Cycling Passion Quotes

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The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

Though they live far from the coast, they retain a great fascination and passion for the ocean. The sound of crashing waves, the smell of salt air, it affects them deeply and has inspired many of their lovliest songs. There is one that tells of this love, if you want to hear it.

Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the hunger of your mind, to buy safety?

Success demands singleness of purpose. You need to be doing fewer things for more effect instead of doing more things with side effects. It is those who concentrate on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results. The ONE Thing shows up time and again in the lives of the successful because it’s a fundamental truth. More than anything else, expertise tracks with hours invested. The pursuit of mastery bears gifts. When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret...People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret. Make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense.

The mind is a machine that is constantly asking: What would I prefer? Close your eyes, refuse to move, and watch what your mind does. What it does is become discontent with That Which Is. A desire arises, you satisfy that desire, and another arises in its place. This wanting and rewanting is an endless cycle for which, turns out, there is already a name: samsara. Samsara is at the heart of the vast human carnival: greed, neurosis, mad ambition, adultery, crimes of passion, the hacking to death of a terrified man on a hillside in the name of A More Pure And Thus Perfect Nation--and all of this takes place because we believe we will be made happy once our desires have been satisfied. I know this. But still I'm full of desire... --"Buddha Boy

We live in wonder, blaze in a cycle of passion and apprehension.

We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.

Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great story-tellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable. What the commodifiers of fantasy count on and exploit is the insuperable imagination of the reader, child or adult, which gives even these dead things life- of a sort, for a while.

Don’t tell me you’re passionate about your job – show me that you’re passionate about helping people like me.

Well," he said slowly, "sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what the harpers sing of and the poets make stories of: the love that escapes the years.... "All or nothing, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?

Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.

A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive.

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part, Nay, I have done, you get no more of me, And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free. Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain. Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath, When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies, When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And Innocence is closing up his eyes, Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover. - Sonnet LXI

His quest was a wolf, and it starved. - Gansey

There’s no way out of this cycle, Daniel,” Cam went on. “She can’t break it, and neither can you. Pick Heaven, pick Hell, I don’t really care and you don’t, either. It won’t make any difference—

I knew exactly what was about to happen. It was part of this pathetic cycle my dad was caught in. He'd get really passionate about some project, talk about ir nonstop for months. Then, inevitably, some tiny problem would crop up and throw sand in the gears and instead of dealing with it he'd let it completely overwhelm it.

There is the love that I love but don't want to love and try to bleed out so the love that I want but don't want, can die a tragic death. And as it lays dying, I'm touched with remorse, feel regret, and try to keep it beating. If it does, I panic, and go through the cycle all over again. What do you call that except pure madness? I'm a catastrophic tsunami on any man who tries to love me. And if I really care about a man, you would think I would be sweet and supportive, but instead I set fires and dare them to walk through them.

Reincarnation isn't something in which I choose to believe but rather a truth I accept. Most people will never know the meaning of their friendships, passions, choices and even challenges. I embrace them, knowing that there’s always a perfect correlation between everything, including between us and the ones that love us and betray us at the end. That’s how I know I’m almost never traveling somewhere but returning, or not meeting someone but fixing the past, or facing a challenge but ending a karmic cycle. If I was a Buddhist Monk, a Scottish Doctor, a French Monarch, or a Spanish Templar, none of that really matters, not as much as what I experienced and believed during that time, not as much as what I did ten years ago or what I believed during my childhood, not as much as who I am now and what I can do with my life at present time.

She held him at arms’ length, looked at the pipe still gripped in his hand, then looked at his face and read him like a book. She ran the tip of her red tongue slowly across her full cushiony, sensuous lips, making them wet-red and looked him straight in the eyes with her own glassy, speckled bedroom eyes. The man drowned. When he came up, he stared back, passion cocked, his whole black being on a live-wire edge. Ready! Solid ready to cut throats, crack skulls, dodge police, steal hearses, drink muddy water, live in a hollow log, and take any rape-fiend chance to be once more in the arms of his high-yellow heart.

I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can be kept up only by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother-region to which it remains firmly bound throughout it’s whole life-cycle; each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will and feelings, its own death. Here indeed are colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet discovered. Here the Cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and the pines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves - but there is no ageing “Mankind.” Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in the deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline.

An artist is an artist before they have ever produced a single thing. The production of something is not what makes a body an artist. It is the soul that makes an artist, the core of the psyche that fills the person, the creative fire inside a person that make them an artist. And if that person has the soul of an artist, that is they have the burning as each and every individual does, then they are an artist, they are entitled to the title artist, we are all entitled to the title artist before we have produced one single thing

Religious Life Cycle invariably goes through several stages - liking, practicing, enchantment, endorsement, passion, fanaticism, extremism, terrorism, embarrassment, abstinence, relinquishing.

When we think of people giving up on their marriage, divorce usually comes to mind. But many people who give up on their marriage (or themselves or their partner) don’t leave; they stay in the comfort cycle—until their marriage presents the inevitable dilemma: venture into the growth cycle or face divorce, loss of integrity, or living death. Validating and soothing each other has its place in marriage—but not when you’re dependent on it. You get stuck in the comfort cycle because neither of you has the strength or motivation to break out. That’s when the other side of the process comes in: holding onto yourself (self-confrontation and self-soothing).

According to Keltar legend, each Druid born into the clan was destined for a soul mate, a perfect match in heart and mind, as well as body, coming together with an explosive, incendiary passion that could not be denied. If the Keltar male exchanged the sacred Druid binding vows with his true love, and his mate willingly returned them, they could bind their souls together for all eternity, in this life and forever beyond. The vows linked them inextricably. ’Twas said if a Keltar gave the vows and they were not returned, he would be forever incomplete, missing a part of his heart, aching for the love of a woman he could never have, eternally bound to her, through this life and all his future existence, whether in the cycle of rebirth, heaven, hell, or even an eternal Unseelie prison. If aught must be lost . . . the legendary vows began, ’twill be my life for yours. . . .

The frost which kills the harvest of a year, saves the harvests of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust. Wars, fires, plagues, break up immovable routine, clear the ground of rotten races and dens of distemper, and open a fair field to new men. There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters a rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order. The sharpest evils are bent into that periodicity which makes the errors of planets, and the fevers and distempers of men, self-limiting. Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. Without war, no soldier; without enemies, no hero.

At his leisure, the lieutenant allowed the unforgettable spectacle to engrave itself upon his mind. With one hand he fondled the hair, with the other he softly stroked the magnificent face, implanting kisses here and there where his eyes lingered. The quiet coldness of the high, tapering forehead, the closed eyes with their long lashes beneath faintly etched brows, the set of the finely shaped nose, the gleam of teeth glimpsed between full, regular lips, the soft cheeks and the small, wise chin… Wherever the lieutenant's eyes moved his lips faithfully followed. The high, swelling breasts, surmounted by nipples like the buds of a wild cherry, hardened as the lieutenant's lips closed about them. The arms flowed smoothly downward from each side of the breast, tapering toward the wrists, yet losing nothing of their roundness or symmetry…The natural hollow curving between the bosom and the stomach carried in its lines a suggestion not only of softness but of resilient strength, and while it gave forewarning to the rich curves spreading outward from here to the hips it had, in itself, an appearance only of restraint and proper discipline. The whiteness and richness of the stomach and hips was like milk brimming in a great bowl, and the sharply shadowed dip of the navel could have been the fresh impress of a raindrop, fallen there that very moment. Where the shadows gathered more thickly, hair clustered, gentle and sensitive, and as the agitation mounted in the now no longer passive body there hung over this region a scent like the smoldering of fragrant blossoms, growing steadily more pervasive… Passionately they held their faces close, rubbing cheek against cheek…Their breasts, moist with sweat, were tightly joined, and every inch of the young and beautiful bodies had become so much one with the other that it seemed impossible there should ever again be a separation…From the heights they plunged into the abyss, and from the abyss they took wing and soared once more to dizzying heights…As one cycle ended, almost immediately a new wave of passion would be generated, and together -with no trace of fatigue- they would climb again in a single breathless movement to the very summit.

He is an unsuccessful scapegoat whose heroic willingness to die for the truth will ultimately make the entire cycle of satanic violence visible to all people and therefore inoperative. The "kingdom of Satan" will give way to the "kingdom of God." Thanks to Jesus' death, the Spirit of God, alias the Paraclete (a word that signifies "the lawyer for the defense"), wins a foothold in the kingdom of Satan. He reveals the innocence of Jesus to the disciples first and then to all of us. The defense of victims is both a moral imperative and the source of our increasing power to demystify scapegoating. The Passion accounts reveal a phenomenon that unbeknownst to us generates all human cultures and still warps our human vision in favor of all sorts of exclusions and scapegoating. If this analysis is true, the explanatory power of Jesus' death is much greater than we realize, and Paul's exalted idea of the Cross as the source of all knowledge is anthropologically sound. The

Noemi wondered if High Place had robbed her of her illusions, or if they were meant to be shattered all along. Marriage could hardly be like the passionate romances one read about in books. It seemed to her, in fact, a rotten deal. Men would be solicitous and well behaved when they courted a woman, asking her out to parties and sending her flowers, but once they married. the flowers wilted. You didn't have married men posting love letters to their wives. That's why Noemí tended to cycle through admirers. She worried a man would be briefly impressed with her luster, only to lose interest later on. There was also the excitement of the chase, the delight that flew through her veins when she knew a suitor was bewitched with her. Besides, boys her age were dull, always talking about the parties they had been to the previous week or the one they were planning to go to the week after. Easy, shallow men. Yet the thought of anyone more substantial made her nervous, for she was trapped between competing de sires, a desire for a more meaningful connection and the desire to never change. She wished for eternal youth and endless merriment.

We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.

Layla!" Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from? The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone.But Don was-Daniel was right where she wanted him to be. "What are you doing here?" Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him. He didn't seem to hear it.He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. "Saving your life." "How did you get in?" "Don't worry about that.No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you." In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce's instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn't right then.Her heart felt ragged and cold.This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life-they were torture to her now. "Fear not," he whispered. "Let me tell you, my love, what happens after this life.You come back,you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real.You come back to me,again and again-" The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle.His body was so warm against hers. "But I die again and again." "What?" He tilted his head.Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well-that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn't expected her to understand. "How do you-Never mind. It doesn't matter.What matters is that we will again be together.We will always find each other,always love each other, no matter what.I will never leave you." Luce fell to her knees on the stone steps. She hid her face in her hands. "I don't know how you can stand it.Over and over again,the same sadness-" He lifted her up. "The same ecstasy-" "The same fire that kills everything-" "The same passion that ignites it all again.You don't know.You can't remember how wonderful-" "I've seen it.I do know." How she had his attention. He didn't seem sure whether or not to believe her, but at least he was listening. "What if there's no hope of anything ever changing?" she asked. "There is only hope. One day, you will live through it.That absolute truth is the only thing that keeps me going. I will never give up on you. Even if it takes forever." He wiped away her tears with his thumb. "I'll love you with all my heart,in every life, through every death. I will not be bound by anything but my love for you." "But it's so hard.Isn't it hard for you? Haven't you ever thought,what if..." "One day,our love will conquer this dark cycle.That's worth everything to me.

In interviews with riders that I've read and in conversations that I've had with them, the same thing always comes up: the best part was the suffering. In Amsterdam I once trained with a Canadian rider who was living in Holland. A notorious creampuff: in the sterile art of track racing he was Canadian champion in at least six disciplines, but when it came to toughing it out on the road he didn't have the character. The sky turned black, the water in the ditch rippled, a heavy storm broke loose. The Canadian sat up straight, raised his arms to heaven and shouted: 'Rain! Soak me! Ooh, rain, soak me, make me wet!' How can that be: suffering is suffering, isn't it? In 1910, Milan—San Remo was won by a rider who spent half an hour in a mountain hut, hiding from a snowstorm. Man, did he suffer! In 1919, Brussels—Amiens was won by a rider who rode the last forty kilometers with a flat front tire. Talk about suffering! He arrived at 11.30 at night, with a ninety-minute lead on the only other two riders who finished the race. The day had been like night, trees had whipped back and forth, farmers were blown back into their barns, there were hailstones, bomb craters from the war, crossroads where the gendarmes had run away, and riders had to climb onto one another's shoulders to wipe clean the muddied road signs. Oh, to have been a rider then. Because after the finish all the suffering turns into memories of pleasure, and the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure. That is Nature's payback to riders for the homage they pay her by suffering. Velvet pillows, safari parks, sunglasses: people have become woolly mice. They still have bodies that can walk for five days and four nights through a desert of snow, without food, but they accept praise for having taken a one-hour bicycle ride. 'Good for you.' Instead of expressing their gratitude for the rain by getting wet, people walk around with umbrellas. Nature is an old lay with few suitors these days, and those who wish to make use of her charms she rewards passionately. That's why there are riders. Suffering you need; literature is baloney.

Polyamorists call for the respect of the cycles of desire, which are far from being linear. For them, the idea of breaking off a relationship simply because it is going through a dry period is as ridiculous as the idea of chopping down a tree in the winter simply because it has lost its leaves, forgetting that after winter comes spring. Of course, they are no more exempt from the pain of romantic breakups than the next person, but they make such decisions after mature reflection and not as a result of pressure from ruling hormonal, passionate impulses.

We look to artists to feel for us, to suffer and rejoice, to describe the heights of their passionate response to life so that we can enjoy them from a safe distance. . . . We look to artists to stop time for us, to break the cycle of birth and death and temporarily put an end to life’s processes. It is too much of a whelm for any one person to face up to without going into sensory overload. Artists, on the other hand, court that intensity. We ask artists to fill our lives with a cavalcade of fresh sights and insights, the way life was for us when we were children and everything was new.39

Two fears alternate in marriage, of loneliness and of bondage. The dread of loneliness being keener than the fear of bondage, we get married. For one person who fears being thus tied there are four who dread being set free. Yet the love of liberty is a noble passion and one to which most married people secretly aspire, -- in moments when they are not neurotically dependent -- but by then it is too late; the ox does not become a bull, not the hen a falcon. The fear of loneliness can be overcome, for it springs from weakness; human beings are intended to be free, and to be free is to be lonely, but the fear of bondage is the apprehension of a real danger, and so I find it all the more pathetic to watch young men and beautiful girls taking refuge in marriage from an imaginary danger, a sad loss to their friends ad a sore trial to each other. First love is the one most worth having, yet the best marriage is often the second, for we should marry only when the desire for freedom be spent; not till then does a man know whether he is the kind who can settle down. The most tragic breakings-up are of those couples who have married young and who have enjoyed seven years of happiness, after which the banked fires of passion and independence explode -- and without knowing why, for they still love each other, they set about accomplishing their common destruction.

This has everything to do with parenting, because the kind of disciple I am dictates the kind of mother I am. I am a mom who is passionate about the work of God, or I’m not. My kids will surely know the difference. I’ll teach my children to elevate themselves or I’ll teach them to love the kingdom; those are mutually exclusive. If I truly believe, then my kids belong to Christ and my highest calling is to see them into his good care. My work is to present them to Jesus as single-minded disciples, prepared and equipped to live out their mission. If I believe, I create a house of grace. If I believe, my children will see me forgive and ask forgiveness. If I believe, my kids will care about this troubled planet Jesus was willing to die for.

Noemí wondered if High Place had robbed her of her illusions, or if they were meant to be shattered all along. Marriage could hardly be like the passionate romances one read about in books. It seemed to her, in fact, a rotten deal. Men would be solicitous and well behaved when they courted a woman, asking her out to parties and sending her flowers, but once they married, the flowers wilted. You didn’t have married men posting love letters to their wives. That’s why Noemí tended to cycle through admirers. She worried a man would be briefly impressed with her luster, only to lose interest later on. There was also the excitement of the chase, the delight that flew through her veins when she knew a suitor was bewitched with her. Besides, boys her age were dull, always talking about the parties they had been to the previous week or the one they were planning to go to the week after. Easy, shallow men.

Generational Patterns Since the beginning of recorded time, certain writers and thinkers have intuited a pattern to human history. It was perhaps the great fourteenth-century Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun who first formulated this idea into the theory that history seems to move in four acts, corresponding to four generations. The first generation is that of the revolutionaries who make a radical break with the past, establishing new values but also creating some chaos in the struggle to do so. Often in this generation there are some great leaders or prophets who influence the direction of the revolution and leave their stamp on it. Then along comes a second generation that craves some order. They are still feeling the heat of the revolution itself, having lived through it at a very early age, but they want to stabilize the world, establish some conventions and dogma. Those of the third generation—having little direct connection to the founders of the revolution—feel less passionate about it. They are pragmatists. They want to solve problems and make life as comfortable as possible. They are not so interested in ideas but rather in building things. In the process, they tend to drain out the spirit of the original revolution. Material concerns predominate, and people can become quite individualistic. Along comes the fourth generation, which feels that society has lost its vitality, but they are not sure what should replace it. They begin to question the values they have inherited, some becoming quite cynical. Nobody knows what to believe in anymore. A crisis of sorts emerges. Then comes the revolutionary generation, which, unified around some new belief, finally tears down the old order, and the cycle continues. This revolution can be extreme and violent, or it can be less intense, with simply the emergence of new and different values.

One day,our love will conquer this dark cycle.That's worth everything to me." Luce looked up and saw the love glowing in his eyes. He believed what he was saying. He didn't care if he suffered again and again; he'd forge on, losing her over and over,buoyed by the hope that one day this wouldn't be their end. He knew it was doomed,but he tried over and over again anyway,and he always would. His commitment to her,to them, touched a part of her that she'd thought she'd given up on. She still wanted to argue: This Daniel didn't know the challenges coming their way,the tears they would shed over the ages.He didn't know that she'd seen him in his moments of deepest desperation. What the pain of her deaths would do to him. But then- Luce knew.And that made all the difference in the world. Daniel's lowest moments had terrified her, but things had changed. All along, she'd felt bound to their love, but now she knew how to protect it.Now she had seen their love from so many different angles. She understood it in a way she'd never thought she would.If Daniel ever faltered,she could raise him up. She had learned how to do it from the best: from Daniel.Here she was,about to kill her soul, about to take away their love permanently, and five minutes alone with him brought her back to life. Some people spent their entire lives looking for love like this. Luce had had it all along. The future held no starshot for her. Only Daniel.Her Daniel, the one she'd left in her parent's backyard in Thunderbolt.She had to go. "Kiss me," she whispered. He was seated on the steps with his knees parted just enough to let her body slide between them. She sank to her knees and faced him. Their foreheads were touching.The tips of their noses. Daniel took her hands. He seemed to want to tell her something,but he could not find the words. "Please," she begged,her lips edging toward his. "Kiss me and set me free.

Eh? How 'bout that?" Bill nudged her. "Did I promise to show you love or did I promise to show you love?" "Sure,they seem like they're in love." Luce shrugged. "But-" "But what?Do you have any idea how painful that is? Look at that guy. He makes getting inked look like being caressed by a soft breeze." Luce squirmed on the branch. "Is that the lesson here? Pain equals love?" "You tell me," Bill said. "It may surprise you to hear this,but the ladies aren't exactly banging down Bill's door." "I mean,if I tattooed Daniel's same on my body would that mean I loved him more than I already do?" "It's a symbol,Luce." Bill let out a raspy sigh. "You're being too literal. Think about it this way: Daniel is the first good-looking boy LuLu has ever seen. Until he washed ashore a few months ago, this girl's whole world was her father and a few fat natives." "She's Miranda," Luce said, remembering the love story from The Tempest, which she'd read in her tenth-grade Shakespeare seminar. "How very civilized of you!" Bill pursed his lips with approval. "They are liek Ferdinand and Miranda: The handsome foreigner shipwrecks on her shores-" "So,of course it was love at first sight for LuLu," Luce murmured. This was what she was afraid of: the same thoughtless,automatic love that had bothered her in Helston. "Right," Bill said. "She didn't have a choice but to fall for him.But what's interesting here is Daniel. You see, he didn't have to teach her to craft a woven sail, or gain her father's trust by producing a season's worth of fish to cure,or exhibit C"-Bill pointed at the lovers on the beach-"agree to tattoo his whole body according to her local custom.It would have been enough if Daniel had just shown up.LuLu would have loved him anyway." "He's doing it because-" Luce thought aloud. "Because he wants to earn her love.Because otherwise,he would just be taking advantage of their curse. Because no matter what kind of cycle they're bound to,his love for her is...true.

Marriage could hardly be like the passionate romances one read about in books. It seemed to her, in fact, a rotten deal. Men would be solicitous and well behaved when they courted a woman, asking her out to parties and sending her flowers, but once they married, the flowers wilted. You didn’t have married men posting love letters to their wives. That’s why Noemí tended to cycle through admirers. She worried a man would be briefly impressed with her luster, only to lose interest later on. There was also the excitement of the chase, the delight that flew through her veins when she knew a suitor was bewitched with her. Besides, boys her age were dull, always talking about the parties they had been to the previous week or the one they were planning to go to the week after. Easy, shallow men. Yet the thought of anyone more substantial made her nervous, for she was trapped between competing desires, a desire for a more meaningful connection and the desire to never change. She wished for eternal youth and endless merriment.

I want to end here with the most common and least understood sexual problem. So ordinary is this problem, so likely are you to suffer from it, that it usually goes unnoticed. It doesn't even have a name. The writer Robertson Davies dubs it acedia. “Acedia” used to be reckoned a sin, one of the seven deadly sins, in fact. Medieval theologians translated it as “sloth,” but it is not physical torpor that makes acedia so deadly. It is the torpor of the soul, the indifference that creeps up on us as we age and grow accustomed to those we love, that poisons so much of adult life. As we fight our way out of the problems of adolescence and early adulthood, we often notice that the defeats and setbacks that troubled us in our youth are no longer as agonizing. This comes as welcome relief, but it has a cost. Whatever buffers us from the turmoil and pain of loss also buffers us from feeling joy. It is easy to mistake the indifference that creeps over us with age and experience for the growth of wisdom. Indifference is not wisdom. It is acedia. The symptom of this condition that concerns me is the waning of sexual attraction that so commonly comes between lovers once they settle down with each other. The sad fact is that the passionate attraction that so consumed them when they first courted dies down as they get to know each other well. In time, it becomes an ember; often, an ash. Within a few years, the sexual passion goes out of most marriages, and many partners start to look elsewhere to rekindle this joyous side of life. This is easy to do with a new lover, but acedia will not be denied, and the whole cycle happens again. This is the stuff of much of modern divorce, and this is the sexual disorder you are most likely to experience call it a disorder because it meets the defining criterion of a disorder: like transsexuality or S-M or impotence, it grossly impairs sexual, affectionate relations between two people who used to have them. Researchers and therapists have not seen fit to mount an attack on acedia. You will find it in no one’s nosology, on no foundation's priority list of problems to solve, in no government mental health budget. It is consigned to the innards of women's magazines and to trashy “how to keep your man” paperbacks. Acedia is looked upon with acceptance and indifference by those who might actually discover how it works and how to cure it. It is acedia I wish to single out as the most painful, the most costly, the most mysterious, and the least understood of the sexual disorders. And therefore the most urgent.

The movement actually managed to succeed in lobbying for the passage of involuntary sterilization laws in thirty American states. This meant that the state could neuter people who fell below a particular IQ without their having any say in the matter. That each state eventually repealed the laws is a testament to common sense and compassion. That the laws existed in the first place is a frightening indication of how dangerously limited any standardized test is in calculating intelligence and the capacity to contribute to society. IQ tests can even be a matter of life and death. A criminal who commits a capital offense is not subject to the death penalty if his IQ is below seventy. However, IQ scores regularly rise over the course of a generation (by as much as twenty-five points), causing the scale to be reset every fifteen to twenty years to maintain a mean score of one hundred. Therefore, someone who commits a capital offense may be more likely to be put to death at the beginning of a cycle than at the end. That’s giving a single test an awful lot of responsibility. People can also improve their scores through study and practice. I read a case recently about a death row inmate who’d at that point spent ten years in jail on a life sentence (he wasn’t the trigger man, but he’d been involved in a robbery where someone died). During his incarceration, he took a series of courses. When retested, his IQ had risen more than ten points—suddenly making him eligible for execution.

The Greeks, on the other hand, were passionately interested in logic and reason. Plato (ca. 428–ca. 348 BCE) was continually occupied with problems of epistemology and the nature of wisdom. Much of his early work was devoted to the defense of Socrates, who had forced men to clarify their ideas by his thought-provoking questions but had been sentenced to death in 399 on the charges of impiety and the corruption of youth. In a way that was not dissimilar to that of the people of India, he had become dissatisfied with the old festivals and myths of religion, which he found demeaning and inappropriate. Plato had also been influenced by the sixth-century philosopher Pythagoras, who may have been influenced by ideas from India, transmitted via Persia and Egypt. He had believed that the soul was a fallen, polluted deity incarcerated in the body as in a tomb and doomed to a perpetual cycle of rebirth. He had articulated the common human experience of feeling a stranger in a world that does not seem to be our true element. Pythagoras had taught that the soul could be liberated by means of ritual purifications, which would enable it to achieve harmony with the ordered universe. Plato also believed in the existence of a divine, unchanging reality beyond the world of the senses, that the soul was a fallen divinity, out of its element, imprisoned in the body but capable of regaining its divine status by the purification of the reasoning powers of the mind. In the famous myth of the cave, Plato described the darkness and obscurity of man’s life on earth: he perceives only shadows of the eternal realities flickering on the wall of the cave. But gradually he can be drawn out and achieve enlightenment and liberation by accustoming his mind to the divine light.

Can fascism still exist? Clearly Stage One movements can still be found in all major democracies. More crucially, can they reach Stage Two again by becoming rooted and influential? We need not look for exact replicas, in which fascist veterans dust off their swastikas. Collectors of Nazi paraphernalia and hard-core neo-Nazi sects are capable of provoking destructive violence and polarization. As long as they remain excluded from the alliances with the establishment necessary to join the political mainstream or share power, however, they remain more a law and order problem than a political threat. Much more likely to exert an influence are extreme Right movements that have learned to moderate their language, abandon classical fascist symbolism, and appear “normal.” It is by understanding how past fascisms worked, and not by checking the color of shirts, or seeking echoes of the rhetoric of the national-syndicalist dissidents of the opening of the twentieth century, that we may be able to recognize it. The well-known warning signals—extreme nationalist propaganda and hate crimes—are important but insufficient. Knowing what we do about the fascist cycle, we can find more ominous warning signals in situations of political deadlock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for tougher allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery. Fascists are close to power when conservatives begin to borrow their techniques, appeal to their “mobilizing passions,” and try to co-opt the fascist following. Armed by historical knowledge, we may be able to distinguish today’s ugly but isolated imitations, with their shaved heads and swastika tattoos, from authentic functional equivalents in the form of a mature fascist conservative alliance. Forewarned, we may be able to detect the real thing when it comes along.

Sadly, there are many forces more powerful and devestating than love... Among them for example, the anger and jealousy of a spurned husband or lover. Fire begets passions, but it also burns.

Life cycles. So when you see yourself in a low point: start with the below and the rest follows (sex, french toast, smiling, money, and maybe some passion). Don’t forget that when the lights come on inside of you, everyone in the world can see a little better.

Kemmer is not always played by pairs. Pairing seems to be the commonest custom, but in the kemmerhouses of towns and cities, groups may form and intercourse take place promiscuously among the males and females of the group. The furthest extreme from this practice is the custom of vowing kemmering (Karh. oskyommer), which is to all intents and purposes monogamous marriage. It has no legal status, but socially and ethically is an ancient and vigorous institution. The whole structure of the Karhidish Clan-Hearths and Domains is indubitably based upon the institution of monogamous marriage. I am not sure of divorce rules in general; here in Osnoriner there is divorce, but no remarriage after either divorce or the partner’s death: one can only vow kemmering once. Descent of course is reckoned, all over Gethen, from the mother, the “parent in the flesh” (Karh. amha). Incest is permitted, with various restrictions, between siblings, even the full siblings of a vowed-kemmering pair. Siblings are not however allowed to vow kemmering, nor keep kemmering after the birth of a child to one of the pair. Incest between generations is strictly forbidden (In Karhide/Orgoreyn; but is said to be permitted among the tribesmen of Perunter, the Antarctic Continent. This may be slander.). What else have I learned for certain? That seems to sum it up. There is one feature of this anomalous arrangement that might have adaptive value. Since coitus takes place only during the period of fertility, the chance of conception is high, as with all mammals that have an estrous cycle. In harsh conditions where infant mortality is great, a race survival value may be indicated. At present neither infant mortality nor the birthrate runs high in the civilized areas of Gethen. Tinibossol estimates a population of not over 100 million on the Three Continents, and considers it to have been stable for at least a millennium. Ritual and ethical absention and the use of contraceptive drugs seem to have played the major part in maintaining this stability. There are aspects of ambisexuality that we have only glimpsed or guessed at, and which we may never grasp entirely. The kemmer phenomenon fascinates all of us Investigators, of course. It fascinates us, but it rules the Gethenians, dominates them. The structure of their societies, the management of their industry, agriculture, commerce, the size of their settlements, the subjects of their stories, everything is shaped to fit the somer-kemmer cycle. Everybody has his holiday once a month; no one, whatever his position, is obliged or forced to work when in kemmer. No one is barred from the kemmerhouse, however poor or strange. Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion. This is easy for us to understand. What is very hard for us to understand is that, four-fifths of the time, these people are not sexually motivated at all. Room is made for sex, plenty of room; but a room, as it were, apart. The society of Gethen, in its daily functioning and in its continuity, is without sex. Consider:

Serial winners leverage a cycle of winning action to make progress. They do something every day that puts them or keeps them on course for the things they want in life. Along the way, they steadily overcome friction and other forces that could slow them down or knock them off course. By focusing on what they can and should do, they manage themselves out of tough, demoralizing situations. The result? They are always moving forward, following their passions, having fun, and contributing to the world. What

Before you know it, you are bound to Prakriti by her twisted, three-stranded rope; you begin to believe that what happens in Prakriti unconsciously – birth, death, pain, pleasure, desire, anger – is real, that it is all done by you, felt by you, made to happen by you. Or that they are all happening to you. Both are not true.’ ‘A three-stranded rope?’ Arjuna frowned. ‘What do You mean, Lord?’ ‘Know this, Mahabahu,’ said Krishna. ‘Goodness (Sattva), Rajas (passion) and Tamas (dullness) are the three strands of Nature’s rope, which bind down the soul. Rajas is part of Nature’s creative side – birth, energy, movement, change, action, the season of spring. Tamas is part of Nature’s destructive side – death, decay, inertia, heaviness, winter. Sattva is the state in between – harmony, wholesomeness, lucidity, stillness, summer. ‘Of these, Sattva, pure and good, can illuminate your soul in its shining light, but even Sattva is a golden shackle. Once you enjoy that happy state of Sattva – good health, knowledge, harmony and peace – you get attached to it, not willing to let it go, yearning for it when it is gone, as it will. ‘Rajas springs from desire, yearning, dissatisfaction with the way things are. It prompts you to action, and once you act, it attaches you to the result of your action, makes you want a particular outcome, makes you happy when you get it, unhappy when you don’t. Beware, Kaunteya, for Rajas binds your soul tight. ‘Tamas is born of ignorance - it confuses, deludes, makes you negligent. It binds your soul to indolence, sleep, sloth, laziness. ‘The power of goodness makes slaves of the happy, makes them constantly hunger for peace and harmony. Passion enslaves the doers, traps them in an unending cycle of wanting something and then acting to get it. Dullness enslaves the careless and negligent, who never want to leave that torpid state of ignorance and lethargy.’ Too true, mused Arjuna. No wonder human life was so full of torment. ‘Goodness, passion and dullness are present in all beings, Arjuna,’ Krishna went on, ‘combined in different ways, constantly in motion, rising and falling, one following the other. They are all present in you; they are your nature. Sometimes goodness prevails over the other two, making you feel calm, radiant, happy, at peace, fulfilled; sometimes passion prevails, making you feel restless, greedy, impatient, excited, excitable, full of energy. At other times, dullness prevails, which destroys clear thinking – anger, fear, grief, confusion arise in this state.

This is the story line for extraordinary success stories. Passion for something leads to disproportionate time practicing or working at it. That time spent eventually translates to skill, and when skill improves, results improve. Better results generally lead to more enjoyment, and more passion and more time is invested. It can be a virtuous cycle all the way to extraordinary results.

Few people wanted to hear that, despite appearances, since the end of slavery our nation has remained trapped in a cycle of reform, backlash, and reformation of systems of racialized social control. Things have changed since then. As I write this, Donald Trump is president of the United States. For many, this feels like whiplash. After eight years of Barack Obama in the White House—a man who embraced the rhetoric (though not the politics) of the Civil Rights Movement—we now have a president who embraces the rhetoric and the politics of white nationalism. This is a president who openly stokes racial animosity and even racial violence, who praises dictators (and likely aspires to be one), who behaves like a petulant toddler on Twitter, and who has a passionate, devoted following of millions of people who proudly say they want to “make America great again” by taking us back to a time that we’ve left behind. We are now living in an era of unabashed racialism, a time when many white Americans feel free to speak openly of their nostalgia for an age when their cultural, political, and economic dominance could be taken for granted—no apologies required. It can no longer be denied that the colorblind veneer of early twenty-first-century American democracy was just that: a veneer. Right beneath the surface lay an ugly reality that many Americans were not prepared to face. In so many respects, this book was written in a different world. It was written before a seventeen-year-old black teenager named Trayvon Martin was killed in a gated community by a self-appointed

As soon as he arrives, everyone falls silent. It is like when you're walking in the country and the crickets mysteriously fall quiet. The zone of silence moves with him like an eye, and the shrill noise starts up again as soon as he has passed by. Destiny no longer penetrates into that zone, all is quiet, passions are extinguished, but it is the ideal zone from which to measure the stridency of the world. The end of every cycle of activity, of suffering or pleasure, is marked by a symbolic masturbation. A sort of mythological offering to seal the end of an event, a nod towards orgasm, the joy of an ending. For societies too, the end of a cycle is marked by a symbolic masturbation, which is followed not long after by real melancholy. This is what socialism was for us. The famous gesture of tearing one's page from the typewriter, by which writers or journalists elevate themselves to the status of Wild West heroes drawing their six-shooters.

We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.

When born (in the future lives) they are attached again to the body (and mind) as Atman, and become subject to lust and the other two passions. Karma is again produced by them, and they have to receive its inevitable results. (Thus) body undergoes birth, old age, disease, death, and is reborn after death; while the world passes through the stages of formation, existence, destruction, and emptiness, and is re-formed again after emptiness. Kalpa after Kalpa[FN#343] (passes by), life after life (comes on), and the circle of continuous rebirths knows no beginning nor end, and resembles the pulley for drawing water from the well.[FN#344] [FN#343] Kalpa, a mundane cycle, is not reckoned by months and years. lt is a period during which a physical universe is formed to the moment when another is put into its place. A.

For others to be generous it requires that a person accept their generosity for the cycle to be completed.

The most recent writers on genius, creativity’s greatest manifestation, agree that it can appear at any point in the life cycle, not just in childhood. They reject the nineteenth-century romantic belief that it exists only in a small set of heroic people. They find three factors key to what they see as a more general phenomenon. First is a grandiose and mystical sense of the world, what Einstein called “cosmic religiosity.” Such an elevated mood can appear in the hypomanic phase of the up-down cycle of someone with a bipolar disorder, as depression lifts and elation appears. The second element of genius is an ability to concentrate obsessively on a goal and to strive for perfection in reaching it. The third element is a resonance to one’s historical era, being in sync with current ideals, living when one’s gift or invention can be appreciated.5

None of this matters. I mean, those people—that man and his kids who you just fed—they matter, but no one cares about them. Those kids ar the future if they don't starve to death. But if they manage to grow up, what kind of men will they be?' 'That's what Earthseed was about,' I said. 'I wanted us to understand what we could be, what we could do. I wanted to give us a focus, a goal, something big enough, complex enough, difficult enough, and in the end, radical enough to make us become more than we ever have been. We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that's the way things are. That's the way things have always been.' 'It is,' Len said. 'It is,' I repeated. 'There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren't, the cycles wouldn't keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfil the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They'll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it's only to begin a new one, a different one. 'Earthseed is about preparing to fulfil the Destiny. It's about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It's about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are. It's...' I glanced at Len, caught a little smile on her face, and wound down. 'It's about a lot more than that,' I said. 'But those are the bones.' 'Makes a strange sermon.' 'I know.

I’ve hollowed out, replaced passion with practicality. I’m the empty shell that plagued my earliest nightmares.

I have great, wild hopes of finding my daughter as she will be in adulthood, when she nominally stops needing me, when she is past the seizures and denunciations that I expect will come at adolescence because they came so brutally for me. I hope that I am right in my interpretation of the organic grandmother, that mother hunger is a primal trait of womanness, and that my daughter's need for me may prove larger, more enduring, more passionate than the child's needs for meals, clothes, shelter and applause. I hope that she needs me enough to show me who she is, to give regular dispatches, her intellectual progeny, and to trust me with their safekeeping. I hope that she likes to barter- Youth and Experience haggling over Notoriety. May she spit fire and leave me gladly but sense in her very hemoglobin that she can find me and rest with me and breathe, safely breathe, if only for the intermission between cycles of anger and disappointment. For as long as they last, my bones, brains, and strength are her birthright, and they may not be much, but they are tenacious by decree, and they’ll comply happily with the customs of dynasty. When Youth comes calling, Experience gets her shovel and digs.

Physical effects, both long and short term, include: Racing heart, headache, nausea, muscle tension, fatigue, dry mouth, dizzy feelings, increase in breathing rate, aching muscles, trembling and twitching, sweating, disturbed digestion, immune system suppression and memory issues. Your body was designed to endure brief moments of acute stress, but chronic stress (stress that is ongoing) can start to cause chronic health conditions, like cardiovascular disease, insomnia, hormonal dysregulation and so on. If the ordinary physical experience of stress is prolonged, the physical effects can have consequences in the rest of your life… Mental and psychological effects include: Exhaustion and fatigue, feeling on edge, nervousness, irritability, inability to concentrate, lack of motivation, changes to libido and appetite, nightmares, depression, feeling out of control, apathy and so on. Stress can reinforce negative thinking patterns and harmful self-talk, lower our confidence, and kill our motivation. More alarming than this, overthinking can completely warp your perception of events in time, shaping your personality in ways that mean you are more risk averse, more negatively focused and less resilient. When you’re constantly tuned into Stress FM you are not actually consciously aware and available in the present moment to experience life as it is. You miss out on countless potential feelings of joy, gratitude, connection and creativity because of your relentless focus on what could go wrong, or what has gone wrong. This means you’re less likely to recognize creative solutions to problems, see new opportunities and capitalize on them, or truly appreciate all the things that are going right for you. If you are constantly in a low-level state of fear and worry, every new encounter is going to be interpreted through that filter, and interpreted not for what it is, but for what you’re worried it could be.  Broader social and environmental effects include: Damage to close relationships, poor performance at work, impatience and irritability with others, retreating socially, and engaging in addictive or harmful behaviors. A person who is constantly stressed and anxious starts to lose all meaning and joy in life, stops making plans, cannot act with charity or compassion to others, and loses their passion for life. There is very little spontaneity, humor or irreverence when someone’s mind is too busy catastrophizing, right? As you can imagine, the physical, mental and environmental aspects all interact to create one, unified experience of overthinking and anxiety. For example, if you overthink consistently, your body will be flooded with cortisol and other stress hormones. This can leave you on edge, and in fact cause you to overthink even more, adding to the stress, changing the way you feel about yourself and your life. You might then make bad choices for yourself (staying up late, eating bad food, shutting people out) which reinforce the stress cycle you’re in. You may perform worse at work, procrastinating and inevitably giving yourself more to worry about, and so on…

Carve out and then ritualize thirty minutes early each Sunday morning to create your “Blueprint for a Beautiful Week.” Start the process by writing a story in your journal about the highlights from the seven days you just lived. Then record your lessons learned and optimizations for making the coming week even better. Next, on a large piece of paper that has each day running from 5 AM to 11 PM on it, note down all your commitments. The key here is to list more than your business meetings and work projects. Set clear periods for your Victory Hour, your 90/90/1 sessions, your 60/10 cycles and your 2nd Wind Workouts, as well as time for your loved ones, blocks for your portfolio of passions and segments for your errands. Doing this weekly will build extraordinary focus into your days, yield marvelous momentum, enhance your productivity significantly and improve your life’s balance noticeably.

The news cycle Actually, the public is prodigiously sensitive to current news. Its attention is focused immediately on any spectacular event that fits in with its myths. At the same time the public will fix its inter­est and its passion on one point, to the exclusion of all the rest. Besides, people have already become accustomed to and have accommodated themselves to "the rest" (yesterday's news or that of the day before yesterday). We are dealing here not just with forgetfulnes but also with plain loss of interest.

At stage 1, the relationship begins with passion. You hold your partner in high regard, praise them, give them all your attention and hope or expect them to do the same. You probably,and without realising it, inflate the positives and might feel like they are “the one.” As the relationship progresses to stage 2, you become more sensitive to words and actions that could possibly hold even the slightest hint of negativity. You may fixate on the smallest of things like a late reply to their text or a missed call, and begin to question their motives and interest. This comes from a place of anxiety, a fear of abandonment and low self-worth. The symptoms of BPD will start to flare up and interfere. At stage 3, the relationship can take on a different tone again. You might start testing out your partner,deliberately push them away or behave unacceptably .You might cause arguments for no reason just to see how willing they are to fight for the relationship. Stage 4 rolls around and you will start to distance yourself from the love of your life, letting the relationship spiral downward because at that point, you are convinced that they are going to leave you. This is really painful for you. You don’t want them to leave, and they don’t want to leave you either. When they express confusion, you will hide away your real feelings and pretend that everything is fine. Stage 5 may be where the relationship ends, especially if your partner isn't aware yet that you are Borderline or just what that means ie this is the playing out of symptoms and not what you really want. Borderlines experience intense mood swings, ranging from sadness at the loss of the relationship to anger against the other person. The fear of abandonment becomes a reality and it fuels your emotional lability. There may be attempts by them to resolve things but if the relationship is really over, then we’re at stage 6, where the Borderline might spiral downward and experience a bout of severe depression. They may give into their thoughts of low self-worth and even resort to reckless behaviors and self-harming to seek distraction and relief. If the relationship hasn’t ended, the cycle may start all over again. The occurrence of this cycle and its intensity depends on whether or not you are managing your illness by seeking professional help, and if you have other sources of emotional support. The BPD cycle is not a sure thing to happen for people that have or know someone with BPD, nor is it an official symptom of the condition. However it is really very common and even if not officially a symptom ,it is symptomatic. The idea that people with BPD cannot ‘hold down’ relationships, however, is a misconception and as a matter of fact, many people with BPD do have healthy and successful relationships, especially if they have been in, or are going through therapy. Because of the intensity of their emotions ,Borderlines can be the most loving, caring empathic and fun partners. 6 “SOMEONE…HELP ME, PLEASE.” - DIALECTICAL BEHAVIOR THERAPY “I just got diagnosed.

the re-creator; all of these in cycle. Sometimes the one who is running from the Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and enter another. Passion dies and is brought back. Pain is chased away and surfaces another time. To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many many endings, and many many beginnings—all in the same relationship. The process is complicated by the fact that much of our overcivilized culture has a difficult time tolerating the transformative. But there are better attitudes with which to embrace the Life/Death/Life nature. Throughout the world, though it is called by different names, many see this nature as un baile con La Muerte, a dance with death; Death as a dancer, with Life as its dance partner.

This aliveness amplified a desire to embrace pleasure and nakedness, to live by instinct and intuition, to live by the skin and the senses, To break free. Break free from what? From the confines of my own clothes, from convention and how one must behave in public spaces, from the confines of a risk-averse society, of a Catholic "thou shalt not" Ireland, from sin, from being a role model, a desired object, an individual, an ego, a human being, to be free even of my own skin and all that it contains. I felt a burning hunger, a devouring compulsion, an overriding passion beyond logic or reason, worry or care for total abandonment and surrender. Freedom.

Most of us are caught in the insidious cycle of “waiting to be happy and fulfilled.” “When I am making $300,000 a year I will be happy and fulfilled…”  “When the kids are out of college I will be happy and fulfilled…” “etc. etc., etc…” This is dysfunctional and results in perpetual dissatisfaction and a poorly lived life. Life is not about the destination. It is about the journey. The moment by moment life we create and experience.

Sallustius (4, 10), the friend of Julian, allegorically justifies (just like the 'Apostate') all the ritual phases of the 'passion' of Attis, with whom his faithful 'ascend' to the gods. After a time of fasting, 'milky food represents our rebirth'. Like the silver dish of Parabiago, contorniate medallions show us Attis in Cybele's chariot, a celestial triumph in which his faithful followers hope one day to have their part. The holy week of the Phrygian cult is also related to the solar cycle. With the attributes of the Sun and the Moon (as he was likened to the Men of the Pisidians), in other words the guarantors of cyclic eternity, Attis acquired the cosmic dimension of a sovereign god; but that did not mean the exclusion of all other gods.

Your and our sea of love! The night sea, calm and silent, With the lapping sound of waves, There my heart wanders, my heart indulgent, And floats with these waves, Into the ocean of feelings, Into the depths of emotions, And I doubt my heart’s dealings, As it creates new waves of emotions, Where I feel wet with your embrace, And the waves of life surround me from every side, And I seek you riding these waves and merge with your grace, Feeling the beauty of your beautiful face that now stares at me from every side, And then my love Irma, I let myself sink to the bottom, As your feelings, your memories, your touch pile over me, And now I can even feel your every atom, As your conscience of love sinks into me, At the bottom of the life’s sea, Where ripples and waves distract the casual seeker of love, Because the pearls lie at the bottom of the sea, Just like you, every moment sinking into me silently, in this sea of love, Where I am the waves, I am the ripples, I am the sea, And you are the motion that keeps me alive, And in this state I shall now forever be, With you and the sea of life forever in me alive, Then at the bottom as you secretly kiss me, Some mariner shall feel the joy in his heart, And so shall begin the cycle of new waves, new tides in the sea, Where now the sea, the waves, the pearl, everything is part of our heart, That beats endlessly over the surface of the sea, To inspire the true mariner of the sea seeking life and love, To him we shall bear the visions of what he can be, A lover, just like you and me, who always finds his true love, So Irma, let the sea of feelings and your memories grow over me, And let me at the bottom lie submerged, in this vivid presence of thee, Where you are the water, the sea, and everything for me, For my true world is created only when I love thee! And this is what my wish for the true mariner of life shall always be, Seeking love, seeking a wave of passion to ride, And dearing to dive into this sea, At the bottom to discover you and me, Lying in the wet embrace that spreads in all directions, Wherever a true mariner turns to see, Our reflections to discover love’s true sensations, And imagines about the wonder if he too with his lover could dwell in this sea, our sea! And see, The wonder of love and the wonder of the sea, Where life grows on the surface and at the bottom too, For I love you Irma on the surface of the sea, And at its bottom too, So let this mariner come and brave the sea of life, As we cast our spell of love in the form of waves and infinite ripples, Let him discover his own meaningful strife, And flow endlessly with these ripples, To finally tarry at the bottom of this sea, Where now his lover shall tame his weary mind, Just like you do it for me, And make me believe even your heart has a mind, a beautiful mind! That often thinks of me, And dares to plunge into the darkness of the sea, Only to seek me, And realise that at the bottom you and I are the life of the sea! Where many mariners and lovers lie in their state humbled, To flow with these waves endlessly, As we at the bottom of this sea lie passionately cuddled, Like the pearl in an oyster, forever and endlessly!

Into these loves who but for passion looks, At this first sight here let him lay them by, And seek elsewhere in turning other books, Which better might his labour satisfy. To the Reader of these Sonnets

Flynn called this virtuous cycle of skill improvement the social multiplier effect, and he used the same logic to explain generational changes in abstract reasoning. More and more, over the past century, our jobs and daily lives ask us to think analytically, logically. We go to school for longer, and in school, we’re asked, more and more, to reason rather than rely on rote memorization.

Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. Heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. Profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe. The passionately conceived ideas of the great storytellers are copied, stereotyped, reduced to toys, molded in bright-colored plastic, advertised, sold, broken, junked, replaceable, interchangeable.

Bud Light?” she asks in a distasteful tone. “Did you think you would be getting a microbrew? It’s a college house.” “Still”—she takes a sip and cringes—“I thought you’d have a little more class.” “You’re giving me too much credit.” I nod my head toward the corner of the loft where there are less people. When she doesn’t initially follow me, I turn back around, grab her hand like I had to in class, and pull her across the loft until we’re settled in the corner. I lean against the wall and prop one leg behind me. She eyes me, giving me a full once-over. I do the same. She’s damn hot, and I’m regretting my actions last Saturday, passing out mid grope. Finally she says, “You seem to have lost your shirt.” She motions with her finger over my bare chest. I look down at her legs and reply, “Must be where the other half of your skirt is.” “Think they’re making out in a laundromat somewhere?” She takes a sip of her beer and cringes again. A few more sips and she’ll get used to it; always happens for me. “If they are, I hope they use the gentle cycle.” Her brow pulls together. “Not sure if that makes sense.” “Oh, because half of a skirt and a shirt making out in a laundromat does?” “In children’s books, sure.” “What kind of perverted children’s books did you read growing up?” I counter. “You know, the classics,” she answers causally. “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and Skirt and Shirt, Lovers for Life.” “Ah, yes, I forgot about that passionate yet eye-opening youth literature that took the New York Times by storm.” “I have five signed first-edition copies in a box in my parents’ attic. Banking on them to clear out my student loans.” She sips her beer, flips her hair behind her shoulder, glances at my chest again. “Five?” I answer sarcastically. “Damn, forget college loans, you’re set for life.” “You think?” She glances around. “What the hell am I doing here then?” “To see me of course,” I answer with a smile. She rolls her eyes. “More like dragged to this party because my roommate has a crush on one of your freshmen.” “Yeah, which one?” I look over her head, eyeing all the partygoers. “No idea, but apparently he has amazing blue eyes.” “Amazing, huh? Has to be Gunner. I was even stunned by his eyes when he was recruited.” No joke, the dude won the lottery for irises. I’m even jealous with how . . . aqua they are. “Not ashamed to admit that?” she asks, shifting on her heels. “Not even a little.

The Pentagram, a symbol of five points, stands as an eternal testament to the profound interconnection of all things. Each point signifies the fundamental elements of existence - earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. It is a cosmic diagram reminding us that as humans, we are not separate entities in an indifferent universe, but rather integral parts of a grand, interconnected cosmic dance. The element of earth represents the physical realm, our bodies, and the tangible world around us. It reminds us of our mortal nature, our connection to the mother Earth, and the grounding force that allows us to grow and prosper. Air, the breath of life, signifies the realm of intellect, communication, and thought. It is the invisible force that fuels our creative and innovative abilities, allowing us to soar towards our highest aspirations. Fire symbolizes passion, energy, and transformation. It is the spark of life within us, the burning desire to grow, evolve, and reach beyond the realms of the possible. Yet, it also serves as a reminder of the transformative power of trials and tribulations, refining us like gold in a crucible. Water relates to emotions, intuition, and the depths of the subconscious. It is the wellspring of our feelings, our dreams, our hopes, and our fears. Water teaches us the power of adaptability, the beauty of depth, and the strength in gentleness. Finally, the fifth point, spirit, represents the divine essence that permeates all things. It is the invisible thread that weaves together the fabric of the universe, the divine spark within each of us, connecting us to each other and to the cosmos. The Pentagram, therefore, is not merely a symbol. It is a philosophical compass, a map of our spiritual journey. It reminds us to remain grounded, yet to let our thoughts soar; to burn with passion, yet to cool with compassion; to dive deep within ourselves, yet to connect to the divine within all. It is a reminder that we are born of the cosmos, and to the cosmos, we shall return - a testament to the spiritual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In this dance of existence, we are not solitary dancers, but part of a divine choreography, intricately woven into the fabric of the universe.

In 1968, the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy completed an assassination trilogy that struck many as the tragic if natural outgrowth of an era of unstoppable passion and violence.

Mankind,’ however, has no aim, no idea, no plan, any more than the family of butterflies or orchids. ‘Mankind’ is a zoological expression, or an empty word. But conjure away the phantom, break the magic circle, and at once there emerges an astonishing wealth of actual forms the Living with all its immense fullness, depth and movement hitherto veiled by a catchword, a dryasdust scheme, and a set of personal ‘ideals.’ I see, in place of that empty figment of one linear history which can only be kept up by shutting one’s eyes to the overwhelming multitude of the facts, the drama of a number of mighty Cultures, each springing with primitive strength from the soil of a mother region to which it remains firmly bound throughout its whole life-cycle, each stamping its material, its mankind, in its own image; each having its own idea, its own passions, its own life, will, and feeling, its own death Here indeed are colours, lights, movements, that no intellectual eye has yet discovered. Here the Cultures, peoples, languages, truths, gods, landscapes bloom and age as the oaks and the stone-pines, the blossoms, twigs and leaves but there is no ageing ‘Mankind.’ Each Culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay, and never return. There is not one sculpture, one painting, one mathematics, one physics, but many, each in its deepest essence different from the others, each limited in duration and self-contained, just as each species of plant has its peculiar blossom or fruit, its special type of growth and decline. These cultures, sublimated life-essences, grow with the same superb aimlessness as the flowers of the field. They belong, like the plants and the animals, to the living Nature of Goethe, and not to the dead Nature of Newton. I see world-history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms. The professional historian, on the contrary, sees it as a sort of tapeworm industriously adding on to itself one epoch after another.

We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.” “It is,” Len said. “It is,” I repeated. “There seem to be solid biological reasons why we are the way we are. If there weren’t, the cycles wouldn’t keep replaying. The human species is a kind of animal, of course. But we can do something no other animal species has ever had the option to do. We can choose: We can go on building and destroying until we either destroy ourselves or destroy the ability of our world to sustain us. Or we can make something more of ourselves. We can grow up. We can leave the nest. We can fulfill the Destiny, make homes for ourselves among the stars, and become some combination of what we want to become and whatever our new environments challenge us to become. Our new worlds will remake us as we remake them. And some of the new people who emerge from all this will develop new ways to cope. They’ll have to. That will break the old cycle, even if it’s only to begin a new one, a different one.

[Social media] becomes an endless cycle of someone tweeting a thing they feel passionate about, then other people coming in and tearing apart their idea because it doesn't exactly align with their own. That's not a dialogue; it's an argument into the void.

A Petrichor Chaser And Lover By: Lorena Tamayo Castillo We grow, glow, learn, and yearn. Walk, and work for a row and worn. We go, goes, gone, to get somewhere . And we know, we are gloomy of the storm. But nature bloom and blossom on jubilant roar. So are we? Go, get up and take shower that rain. For after the withered, there is the great restore. A Petrichor chaser and lover, is never in vain. For that very scent of weather is a gain. Where a wonder land is in reign.

You must use your emotions to empower your passion for reaching personal goals. You must utilize your intellect to strategize, and finally you must detach your awareness to acquire the sobriety needed to achieve those goals. In other words, you need to cycle between the passion generated by your fears and desires and the rational thoughts associated with self-control and discipline

The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.

Act Like a Champion YOU'RE A CHAMPION. Here's proof: You're alive. You were conceived in the womb of your mother as a result of the most exhausting, gruesome race in the universe. There were 180 million human sperms running, swimming, cycling towards one solitary egg waiting in the fallopian tube of the female body. It was a triathlon of epic proportions where there would be only one champion. And you won. You came out the champion. You defeated 180 million competitors. I repeat: You're already a champion. So act like one. God created you for a sacred mission. So live life every day with purpose and passion.

To lose my thoughts and beliefs, and to find my soul, I go to both friend and enemy, my teacher, my guide, my home, my escape, my questions and answers, my thirst and my eagerness, my passion, my hunger and craving, my sorrow and happiness, my source and inspiration. I'm speaking of Nature, that gives us literally everything we know. From our knowledge, medicine, food, water, air, clothing and shelter, to its creative and medicinal/restorative ways of making us feel deeply and spiritually connected to life when spending time in nature, and its mezmerizing confrontation with the profound mysteries in life. Bringing us, no matter who we are and where we are from, in contact with the past and future, with the cycles of life, with the tasty and the toxic, the good and the bad, the micro and the macro, the soft and the hard, the ugly and the beautiful, the death and re-birth, the ebbs & the flows, the wholeness and relationship & inter-relatedness of nature and life itself. Its incredible diversity in all her glory that teaches us that we absolutely without a doubt must avoid the forcing/pressure of standardization of protocols/constucts/models in which just one way of living or model of development predominates. I believe our purpose is quiet simple. It is to love. To love oneself and each other, to love all life and to love our Mother Earth for She teaches us, nurtures us, feeds us and shelter us, and for eventually we will turn into Earth. Life is beautiful because it does not last forever.

When Warren was a little boy fingerprinting nuns and collecting bottle caps, he had no knowledge of what he would someday become. Yet as he rode his bike through Spring Valley, flinging papers day after day, and raced through the halls of The Westchester, pulse pounding, trying to make his deliveries on time, if you had asked him if he wanted to be the richest man on earth—with his whole heart, he would have said, Yes. That passion had led him to study a universe of thousands of stocks. It made him burrow into libraries and basements for records nobody else troubled to get. He sat up nights studying hundreds of thousands of numbers that would glaze anyone else’s eyes. He read every word of several newspapers each morning and sucked down the Wall Street Journal like his morning Pepsi, then Coke. He dropped in on companies, spending hours talking about barrels with the woman who ran an outpost of Greif Bros. Cooperage or auto insurance with Lorimer Davidson. He read magazines like the Progressive Grocer to learn how to stock a meat department. He stuffed the backseat of his car with Moody’s Manuals and ledgers on his honeymoon. He spent months reading old newspapers dating back a century to learn the cycles of business, the history of Wall Street, the history of capitalism, the history of the modern corporation. He followed the world of politics intensely and recognized how it affected business. He analyzed economic statistics until he had a deep understanding of what they signified. Since childhood, he had read every biography he could find of people he admired, looking for the lessons he could learn from their lives. He attached himself to everyone who could help him and coattailed anyone he could find who was smart. He ruled out paying attention to almost anything but business—art, literature, science, travel, architecture—so that he could focus on his passion. He defined a circle of competence to avoid making mistakes. To limit risk he never used any significant amount of debt. He never stopped thinking about business: what made a good business, what made a bad business, how they competed, what made customers loyal to one versus another. He had an unusual way of turning problems around in his head, which gave him insights nobody else had. He developed a network of people who—for the sake of his friendship as well as his sagacity—not only helped him but also stayed out of his way when he wanted them to. In hard times or easy, he never stopped thinking about ways to make money. And all of this energy and intensity became the motor that powered his innate intelligence, temperament, and skills.

key process in personality development involves situations and personality traits reciprocally “calling” each other. The corresponsive principle suggests that the very traits that steer us toward certain life situations are the very same traits that those situations encourage, reinforce, and amplify. In this relationship there is the possibility of virtuous and vicious cycles.

The giant brandished his fist to knock her flat. And glass exploded against his face. Thomas whipped his head round to see Blunderbuss, rainbow mud staining her rainbow yarn, in the traditional Wom fighting stance: her bone armoured rump in the air, front legs splayed out before her, mouth gaping open, in a tremendous snarl, spitting whiskey bottles, passion fruits, and horseshoes into the baseball's flabby cheeks. "I'm not afraid of you!" the wombat yelled. "I saw you get stuck in the washing machine once. Round and round you went. Who's afraid of something that can't defeat a rinse cycle?

Often, for me, the best ideas come out of extreme situations in unknown terrain, whether in cycling or in business. Pushing beyond what I think I can do creates an opening for new ideas.

In our family, we live by the Hard Thing Rule. It has three parts. The first is that everyone—including Mom and Dad—has to do a hard thing. A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. I’ve told my kids that psychological research is my hard thing, but I also practice yoga. Dad tries to get better and better at being a real estate developer; he does the same with running. My oldest daughter, Amanda, has chosen playing the piano as her hard thing. She did ballet for years, but later quit. So did Lucy. This brings me to the second part of the Hard Thing Rule: You can quit. But you can’t quit until the season is over, the tuition payment is up, or some other “natural” stopping point has arrived. You must, at least for the interval to which you’ve committed yourself, finish whatever you begin. In other words, you can’t quit on a day when your teacher yells at you, or you lose a race, or you have to miss a sleepover because of a recital the next morning. You can’t quit on a bad day. And, finally, the Hard Thing Rule states that you get to pick your hard thing. Nobody picks it for you because, after all, it would make no sense to do a hard thing you’re not even vaguely interested in. Even the decision to try ballet came after a discussion of various other classes my daughters could have chosen instead. Lucy, in fact, cycled through a half-dozen hard things. She started each with enthusiasm but eventually discovered that she didn’t want to keep going with ballet, gymnastics, track, handicrafts, or piano. In the end, she landed on viola. She’s been at it for three years, during which time her interest has waxed rather than waned. Last year, she joined the school and all-city orchestras, and when I asked her recently if she wanted to switch her hard thing to something else, she looked at me like I was crazy. Next year, Amanda will be in high school. Her sister will follow the year after. At that point, the Hard Thing Rule will change. A fourth requirement will be added: each girl must commit to at least one activity, either something new or the piano and viola they’ve already started, for at least two years. Tyrannical? I don’t believe it is. And if Lucy’s and Amanda’s recent comments on the topic aren’t disguised apple-polishing, neither do my daughters. They’d like to grow grittier as they get older, and, like any skill, they know grit takes practice. They know they’re fortunate to have the opportunity to do so. For parents who would like to encourage grit without obliterating their children’s capacity to choose their own path, I recommend the Hard Thing Rule.

You have heard that it has been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say to you, resist chaos with all of the passion of the Goddess: Create peace in the sacred places of the Earth; Revenge begats revenge; whosoever breaks the cycle of revenge is beloved of the Goddess. Find common ground with your adversary quickly, For whosoever shall create consensus is the beloved of the Goddess.

Politics becomes a cycle of vendetta and payback.37 Meanwhile, the habits of wealth and luxury undermine the important virtues necessary to sustain free institutions, including honor and service in arms—even the passion for freedom itself. Men become soft and effeminate, like the bakers and tinkers of Machiavelli’s failed militia.38 People prefer the comfortable life to the stern sacrifices of their forefathers. New legislation on Plato’s model won’t help, either: “The modification of the laws did not suffice to keep men good.” On the contrary, Machiavelli declared, “the new laws are ineffectual, because the [society’s] institutions, which remain constant, are corrupt.

People often point to the London Metropolitan Police, who were formed in the 1820s by Sir Robert Peel,” Vitale said when we met. “They are held up as this liberal ideal of a dispassionate, politically neutral police with the support of the citizenry. But this really misreads the history. Peel is sent to manage the British occupation of Ireland. He’s confronted with a dilemma. Historically, peasant uprisings, rural outrages were dealt with by either the local militia or the British military. In the wake of the Napoleonic Wars, in the need for soldiers in other parts of the British Empire, he is having more and more difficulty managing these disorders. In addition, when he does call out the militia, they often open fire on the crowd and kill lots of people, creating martyrs and inflaming further unrest. He said, ‘I need a force that can manage these outrages without inflaming passions further.’ He developed the Peace Preservation Force, which was the first attempt to create a hybrid military-civilian force that can try to win over the population by embedding itself in the local communities, taking on some crime control functions, but its primary purpose was always to manage the occupation. He then exports that model to London as the industrial working classes are flooding the city, dealing with poverty, cycles of boom and bust in the economy, and that becomes their primary mission. “The creation of the very first state police force in the United States was the Pennsylvania State Police in 1905,” Vitale went on. “For the same reasons. It was modeled similarly on U.S. occupation forces in the Philippines. There was a back-and-forth with personnel and ideas. What happened was local police were unable to manage the coal strikes and iron strikes. . . . They needed a force that was more adherent to the interests of capital. . . . Interestingly, for these small-town police forces in a coal mining town there was sometimes sympathy. They wouldn’t open fire on the strikers. So, the state police force was created to be the strong arm for the law. Again, the direct connection between colonialism and the domestic management of workers. . . . It’s a two-way exchange. As we’re developing ideas throughout our own colonial undertakings, bringing those ideas home, and then refining them and shipping them back to our partners around the world who are often despotic regimes with close economic relationships to the United States. There’s a very sad history here of the U.S. exporting basically models of policing that morph into death squads and horrible human rights abuses.” The almost exclusive reliance on militarized police to deal with profound inequality and social problems is turning poor neighborhoods in cities such as Chicago into failed states. The “broken windows” policy, adopted by many cities, argues that disorder produces crime. It criminalizes minor infractions, upending decades of research showing that social dislocation leads to crime. It creates an environment where the poor are constantly harassed, fined, and arrested for nonsubstantive activities.

When you're starving or wrapped up in a cycle of bingeing-and-purging, or sexually obsessed with a man, it is very hard to think about anything else, very hard to consider what else you might need or want or fear were you not so intently focuses on one crushing passion.

Great works of uncommon genius will call for us to return to their worlds again and again, enticing us to pour our passion and enthusiasm into them so that time may continue to cycle and progress, beloved characters may return to life, and the universes may continue to evolve and develop, without cease.

Turnings come in cycles of four. Each cycle spans the length of a long human life, roughly eighty to one hundred years, a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum. Together, the four turnings of the saeculum comprise history’s seasonal rhythm of growth, maturation, entropy, and destruction: The First Turning is a High, an upbeat era of strengthening institutions and weakening individualism, when a new civic order implants and the old values regime decays. The Second Turning is an Awakening, a passionate era of spiritual upheaval, when the civic order comes under attack from a new values regime. The Third Turning is an Unraveling, a downcast era of strengthening individualism and weakening institutions, when the old civic order decays and the new values regime implants. The Fourth Turning is a Crisis, a decisive era of secular upheaval, when the values regime propels the replacement of the old civic order with a new one.

I knew this moment would come eventually," Hecate said. "I have seen love—all forms and degrees—but there is something dear about this love—the kind you two share. It is desperate and fierce and passionate." She paused to laugh, and so did everyone behind them. "And perhaps it is because I know you, but it is my favorite kind of love to watch. It blossoms and blazes, challenges and teases, hurts and heals. There are no two souls better matched. Apart, you are light and dark, life and death, a beginning and an end. Together, you are a foundation that will weave an empire, unite a people, and weld worlds together. You are a cycle that never ends—eternal and infinite.