Disconnect Best Quotes

Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?

You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.

Dominance functions best in a culture of disconnections and fragmentation. Feminism recognizes connections. Imagine

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

Dissociation leaves us disconnected from our memories, our identities and our emotions. It breaks the trauma into digestible components, so that different aspects of the trauma get stored in different compartments in our brain. What happens as a result is that the information from the trauma becomes disorganized and we are not able to integrate these pieces into a coherent narrative and process trauma fully until, hopefully, with the help of a validating, trauma-informed counselor who guides us to the appropriate therapies best suited to our needs, we confront the trauma and triggers in a safe place.

Life is Beautiful? Beyond all the vicissitudes that are presented to us on this short path within this wild planet, we can say that life is beautiful. No one can ever deny that experiencing the whirlwind of emotions inside this body is a marvel, we grow with these life experiences, we strengthen ourselves and stimulate our feelings every day, in this race where the goal is imminent death sometimes we are winners and many other times we lose and the darkness surprises us and our heart is disconnected from this reality halfway and connects us to the server of the matrix once more, debugging and updating our database, erasing all those experiences within this caracara of flesh and blood, waiting to return to earth again. "Life is beautiful gentlemen" is cruel and has unfair behavior about people who looked like a bundle of light and left this platform for no apparent reason, but its nature is not similar to our consciousness and feelings, she has a script for each of us because it was programmed that way, the architects of the game of life they know perfectly well that you must experiment with all the feelings, all the emotions and evolve to go to the next levels. You can't take a quantum leap and get through the game on your own. inventing a heaven and a hell in order to transcend, that comes from our fears of our imagination not knowing what life has in store for us after life is a dilemma "rather said" the best kept secret of those who control us day by day. We are born, we grow up, we are indoctrinated in the classrooms and in the jobs, we pay our taxes, we reproduce, we enjoy the material goods that it offers us the system the marketing of disinformation, Then we get old, get sick and die. I don't like this story! It looks like a parody of Noam Chomsky, Let's go back to the beautiful description of beautiful life, it sounds better! Let's find meaning in all the nonsense that life offers us, 'Cause one way or another we're doomed to imagine that everything will be fine until the end of matter. It is almost always like that. Sometimes life becomes a real nightmare. A heartbreaking horror that we find impossible to overcome. As we grow up, we learn to know the dark side of life. The terrors that lurk in the shadows, the dangers lurking around every corner. We realize that reality is much harsher and ruthless than we ever imagined. And in those moments, when life becomes a real hell, we can do nothing but cling to our own existence, summon all our might and fight with all our might so as not to be dragged into the abyss. But sometimes, even fighting with all our might is not enough. Sometimes fate is cruel and takes away everything we care about, leaving us with nothing but pain and hopelessness. And in that moment, when all seems lost, we realize the terrible truth: life is a death trap, a macabre game in which we are doomed to lose. And so, as we sink deeper and deeper into the abyss, while the shadows envelop us and terror paralyzes us, we remember the words that once seemed to us so hopeful: life is beautiful. A cruel and heartless lie, that leads us directly to the tragic end that death always awaits us.

What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks. In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. "What's new?" is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question "What is best?," a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and "best" was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

Here’s how I see your weight—it is your smoke detector. And we’re all burning up the best part of our lives.” I’d never thought of it that way before, but it was a true aha moment. My weight was an indicator warning, a flashing light blaring my disconnection from the center of myself.

The solution which I am urging is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is LIfe in all its manifestations. Instead of this single unity, we offer children--Algebra, from which nothing follows; Geometry, from which nothing follows; Science, from which nothing follows; History, from which nothing follows; a Couple of Languages, never mastered; and lastly, most dreary of all, Literature, represented by plays of Shakespeare, with philological notes and short analyses of plot and character to be in substance committed to memory. Can such a list be said to represent Life, as it is known in the midst of living it? The best that can be said of it is, that it is a rapid table of contents which a deity might run over in his mind while he was thinking of creating a world, and has not yet determined how to put it together

We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

Research shows that we need to take a break and decompress so we can be at our best at work—and at home. Maybe we should ask if the life we’re working so hard to create is fun to live? When’s the last time you disconnected and took a vacation?

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise? If you put ten people in a room and they have to choose an ice cream flavor, they’re gonna arrive at vanilla. There is always constant pressure to conform. But originality only happens on the edges of reality. And working on that line is always dangerous because it’s only a short step to disconnected insanity. So resist temptations and advice to play to the middle. The best work always comes from pushing the edge.

At best, we base our thinking on disconnected facts or snippets of scientific knowledge uninformed by a broader evolutionary perspective.

What is weak, emphasize as strong. Not sure how to pronounce a word? Then say it loudly with confidence. If technology is outdated, the company board of directors will spend fortunes advertising that their products are the newest and best. To finance the lies, the board will fire a third of the employees, making stock prices go up. Then, before customers disconnect and go to competitors, the company will have made enough money on its lies to buy a startup company with new technology. But, of course, the new technology should not be a backdoor for thieves.

Bannon described Trump as a simple machine. The On switch was full of flattery, the Off switch full of calumny. The flattery was dripping, slavish, cast in ultimate superlatives, and entirely disconnected from reality: so-and-so was the best, the most incredible, the ne plus ultra, the eternal. The calumny was angry, bitter, resentful, ever a casting out and closing of the iron door.

We learn in school the importance of a general education, but then later in life, many of us seem to disconnect from the idea of learning and just settle for what knowledge we’ve already attained. I believe many of us cease yearning for new information because we may have felt forced to learn things we found to be useless later in life, and as a result experience a level of disenchantment.

there are studies showing that one oxytocin receptor gene variant is associated with extreme aggression in kids, as well as a callous, unemotional style that foreshadows adult psychopathy.54 Moreover, another variant is associated with social disconnection in kids and unstable adult relationships. But unfortunately these findings are uninterpretable because no one knows if these variants produce more, less, or the usual amount of oxytocin signaling.

I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between 'good' and 'bad' as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can't exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.

I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.

When it comes to green energy investigations, I conclude that the internal opposition I face has its origins in the personal beliefs of those who decide which stories go on the air and which are kept off. The purpose of the stories I propose isn’t to examine the general merits or shortfalls of the technology, ideology, or movement. They’re financial stories delving into possible waste, abuse, and questionable spending of tax dollars. What I didn’t anticipate is that some colleagues and managers, unable to disconnect their personal viewpoints from their duty as journalists, would view this line of reporting as damaging to a cause about which they hold deep-rooted beliefs. Fearful that the stories would discourage rather than promote green energy, they want to prevent the public from seeing them at all. It’s a paternalistic attitude that results in de facto censorship. Simply put: they decide that it’s best for you to not hear a story at all rather than run the risk that you might see it and form the “wrong” opinion. (By that, I mean an opinion that differs from theirs.)

Blind compassion is rooted in the belief that we are all doing the best that we can. When we are driven by blind compassion, we cut everyone far too much slack, making excuses for others’ behavior and making nice in situations that require a forceful “no,” an unmistakable voicing of displeasure, or a firm setting and maintaining of boundaries. These things can, and often should, be done out of love, but blind compassion keeps love too meek, sentenced to wearing a kind face. This is not the kindness of the Dalai Lama, which is rooted in courage, but rather a kindness rooted in fear, and not just the fear of confrontation, but also the fear of not coming across as a good or spiritual person. When we are engaged in blind compassion we rarely show any anger, for we not only believe that compassion has to be gentle, we are also frightened of upsetting anyone, especially to the point of their confronting us.

The best protection is to snip the connecting cord they’ve attached that ties your choice to guilt. First, snip the cord inside yourself. Then thank them for their support, as if support was what they had to offer. This disconnects their access and frees you to move on without any chains of obligation to bind you.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; in its precepts 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt'. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life: in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character, by disconnecting each man's feelings of duty from the interests of his fellow-creatures [...]. It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience;

I had an uncomfortable feeling I sometimes get in conversation with another person, as if the fundamental part of myself had evaporated-not in the sense of being gone, but as if it has undergone a phase transition and is hovering over my actual body as a vapor. That's the best I can describe it, as if my consciousness and my physical person are suddenly separated.

In this Chautauqua I would like not to cut any new channels of consciousness but simply dig deeper into old ones that have become silted in with the debris of thoughts grown stale and platitudes too often repeated. “What’s new?” is an interesting and broadening eternal question, but one which, if pursued exclusively, results only in an endless parade of trivia and fashion, the silt of tomorrow. I would like, instead, to be concerned with the question “What is best?,” a question which cuts deeply rather than broadly, a question whose answers tend to move the silt downstream. There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and “best” was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now. Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum. Some channel deepening seems called for.

What if—is more complicated than that? What if maybe opposite is true as well? Because, if bad can sometimes come from good actions—? where does it ever say, anywhere, that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes—the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be? Or, spin it another way, sometimes you can do everything wrong and it still turns out to be right?” “I’m not sure I see your point.” “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?

To these statements, Socrates, no one can offer a reply; but when you talk in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers: They fancy that they are led astray a little at each step in the argument, owing to their own want of skill in asking and answering questions; these littles accumulate, and at the end of the discussion they are found to have sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former notions appear to be turned upside down. And as unskilful players of draughts are at last shut up by their more skilful adversaries and have no piece to move, so they too find themselves shut up at last; for they have nothing to say in this new game of which words are the counters; and yet all the time they are in the right. The observation is suggested to me by what is now occurring. For any one of us might say, that although in words he is not able to meet you at each step of the argument, he sees as a fact that the votaries of philosophy, when they carry on the study, not only in youth as a part of education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years, most of them become strange monsters, not to say utter rogues, and that those who may be considered the best of them are made useless to the world by the very study which you extol.

Well I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between 'good' and 'bad' as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can't exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you-wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking 'what if', 'what if'. 'Life is cruel.' 'I wish I had died instead of.

This might sound sadistic but it’s true; people want to see their sadness reflected back at them because it makes them feel connected to something and connection is the best salve for sadness. The irony is we’re usually at our most disconnected when we’re grieving, either because we’ve lost the person we felt closest to or because we’ve withdrawn from others in order to protect ourselves from future pain, or to protect them from our “brokenness”. Sometimes, we even disconnect from ourselves, our bodies becoming battlegrounds as we wage silent wars upon ourselves.

Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set?

The pain of heartache often comes in unpredictable episodes of intense pain that come and go. These episodes are called grief “spasms”—you feel overwhelmed by your sense of sorrow. You may hurt physically and feel like you have the flu. Consumed by your own pain and situation,you feel disconnected to everyone else and life takes on a surreal, hazy quality. Stumbling through each day, you feel taxed by the most mundane tasks. All you can think about is how much you hurt. The intensity of your feelings may frighten you, but this is normal. You’re not losing control; you’re not going crazy. You are grieving.

It’s a gorgeous oddity of our existence – our loneliness is not caused by being on our own. Indeed, loneliness is best cured with aloneness, which is to say, a meaningful connection to ourselves. Moral loneliness is when the supply cord to connection, caring and doing the right thing by each other and the planet has been severed. We can’t tap into the point of life, to what matters. When you don’t know your true north, the disorientation is terrifying. You are suspended in a vague and directionless vastness. The Greeks argued that this kind of moral loneliness led to acedia – a state of spiritual apathy or listless sloth. The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas described it as “the sorrow of the world”, this moral “asleepness.” As I ventured into the early stages of this journey, I quickly realized it was at the root of our disconnect from this one wild and precious life we’d been granted. And that we’d be revisiting it many times over. It’s an evolutionary response to shut down and go numb like this. When we can’t fight or flee from a horrible threat, we lie down and play dead – we freeze. Of course, freezing or numbing out can work as a survival trick for a while, but if we remain asleep, particularly as a society, we face our collective demise.

Then the events leading up to her collapse came back to her in a flash. Her hands flew automatically to her belly and she was only partially reassured to feel the tight ball there. Was her baby okay? Was she herself okay? She blinked harder to bring the room more into focus. There was light shining through a crack in the bathroom door. A glance at the blinds told her that it was dark outside. Then her gaze fell on the chair beside her bed and she found Ryan staring at her, his gaze intense. She flinched away from the raw emotion shining in his blue eyes. “Hey,” he said quietly. “How are you feeling?” “Numb,” she answered before she could think better of it. “Kind of blank. My head doesn’t hurt anymore. Are my feet still swollen?” He carefully picked up the sheet and pushed it over her feet. “Maybe a little. Not as bad as they were. They’ve been giving you meds and they’re monitoring the baby.” “How is she?” Kelly asked, a knot of fear in her throat. “For now, she’s doing fine. Your blood pressure stabilized, but they might have to do a C-section if it goes back up or if the baby starts showing signs of distress.” Kelly closed her eyes and then suddenly Ryan was close to her, holding her, his lips pressed against her temple. “Don’t worry, love,” he murmured. “You’re supposed to stay calm. You’re getting the best possible care. I’ve made sure of it. They’re monitoring you round-the-clock. And the doctor said the baby has an excellent prognosis at thirty-four weeks’ gestation.” She sagged against the pillow and closed her eyes. Relief pulsed through her but she was so tired she couldn’t muster the energy to do anything more than lie there thanking God that her baby was okay. “I’m going to take care of you, Kell,” Ryan said softly against her temple. “You and our baby. Nothing will ever hurt you again. I swear it.” Tears burned her eyelids. She was emotionally and physically exhausted and didn’t have the strength to argue. Something inside her was broken and she had no idea how to fix it. She felt so…disconnected.

I think the soul anguish we get when we are not in agreement with our twin is caused by any relative disconnection between the two minds. It's a lack of harmony. That is why it is best to back off and not do anything. Allow space between the twins so the differences don't cause anguish to the two. It's like a nut and bolt that don't quite fit together, forcing them together only causes damage. Internal re-tooling may be necessary, whether it happens during the current earthly phase or at some time after. Both twins need to be of the same mind in order for full fruition to occur. If they are not, there will be friction rather than fruition, to whatever extent there is a lack of harmony between the twins.

Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?

I’m not sure I see your point.” “Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.” “Sorry but I’m not really appreciating your point here.” “You don’t need a point. The point is maybe that the point is too big to see or work round to on our own. Because—” up went the batwing eyebrow—“well, if you didn’t take picture from museum, and Sascha didn’t steal it back, and I didn’t think of claiming reward—well, wouldn’t all those dozens of other paintings remain missing too? Forever maybe? Wrapped in brown paper? Still shut in that apartment? No one to look at them? Lonely and lost to the world? Maybe the one had to be lost for the others to be found?” “I think this goes more to the idea of ‘relentless irony’ than ‘divine providence.’ ” “Yes—but why give it a name? Can’t they both be the same thing?

Well—I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can’t exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you—wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking ‘what if,’ ‘what if.’ ‘Life is cruel.’ ‘I wish I had died instead of.’ Well—think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no—hang on—this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?” “Get where?” “Understand, by saying ‘God,’ I am merely using ‘God’ as reference to long-term pattern we can’t decipher. Huge, slow-moving weather system rolling in on us from afar, blowing us randomly like—” eloquently, he batted at the air as if at a blown leaf. “But—maybe not so random and impersonal as all that, if you get me.

Quite simple,” said the chairman, “you haven’t really come into contact with our authorities. All those contacts are merely apparent, but in your case, because of your ignorance of the situation here, you think they’re real. As for the telephone: look, in my own house, though I certainly deal often with the authorities, there’s no telephone. At inns and in places like that it may serve a useful purpose, along the lines, say, of an automated phonograph, but that’s all. Have you ever telephoned here, you have? Well then, perhaps you can understand me. At the Castle the telephone seems to work extremely well; I’ve been told the telephones up there are in constant use, which of course greatly speeds up the work. Here on our local telephones we hear that constant telephoning as a murmuring and singing, you must have heard it too. Well, this murmuring and singing is the only true and reliable thing that the local telephones convey to us, everything else is deceptive. There is no separate telephone connection to the Castle and no switchboard to forward our calls; when anyone here calls the Castle, all the telephones in the lowest-level departments ring, or all would ring if the ringing mechanism on nearly all of them were not, and I know this for certain, disconnected. Now and then, though, an overtired official needs some diversion—especially late in the evening or at night—and turns on the ringing mechanism, then we get an answer, though an answer that’s no more than a joke. That’s certainly quite understandable. For who can claim to have the right, simply because of some petty personal concerns, to ring during the most important work, conducted, as always, at a furious pace? Nor can I understand how even a stranger can believe that if he calls Sordini, for instance, it really is Sordini who answers. Quite the contrary, it’s probably a lowly filing clerk from an entirely different department. But it can happen, if only at the most auspicious moment, that someone telephones the lowly filing clerk and Sordini himself answers. Then of course it's best to run from the telephone before hearing a sound.

When I hung up the phone that night I had a wet face and a broken heart. The lack of compassion I witnessed every day had finally exhausted me. I looked around my crowded office, at the stacks of records and papers, each pile filled with tragic stories, and I suddenly didn’t want to be surrounded by all this anguish and misery. As I sat there, I thought myself a fool for having tried to fix situations that were so fatally broken. It’s time to stop. I can’t do this anymore. For the first time I realized my life was just full of brokenness. I worked in a broken system of justice. My clients were broken by mental illness, poverty, and racism. They were torn apart by disease, drugs and alcohol, pride, fear, and anger. I thought of Joe Sullivan and of Trina, Antonio, Ian, and dozens of other broken children we worked with, struggling to survive in prison. I thought of people broken by war, like Herbert Richardson; people broken by poverty, like Marsha Colbey; people broken by disability, like Avery Jenkins. In their broken state, they were judged and condemned by people whose commitment to fairness had been broken by cynicism, hopelessness, and prejudice. I looked at my computer and at the calendar on the wall. I looked again around my office at the stacks of files. I saw the list of our staff, which had grown to nearly forty people. And before I knew it, I was talking to myself aloud: “I can just leave. Why am I doing this?” It took me a while to sort it out, but I realized something sitting there while Jimmy Dill was being killed at Holman prison. After working for more than twenty-five years, I understood that I don’t do what I do because it’s required or necessary or important. I don’t do it because I have no choice. I do what I do because I’m broken, too. My years of struggling against inequality, abusive power, poverty, oppression, and injustice had finally revealed something to me about myself. Being close to suffering, death, executions, and cruel punishments didn’t just illuminate the brokenness of others; in a moment of anguish and heartbreak, it also exposed my own brokenness. You can’t effectively fight abusive power, poverty, inequality, illness, oppression, or injustice and not be broken by it. We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt––and have hurt others––are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.

A Pilonidal Cyst Removal is all the time organized close to the tailbone at the most paramount motivation behind the disconnected of the buttocks.The pimple can be depleted through a little section point or cleared surgically.

it can be beneficial to disconnect from certain sources of information and streams of content so that you can cultivate a more curated flow of inspiration.

Once a teenage girl was talking on her phone for nearly half an hour and then disconnected the call. Father: Wow that was quite quick. You rarely keep the phone so early. Everything okay? Girl: Yes dad. That was a just a wrong number.

No man ever steps in the same river twice. ~ Heraclitus We live in a word of ever-present change: the dispossessed buy Disney time shares the disenfranchised open Subways the disabled get the best parking spaces at the mall the disbelievers meet Jesus at a hockey game the disconcerted get the best seats to Rolling Stones concerts the disconnected have the most Facebook friends the discouraged win Purple Hearts in Fallujah the discredited have Amex Platinum Cards the discrete are exposed by the Washington Post the disgraced cash in big on their notoriety the disheveled design successful urban clothing lines the dishonest run our banks and brokerage houses the disreputable hold the highest offices. Shit, today, even the disgruntled have turn gruntled. So, fuck you Heraclitus of Ephesus! I'm tossing your bipolar Greek ass back in the river you came from.

Like trees, we are in an inextricable relationship with the earth for the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. As American naturalist John Burroughs wrote, “We are rooted to the air through our lungs and to the soil through our stomachs. We are walking trees and floating plants.” When we forget this, we become disconnected and ungrounded. We need to reestablish the connection by taking in energy from Earth and the cosmos and releasing energy that’s been stuck inside our bodies. Energy does best when it is free to flow.

Isolation and the potential loss of loving connection is coded by the human brain into a primal panic response. This need for safe emotional connection to a few loved ones is wired in by millions of years of evolution. Distressed partners may use different words but they are always asking the same basic questions, “Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Will you come when I need you, when I call?” Love is the best survival mechanism there is, and to feel suddenly emotionally cut off from a partner, disconnected, is terrifying. We have to reconnect, to speak our needs in a way that moves our partner to respond. This longing for emotional connection with those nearest to us is the emotional priority, overshadowing even the drive for food or sex. The drama of love is all about this hunger for safe emotional connection, a survival imperative we experience from the cradle to the grave. Loving connection is the only safety nature ever offers us.

Doing what's best for you is sometimes hard, because it comes with an unbearable unusual taste, but if you discipline yourself to make it a habit, it would become the very thing you crave for.

Both Sabbath and worship have largely become individualized—a difficult reality we must be sensitive to when thinking through the Sabbath. Without being sentimental, I do wonder whether something critical is lost when we disconnect our corporate worship from our Sabbath. I even wonder whether something is lost when we stop donning our Sunday best.

The best thing to do when you receive an aggressive phone call is to hang up.

A toddler learns discipline best when he experiences natural consequences for his behavior, rather than a disconnected punishment like time-out. If a child throws food, his mealtime is over. If a child refuses to get dressed, we won’t be able to go to the park today. These parental responses appeal to a child’s sense of fairness.

For survivors of biological mother-perpetrated abuse, the relationship with the mother is best characterized by the most severe physical, psychological, and spiritual disconnection. These women feel deceived, deserted, betrayed, confused, offended, and intruded upon to the very core of their existence.

Get a plan, because plans fix problems Mentally strong people are planners. They think ahead. They prepare. They do what’s best for the long-term outcome. You might think that this disconnects them from the moment, but the opposite is true. Worrying disconnects you from the moment. Overthinking disconnects you from the moment. When you are consistently sidelined from your own anxiety, it’s because you don’t have a plan regarding the thing that’s making you scared.

One team made a collective goal of each person having one night off per week. The “Predictable Time Off” (PTO) experiment featured a team commitment to rotate evenings where one person was totally disconnected from work and wireless devices.

If a networked product can begin to win over a series of networks faster than its competition, then it develops an accumulating advantage. These advantages, naturally, manifest as increasing network effects across customer acquisition, engagement, and monetization. Smaller networks might unravel and lose their users, who might switch over. Naturally, it becomes important for every player to figure out how to compete in this type of high-stakes environment. But how does the competitive playbook work in a world with network effects? First, I’ll tell you what it’s not: it’s certainly not a contest to see who can ship more features. In fact, sometimes the products seem roughly the same—just think about food-delivery or messaging apps—and if not, they often become undifferentiated since the features are relatively easy to copy. Instead, it’s often the dynamics of the underlying network that make all the difference. Although the apps for DoorDash and Uber Eats look similar, the former’s focus on high-value, low-competition areas like suburbs and college towns made all the difference—today, DoorDash’s market share is 2x that of Uber Eats. Facebook built highly dense and engaged networks starting with college campuses versus Google+’s scattered launch that built weak, disconnected networks. Rarely in network-effects-driven categories does a product win based on features—instead, it’s a combination of harnessing network effects and building a product experience that reinforces those advantages. It’s also not about whose network is bigger, a counterpoint to jargon like “first mover advantage.” In reality, you see examples of startups disrupting the big guys all the time. There’s been a slew of players who have “unbundled” parts of Craigslist, cherry-picking the best subcategories and making them apps unto themselves. Airbnb, Zillow, Thumbtack, Indeed, and many others fall into this category. Facebook won in a world where MySpace was already huge. And more recently, collaboration tools like Notion and Zoom are succeeding in a world where Google Suite, WebEx, and Skype already have significant traction. Instead, the quality of the networks matters a lot—which makes it important for new entrants to figure out which networks to cherry-pick to get started, which I’ll discuss in its own chapter.

by-products of shame—fear, blame and disconnection—and move toward the courage, compassion and connection we need to live our best, authentic lives.

Play in common society and succeed in the game it sells you but disconnect from it often, so you’re never really owned by it. Because the sport the majority is playing is only an illusion—sort of a waking dream—that too many good people are donating the best mornings of their finest days to as they put money over meaning, profits over people, popularity over integrity, being busy over family and achievement over loving the basic miracles of the now.

Steven Cole says that the best cure for loneliness or disconnection is to combine a sense of mission and purpose in your life with community engagement. Spending time in service marries connection with deep fulfillment, and the result is a boost in health. Prosocial behavior, including volunteering, has also been shown to boost our immune system, combat the physical stress caused by loneliness, and extend our longevity. Sadly, says Cole, these days too many of us have actually dialed back our engagement with others to pursue individual health-enhancing goals, like training for a triathlon, taking yoga classes, or trying to find our “one true love.” Those things are all great, but the biggest benefit for all comes when, as Cole describes it, your health is a “means to an end, which is, essentially, to make some meaningful stuff happen, not just for you but for others.” What

You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life.

We all can become magicians of sorts. But to experience this higher reality I’m speaking of—to really find it—you’ll need to leave the world a lot. Play in common society and succeed in the game it sells you but disconnect from it often, so you’re never really owned by it. Because the sport the majority is playing is only an illusion—sort of a waking dream—that too many good people are donating the best mornings of their finest days to as they put money over meaning, profits over people, popularity over integrity, being busy over family and achievement over loving the basic miracles of the now.

When we feel disconnected and undernourished, we can often fall into the trap of distancing ourselves further by hating on the nearest person living “lite” in one form or another (pretending, avoiding, sending wink emoticons). I do it myself. I know a lot of us do as we grapple with the fragmentation going on around us. But I now use my judgy rage as a trigger to get me to come in closer. It goes like this: I feel the hot rage and judgment. Then I stop and I look at the people. I might see their pain, their lostness straight away. Sometimes I imagine them as a little child of seven so I can best see their vulnerability. My anger subsides and I feel compassion in its place. I try to look into their eyes if they allow me. I make sure I’m smiling when I do. I do this at train stations, when I’m bustling down streets; I do it when I’m confronted by others who don’t share my political values or scientific views, a situation that is increasingly causing division among us all. The technique never fails to connect me into our shared humanity. I soften. They soften. Next, and for extra sturdy effect, I say to myself, “I get you.

Disconnecting from some people is as important as connecting with some people.

The modern urban-industrial society is based on a series of radical disconnections between body and soul, husband and wife, marriage and community, community and the earth. At each of these points of disconnection the collaboration of corporation, government, and expert sets up a profit-making enterprise that results in the further dismemberment and impoverishment of the Creation. Together, these disconnections add up to a condition of critical ill health, which we suffer in common -- not just with each other, but with all other creatures. Our economy is based upon this disease. Its aim is to separate us as far as possible from the sources of life (material, social, and spiritual), to put these sources under the control of corporations and specialized professionals, and to see them to us at the highest profit. It fragments the Creation and sets the fragments into conflict with one another. For the relief of the suffering that comes of this fragmentation and conflict, our economy proposes, not health, but vast "cures" that further centralize power and increase profits... Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health. And what our society does its best to disguise from us is how ordinary, how commonly attainable, health is. We lose our health -- and create profitable diseases and dependencies -- by failing to see the direction connections between living and eating, eating and working, working and loving. In gardening, for instance, one works with the body to feed the body. The work, if it is knowledgeable, makes for excellent food. And it makes one hungry. The work thus makes eating both nourishing and joyful, not consumptive, and keeps the eater from getting fat and weak. This is health, wholeness, a source of delight. And such a solution, unlike the typical industrial solution, does not cause new problems.

Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of disappointing anyone. They think that if you are kind, you’ll never disappoint anyone. They think that if you try hard enough, if you manage your time well enough, if you’re selfless enough, prayerful enough, godly enough, you’ll never disappoint anyone. I fear these people are headed for a rude awakening. I know this, because I was one of those people. For so many years, I was deeply invested in people knowing that I was a very competent, capable, responsible person. I needed them to know that about me, because if that was true about me, I believed, I would be safe and happy. If I was responsible and hardworking, I would be safe and happy. Fast forward to a deeply exhausted and resentful woman, disconnected from her best friends, trying so darned hard to keep being responsible, but all at once, unable. Something snapped, and my anger outweighed my precious competence. Something fundamental had to change. This is what I know for sure: along the way you will disappoint someone. You will not meet someone’s needs or expectations. You will not be able to fulfill their request. You will leave something undone or poorly done. Possibly, this person will be angry with you, or sad. You’ve left them holding the bag. Or maybe instead of sadness or anger, they’ll belittle you or push all your shame buttons—maybe they’ll say things like, “I guess you’re just not a hard worker.” Or, “I guess you’re just a low-capacity person.” Or, “I thought I could count on you.” These are basically sharp blades straight into the hearts of people like me, people who depend very heavily on meeting people’s expectations. But here’s the good news: you get to decide who you’re going to disappoint, who you’re going to say no to. And it gets easier over time, the disappointing. What you need along the way: a sense of God’s deep, unconditional love, and a strong sense of your own purpose. Without those two, you’ll need from people what is only God’s to give, and you’ll give up on your larger purpose in order to fulfill smaller purposes or other people’s purposes. To be sure, finding your purpose can take a long time to figure out, and along the way it is tempting to opt instead for the immediate gratification, the immediate fix, of someone’s approval. But the sweet rush of approval, the pat on the head, can often derail us from real love, and real purpose.

A repetitive strain injury of the mind. How to exist in the 21st century and not have a panic attack Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Is that really in your best interests? Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui. Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain. Let it happen. If you feel panic rising the instinctive reaction is to panic some more. To panic about the panic. To metapanic. The trick is to try to feel panic without panicking about it. This is nearly—but not quite—impossible. I had panic disorder—a condition defined not by the occasional panic attack but by frequent panic attacks and the continuous hellish fear of the next one. By the time I’d had hundreds of panic attacks I began to tell myself I wanted it. I didn’t, obviously. But I used to work hard at trying to invite the panic—as a test, to see how I could cope. The more I invited it, the less it wanted to stay around. Accept feelings. And accept that they are just that: feelings. Don’t grab life by the throat. “Life should be touched, not strangled,” said the writer Ray Bradbury. It is okay to release fear. The fear tries to tell you it is necessary, and that it is protecting you. Try to accept it as a feeling, rather than valid information. Bradbury also said: “Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get.” Be aware of where you are. Are your surroundings overstimulating? Is there somewhere you can go that is calmer? Is there some nature you can look at? Look up. In city centers, the

How to exist in the 21st century and not have a panic attack Keep an eye on yourself. Be your own friend. Be your own parent. Be kind to yourself. Check on what you are doing. Do you need to watch the last episode of the series when it is after midnight? Do you need that third or fourth glass of wine? Is that really in your best interests? Declutter your mind. Panic is the product of overload. In an overloaded world we need to have a filter. We need to simplify things. We need to disconnect sometimes. We need to stop staring at our phones. To have moments of not thinking about work. A kind of mental feng shui. Listen to calm noise. Things that aren’t as stimulating as music. Waves, your own breath, a breeze through the leaves, the purr of a cat, and best of all: rain.

But what Jason loved most about Sherlock was the fact that he could unplug him at will. the best of both worlds. a 'disconnectable' friend.

This might sound sadistic but it’s true; people want to see their sadness reflected back at them because it makes them feel connected to something and connection is the best salve for sadness. The irony is we’re usually at our most disconnected when we’re grieving, either because we’ve lost the person we felt closest to or because we’ve withdrawn from others in order to protect ourselves from future pain, or to protect them from our “brokenness.” Sometimes, we even disconnect from ourselves, our bodies becoming battlegrounds

In their book, Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation, professors David L. Eng and Shinhee Han explore the topic of racial melancholia, which they describe as a mourning without end for Asian Americans, a mourning for all of the parts of ourselves that cannot name the unknowable losses we experience as children of immigrants, as adoptees, as members of diasporas. The authors explore the cost of assimilation to and mimicry of white culture as a search for belonging, and the mourning that follows when we may realize that despite our best efforts, we are still never fully accepted. The heartbreaking part of this story is that in this mimicry of whiteness, we also sacrifice much of our own identity and histories in the process. What results is a dissociation and disconnection of the self in order to survive racism and xenophobia. In many immigrant households, parents chose not to speak in their native languages at home so as to ensure that their children learned fluent English

No matter where we live in America, Thorne concludes, :the distance between cornfield and cornbread is growing fast," and we are powerless to prevent his disconnection. It is that same sense of urgency, of impending loss, that breathed life into the Southern Foodways Alliance ‚ and that now drives such programmatic efforts as the annual symposium, field trips to various Southern locales, budding oral history projects, and collections of exemplary food-writing such as the one you are holding in your hands.

Technology has given us independence—freedom from hassles and wires and other people’s choices—and more efficient lives, but it has largely broken its promise to give us freedom with one another to build big things together. Summing up 1989 until now, one could say we are, at our worst, “bowling alone, together.” Never have we been so connectable and never have we felt so disconnected

Alaska Airlines Reservations Phone Number +1-855-653-0624 Alaska Airlines Reservations Phone Number might it be said that you will choose your favored seats on Alaska Airlines? Would you like to have a lot of familiarity with the seat choice on Alaska Airlines, similar to situate choice during booking, in the wake of booking, and its approach? On the off chance that indeed, look at the sub-themes referenced underneath: Gold country Airlines online seat determination technique during the booking Might it be said that you are hoping to make an Alaska Airlines booking and need to have your beloved seat on your Alaska Airlines flight? In the event that indeed, here are the means that you really want to follow: To choose your seat while reserving a spot on Alaska Airlines, you want first to open its enrolled site on your individual gadget. From that point forward, you need to enter your login accreditations and afterward effectively sign in to your record. Then, you really want to pick the best trip for your outing. When you begin filling in every one of the significant subtleties, you will view as the "Seat Selection" symbol. Here, you want to pick your beloved seat. Pick the seat, pay for the ticket alongside the seat and affirm your booking. Gold country Airlines disconnected seat determination technique during the booking

Jesus. Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, Phoenix, L.A., and Seattle, plus two small towns she'd never heard of in the Gulf Coast region. The unit was literally scattered across the map, manpower and resources spread thinner than she'd ever known them to be. And every team was involved in high-risk operations ranging from murder to possible terrorist threats-the latter being investigations the unit had only recently begun to be called into as consultants. As far as Riley could tell, she was the only agent operating without a team, partner, or any kind of backup. But then, she was also the only one who had set off on a very unofficial investigation of a few oddities-not murder or any other major crime. Then. Now the situation was definitely high-risk. And being on her own here now was both a very bad idea, and seemingly unavoidable. Unless she bailed. Returned to Quantico. Nobody would blame her for that, not under the circumstances. Hell, when-if-she told Bishop about this latest wrinkle, he'd undoubtedly recall her without even allowing her time to pack. Riley realized she was fingering the burn at the base of her skull. She forced herself to stop, swore under her breath, and disconnected from the SCU's database. She couldn't bail. Couldn't leave. She had to know. Had to figure out what was going on. "Let's pretend," she whispered. She could do that. It's what she did best, after all. Pretend. Pretend everything was normal. Pretend there was nothing wrong with her. Pretend she wasn't terrified.

As for trust, at best all you can trust is that they are good kids who will inevitably roam into bad tech terrain. But unlike grown-ups, whose fully matured brain should be able to tell right from wrong, a joke from bullying, and tasteful content from trash, and should be able to exercise impulse control and mature judgment in how we use tech, our children are not there yet. They are still children. Our

The fact that the stakes are higher is all the more reason to provide teenagers with as many opportunities as possible to make their own decisions and learn from the consequences. Just as it was critical for the toddler to fumble with her shoelaces before mastering the art of shoelace tying, so is it critical for the adolescent to fumble with difficult tasks and choices in order to master the art of making independent, healthy, moral decisions that can be called upon in the absence of parents’ directives. We all want our children to put their best foot forward. But in childhood and adolescence, sometimes the best foot is the one that is stumbled on, providing an opportunity for the child to learn how to regain balance, and right himself.

One thing alone was certain, and this became the leitmotif of this remarkable myth of the Brahmin's son Siddhartha, who sets off on a journey to try and discover the truth about his life: Place no credence in those who teach wisdom, for you can only attain wisdom through your own life and your own sacrifices. By contrast, if you follow the former path, all you will ever be is at best a good student, who in turn becomes a teacher who has nothing to impart about his own experience - except for knowledge that is of little value. That insight undoubtedly had more of Nietzsche's Zarathustra about it than Buddha. 'Don't follow me, follow yourself.' For it was not a question of renouncing the Self but precisely about finding it. This was a very Western line of thought. The only things that were to be left behind were the idols that feigned a truth they did not possess. This also included smashing false self-images. Individualism that had disconnected itself from the totality of thing was an aberration. The Enlightenment image of humans as masters of nature was a lie. Siddhartha finds himself faced by a series of pure graven images - all of which he must destroy in order to become himself.

In recent years, biological scientists have described the profound disconnect between the deep history of the human body and the reality of life in the modern world. This is often described as the “mismatch” hypothesis. All animals, including humans, are best suited to a certain range of environmental conditions. When there’s a match between an animal’s genetic heritage and its environment, that animal is likely to remain healthy. But if the organism is forced to live outside of its normal range, in an “alien” environment, it will suffer stress and ill-health.

Poker has taught me to disconnect failure from outcomes. Just because I lose doesn’t mean I failed, and just because I won doesn’t mean I succeeded—not when you define success and failure around making good decisions that will win in the long run.

From a strictly realistic perspective, should we bet on infinite life and endless consequences to our actions? Pascal would argue that our answer must be a resounding „Yes!“ We might as well assume that there will be a future continuity of our personal consciousness, however changed, however disembodied or re-embodied, however connected or disconnected we remain to the „self“ we experience in this life. If we make that bet on our own future lives, then we will prepare in whatever way we can to assure that we continue in a good way, in a better embodiment and environment. We will become truly responsible for our thoughts and our acts. Even though we may not remember the previous-life self who made those preparations, we certainly will want to enjoy the results. If our bet is misplaced, and our preparations have no effect because we actually do enter oblivion at death, we will simply not exist to regret having made them. But if we wrongly bet on noncontinuity and therefore do not prepare for the future and have to face it unprepared, then we may suffer seriously in our next existence, and we will very much regret our decision. Even if we don‘t remember making it, don‘t know why we are suffering, don‘t know how to fault ourselves for being so unconscious in our previous life, we will still suffer and regret. Pascal‘s wager is therefore a very safe bet – it has a clear-cut positive outcome. Whether our personal life is really terminal at death or in fact infinite in continuity, if we bet, like Pascal, on the existence of our life after death, in whatever form, we will be in the best possible position, however things turn out. (pp. 7-8, The Nature of Reality)