Confrontation On The Bridge Quotes

You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyone—any person or any force—dampen, dim or diminish your light. Study the path of others to make your way easier and more abundant. Lean toward the whispers of your own heart, discover the universal truth, and follow its dictates. […] Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don't be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice. And if you follow your truth down the road to peace and the affirmation of love, if you shine like a beacon for all to see, then the poetry of all the great dreamers and philosophers is yours to manifest in a nation, a world community, and a Beloved Community that is finally at peace with itself.

Children of her type contrive the purest philosophies. Ada had worked out her own little system. Hardly a week had elapsed since Van’s arrival when he was found worthy of being initiated in her web of wisdom. An individual’s life consisted of certain classified things: "real things" which were unfrequent and priceless, simply "things" which formed the routine stuff of life; and "ghost things," also called "fogs," such as fever, toothache, dreadful disappointments, and death. Three or more things occurring at the same time formed a "tower," or, if they came in immediate succession, they made a "bridge." "Real towers" and "real bridges" were the joys of life, and when the towers came in a series, one experienced supreme rapture; it almost never happened, though. In some circumstances, in a certain light, a neutral "thing" might look or even actually become "real" or else, conversely, it might coagulate into a fetid "fog." When the joy and the joyless happened to be intermixed, simultaneously or along the ramp of duration, one was confronted with "ruined towers" and "broken bridges.

Sin is a spiritual and moral malignancy. Left unchecked, it can spread throughout our entire inner being and contaminate every area of our lives. Even worse, it often will “metastasize” from us into the lives of other believers around us.

Anxiety is a sin also because it is a lack of acceptance of God’s providence in our lives.

Shall we presume on God’s grace by tolerating in ourselves the very sin that nailed Christ to the cross?

Think of it in terms of men's and women's cultures: women live in male systems, know male rules, speak male language when around men, etc. But what do men really know about women? Only screwed up myths concocted to perpetuate the power imbalance. It is the same situation when it comes to dominant and non-dominant or colonizing and colonized cultures/ countries/ people. As a bilingual/bicultural woman whose native culture is not American, I live in an American system, abide by American rules of conduct, speak English when around English speakers, etc., only to be confronted with utter ignorance or concocted myths and stereotypes about my own culture. -- Judit Moschkovich - "--But I Know You, American Woman

Involuntary servitude was banned by the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, but nothing was done to confront the ideology of white supremacy. Slavery didn’t end in 1865; it just evolved.

Emotions—sexuality, aggression, pleasure, fear, and pain—are instinctive processes. They color our lives and help us confront the fundamental challenges of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure. We

His nose was his most distinctive feature: curved like a scimitar at the top but bent flat at the tip, and with the bone of the bridge cut like a diamond--in short, a nose out of a folktale, the sort of sizable, convoluted, intricately turned nose that, for many centuries, confronted though they have been by every imaginable hardship, the Jews have never stopped making.

Our goal in the pursuit of godliness should be to grow more in our conscious awareness that every moment of our lives is lived in the presence of God; that we are responsible to Him and dependent on Him. This goal would include a growing desire to please Him and glorify Him in the most ordinary activities of life. Of

If a person cannot swim across the river, he must take the bridge. He is not afraid of the water or worried that he may drown. But he takes the bridge out of necessity. It is a fact. To fear or worry over necessities (over facts), stills the mind. The stagnant mind only focuses and refocuses on a single point, without peripheral vision—it ponders danger, but it does not prepare for it. The brave man is not bound immobile with caution or lost scouting the fog of hazard calculating insurmountable variables. His sight and sense is not hindered and he may confront danger upon its arrival. To be brave is not to be careless or headstrong, but to act without expectation.

all sin without distinction — is lawlessness.

I have seen this restlessness among the people before. It was in another millennium, another decade, and at another time in our history, but it pushed through America like a storm. In ten short years, there was a tempest that transformed what the American Revolution did not address, what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were afraid to confront, what the Civil War could not unravel, what Reconstruction tried to mediate, and Jim Crow did its best to retrench. This mighty wind made a fundamental shift in the moral character of our nation that has reached every sector of our society. And this history lends us one very powerful reminder today: Nothing can stop the power of a committed and determined people to make a difference in our society.

We don’t become saints by our actions. We are made saints by the immediate supernatural action of the Holy Spirit alone who works this change deep within our inner being so that we do, in fact, become new creations in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 5:17).

We are dealing, then, with an absurdity that is not a quirk or an accident, but is fundamental to our character as people. The split between what we think and what we do is profound. It is not just possible, it is altogether to be expected, that our society would produce conservationists who invest in strip-mining companies, just as it must inevitably produce asthmatic executives whose industries pollute the air and vice-presidents of pesticide corporations whose children are dying of cancer. And these people will tell you that this is the way the "real world" works. The will pride themselves on their sacrifices for "our standard of living." They will call themselves "practical men" and "hardheaded realists." And they will have their justifications in abundance from intellectuals, college professors, clergymen, politicians. The viciousness of a mentality that can look complacently upon disease as "part of the cost" would be obvious to any child. But this is the "realism" of millions of modern adults. There is no use pretending that the contradiction between what we think or say and what we do is a limited phenomenon. There is no group of the extra-intelligent or extra-concerned or extra-virtuous that is exempt. I cannot think of any American whom I know or have heard of, who is not contributing in some way to destruction. The reason is simple: to live undestructively in an economy that is overwhelmingly destructive would require of any one of us, or of any small group of us, a great deal more work than we have yet been able to do. How could we divorce ourselves completely and yet responsibly from the technologies and powers that are destroying our planet? The answer is not yet thinkable, and it will not be thinkable for some time -- even though there are now groups and families and persons everywhere in the country who have begun the labor of thinking it. And so we are by no means divided, or readily divisible, into environmental saints and sinners. But there are legitimate distinctions that need to be made. These are distinctions of degree and of consciousness. Some people are less destructive than others, and some are more conscious of their destructiveness than others. For some, their involvement in pollution, soil depletion, strip-mining, deforestation, industrial and commercial waste is simply a "practical" compromise, a necessary "reality," the price of modern comfort and convenience. For others, this list of involvements is an agenda for thought and work that will produce remedies. People who thus set their lives against destruction have necessarily confronted in themselves the absurdity that they have recognized in their society. They have first observed the tendency of modern organizations to perform in opposition to their stated purposes. They have seen governments that exploit and oppress the people they are sworn to serve and protect, medical procedures that produce ill health, schools that preserve ignorance, methods of transportation that, as Ivan Illich says, have 'created more distances than they... bridge.' And they have seen that these public absurdities are, and can be, no more than the aggregate result of private absurdities; the corruption of community has its source in the corruption of character. This realization has become the typical moral crisis of our time. Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.

Alexei Alexandrovich stood face to face with life, confronting the possibility of his wife loving someone else besides him, and it was this that seemed so senseless and incomprehensible to him, because it was life itself. All his lief Alexei Alexandrovich had lived and worked in spheres of services that dealt with reflections of life. And each time he had encountered life itself, he had drawn back from it. Now he experienced a feeling similar to what a man would feel who was calmly walking across a bridge over an abyss and suddenly saw that the bridge had been taken down and below him was the bottomless deep. This bottomless deep was life itself, the bridge the artificial life that Alexei Alexandrovich had lived.

But the purpose of listening across lines of difference is not agreement or compromise. It is understanding. True understanding is not possible unless we risk changing our worldview. Otherwise we think we have built bridges to one another, but the bridges are rooted in sands that can shift with the tide. Solidarity is only possible if we are brave enough to reckon with the past and how the past shapes the present. In the United States, this means confronting the reality of white supremacy.

Like it or not, we all carry the past of our country. The unresolved conflicts of race and class lay coiled, ready to erupt, unless we set our minds to an honest reckoning with that past and a search for solutions grounded in genuine truth and justice. Unlike the cursing anonymous voice on a telephone, or the menacing face, or the billy club that split John Lewis's head in Selma, Alabama, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, implicit bias is hard to see; implicit bias is a silent snake that slinks around in ways we don't notice.

What the fuck is this?” he roared, striding into the centre of the room, water dripping from his beard, down through the grizzled white hairs on his chest, off his slapping fruits. It was a strange sight to see. A naked old man confronting three armed Practicals of the Inquisition. Ridiculous, and yet no one was laughing. There was something strangely terrifying about him, even without his clothes and running with wet. It was the Practicals who shifted backwards, confused, scared even. “You’re coming with us,” the woman repeated, though a certain doubt seemed to have entered her voice. One of her companions stepped warily towards Bayaz. Jezal felt a strange sensation in his stomach. A tugging, a sucking, an empty, sick feeling. It was like being back on the bridge, in the shadow of the Maker’s House. Only worse. The wizard’s face had turned terribly hard. “My patience is at an end.” Like a bottle dropped from a great height, the nearest Practical burst apart. There was no thunderclap, only a gentle squelching. One moment he was moving towards the old man, sword raised, entirely whole. The next he was a thousand fragments. Some unknown part of him thudded wetly against the plaster next to Jezal’s head. His sword dropped and rattled on the boards. “You were saying?” growled the First of the Magi.

This was no coincidence. The best short stories and the most successful jokes have a lot in common. Each form relies on suggestion and economy. Characters have to be drawn in a few deft strokes. There's generally a setup, a reveal, a reversal, and a release. The structure is delicate. If one element fails, the edifice crumbles. In a novel you might get away with a loose line or two, a saggy paragraph, even a limp chapter. But in the joke and in the short story, the beginning and end are precisely anchored tent poles, and what lies between must pull so taut it twangs. I'm not sure if there is any pattern to these selections. I did not spend a lot of time with those that seemed afraid to tell stories, that handled plot as if it were a hair in the soup, unwelcome and embarrassing. I also tended not to revisit stories that seemed bleak without having earned it, where the emotional notes were false, or where the writing was tricked out or primped up with fashionable devices stressing form over content. I do know that the easiest and the first choices were the stories to which I had a physical response. I read Jennifer Egan's "Out of Body" clenched from head to toe by tension as her suicidal, drug-addled protagonist moves through the Manhattan night toward an unforgivable betrayal. I shed tears over two stories of childhood shadowed by unbearable memory: "The Hare's Mask," by Mark Slouka, with its piercing ending, and Claire Keegan's Irishinflected tale of neglect and rescue, "Foster." Elizabeth McCracken's "Property" also moved me, with its sudden perception shift along the wavering sightlines of loss and grief. Nathan Englander's "Free Fruit for Young Widows" opened with a gasp-inducing act of unexpected violence and evolved into an ethical Rubik's cube. A couple of stories made me laugh: Tom Bissell's "A Bridge Under Water," even as it foreshadows the dissolution of a marriage and probes what religion does for us, and to us; and Richard Powers's "To the Measures Fall," a deftly comic meditation on the uses of literature in the course of a life, and a lifetime. Some stories didn't call forth such a strong immediate response but had instead a lingering resonance. Of these, many dealt with love and its costs, leaving behind indelible images. In Megan Mayhew Bergman's "Housewifely Arts," a bereaved daughter drives miles to visit her dead mother's parrot because she yearns to hear the bird mimic her mother's voice. In Allegra Goodman's "La Vita Nuova," a jilted fiancée lets her art class paint all over her wedding dress. In Ehud Havazelet's spare and tender story, "Gurov in Manhattan," an ailing man and his aging dog must confront life's necessary losses. A complicated, only partly welcome romance blossoms between a Korean woman and her demented

But the Gnostics were too remote for me to establish any link with them in regard to the questions that were confronting me. As far as I could see, the tradition that might have connected Gnosis with the present seemed to have been severed, and for a long time it proved impossible to find any bridge that led from Gnosticism—or neo-Platonism—to the contemporary world. But when I began to understand alchemy I realized that it represented the historical link with Gnosticism, and that a continuity therefore existed between past and present. Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed the bridge on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.27

The danger, of course, is that it is not always easy to distinguish between a default that was inevitable—in the sense that a country is so highly leveraged and so badly managed that it takes very little to force it into default—and one that was not—in the sense that a country is fundamentally sound but is having difficulties sustaining confidence because of a very temporary and easily solvable liquidity problem. In the heat of a crisis, it is all too tempting for would-be rescuers (today notably multilateral lenders such as the IMF) to persuade themselves that they are facing a confidence problem that can be solved with short-term bridge loans, when in fact they are confronting a much more deeply rooted crisis of solvency and willingness to pay

Woke is not merely a state of awareness; it is a force that dismantles the walls of ignorance and complacency. It is the unwavering commitment to truth, justice, and equality, igniting a flame within the hearts of those who seek a better world. To be woke is to rise above the shadows of indifference and confront the uncomfortable realities that permeate our society. It is to acknowledge the deep-rooted biases, systemic injustices, and the pervasive discrimination that persistently plague our communities. Woke is the courage to challenge the status quo, to question the narratives that uphold oppression, and to demand accountability from those who hold power. It is the unwavering belief that every voice matters, regardless of race, gender, or social standing. Woke is the realization that progress requires action, not just words. It is the recognition that the fight for justice extends beyond hashtags and viral trends. It is a constant pursuit of education, empathy, and empathy and the willingness to stand up for what is right, even in the face of adversity. Woke is a movement that refuses to be silenced. It is the collective power of individuals coming together to amplify marginalized voices, to challenge the systems that perpetuate inequality, and to build a future where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. Being woke is not an endpoint; it is a lifelong journey. It is the commitment to unlearn and relearn, to listen and understand, and to continuously evolve in the pursuit of a more inclusive and equitable world. So, let us embrace our woke-ness, not as a trend or a buzzword, but as a guiding principle in our lives. Let us use our awareness to foster meaningful change, to uplift the marginalized, and to build bridges where there were once divides. For in our collective awakening lies the power to reshape the world, to create a future where justice, compassion, and equality prevail. Let us be woke, let us be bold, and let us be the catalysts of a brighter tomorrow.

She’s smart, but it’s not just that she’s smart. She works harder than anyone I know, yet she’s too hard on herself. Everyone likes Mia. From the geeks to the jocks to the stoners, every single group of kids in our class has nothing but the best to say about her because she never judges. She’s not petty like other people. She doesn’t gossip, but instead, she gives people the benefit of the doubt. I’ve seen her put others first, one too many times because she hates confrontation. Unless it’s with me, of course, and then she’s brutal.” Carson’s voice grew soft as he turned me around in his arms to face him. “But she puts too much pressure on herself to be perfect. And I hate that. It eats away at me when I see it.” My heart pounded like a drum in my chest until I thought it might burst. All I could do was stare up at him, my lashes fluttering as I blinked away my shock. He reached up to my hair and smoothed a hand through my locks, and for a moment, I wondered if he remembered we weren’t alone, that there was someone—a stranger—standing only feet away from us, but he just continued, dragging his fingers through the length of my locks as he said, “Her hair. . .it reminds me of the sunset—both orange, and fiery pink, and pale yellow at the same time. She’s a good friend—loyal to the core and trustworthy, the kind who will be on your side through anything. And her laugh. . .She has this laugh. The one where she doesn’t think someone’s funny, but she’s pretending anyway. That laugh doesn’t reach her eyes. But her real laugh, now that’s something to see because her whole face gets into it. It’s uncontrollable. It sounds like wind chimes, and she crinkles her nose and eyes.” Reaching up, he touched the bridge of my nose, making me gasp. “And every time I hear it, I think, I want to be the one to make her laugh like that because it’s impossible to hear and not smile. It pulls you in, that laugh.

But here are a few leadership tips learned from scars: Learn quickly what hills you will die on and which ones you must not. Learn when to build bridges and when to draw lines, and don’t get the two mixed up! Learn when to confront and when to let it die and never bring it up again. Learn that when you become a leader, you can never again get angry in public. You can never defend yourself when a staff person or leader has been hurt by your comments. The best thing to do is to begin with the wash of repentance,

Second, not only does the gospel prepare me to face my sin, it also frees me up to do so. Facing our sin causes us to feel guilty. Of course we feel guilty because we are guilty. And if I believe, consciously or unconsciously, that God still counts my guilt against me, my instinctive sense of self-protection forbids me to acknowledge my sin and guilt, or, at the least, I seek to minimize it. But we cannot begin to deal with a particular manifestation of sin, such as anger or self-pity, until we first openly acknowledge its presence and activity in our lives. So I need the assurance that my sin is forgiven before I can even acknowledge it, let alone begin to deal with it. By

Second, not only does the gospel prepare me to face my sin, it also frees me up to do so. Facing our sin causes us to feel guilty. Of course we feel guilty because we are guilty. And if I believe, consciously or unconsciously, that God still counts my guilt against me, my instinctive sense of self-protection forbids me to acknowledge my sin and guilt, or, at the least, I seek to minimize it. But we cannot begin to deal with a particular manifestation of sin, such as anger or self-pity, until we first openly acknowledge its presence and activity in our lives. So I need the assurance that my sin is forgiven before I can even acknowledge it, let alone begin to deal with it.

It’s not enough to agree that we do tolerate at least some of them. Anyone except for the most self-righteous person will acknowledge that. “After all, no one is perfect,” may be our attitude. But to honestly face those sins is another matter. For one thing, it is quite humbling. It also implies that we must do something about them. We can no longer continue to ignore them as we have in the past.

Yet another reason Jamie was willing to pay out for expensive, hard-capped boots. You never knew where you’d be stepping. Right in the centre of the settlement a side-path led down a narrow little alley between the backs of two squats made out of shipping pallets, and opened into a little square where three tents all opened towards each other. Two of them looked ancient, propped up by sticks and other rigid objects, tied off and hanging from the bridge overhead with their support strings.  But the third tent looked pretty new.  It was a modest green and orange striped thing — big enough to fit no more than two people. But it matched the description that Reggie had given. He said that it looked too nice to be there, and this one did.  ‘Grace?’ Jamie called softly. Roper was right at her shoulder. She could smell the cigarettes on his breath. There was no answer. She stepped forward a little. ‘Grace? Are you in there? Can you hear me?’ There was an equal chance that the tent was empty, or that Grace was strung out and unresponsive. Either way, she needed to take a look. Jamie glanced at Roper, whose face she couldn’t read. His nose was wrinkled in disgust, but his flushed cheeks told her that he was as nervous as she was.  As much as she hated to generalise — confronting homeless people was never an easy thing to do. They could be unpredictable at best, and it was always smart to tread lightly. She steadied her heart, took a breath and then clenched her hand to stop it from shaking. The zipper toggle hung at the top of the entrance, shimmering gently in the half-light. Jamie couldn’t tell if it was from movement inside, or from vibrations coming through the other squats around them.  She swallowed and reached for it, taking it lightly between her fingers, not wanting to startle whoever was inside. Roper’s breath was short and sharp in her ear. ‘Grace?’ she tried again, but there was no response. She tugged left and the zipper began to unfurl, grinding its way along the teeth. Roper exhaled behind her, filling the already ripe gap with hot air.  Jamie craned her neck to look through the widening gap as the flap began to fold down, but inside was shaded and dark. The smell of urine wafted out and stung her nostrils. She was aware of her boots in the mud, aware of the sounds around her, of the closeness of Roper as he looked over her head.  Everything was still, the zipper not seeming to move at all.

As we have progressed on our journey of learning, we are confronted with the glaringly obvious fact that most are imprisoned within their world views by FEAR. Fear is the reason people succumb to the structural incentives and penalties to ignore, dismiss or suppress any evidence or information which challenges their “comfortable and familiar” world view. To “march out of step” to bridge the reality gap requires courage, the courage to challenge our preconceptions and beliefs; those who “step out of line” risk ridicule, opprobrium and worse. Fear comes in many and various guises and is similarly betrayed in multiple behaviours, not least, aggression or retreat in the face of facts or uncomfortable truths. When confronted with information which shows people that their governments and all the institutions in which they trust, kill, steal and corrupt everything they touch, most are inclined, like children, to stick their hands over their ears and sing loudly, “la, la, la, we’re not listening because you’re a bat-shit crazy, tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy theorist spouting Nazi hate speech [aka. Uncomfortable Truth] ”.

 Once inside, I stood in the shadows where I knew that I was out of sight and carefully peered through the windows. What I saw made my heart skip a beat. It was Franz Knüppel, making his way between some of the huge bales of rubber towards the forward part of the ship. In the dark I fumbled for the signal pistol kept in a box on the bridge for emergencies and rammed a cartridge into its chamber. Not wanting to lose sight of Knüppel, I quietly stepped out onto the wing of the bridge, all the time keeping my eye on him…. I don’t think that he knew that he had been seen, because by this time he had made his way to the bollard holding our bow lines. Still trying to stay out of sight, I quickly stepped forward and watched as he suddenly took a few steps to where he could leap across the open space between the dock and the ship. “What’s he up to?” I thought, as I saw him coming down the port side of the Farmington closing the distance between us. My heart was racing as I stepped out of the shadows and pointed the pistol at him from the bridge and said in my most convincing way, “Get off my ship or I’ll fry your ba11s with a flare!” I was so nervous that had I pulled the trigger it could well have happened. “I’m just looking for Olaf,” he lied. Acting as judge and jury I proclaimed, “The hell you are, he’s dead, you killed him and now it’s your turn!” I never saw anyone move as fast. Knüppel jumped to the dock and ran, ducking between the big bales of raw rubber. Suddenly all of the lights on the dock came on, illuminating everything within sight. The watchman having heard the commotion had thrown the master switch and now started blowing his English Bobbie’s whistle as he gave chase. I knew that the watchman was no match for Knüppel and hoped that he wouldn’t have to confront him. By now the entire Port of Harbel was awake! I could see lights going on everywhere, but Franz Knüppel, the deserter from the French Foreign Legion, eluded the watchman and disappeared into the dark. I’m glad that I didn’t have to pull the trigger because I only had one shot handy and would have had to make it count. I don’t know where Knüppel went, but the night swallowed him up!

Never burn a bridge you’re standing on.

Building steps: acknowledging the past, lamenting it, confronting shame and guilt, confessing our collective sin, extending forgiveness, committing to repentance, making reparations, and ultimately moving into complete restoration.

The use of internal and external masking creates what can be called our “noble lie”. This is the fictitious story we tell ourselves to maintain a positive self-image in the face of our many flaws. While having a positive self-image is beneficial, problems arise when it is too reliant on the use of internal and external masking. For if our self-deceptions become too flaunting of reality we become akin to an individual walking over a deep chasm on a poorly constructed bridge. “The chasm was life itself”, wrote Leo Tolstoy in his book Anna Karenina, “the bridge that artificial life” While the bridge of our self-deceptions may hold for many years, we always face the risk that the bridge will break and we will be forced to confront the chasm of life – which after years of lying to ourselves, and denying, rather than dealing with our weaknesses, we will be ill-equipped to cope with.

We can’t understand what happened in 2016 without confronting the audacious information warfare waged from the Kremlin, the unprecedented intervention in our election by the director of the FBI, a political press that told voters that my emails were the most important story, and deep currents of anger and resentment flowing through our culture. I know some people don’t want to hear about these things, especially from me. But we have to get this right. The lessons we draw from 2016 could help determine whether we can heal our democracy and protect it in the future, and whether we as citizens can begin to bridge our divides. I want my grandchildren and all future generations to know what really happened. We have a responsibility to history—and to a concerned world—to set the record straight. I also share with you the painful days that followed the election. A lot of people have asked me, “How did you even get out of bed?” Reading the news every morning was like ripping off a scab. Each new revelation and outrage made it worse. It has been maddening to watch our country’s standing in the world plummet and to see Americans live in fear that their health care might be taken away so that the superrich can get a tax cut.

No one needs as much sex as you have , and even if they do, which they don’t, by the way, because if they needed it, they’d be an addict. Are you an addict?” She gives me a long look that makes me feel uneasy about myself. “But let’s say, for shits and giggles, you did need it—you don’t need to tell her every time you have it. You tell her to hurt her .” She folds her arms over her chest. “You have sex with other people and tell her because when you do, it makes her sad and her being sad about that validates your feelings for her. She still cares. She wouldn’t be sad otherwise. She’s sad that I’m sleeping with other people, it must be because she still has feelings for me. You do it to feel close to her.” I scowl up at her, equal parts annoyed and confronted. “I don’t need a psychology lecture, Bridge.” “No, Beej.” She gives me a pointed look. “You need a therapist.

What is the truth, but a disguised lie! His slogan, which he has always worked with; as it has no meaning in this world, rather it does not exist, everything is relative, so what is for me an irrefutable truth may be for others just an illusion. Each sees from his angle and according to the amount of data that his mind receives from the surrounding environment, and the result that the mentality deduced from linking and analyzing these data, is the truth then. What if we have the ability to manipulate the data? Then the truth becomes in our hands as a piece of dough, we shape it as we like, and sometimes, out of the perfection of the lie, when the truth appears, no one believes it. If the truth suits the desires and orientations of the mind, then it becomes your help to its owner, a loyal and obedient soldier in your hands, and whenever you whip it with many details, it decides to ignore them, and under pressure it will fill the gaps with the invented story on his own occurred. Good suspicion, misunderstanding, complicated matter, forgetfulness, trust, are all tools and justifications to bridge these gaps, then it realizes that its salvation from this torment is by believing the generalities of what it sees, and the conclusion, the final, is the truth. But before confronting Satan with its greatest weapon, you must first whip your mind, have it at your command, then you will be able to weave the greatest truth, not subject to criticism, nor denial from the angle that the victim sees.

where God through Elihu confronts Job with his audacity, that met my need at the time, causing me to realize and repent of my own accusations against God.

In dust, heat, and discouragement and fatigue beyond telling, the British retreat continued. Trailing through St. Quentin, the tired remnants of two battalions gave up, piled up their arms in the railroad station, sat down in the Place de la Gare, and refused to go farther. They told Major Bridges whose cavalry had orders to hold off the Germans until St. Quentin was clear of troops, that their commanding officers had given the mayor a written promise to surrender in order to save the town further bombardment. Not caring to confront the battalion colonels whom he knew and who were senior to him, Bridges wished desperately for a band to rouse the two hundred or three hundred dispirited men lying about in the square. “Why not? There was a toy shop handy which provided my trumpeter and myself with a tin whistle and a drum and we marched round and round the fountain where the men were lying like the dead playing the British Grenadiers and Tipperary and beating the drum like mad.” The men sat up, began to laugh, then cheer, then one by one stood up, fell in and “eventually we moved off slowly into the night to the music of our improvised band, now reinforced with a couple of mouth organs.

All too often, people and organizations that are confronted with change find themselves struggling and don’t know why. They’ve applied every practical solution, quantitative method, and technical approach to managing change, and they’re at a loss for why it’s not working. And then they learn about the Bridges transition model and realize that change and transition are very different animals. They finally come to grips with the fact that the human element, the wonderfully unpredictable part of business and leadership and life that academics and experts so often overlook, is the difference between success and failure, between transformational growth and painful decline.

Public interest technology pushes back against this, with an awareness that we need to fund infrastructure as well as innovation. If we are building AI systems that intervene in people’s lives, we need to maintain and inspect and replace the systems the same way we maintain and inspect and replace bridges and roads.

Bigotry is a poison that corrodes the very fabric of humanity, staining our hearts with prejudice and our minds with ignorance. It is a destructive force that thrives on fear, division, and the rejection of our shared humanity. To combat bigotry is to dismantle the barriers that separate us, to recognize the inherent worth of every individual, regardless of their race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. It is to embrace diversity as a source of strength, understanding that our differences are what make us beautifully unique. Bigotry blinds us to the richness of the tapestry of human existence, condemning us to a world of narrow-mindedness and intolerance. It stifles progress, stifles progress, hampers empathy, and perpetuates injustice. It is an affront to the principles of equality and the fundamental rights we all deserve. Confronting bigotry requires courage, empathy, and a commitment to unlearn the biases ingrained within us. It is an ongoing process that demands self-reflection and a willingness to challenge our own preconceived notions. It is about standing up against discrimination in all its forms, whether overt or subtle, and refusing to be complicit in the face of injustice. In the fight against bigotry, we must be vigilant and steadfast, for it is not enough to be non-racist or non-discriminatory; we must actively be anti-bigotry. We must use our voices to amplify the silenced, to advocate for change, and to build bridges of understanding where there were once walls of prejudice. Let us remember that the power to eradicate bigotry lies within each and every one of us. It is through education, dialogue, and empathy that we can dismantle the walls of hatred and forge a society built on acceptance, respect, and love. Together, let us be the fierce advocates for equality, the beacons of hope in the face of darkness, and the champions of a world where bigotry has no place. For in the unity of our actions, we can create a future where every individual can flourish, and where the radiant tapestry of humanity shines in all its glory.

Democracy, the beating heart of a just society, stands as a testament to the power of collective voice and the relentless pursuit of equality. It is a beacon of hope that illuminates the path towards a world where every voice matters. At its core, democracy embodies the fundamental belief that every individual possesses inherent worth and has the right to participate in shaping the course of their own destiny. It is a recognition that diverse perspectives enrich our understanding, and that decisions made collectively are more likely to uphold the principles of justice and fairness. Democracy is not a static entity; it is a constant work in progress, demanding our active engagement and vigilance. It requires the nurturing of informed citizens, critical thinking, and open dialogue. It necessitates the protection of civil liberties and the relentless pursuit of truth and transparency. Democracy thrives in an environment where empathy reigns and the marginalized are uplifted. It is a system that strives to dismantle the barriers that separate us, fostering an inclusive society where every individual, regardless of their race, gender, or socioeconomic status, has an equal opportunity to be heard and represented. Yet, democracy is not without its challenges. It is vulnerable to the forces of corruption, apathy, and division. It requires our unwavering commitment to resist complacency, to stand up for justice, and to protect the rights of all citizens. It demands that we confront our biases, bridge our differences, and work towards the common good. In a world where power can be concentrated in the hands of a few, and the voices of the marginalized can be silenced, democracy stands as a reminder that power ultimately resides in the people. It is a call to action, a call to nurture the seeds of democracy within our hearts, our communities, and our institutions. For democracy is not just a political system; it is a profound philosophy that recognizes the inherent worth and agency of every individual. It is a reminder that our collective destiny is shaped by the choices we make, the values we uphold, and the unwavering belief that democracy matters, now and for generations to come.

Alexei Alexandrovich was not a jealous man. Jealousy, in his opinion, was insulting to a wife, and a man ought to have trust in his wife. Why he ought to have trust - that is, complete assurance that his young wife would always love him - he never asked himself; but he felt no distrust, because he had trust and told himself that he had to have it. But now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to have trust was not destroyed, he felt that he stood face to face with something illogical and senseless, and he did not know what to do. Alexei Alexandrovich stood face to face with life, confronting the possibility of his wife loving someone else besides him, and it was this that seemed so senseless and incomprehensible to him, because it was life itself. All his life Alexei Alexandrovich had lived and worked in spheres of service that dealt with reflections of life. And each time he had encountered life itself, he had drawn back from it. Now he experienced a feeling similar to what a man would feel who was calmly walking across a bridge over an abyss and suddenly saw that the bridge had been taken down and below him was the bottomless deep. This bottomless deep was life itself, the bridge the artificial life that Alexei Alexandrovich had lived. For the first time questions came to him about the possibility of his wife falling in love with someone, and he was horrified at them.

People fear what they don't understand. It's an immutable fact in life that's been used for all manner of people to do all manner of horrible things to all manner of other people. To fear the unknown is to build a bridge in your mind and promptly burn it down. With one exception, it's always better to confront the unknown and understand it. That exception, of course, being when a shit-ton of bombs are involved.

The troll alone understands. Those goats could have chosen another meadow, crossed a different bridge but that would mean a different story...A wise troll and three non-confrontational goats.

The other traffic issue concerned the park’s users. Vaux and Olmsted came up with three categories of roadway that they simply called the “Walk” (for pedestrians), the “Ride” (for horseback riding), and the “Drive” (for carriages). All together, there are today about seventy miles of Walk, Ride, and Drive wending through the park. In the master plan, none of these paths ever touched. If the Drive crossed the Walk, a bridge was constructed to pass pedestrian traffic below the carriages. Similarly, the Ride was kept separate from the other paths so that horseback riders would never have to rear up suddenly when confronted with an obstacle.

Despite the perma-shock in which many of us have lived our entire lives, with alarms in our ears made only more shrill by 24 hour news cycles, and unrelenting internet death row photos of dogs and cats at animal shelters, we inexplicably expect our shocking truths--that ours is a society built on oppression, rape and murder--to get heard the first time through. When the truths aren't heard, we end up beyond frustrated. We butt up against other people's moral hypocrisies and shut down as we hear the same stories about people who are compassionate but still eat animals. We grow weary of taking people's hands and walking them down the road to see the more than 23 million chickens killed for food every day in the U.S. And we forget that people can't see the animals hiding in their words and signifiers; we forget that we can't see them either. Beyond beef and bacon, there are other words that hide animals: deforestation, road construction, housing development, war. We must learn to be attuned to those words. And we have to learn how to speak kindly to people who are thinking about them, even if they don't recognize the absent referents in their speech. When we are thinking about how oppressors have guns, prisons, and slaughterhouses, we remember that words are weapons. When we turn them on each other and our potential allies, we forget. Out of frustration over all the things that haven't gotten better, we resort to name calling, dismiss the possibility of bridge building with other movements and within our own, and retreat back to internet cliques to discuss cupcake recipes or bash something read in the Huffington Post.

When your social anxiety becomes so great that you have to avoid the specific situation that causes it, you are dealing with a social phobia. In movies and on television, in both serious and comical contexts, we have heard of many phobias: fear of heights, fear of trains, fear of bridges, fear of crowds. And this, according to the Journal of Psychiatry, is the decade of social phobia. What is social phobia? As we discussed earlier, social phobia is essentially performance anxiety. Here is how the DSMII-R defines it: “The essential feature is a persistent irrational fear and compelling desire to avoid situations in which the individual may be exposed to scrutiny by others.” In other words, the avoidance typical of social anxiety sufferers becomes so extreme that it overshadows any desire to participate in the situation. The fear of being scrutinized by others includes not only the evaluation of the performance but also a fear that anxiety symptoms will become obvious. Obsessive thought patterns (“They can tell I’m nervous,” “They can see I’m sweating”) are common, along with the actual physical symptoms. Both mental and physical symptoms become as stressful as the situation itself. “There is also fear that the individual will behave in a manner that will be humiliating or embarrassing.” Again, the individual is preoccupied with fear of failure or performance anxiety. “Marked anticipatory anxiety occurs if the individual is confronted with the necessity of entering into such a situation.” Even the thought of being evaluated causes the social phobic reaction, so ingrained is the anxiety response. Where social phobia exists, there is a pronounced inhibition of interaction on all levels. The individual is so preoccupied by fear of symptoms and by finding a way of avoiding the situation that he cannot successfully interact. Some specific social phobias are included here: -Fear of public speaking -Fear of participating in a group presentation -Fear of eating in a restaurant -Fear of raising a hand to talk in class -Fear of writing a check in front of someone -Fear of using a public bathroom -Fear of dating -Fear of participating in an activity with other people -Fear of attending public events Think of social phobia as extreme performance anxiety about a specific act, such as those listed above. Where there is any chance of being evaluated by others in the situation he fears, the social phobic will experience extreme anxiety and will do all he can to avoid the situation.

I think about what makes us lonely on a recent subway ride from Brooklyn to Manhattan. As the train hurtles over the Manhattan Bridge, the subway car is silent, save for the muffled beats of a pop song. A woman up front is reading a book, and a few commuters are dozing. The rest of us are glued to our devices: heads bent, earbuds in, fingers scrolling. The trains sputters and then stops completely mid-bridge; plugged into our own curated digital landscapes, no one looks up. What was once a period of contemplation, boredom, small talk, confrontations, maybe even some light flirting, has been replaced by screens. In addition to filling the blank spaces in our day, our phones double as a crutch to “lean on when we are socially anxious or uncomfortable,” says Julia Bainbridge, a freelance writer and editor, who, in 2016, launched The Lonely Hour, a podcast dedicated to exploring the condition. The world is unpredictable, but our screens provide a convenient buffer against the possibility of spontaneous human interaction.

Having opened up a way for the imprisoned souls, the chief celebrant had succeeded by means of spells and incantations in breaking open the gates of hell. He had shone his light (a little hand mirror) for the souls in darkness. He had confronted Yama, the Judge of the Dead. He had seized the demon torturers who resisted his progress. He had invoked Ksitigarbha, the Saviour King, to aid him. He had raised up a golden bridge, and now, by means of a litle flag which he held aloft in one hand, was conducting over it those souls from the very deepest pit of hell who still remined undelivered.

Instead, there can be a strong tendency to avoid this level of direct confrontation. More often we simply do not say anything, and keep the uncomfortable feelings to ourselves. Or we might say, “Oh, it’s no big deal. Water under the bridge,” and then express our frustration in other ways, such as showing up late, breaking a commitment, or making a sarcastic joke about it. It is extremely common for people with social anxiety to have accompanying stomach and gastro-intestinal problems as well. Much of this comes from regularly suppressing anger and avoiding direct confrontation. If we do approach the conflict, it is often after many hours or days of rumination and planning. Our feelings come out with a fair amount of explaining or self-blame. We can say things like: “Yes, I’m upset, but it’s really because I’m too sensitive,” or “I know it’s no big deal, but I just had a hard time with it for some reason.” How often do you take the blame in order to avoid a conflict? Avoiding conflict can have a substantial negative effect on our lives. The reality is, every single relationship is going to have some sort of conflict or disagreement in it. When we try to go through life with no disagreement, without making any waves, we end up greatly limiting ourselves. In the second part of this book, you will learn how to identify what you truly think and feel about a situation. You will also learn how to speak up for yourself, and how to develop a level of assertiveness that will greatly increase your sense of well-being in your relationships. Before you can start to do this, however, there is one final area we must discuss about the problem of social anxiety. This is your relationship with yourself—the most significant relationship you have, and one that determines the quality of all of your other relationships. If you are regularly at odds with yourself, criticizing yourself, and disliking who you are, it makes connecting with others very difficult.

My mum's grandmother wore lipstick every day of her life, and one time stopped her car on a one-lane bridge because a man was following her car too closely. I could be confrontational too, if I had the addresses of the people I wanted to confront.