that had gone unnoticed. MT: Why not just clean up our bad habits by sweeping them away once and for all in the year zero, making way for an era of love and infinite peace? RG: Because the world wouldn't have been able to take it! Since the sacrificial principle is the fundamental principle of the human order—up to a certain point human beings need to pour out their violence and tensions onto scapegoats—destroying it all at once is impossible. That's why Christianity is made in such a way as to allow for transitions. This is no doubt one of the reasons why it is at once so far from and so close to myth, and always susceptible to being interpreted a bit mythically. When Nietzsche says that Christianity is impossible, that it can only lead to absurdities, to outrageous, insane things, it can be said that he's superficially right, even if ultimately he's wrong. You can't get rid of the sacrificial principle by just flicking it away as if it were a piece of dust. History isn't finished. Every day very interesting things, changes in outlook, are happening right before our eyes. In the United States and everywhere, a lot of current cultural phenomena can be unified by describing them as the discovery of new victims, or rather as their concrete rehabilitation, for in truth we've known about them for a long time: women, children, the elderly, the insane, the physically and mentally handicapped, and so forth. For example, the question of abortion, which has great importance in American debates, is no longer formulated except in the following terms: “Who is the real victim? Is it the child or is it the mother?” You can no longer defend a given position, or indeed any of them, except by making it into a contribution to the anti-victimary crusade. MT

You wanted something to happen, right? " Rick says. "For all of this to be leading up to something? Closure," Rick says, pointing at the manila envelope. "That is definitely one way to have closure." "I didn't say I wanted closure. Drama. I said I wanted drama." "What do you think drama is, Murray?" "How about something more open-ended?" "Oh sure, that can be arranged, too," Rick says. "But even open-ended stories have to end at some point, right? Open endings, after all, are still endings.

q) Consultation with CVC or UPSC where necessary (r) Forward the inquiry report to the delinquent employee together with the reasons for disagreement, if any and the recommendations of the CVC where applicable - Rule 15(2) (s) Considering the response of the delinquent employee to the inquiry report and the reasons for disagreement and taking a view on the quantum of penalty or closure of the case. Rule 15(2)A (t) Pass final order in the matter – Rule 15(3) (u) On receipt of copy of the appeal from the penalized employee, prepare comments on the Appeal and forward the same to the Appellate Authority together with relevant records. - Rule 26(3) 9. What happens if any of the functions of the Disciplinary Authority has been performed by an authority subordinate to the disciplinary authority? Where a statutory function has been performed by an authority who has not been empowered to perfrom it, such action without jurisdiction would be rendered null and void. The Hon’ble Supreme Court in its Judgment dated 5 th September 2013, in Civil Appeal No. 7761 of 2013 (Union of India & Ors.Vsd. B V Gopinathan) has held that the statutory power under Rule 14(3) of the CCA rule has necessarily to be performed by the Disciplinary Authority. as under: “49. Although number of collateral issues had been raised by the learned counsel for the appellants as well the respondents, we deem it appropriate not to opine on the same in view of the conclusion that the charge sheet/charge memo having not been approved by the disciplinary authority was non est in the eye of law. ” 10. What knowledge is required for the efficient discharge of the duties in conducting disciplinary proceedings? Disciplinary Authority is required to be conversant with the following: � Constitutional provisions under Part III (Fundamental Rights) and Part XIV (Services Under the Union and the States) � Principles of Natural Justice 7

Closure happens in your head. Nowhere else. And you can’t wait for someone, something — someplace — to give it to you. You have to close that loop yourself.

It's already happening. After falling for years, California's greenhouse gas emissions rose 1.7 percent in 2012, pushed up by the drought and the closure of the San Onofre nuclear plant in San Diego County. The state has not yet released emissions data for 2013. Experts say a sustained drought wouldn't prevent California from reaching its climate change goals. Instead, years of dry weather would force energy providers to find new strategies - ones that would likely cost more. In addition to being clean, hydropower tends to be cheap. "It makes things harder," said Victor Niemeyer, program manager for greenhouse gas reductions at the Electric Power Research Institute. "If there's less hydro, the power has to come from somewhere. You have to burn more gas, and that costs more money, all things considered.

Attempts to Close the Detention Center The United States Detention Center on the grounds of the Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba was established in January of 2002 by the U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. It was designated as the site for a prison camp, euphemistically called a detention center, to detain prisoners taken in Afghanistan and to a lesser degree from the battlefields of Iraq, Somalia and Asia. The prison was built to hold extremely dangerous individuals and has the facilities to be able to interrogate these detainees in what was said to be “an optimal setting.” Since these prisoners were technically not part of a regular military organization representing a country, the Geneva Conventions did not bind the United States to its rules. The legality of their incarceration is questionable under International Law. This would lead one to the conclusion that this facility was definitely not a country club. Although, in most cases these prisoners were treated humanely, there were obvious exceptions, when the individuals were thought to have pertinent information. It was also the intent of the U.S. Government not to bring them into the United States, where they would be afforded prescribed legal advantages and a more humane setting. Consequently, to house these prisoners, this Spartan prison was constructed at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base instead of on American soil. Here they were out of sight and far removed from any possible legal entanglements that would undoubtedly regulate their treatment. Many of the detainees reported abuses and torture at the facility, which were categorically denied. In 2005 Amnesty International called the facility the “Gulag of our times.” In 2007 and 2008, during his campaign for the Presidency, Obama pledged to close the Detention Center at Guantánamo Bay. After winning the presidential election, he encouraged Congress to close the detention center, without success. Again, he attempted to close the facility on May 3, 2013. At that time, the Senate stopped him by voting to block the necessary funds for the closure. The Republican House remained adamant in their policy towards the President, showing no signs of relenting. It was not until thaw of November of 2014 that any glimmer of hope became apparent. Despite Obama’s desire to close the detention center, he also knew that the Congress, headed by his opposing party, would not revisit this issue any time soon, and if anything were to happen, it would have to be by an executive order. The number has constantly decreased and is now said to be fewer than 60 detainees. There are still problems regarding some of these more aggressive prisoners from countries that do not want them back. It is speculated that eventually some of them may come to the United States to face a federal court. Much is dependent on President-Elect Trump as to what the future holds regarding these incarcerated people.

Cecy, this is hardly the time and place for—” “A tryst?” She laughed. “You think I mean to trap you in this secluded cottage and have my wicked way with you? You should be so lucky. No, remove your shirt. I want a look at your arm.” “My arm?” His eyes narrowed. “Which one?” “Which one do you think?” She crossed to him and began unknotting the cravat at his neck. “The one you injured while wrestling the boar last night.” Oh, the look on his face . . . Cecily wanted to kiss him. He was so adorably befuddled. At last, he’d let slip that hard mask of indifference he’d been wearing since his arrival at Swinford Manor. And in its place—there was Luke. Engaging green eyes, touchable dark brown hair, those lips so perfectly formed for roguish smiles and tender kisses alike. This was the man she’d fallen in love with. The man she still loved now. Yes, he’d changed, but she had too. She was older, wiser, stronger than the girl she’d been. This time, she wouldn’t let him go. “You knew?” She smiled. “I knew.” His breath hitched as she slipped the cravat from his neck. Attempting to ignore the wedge of bare chest it revealed, and the mad pounding of her blood that view inspired, Cecily set to work on his waistcoat buttons. “How?” he asked, obeying her silent urgings to shed the garment. “How did you know?” “It’s a fortunate thing you weren’t assigned to espionage. You’ve no talent for disguise whatsoever. If I hadn’t suspected already, I would have figured it out this afternoon. My stocking was found in this remote cottage, and you just happen to know the secrets of the door latch? Then there’s the fact that you’ve been favoring your arm since breakfast.” She undid the small closure of his shirtfront before turning her attention to his cuffs. “But I knew you last night. I’d know your voice anywhere, not to mention your touch.” She gave a shaky sigh, unable to meet his questioning gaze. “It’s like you said, Luke. You still make me tremble, even after all these years.” His voice was soft. “I don’t even know why I followed you. The way we’d parted so angrily . . . I just couldn’t let you go, not like that.” “And I’m glad of it. You saved my life.

The past is past. And yet — in the now, in our being, we carry much of the past with us. But we carry much of the past with us only as far as we have unfinished situations. What happened in the past is either assimilated and has become a part of us, or we carry around an unfinished situation, an incomplete gestalt. Let me give you an example. The most famous of the unfinished situations is the fact that we have not forgiven our parents. As you know, parents are never right. They are either too large or too small, too smart or too dumb. If they are stern, they should be soft, and so on. But when do you find parents who are all right? You can always blame the parents if you want to play the blaming game, and make the parents responsible for all your problems. Until you are willing to let go of your parents, you continue to conceive of yourself as a child. But to get closure and let go of the parents and say, “I am a big girl now,” is a different story. This is part of therapy — to let go of parents, and especially to forgive one’s parents, which is the hardest thing for most people to do.

The pulsing heartbeat of true crime, of all human stories when you got right down to it, was we all wanted and hoped and dreamed and loved, but we had no control over what happened in the end. There was a reason why even the most sensationalistic supermarket paperback would tell you that the victim loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian, or that another victim was three days away from her birthday. "These books promise closure and justice," I said to Lenore, scratching her under her chin. "But ultimately they reinforce the reality that so many lives are interrupted, so many dreams unfulfilled.

Closure of the Friends API meant only one thing: no one would be able to further monetize Facebook data except for Facebook itself.

The pulsing heartbeat of true crime, of all human stories when you got right down to it, was we all wanted and hoped and dreamed and loved, but we had no control over what happened in the end. There was a reason why even the most sensationalistic supermarket paperback would tell you that the victim loved animals and wanted to be a veterinarian, or that another victim was three days away from her birthday. "These books promise closure and justice," I said to Lenore, scratching her under the chin, "But ultimately they reinforce the reality that so many lives are interrupted, so many dreams unfulfilled.

Oh, human certainty, knowing that nothing has happened in vain, that nothing was happening in vain, although disappointment seems to be all, and no way leads out of the thicket; oh, certainty, knowing that even when the way turns to evil the knowledge gained by experience has grown, remaining as an increment of knowledge in the world, remaining as the cool-bright reflection of the estate beyond chance to which the earthly action of man can penetrate whenever it conforms to the necessity determined by perception and attains in this way a first illumination of earthbound life and its herdlike sleep. Oh, certainty full of trust, not streaming hither from heaven but arising as on it—, then must not fulfillment of certain trust, if fulfillment be at all possible, be realized here on earth? the necessary is always consummated in the simple way of earth, the streaming round of questions will always find its closure only upon earth, even through the perceptive task may concern itself with uniting the separate spheres of the universe, still there is no genuine task without earthly roots, none possible of solution without an earthly starting point.

the problem of how to go on when the game is over, when it has reached its end-point.41 Hegel is not simply the thinker of closure, of the closed circle of the end of history in Absolute Knowing, but also the thinker of the terrible void of inertia when, after “the system is closed,” nothing (that we can think) happens although “the time goes on.

I will write this story only once, for me, as a form of catharsis – my final attempt at closure. There will be no rewrites, no editors, and no sales strategy – even if I end up holding the only copy of the book ever printed. This story is the retelling of events that occurred three years ago, exactly as they happened and as best I can communicate them. Police reports and coroner’s inquests are not intended nor equipped to address evil. It is not taught in our schools nor recognised in our counselling – yet I walked with evil as it stalked the halls, the hearts and the classrooms of Hunter High on that Black Friday. Then I wasted three years trying to explain and analyse the evil away. Wasted lives, then wasted years -- but I can no longer allow the truth to remain buried with the dead, and the whole story must, finally, now be told.

The only cigarettes allowed in the Dominican Republic were those made from tobacco grown on Trujillo’s plantations and manufactured at his 1,600-man cigarette factory. Although Dominican tobacco is good when used in making cigars, the people wanted what they couldn’t have and that was American-made cigarettes, which were impossible to get on the island. It was also more profitable to raise sugarcane on the available land, so that also hampered the amount of tobacco grown. Noticing the bumboats around the stern, I shouted down to them, asking what they were selling. It turned out that they were buying and were willing to pay $50 per carton for the same American cigarettes that we only paid twenty-five cents a pack for. At that time we were allowed to keep the ship’s store open in port, so the arithmetic made sense. I quickly bought five cartons at $2.50 each, and started lowering them down in a bucket. Each time I lowered a carton of Lucky Strikes, $50.00 came back up. Not bad, and all went well, until I got to the fourth carton and the bucket came up empty. The scoundrel, on his bumboat, was heading back to the port with a carton that he didn’t pay for. There were still other vendors in boats looking to make a deal, but by now I couldn’t buy any more cigarettes because the ship’s storekeeper had figured out what was happening. Knowing that it would deplete the cigarettes left in the ship’s store, he dropped the wire screen closure. Okay, I knew what to do…. I went to the carpenter’s locker and carefully slit open my remaining carton and filled the empty carton with sawdust before resealing it again. Down went the carton and up came $50. With that, I closed up shop, knowing that the guys in the bumboats would figure out what had happened and would try to get even. I wound up with $200 and 10 packs of cigarettes, less my unforeseen expenses. Not a bad day’s work.

You most likely really want to write them a letter or meet up with them and let them know how much they hurt you or how awful they really are. You may think that in doing this, you will get closure. You won’t. One of two things happens instead: They either blame you for all the abuse, or they pretend to be sorry—and say that they don’t deserve you, or that they are tired of hurting you.

The word “canon” is derived from a Hebrew word signifying “reed” (qaneh) and by extension “measuring stick.” It enters into the Greek language as “canon” (kanon) with a wider semantic range signifying exemplary standards in relation to literary works, grammatical rules, and even certain human beings. The word was coined in the early church to indicate an absolutely authoritative, complete list of God-inspired books, which was the standard of truth (Athanasius, 39th Festal Letter). Although such a list was considered closed, it is clear that the creation of the canon did not happen in an instant. It had a long and complex history before such closure occurred. The historian Josephus (AD 95) describes a closed list of inspired books that had been authoritative for all Jews for centuries (Against Apion 8).