Drama Free Life Quotes

Free yourself from the complexities and drama of your life. Simplify. Look within. Within ourselves we all have the gifts and talents we need to fulfill the purpose we've been blessed with.

How would your life be different if…You stopped validating your victim mentality? Let today be the day…You shake off your self-defeating drama and embrace your innate ability to recover and achieve.

Not every person wants the prettiest, smartest, talented or spiritually uplifting person to build a life with. Sometimes we just want that special someone that makes sense, puts up with us, has patience, comes without drama, gives us focus and is willing to run with our half-baked ideas.

Drama doesn't just walk into your life. Either you create it, invite it or associate with it.

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look. Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.

Remember this, my darling—remember this. What you achieve on earth is only a small part of the deal. If there's a secret I could whisper, and that you could keep, it would be that it's all inside you already. Every single thing you need. Earth is just a stopover. A kind of game. Make it a star game. If I could give you a gift, it would be to teach you how to stay free inside that game, to find the glory inside yourself, beyond the roles and the drama, so you can dance the dance of the game of life with a little more rhythm, a little more abandon, a little more shaking-those-hips.

Only the never-ending work of mourning can help us from lapsing into the illusion that we have found the parent we once urgently needed—empathic and open, understanding and understandable, honest and available, helpful and loving, feeling, transparent, clear, without unintelligible contradictions. Such a parent was never ours, for a mother can react empathically only to the extent that she has become free of her own childhood; when she denies the vicissitudes of her early life, she wears invisible chains.

But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered. And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination-in many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all!

I know when my life is over my writings will live on, perhaps in a story or maybe a sweet love song. You see, I do not write for glory or to get anything for free. I just sit down and I write, because it makes so much sense to me.

But when I told you I loved you, I meant it. I didn't mean that I'd love you only if it was easy, or only if it was drama-free. I think we both know life isn't like that.

Life has no map; it's made of random events, always caused by something beyond your control.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.

Now, I can finally break free from their web.

Finding a man who tells the truth is like looking for a dinosaur

Faustus, who embraced evil and shunned righteousness, became the foremost symbol of the misuse of free will, that sublime gift from God with its inherent opportunity to choose virtue and reject iniquity. “What shall a man gain if he has the whole world and lose his soul,” (Matt. 16: v. 26) - but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life of fleeting pleasure with no true peace? This was the blackest and most captivating tragedy of all, few could have remained indifferent to the growing intrigue of this individual who apparently shook hands with the devil and freely chose to descend to the molten, sulphuric chasm of Hell for all eternity for so little in exchange. It is a drama that continues to fascinate today as powerfully as when Faustus first disseminated his infamous card in the Heidelberg locale to the scandal of his generation. In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.

Wow! I feel a sense of relief. I am finally free. I never felt this good about myself!

You are a coward. You don’t have power over me anymore. I am free from your lies. I am free from your watered-down poison venom—you can bite me, but it will not affect me anymore.

It is always as it was between Achilles and Homer: one person has the experience, the sensation, the other describes it. A real writer only gives words to the affects and experiences of others; he is an artist in divining a great deal from the little that he has felt. Artist are by no means people of great passion, but they frequently present themselves as such, unconsciously sensing that others give greater credence to the passions they portray if the artist's own life testifies to his experience in this area. We need only let ourselves go, not control ourselves, give free play to our wrath or our desire, and the whole world immediately cries: how passionate he is! But there really is something significant in a deeply gnawing passion that consumes and often swallows up an individual: whoever experiences this surely does not describe it in dramas, music, or novels. Artists are frequently unbridled individuals, insofar, that is, as they are not artists: but that is something different.

So many people dragged me into the pit of hell with them. What they failed to realize was that I refused to become settled and make it my home. I’ve walked out of the pit of hell. I can smile. I am happy because I am finally free.

You cannot worry about the thing you cannot change. You can only accept them, set them free, and live your life of purpose.

I am free because—I forgive you. I am more than alive because I forgive myself.

We arrive and depart this life alone. Every moment in-between is a unique opportunity to experience as much love and belonging as we can possibly muster. Instead we obsess over petty differences and turn our backs on those we are supposed to love.

I am not suggesting that everything bad that happens to us is sent directly by a knowing hand—cooked up specially for our personal development. Nor do I mean that by using the stuff of life as grist for the mill you will learn what you need to learn and move on into a problem-free world. And I also don’t recommend courting drama and disaster so that you can be broken open to the truth. A catastrophe is not a sign that God has singled you out for greatness. What I do mean is that you can use anything—everything—as a wake-up call; you can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain, you will be given the key to a more truthful—and therefore a more joyful—life.

I have learned to love myself. I have set myself free. I am like fire. I am rising and walking into my freedom. I am stronger without you. I am not perfect, but I do know that I am amazing. I have learned to love myself. I have set myself free. I am like fire. I am rising and walking into my freedom.

I am no longer letting questions haunt me. I want and deserve peace in my life. I guess I am the only one who let the questions haunting me, catch me—I finally broke free because it doesn’t serve me anymore. I am finding my way.

We cannot, simply by an act of will, free ourselves from repeating the patterns of our parents’ behavior—which we had to learn very early in life. We become free of them only when we can fully feel and acknowledge the suffering they inflicted on us. We can then become fully aware of these patterns and condemn them unequivocally.

She had spent years locked in a tower, unable to see anything of the world but the scarp of forest beyond her window, but stories had provided her escape. New books, old books, dramas and histories and fantastical adventures, stories of ordinary lives, stories of dragons and demons, murders and mysteries and myths from long ago. A hundred possible worlds, more true to her than her own, more compelling than a life of staring at the same walls and same trees, waiting for the day when the lock would click and she would finally be allowed to be free. A story could not hurt her.

The path to freedom is illuminated by the bridges you have burned, adorned by the ties you have cut, and cleared by the drama you have left behind. Let go. Be free.

Drama free workplace and ego free team mates are crucial for a healthier workplace

I am somebody. I used to think I was invisible because nobody noticed me, but I set fire to my fear. I am free. I am here, and if it’s going to be me against the world, then I am ready. After all the shit I’ve been through, I can handle anything that comes my way. I am not going to ever let anyone make me feel less than a human being—because I matter.

I have a fire under my feet. Ha! Try to put the flames out if you want. The blaze is too strong for anyone who cannot take the heat. My soul is renewed and I am loving the new me! Once upon a time, questions use to haunt me because I never had the answers, but I have a choice. Either I am going to let it kill me or I am going to break free and live the best life I deserve. I chose me. I love me.

when we were old enough, Mom felt like she had given us all the tools she could to have happy lives, and she wanted us to do just that. Live. Make our own mythology, not be swallowed up by hers. Live the kind of happy, drama-free, painful and joyful mortal life she couldn't, and at the end of it come home to be ushered into our next life by the two people who brought us here in the first place. I know you think mortality is evidence that they don't care, but giving us the the ability to grow and change and progress and then finish? That was the greatest gift two ageless, eternal, very very stuck gods could think to give the children they love more than anything.

Beyond her six-figure salary and designer wardrobe, Miranda's fierce intelligence and drama-free approach to living are the real things worth coverting. She speaks her mind, stands her ground, and refuses to apologize for her success - or the contents of her bedside drawer.

Our lives together have never for ten minutes been drama-free. Amanda and Melissa could have had-_-deserved to have far better parents. They deserved stability. We didn't have it to give. But we gave them what we had. When we had more, we did not withhold it. When we had less, they were not unscathed. You can't have a father and mother with the kinds of issues Keith and I had and not ride a relentless roller coaster. When we had on seat belts, it was good. It was fun. When we didn't, it was scary. It was sad.

You would free yourself from so much stress and drama if you just understood and embraced the truth that you are enough.

To gain more control of your life stop focusing on the drama of other people which may include unfollowing some people both on and offline. 

Thunderstorms were what death, and dramatic events, generally should be like, but usually were not; the idea that our life’s dramas rarely look as dramatic as they are. Our most cataclysmic moments are typically free of gravitas, of necessary thunder; a person dies, but instead of the sky darkening and lightning striking, the sun continues to shine and the birds to sing.

All my years of being upset and disappointed by my mother, and all the choices she had made, came down to one truth: She did the best she could with what she had. That truth has set me free.

Real life doesn't give anyone a 'get out of jail free' card. SHIT HAPPENS! No one is exempt. Some struggles don't give us an option for a second try. There are no 'do-overs'. We learn by living!

Why , instead of teaching her poetry and drama and needlework, had her governesses not taught the most important lesson anyone could learn - that life was really not going to be easy after one was free of the schoolroom?

If I really am your dove, you’d let me fly away. Set me free, Lev. You have a girl who looks like me who adores you, and I can’t afford this drama in my life. You’re my sun. Lovely as you are, I can only admire you from afar.

Is it possible, then, to free ourselves altogether from illusions? History demonstrates that they sneak in everywhere, that every life is full of them—perhaps because the truth often seems unbearable to us. And yet the truth is so essential that its loss exacts a heavy toll, in the form of grave illness. In order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. If

Long ago, when I was in my insecure twenties, I met a clever, independent, creative, and powerful woman in her mid-seventies, who offered me a superb piece of life wisdom. She said: “We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth—nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.” They aren’t. They weren’t. They never were. People are mostly just thinking about themselves. People don’t have time to worry about what you’re doing, or how well you’re doing it, because they’re all caught up in their own dramas. People’s attention may be drawn to you for a moment (if you succeed or fail spectacularly and publicly, for instance), but that attention will soon enough revert right back to where it’s always been—on themselves. While it may seem lonely and horrible at first to imagine that you aren’t anyone else’s first order of business, there is also a great release to be found in this idea. You are free, because everyone is too busy fussing over themselves to worry all that much about you. Go be whomever you want to be, then. Do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life. Create whatever you want to create—and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it’s exceedingly likely that nobody will even notice. And that’s awesome.

Yeah, I’m going to get married someday, but after I’ve lived a little, had some fun, and generally gotten my life together.” What they’re saying is that they’re waiting to marry until they grow up. The problem is, they are grown, but they seem to be the only ones who don’t know it.

have always been fascinated by relationships. I grew up in Britain, where my dad ran a pub, and I spent a lot of time watching people meeting, talking, drinking, brawling, dancing, flirting. But the focal point of my young life was my parents’ marriage. I watched helplessly as they destroyed their marriage and themselves. Still, I knew they loved each other deeply. In my father’s last days, he wept raw tears for my mother although they had been separated for more than twenty years. My response to my parents’ pain was to vow never to get married. Romantic love was, I decided, an illusion and a trap. I was better off on my own, free and unfettered. But then, of course, I fell in love and married. Love pulled me in even as I pushed it away. What was this mysterious and powerful emotion that defeated my parents, complicated my own life, and seemed to be the central source of joy and suffering for so many of us? Was there a way through the maze to enduring love? I followed my fascination with love and connection into counseling and psychology. As part of my training, I studied this drama as described by poets and scientists. I taught disturbed children who had been denied love. I counseled adults who struggled with the loss of love. I worked with families where family members loved each other, but could not come together and could not live apart. Love remained a mystery. Then, in the final phase of getting my doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, I started to work with couples. I was instantly mesmerized by the intensity of their struggles and the way they often spoke of their relationships in terms of life and death.

Two words sum up being the daughter of a narcissistic mother: deep sorrow. It was like a massive boulder sat on my chest. Choking me. Suffocating me. Drowning me. Spinning my life out of control. My memories of growing up to become an adult woman who suffered ritual narcissistic abuse had a common thread: Tears. Drama. And compounded trauma.

A wonderful ferment was working in Germany. Life seemed more free, more modern, more exciting than in any place I had ever seen. Nowhere else did the arts or the intellectual life seem so lively. In contemporary writing, painting, architecture, in music and drama, there were new currents and fine talents. And everywhere there was an accent on youth.

Battle scars aren't the only marks of a testimony. Sometimes, the testimony is just the fact that you are unscathed, that the relationship that didn't work out saved you a headache, that the business deal fell through before it even started, or that you're living a quiet, drama-free life. God is just as incredible in those moments as He is in the battle moments.

Here are a few of the mantras I commonly received—see if any of them sound familiar: “Make sure you can support yourself; it’s a tough world out there!” “You’re so smart; you don’t want to waste your intelligence [implied: by getting married too soon].” “We’re expecting big things from you.” “You have your whole life ahead of you—have fun while you can!” “Relax; marriage will happen when it happens.” “I wish I’d had all the opportunities you have.

The artist especially, in whom the power of imitation is particularly strong, must fall prey to the feeble manysidedness of modern life as to a serious childhood illness; in his youth and childhood he will look more like an adult than his real self. The marvellously accurate archetypal youth who is the Siegfried of the Ring des Nibelungen could have been produced only by a man, and by a man moreover who had found his own youth late in life. And as Wagner's youth came late, so did his full maturity; so that in this respect at least he is the opposite of an anticipatory nature. As soon as his spiritual and moral maturity arrives, the drama of his life also begins. And how different he looks now! Below there rages the precipitate current of a vehement will which as it were strives to reach up to the light through every runway, cave and crevice, and desires power. Only a force wholly pure and free could direct this will on to the pathway to the good and benevolent; had it been united with a narrow spirit, such an unbridled tyrannical will could have become a fatality and a way out into the open, into air and sunlight, was in any event bound to be found soon.

I had to surrender; I had to wave the white flag-- not in defeat, but in victory. For the first time in my life, I realized that I couldn't do this on my own. But what was more amazing was the understanding that I didn't have to do it all on my own-- and even that I wasn't supposed to do it all on my own. I finally grasped the truth that I had to surrender my life to the One... the only One who could put the pieces back together, the One who could comfort me, love me, accept me, forgive me, and give me permission to forgive myself. I was not lost, hope was not lost. I was not abandoned-- I was loved.

Once AI makes better decisions than us about careers and perhaps even relationships, our concept of humanity and of life will have to change. Humans are used to thinking about life as a drama of decision-making. Liberal democracy and free-market capitalism see the individual as an autonomous agent constantly making choices about the world. Works of art – be they Shakespeare plays, Jane Austen novels, or tacky Hollywood comedies – usually revolve around the hero having to make some particularly crucial decision. To be or not to be? To listen to my wife and kill King Duncan, or listen to my conscience and spare him? To marry Mr Collins or Mr Darcy? Christian and Muslim theology similarly focus on the drama of decision-making, arguing that everlasting salvation or damnation depends on making the right choice.

There is a sort of subdued pandemonium in the air, a note of repressed violence, as if the awaited explosion required the advent of some utterly minute detail, something microscopic but thoroughly unpremeditated, completely unexpected. In that sort of half-reverie which permits one to participate in an event and yet remain quite aloof, the little detail which was lacking began obscurely but insistently to coagulate, to assume a freakish, crystalline form, like the frost which gathers on the windowpane. And like those frost patterns which seem so bizarre, so utterly free and fantastic in design, but which are nevertheless determined by the most rigid laws, so this sensation which commenced to take form inside me seemed also to be giving obedience to ineluctable laws. My whole being was responding to the dictates of an ambience which it had never before experienced; that which I could call myself seemed to be contracting, condensing, shrinking from the stale, customary boundaries of the flesh whose perimeter knew only the modulations of the nerve ends. And the more substantial, the more solid the core of me became, the more delicate and extravagant appeared the close, palpable reality out of which I was being squeezed. In the measure that I became more and more metallic, in the same measure the scene before my eyes became inflated. The state of tension was so finely drawn now that the introduction of a single foreign particle, even a microscopic particle, as I say, would have shattered everything. For the fraction of a second perhaps I experienced that utter clarity which the epileptic, it is said, is given to know. In that moment I lost completely the illusion of time and space: the world unfurled its drama simultaneously along a meridian which had no axis. In this sort of hair-trigger eternity I felt that everything was justified, supremely justified; I felt the wars inside me that had left behind this pulp and wrack; I felt the crimes that were seething here to emerge tomorrow in blatant screamers; I felt the misery that was grinding itself out with pestle and mortar, the long dull misery that dribbles away in dirty handkerchiefs. On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off. All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.

A wonderful ferment was working in Germany. Life seemed more free, more modern, more exciting than in any place I had ever seen. Nowhere else did the arts or the intellectual life seem so lively. In contemporary writing, painting, architecture, in music and drama, there were new currents and fine talents. And everywhere there was an accent on youth. One sat up with the young people all night in the sidewalk cafés, the plush bars, the summer camps, on a Rhineland steamer or in a smoke-filled artist’s studio and talked endlessly about life. They were a healthy, carefree, sun-worshiping lot, and they were filled with an enormous zest for living to the full and in complete freedom. The old oppressive Prussian spirit seemed to be dead and buried. Most Germans one met—politicians, writers, editors, artists, professors, students, businessmen, labor leaders—struck you as being democratic, liberal, even pacifist.

The life of man is a story; an adventure story; and in our vision the same is true even of the story of God. The Catholic faith is the reconciliation because it is the realisation both of mythology and philosophy. It is a story and in that sense one of a hundred stories; only it is a true story. It is a philosophy and in that sense one of a hundred philosophies; only it is a philosophy that is like life. But above all, it is a reconciliation because it is something that can only be called the philosophy of stories. That normal narrative instinct which produced all the fairy tales is something that is neglected by all the philosophies—except one. The Faith is the justification of that popular instinct; the finding of a philosophy for it or the analysis of the philosophy in it. Exactly as a man in an adventure story has to pass various tests to save his life, so the man in this philosophy has to pass several tests and save his soul. In both there is an idea of free will operating under conditions of design; in other words, there is an aim and it is the business of a man to aim at it; we therefore watch to see whether he will hit it. Now this deep and democratic and dramatic instinct is derided and dismissed in all the other philosophies. For all the other philosophies avowedly end where they begin; and it is the definition of a story that it ends differently; that it begins in one place and ends in another. From Buddha and his wheel to Akhen Aten and his disc, from Pythagoras with his abstraction of number to Confucius with his religion of routine, there is not one of them that does not in some way sin against the soul of a story. There is none of them that really grasps this human notion of the tale, the test, the adventure; the ordeal of the free man. Each of them starves the story-telling instinct, so to speak, and does something to spoil human life considered as a romance; either by fatalism (pessimist or optimist) and that destiny that is the death of adventure; or by indifference and that detachment that is the death of drama; or by a fundamental scepticism that dissolves the actors into atoms; or by a materialistic limitation blocking the vista of moral consequences; or a mechanical recurrence making even moral tests monotonous; or a bottomless relativity making even practical tests insecure. There is such a thing as a human story; and there is such a thing as the divine story which is also a human story; but there is no such thing as a Hegelian story or a Monist story or a relativist story or a determinist story; for every story, yes, even a penny dreadful or a cheap novelette, has something in it that belongs to our universe and not theirs. Every short story does truly begin with creation and end with a last judgement.

Quickly I find another surprise. The boys are wilder writers — less careful of convention, more willing to leap into the new. I start watching the dozens of vaguely familiar girls, who seem to have shaved off all distinguishing characteristics. They are so careful. Careful about their appearance, what they say and how they say it, how they sit, what they write. Even in the five-minute free writes, they are less willing to go out from where they are — to go out there, where you have to go, to write. They are reluctant to show me rough work, imperfect work, anything I might criticize; they are very careful to write down my instructions word by word. They’re all trying themselves on day by day, hour by hour, I know — already making choices that will last too unfairly long. I’m surprised to find, after a few days, how invigorating it all is. I pace and plead for reaction, for ideas, for words, and gradually we all relax a little and we make progress. The boys crouch in their too-small desks, giant feet sticking out, and the girls perch on the edge, alert like little groundhogs listening for the patter of coyote feet. I begin to like them a lot. Then the outlines come in. I am startled at the preoccupation with romance and family in many of these imaginary futures. But the distinction between boys and girls is perfectly, painfully stereotypical. The boys also imagine adventure, crime, inventions, drama. One expects war with China, several get rich and lose it all, one invents a time warp, another resurrects Jesus, another is shot by a robber. Their outlines are heavy on action, light on response. A freshman: “I grow populerity and for the rest of my life I’m a million air.” [sic] A sophomore boy in his middle age: “Amazingly, my first attempt at movie-making won all the year’s Oscars. So did the next two. And my band was a HUGE success. It only followed that I run the country.” Among the girls, in all the dozens and dozens of girls, the preoccupation with marriage and children is almost everything. They are entirely reaction, marked by caution. One after the other writes of falling in love, getting married, having children and giving up — giving up careers, travel, college, sports, private hopes, to save the marriage, take care of the children. The outlines seem to describe with remarkable precision the quietly desperate and disappointed lives many women live today.

Earth (481-640) People with this personality type are likely to become successful leaders. You tend to be more disciplined and careful at planning tasks. Loyalty and trust are important equations in your relationships hence they prove to be your strength in hard times. You respect others and keep people united which makes people flourish under your leadership. Earth signs are efficient decision makers hence always remain firm on the step they took. Fire: (400-300) Fire people are smart enthusiastic and energetic to be around. You are very competitive and curious, and more often very passionate about your goals and desires. Trusting people with a job or any important personal task is hard hence making emotional connections are difficult for you. making friends or getting a lover, your life is full of drama and there’s always a lot happening around you. You are intelligent and always find new ways to do things Water (160-320) Water people are kind and empathetic but sensitive. And you sometimes tend to become people pleasers. being quite impulsive and always in a hurry, you make decisions haphazardly. Water people are shy and introverted while partying around with friends on a weekend would be the last thing you want to do. You dread small talk and expressing yourself to a group of people is quite a demanding job. People feel relaxed in your presence you bring out the best in them. Decision-making can be demanding and you are sometimes regretful of overthinking and hence not capable of finding a firm decision. Air: (0-160) You have quite an entrancing personality. People are naturally drawn towards you and find your company comforting and friendly. Air signs are naturally smart and quite efficient in their workplace. While using your challenges and opportunities wisely you are likely to have great careers. you are good at advising your colleagues. But being bound in a relationship sometimes doesn’t seem to help you, rather you respect open free yet intimate emotional connections. Air people who are artistic and creative always look at things from a unique lens. So now you know your element.

These are the general propositions that form this Humility Code: 1. We don’t live for happiness, we live for holiness. Day to day we seek out pleasure, but deep down, human beings are endowed with moral imagination. All human beings seek to lead lives not just of pleasure, but of purpose, righteousness, and virtue. As John Stuart Mill put it, people have a responsibility to become more moral over time. The best life is oriented around the increasing excellence of the soul and is nourished by moral joy, the quiet sense of gratitude and tranquillity that comes as a byproduct of successful moral struggle. The meaningful life is the same eternal thing, the combination of some set of ideals and some man or woman’s struggle for those ideals. Life is essentially a moral drama, not a hedonistic one. 2. Proposition one defines the goal of life. The long road to character begins with an accurate understanding of our nature, and the core of that understanding is that we are flawed creatures. We have an innate tendency toward selfishness and overconfidence. We have a tendency to see ourselves as the center of the universe, as if everything revolves around us. We resolve to do one thing but end up doing the opposite. We know what is deep and important in life, but we still pursue the things that are shallow and vain. Furthermore, we overestimate our own strength and rationalize our own failures. We know less than we think we do. We give in to short-term desires even when we know we shouldn’t. We imagine that spiritual and moral needs can be solved through status and material things. 3. Although we are flawed creatures, we are also splendidly endowed. We are divided within ourselves, both fearfully and wonderfully made. We do sin, but we also have the capacity to recognize sin, to feel ashamed of sin, and to overcome sin. We are both weak and strong, bound and free, blind and far-seeing. We thus have the capacity to struggle with ourselves. There is something heroic about a person in struggle with herself, strained on the rack of conscience, suffering torments, yet staying alive and growing stronger, sacrificing a worldly success for the sake of an inner victory.

We can in theory assume three extremes of human life, and consider them as elements of actual human life. Firstly, powerful and vehement willing, the great passions (Raja-Guna); it appears in great historical characters, and is described in the epic and the drama. It can also show itself, however, in the small world, for the size of the objects is here measured only according to the degree in which they excite the will, not to their external relations. Then secondly, pure knowing, the comprehension of the Ideas, conditioned by freeing knowledge from the service of the will: the life of the genius (Sattva-Guna). Thirdly and lastly, the greatest lethargy of the will and also of the knowledge attached to it, namely empty longing, life-benumbing boredom (Tama-Guna). The life of the individual, far from remaining fixed in one of these extremes, touches them only rarely, and is often only a weak and wavering approximation to one side or the other, a needy desiring of trifling objects, always recurring and thus running away from boredom. It is really incredible how meaningless and insignificant when seen from without, and how dull and senseless when felt from within, is the course of life of the great majority of men. It is weary longing and worrying, a dreamlike staggering through the four ages of life to death, accompanied by a series of trivial thoughts. They are like clockwork that is wound up and goes without knowing why. Every time a man is begotten and born the clock of human life is wound up anew, to repeat once more its same old tune that has already been played innumerable times, movement by movement and measure by measure, with insignificant variations. Every individual, every human apparition and its course of life, is only one more short dream of the endless spirit of nature, of the persistent will-to-live, is only one more fleeting form, playfully sketched by it on its infinite page, space and time; it is allowed to exist for a short while that is infinitesimal compared with these, and is then effaced, to make new room. Yet, and here is to be found the serious side of life, each of these fleeting forms, these empty fancies, must be paid for by the whole will-to-live in all its intensity with many deep sorrows, and finally with a bitter death, long feared and finally made manifest. It is for this reason that the sight of a corpse suddenly makes us serious.

[T]here was a prophetic medieval Italian abbot, Joachim of Floris, who in the early thirteenth century foresaw the dissolution of the Christian Church and dawn of a terminal period of earthly spiritual life, when the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, would speak directly to the human heart without ecclesiastical mediation. His view, like that of Frobenius, was of a sequence of historic stages, of which our own was to be the last; and of these he counted four. The first was, of course, that immediately following the Fall of Man, before the opening of the main story, after which there was to unfold the whole great drama of Redemption, each stage under the inspiration of one Person of the Trinity. The first was to be of the Father, the Laws of Moses and the People of Israel; the second of the Son, the New Testament and the Church; and now finally (and here, of course, the teachings of this clergyman went apart from the others of his communion), a third age, which he believed was about to commence, of the Holy Spirit, that was to be of saints in meditation, when the Church, become superfluous, would in time dissolve. It was thought by not a few in Joachim’s day that Saint Francis of Assisi might represent the opening of the coming age of direct, pentecostal spirituality. But as I look about today and observe what is happening to our churches in this time of perhaps the greatest access of mystically toned religious zeal our civilization has known since the close of the Middle Ages, I am inclined to think that the years foreseen by the good Father Joachim of Floris must have been our own. For there is no divinely ordained authority any more that we have to recognize. There is no anointed messenger of God’s law. In our world today all civil law is conventional. No divine authority is claimed for it: no Sinai; no Mount of Olives. Our laws are enacted and altered by human determination, and within their secular jurisdiction each of us is free to seek his own destiny, his own truth, to quest for this or for that and to find it through his own doing. The mythologies, religions, philosophies, and modes of thought that came into being six thousand years ago and out of which all the monumental cultures both of the Occident and of the Orient - of Europe, the Near and Middle East, the Far East, even early America - derived their truths and lives, are dissolving from around us, and we are left, each on his own to follow the star and spirit of his own life.

From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky: My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality. I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood": [S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!" This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here". The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed. In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out. What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words. From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)

What I have been doing lately from my WIP "In Hiding" is available on my website. *Strong language warning* Wayne sat in the hygienic emergency room trying to ignore the bitch of a headache that began radiating at the back of his skull. His worn jeans, a blood-stained t-shirt, and his makeshift bandage sat on a nearby chair. The hysteria created by his appearance in the small hospital ward had died down. A local cop greeted him as soon as he was escorted to the examination room. The conversation was brief, once he revealed he was a bail enforcer the topic changed from investigation to shooting the bull. The experienced officer shook his hand before leaving then joked he hoped this would be their only encounter. The ER doc was a woman about his age. Already the years of long hours, rotating shifts and the rarity of a personal life showed on her face. Her eyelids were pink-rimmed, her complexion sallow; all were earmarks of the effect of long-term exhaustion. Wayne knew it all too well as he rubbed his knuckle against his own grainy eyes. Despite this, she attended to him with an upbeat demeanor and even slid in some ribbing at his expense. He was defenseless, once the adrenaline dropped off Wayne felt drained. He accepted her volleys without a response. All he mustered was a smile and occasional nod as she stitched him up. Across the room, his cell toned, after the brief display of the number a woman’s image filled the screen. Under his breath, he mumbled, “Shit.” He intends for his exclamation to remain ignored, having caught it the doctor glanced his direction with a smile. Without invitation, she retrieved his phone handing it to him without comment. Wayne noted the raised eyebrow she failed to hide. The phone toned again as he glanced at the flat image on the device. The woman’s likeness was smiling brightly, her blue eyes dancing. Just looking at her eased the pain in his head. He swiped the screen and connected the call as the doctor finished taping his injury. Using his free uninjured arm, he held the phone away from him slightly, utilizing the speaker option. “Hey Baby.” “What the hell, Wayne!” Her voice filled the small area, in his peripheral vision he saw the doc smirk. Turning his head, he addressed the caller. “Babe, I was getting ready to call.” The excuse sounded lame, even to him. “Why the hell do I have to hear about this secondhand?” Wayne placed the phone to his chest, loudly he exclaimed; “F***!” The ER doc touched his arm, “I will give you privacy.” Wayne gave her a grateful nod. With a snatch, she grabbed the corner of the thin curtain suspended from the ceiling and pulled it close. Alone again, he refocused on the call. The woman on the other end had continued in her tirade without him. When he rejoined the call mid-rant, she was issuing him a heartfelt ass-chewing. “...bullshit Wayne that I have to hear about this from my cousin. We’ve talked about this!” “Honey...” She interrupts him before he can explain himself. “So what the hell happened?” Wisely he waited for silence to indicate it was his turn to speak. “Lou, Honey first I am sorry. You know I never meant to upset you. I am alright; it is just a flesh wound.” As he speaks, a sharp pain radiates across his side. Gritting his teeth, Wayne vows to continue without having the radiating pain affect his voice. “I didn’t want you to worry Honey; you know calling Cooper first is just business.” Silence. The woman miles away grits her teeth as she angrily brushes away her tears. Seated at the simple dining table, she takes a napkin from the center and dabs at her eyes. Mentally she reminds herself of her promise that she was done crying over this man. She takes an unsteady breath as she returns her attention to the call. “Lou, you still there?” There is something in his voice, the tender desperation he allows only her to see. Furrowing her brow she closes her eyes, an errant tear coursed down her cheek.

Learned helplessness is a common cause of clinical depression in people who perceive they have no control over the outcomes of their life situations.

There is no narrative without structure, or plot. In a great story this structure seems like fate, like an inescapable judgment descending on its still unaware heroes, a great metaphysical causality, that crowds out all room for choice. Fate arises not as a limitation on our freedom, but as a manifestation of our freedom, testimony that choice is consequent. The exercise of your freedom cannot prevent the exercise of my own freedom, but it can determine the context in which I am to act freely. You cannot make choices for me, but you can largely determine what my choices will be about. Great stories explore the drama of this deeper touching of one free person by another. They are therefore genuinely sexual dramas astounding us once more with the magic of origins.

Want to love singles in your church? Invite us to the grown-up table. Give us the breakable glasses, not plastic, and let us join in the adult conversation. You may actually learn something from us. And we will be more than willing to jump in and contribute. Pastors and church leaders, ferret out your single adults and get to know us. Invite us into the life and leadership of the church. Put us on committees. Challenge us to give financially. Ask us to lead a project. Don’t let us occupy the sidelines. Make us assimilate.

When it comes to cross-generational relationships within the church, I often remind both singles and marrieds that marriage begins with two single people. Hey, we’re important! And whether singles eventually move toward marriage or stay single for life, we’re still family. What’s more, we need families. If we don’t have our own, we may need to adopt yours. Will you let us?

I feel both sexes desire happiness and companionship above all. Not everybody feels this way, but a great majority of people do. Some will want it at different points in their life, some will have an “ah-ha” moment and know when they are ready, while others were ready for as long as they can remember, always searching for someone with whom they can share the journey we call life.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they’re yours; if they don’t, they never were. —Richard Bach

The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques de Molai and his fellows perished in the flames. But before his execution, the Chief of the doomed Order organized and instituted what afterward came to be called Occult, Hermetic, or Scottish Masonry. In the gloom of his prison, the Grand Master created four Metropolitan Lodges, at Naples for the East, at Edinburg for the West, at Stockholm for the NOrth, and at Paris for the South. [The initials of his name, J.'.B.'.M.'. found in the same order in the first three Degrees, are but one of the many internal and cogent profs that such was the origin of modern Free-Masonry. The legend of Osiris was revived and adopted, to symbolize the destruction of the Order, and the resurrection of Hyrim, slain in the body of the Temple, of Hyrim Abai, the Master, as the martyr of fidelity to obligation, of Truth and Conscience, prophesied the restoration to life of the buried association.]

Jung was not suggesting that we all adopt the Puebloan mythology, rather his point is that many people suffer because their life makes no sense. And the task for those who want to be free of anxiety or depression is to discover this sense. We must, in other words, find a way to justify our existence, so that we, like the Puebloan, can believe that our life is meaningful. For some this can be accomplished through religion, for others by contributing in a substantial way to the promotion of values such as justice, freedom, or community, while others will find it through the creative act. But for those of us in the modern West, where we lack a dominant mythology, it is up to us, and us alone, to discover how we can play a meaningful role in the divine drama of life. For the few who accomplish this task, a fulfilling life will define their future, for the many who don’t, years or decades of pointless suffering and compulsive seeking will be their fate.

Geographical cures rarely work. You can extricate yourself from a place, but you cannot escape your own thoughts. Move somewhere to get away from an uncomfortable situation, and you will likely recreate the drama with a few set of actors playing the same roles. Heal your mind, and you are free anywhere.

Before long, machines would be doing all the work. This would free up “abundant scope for recreation,” enthused an English professor, “by immersion in the imaginative life, in art, drama, dance, and a hundred other ways of transcending the constraints of daily life.

the craft was already within the Moon’s gravitational sphere of influence making it harder to ‘reverse’. The engine could also have been damaged in the explosion and restarting might cause an even worse disaster. So Mission Control opted for a ‘free return’, essentially using the Moon’s gravity to hitch a ride and slingshot them back towards Earth. First, Apollo 13 needed to be realigned; it had left its initial free return trajectory earlier in the mission as it lined up for its planned lunar landing. Using a small burn of the Lunar Module’s descent propulsion system, the crew got the spacecraft back on track for its return journey. Now they started their nerve-shredding journey round the dark side of the Moon. It was a trip that would demand incredible ingenuity under extreme pressure from the crew, flight controllers, and ground crew if the men were to make it back alive. More problems The Lunar Module ‘lifeboat’ only had enough battery power to sustain two people for two days, not three people for the four days it would take the men to return to Earth. The life support and communication systems had to be powered down to the lowest levels possible. Everything that wasn’t essential was turned off. The drama was being shown on TV but no more live broadcasts were made.

Books are more interesting than you can imagine. Read books of every genre. If you want to learn to live a better life, read self-help books. If you want to learn how to think better, read great philosophers. If you want to become mentally strong, read spiritual books. If you want to spice up your life, read fantasy. If you want to understand humans, read fiction. Books have it all. Read books and feed your brain. In your free time, or what you call ‘alone time’, take out a book and read at least 5 pages. Allow yourself to drown in the pool of words. Read books on the topics that pique your interest. Read books written by your industry expert and learn what they have learned after spending decades working. Read books written by people who inspire you and make yourself a tiny part of them by consuming their words. Enough of excuses and drama. You have got so much to look forward to. So much to grow and learn. And books are the easiest way to learn and grow in life.

Don't be satisfied with shallow conversations about nothing. Don't be satisficed with a shallow life about nothing. Pursue the true, the good, and the beautiful together.

Starting when we are very young, we are presented with either a reward or a punishment for adopting the beliefs and behaviors of others in the Dream. This system of reward and punishment, or domestication, is used to control our behavior. The result of domestication is that many of us give up who we really are in exchange for who we think we should be, and consequently we end up living a life that is not our own. Learning how to spot and release our domestication, and reclaiming who we really are in the process, is a hallmark of a Master of Self. When you become so domesticated by or attached to a belief or idea that you can't let go of it, your choices narrow until any notion of choice is really an illusion. Your beliefs now define you, and they will dictate your choice. You are no longer the master of your own self, as your domestication and attachments are controlling you. As a result, you will engage with others and yourself in a way that does not serve your highest good. You have joined into the drama of the party, and it now shapes your Personal Dream. The Dream of the Planet is full of traps to lure you back into the drama of the party, and falling into one of them can happen in the blink of an eye. If you choose to engage with the world, avoiding all traps is virtually impossible. However, when you become aware that you are falling into a trap, the simple act of noticing it allows you to begin to regain control. As you get better at spotting the traps and understanding your own underlying emotions and beliefs that make them traps for you in the first place, you are far less likely to take the bait. And even when you do, you can let go of whatever you are attached too as quickly as your will dictates. It may seem counterintuitive, but you choose to let go in order to be in control. Doing so is the Mastery of Self in action. As a Master of Self, you can have relationships with others, even those who disagree with you, while still being grounded in your Authentic Self. You are able to maintain your free will and respect the free will of others. Knowing that others see you in a specific way gives you choices when you engage with them. You shape-shift only in their perception, and your awareness of that allows you to stay true to yourself and not give in to the temptation to take on others' definitions of who you are. You realize that you don't have to put on any image that others project onto you because you know it is not your reality. With this awareness, you will be better able to co-create harmoniously with others, making the relationships that matter most to you more fulfilling and rewarding. Most importantly, when you become a Master of Self, you know how to stay grounded in your Authentic Self regardless of what's happening around you. You also have the awareness to realize quickly when you are acting in a way that isn't helpful to yourself or others

In the example of the boy and his grandmother, the boy was domesticated to the idea that he must finish all his food, even though that idea wasn't true for him. And as an adult, he adhered to the idea that he should finish his food even if his body is indicating something to the contrary. As a result, he is now also attached to that idea. The difference to understand is this: attachment doesn't always come from domestication, but domestication left unchecked always leads to attachment. Here's what the evolution from domestication to attachment looks like: 1. Domestication. You are domesticated to an idea through interaction with others in the Dream of the Planet. (A grandmother domesticates her grandson to the idea that it's a sin not to finish all the food on his plate.) 2. Self-domestication. Once this idea is lodged inside you and accepted, it becomes a belief. You no longer need an outside domesticator to enforce this idea; you will do it yourself. This is self-domestication in action. (The grandson grows up and habitually finishes all the food on his plate even when he isn't hungry.) 3. Attachment. You are now attached to this belief, and depending on how strong your attachment is, your acceptance of yourself and others is contingent upon fulfillment of the belief. (The grandson feels guilty if he doesn't finish the food on his plate; he admonishes his friends for not finishing their food, and he domesticates his children to the same idea.) As you can see, attachments can often arise from domestication. The irony is that when this happens, you become attached to an idea that you didn't even agree with initially but only adopted because of domestication. The end result is that without awareness, you will adhere to ideas that aren't even true for you (as well as push them on others)! Domestication and attachment work hand in hand to keep you separated from your Authentic Self, lost in the fog and smoke, trapped in the drama of the party. This cycle (domestication, self-domestication, attachment) can continue for generations until you transform into a Master of Self and break the chain. The following exercises will help you begin to identify your own domestications and attachments. Once you have recognized them, you can then decide if you are ready to let them go or not. Noticing Your Domestications Take a moment to look back over your life. What are some ideas that were instilled in you as a child that you later discarded as no longer true for you? These could be ideas about education and career, money and material possessions, politics, religion, or any number of other areas. Remember, the point here isn't to judge or become resentful of those who initially domesticated you to those ideas, but rather to see where domestication occurred and how you broke free. By noticing where you have already spotted and released domestication in your life, you prove to yourself that you have all the power you need inside you to break free again and again.

It's not a quote if you want to read but some of it can one understand, and some of can one feels, anyway.. I've always felt like i was one drop in your ocean, like a second choice always, a spare you can use if you bored or not busy.. you never act in disrespectful way but you can do it without let the one you are dealing with know that, they not important but important at the time, you make me feel I'm not worth it but worth it in some positions then when it comes to feelings you run and run, you ignore, you make others your priority, and when it comes to me there is one time i felt i was special to you, the freaking moment i thought i meant something to you, but when your addiction is a specific gender, you will always look for more, and then when one free trial ends.. it's when the time you will be mean and ignorant as everybody do with real feelings.. i saw everything and everything you respond to that gender was the opposite of what you were talk to me, they told they loved you, they told you everything i wanted to tell and you respond to them like there was nothing.. I'm just tired being the second choice for anyone, tired of making relationships with anyone and then they leave what do you except sir when you know someone like me? what do you know even about me? they let you know everything about them in two or three month and i'm letting you know that in a life time.. i think it's the mystery, or as you told me without any thought what that would do to my heart "stop being dramatic", yeah i know when someone is going into a fresh relationship with someone else he try to get rid of that "one who always cared about" in the most ugly phrase, to obvisually make them stop. I've been totally a lollipop person who is "wanty more than needy" but i was never a person who will say bad thing to you face or behind, more than blame myself of everything i thought from the beginning, our first tequila "ah yeah i feel euphoria every time i rewind to that time" I loved you until it filled me and drops out of me, you were never and you never be just a friend as you think, it's my feeling and you gonna be out of it if that oppose my will to love you, i know you liked me but you were to afraid to say that "bfff maybe you have a lot of the gender that you like them too, that you've been afraid to lose, right? but that kind of gender, sir, destroyed this thing i am talking about, they can burn the hell out everything in one night, in one word, in one voice message, they can and they will win" i never wanted to be the kind that play easy you know, i will burn the bridges, i will act as a shitty person, yeah, you replaced me, i put up on the top over myself, you put me last under your ego yourself. But, you will never know the whole puzzle, the missing piece of the "drama" (i hated this word as much as i never say "the hate word" for anything, but i really do, maybe i told you i hate Arial font once, yeah i remember). Your tall hair, your gaze, your angry mean face when you look at your friend, i never saw you but i wish you were here so i can confirm my vision and illusions and the nights i spend alone imaging you, and confirming to my endless dreams hugging you and endlessly speaking with you about everything. I don't want the bitches to see this but f that, and if you a one of his and saw that, please grab your teeth more on him, please you gonna win, work a bit more hard on that, and you sir.. i'll just stop and see what will happens, even though i'm a very pessimistic person who will already know that nothing will happen and like every ???? relationship it will be dead at the end and you going to love others and forget about me, years are all shit number so i don't care about number, maybe i was too old for you and they were young and ripe.. i don't know what go around that head, the head i really wanted.. maybe i'm going to know more heads in my life, but for now, i'm done.

Telling your story. All forgiveness must begin by facing the truth. You can write down in a journal or tell a trusted friend what happened. Telling your story also allows you to integrate the memories in your consciousness and defuse some of your emotional reactivity. To help heal the memories and avoid retraumatizing yourself, it is helpful to imagine that you are watching the event happen in a movie. This way you may reduce the chances of triggering the brain’s neural stress response. One scientific protocol by Ethan Kross and his colleagues suggests recalling your experience this way: Close your eyes. Go back to the time and place of the emotional experience and see the scene in your mind’s eye. Now take a few steps back. Move away from the situation to a point where you can watch the event unfold from a distance and see yourself in the event, the distant you. Watch the experience unfold as if it were happening to the distant you all over again. Observe your distant self. Naming the hurt. The facts are the facts, but these experiences caused strong emotions and pain, which are important to name. As you watch the situation unfold around your distant self, try to understand his or her feelings. Why did he or she have those feelings? What were the causes and reasons for the feelings? If the hurt is fresh, ask yourself, “Will this situation affect me in ten years?” If the hurt is old, ask yourself whether you want to continue to carry this pain or whether you want to free yourself from this pain and suffering. Granting forgiveness. The ability to forgive comes from the recognition of our shared humanity and the acknowledgment that, inevitably, because we are human we hurt and are hurt by one another. Can you accept the humanity of the person who hurt you and the fact that they likely hurt you out of their own suffering? If you can accept your shared humanity, then you can release your presumed right to revenge and can move toward healing rather than retaliation. We also recognize that, especially between intimates, there can be multiple hurts, and we often need to forgive and ask for forgiveness at the same time, accepting our part in the human drama. Renewing or releasing the relationship. Once you have forgiven someone, you must make the important decision of whether you want to renew the relationship or release it. If the trauma is significant, there is no going back to the relationship that you had before, but there is the opportunity for a new relationship. When we renew relationships, we can benefit from healing our family or community. When we release the relationship, we can move on, especially if we can truly wish the best for the person who has harmed us, and recognize that they, like us, simply want to avoid suffering and be happy in their life.

The more I ventured into the world of science, the more I brushed aside that notion of being part of a drama, or a pattern laid out by fate or faith.

But where do these ideas come from? They are all derived from the writings of the Middle Ages—not works of academic theology, which generally were critical of such highly visual and dramatic approaches, but the popular religious literature of the age, which took pleasure in a powerful narrative of Satan’s being outmanoeuvred and outwitted by Christ.[615] According to these popular atonement theories, Satan had rightful possession over sinful human beings. God was unable to wrest humanity from Satan’s grasp by any legitimate means. Yet what if Satan were to overstep his legitimate authority, and claim the life of a sinless person—such as Jesus Christ, who, as God incarnate, was devoid of sin? The great mystery plays of the Middle Ages—such as the cycle performed at York in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—dramatised the way in which a wily and canny God tricked Satan into overstepping his rights, and thus forfeiting them all. An arrogant Satan received his comeuppance, to howls of approval from the assembled townspeople. A central theme of this great popular approach to atonement was the “Harrowing of Hell”—a dramatic depiction of the risen Christ battering the gates of hell, and setting free all who were imprisoned within its realm.[616] All of humanity were thus liberated by the death and resurrection of Christ. In Narnia, Edmund is the first to be saved by Aslan; the remainder are restored to life later, as Aslan breathes on the stone statues in the Witch’s castle. Lewis’s narrative in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe contains all the main themes of this medieval atonement drama: Satan having rights over sinful humanity; God outwitting Satan because of the sinlessness of Christ; and the breaking down of the gates of Hell, leading to the liberation of its prisoners. The imagery is derived from the great medieval popular religious writings which Lewis so admired and enjoyed.

Every time I felt the relief of not needing to determine the value (monetary, emotional, whatever) of something and instead asked myself whether it fit into the container I had for it, I started looking for more ways to put this drama-free strategy to work. No angst. No emotion. No analysis. I just picked out my favorites, put them in the container, and knew that when the container was full, anything left wasn’t as loved as the ones in the container. This made decluttering easy, or at least doable.

The problem with waiting to get your life in order before considering marriage is that you really have no idea when your life will be in order, if ever.

One of my most favored day fancies creates a fool drama that goes something like this: It is evening. We have had our supper and the dishes have been washed and put away. Ima Dean and Romey are in chairs in the sitting room reading books. Though there is candy in the sack on the table they have remembered we cannot afford trips to the dentist and are munching fruit. The pages which so absorb them are taking them to faraway borders and on the way they are being introduced to great men and great women. They have come around to my way of thinking. We do not need television. It’s fare is pretty dull and slovenly compared to the excitement and order there is to be found in the written word. I go to my room and open the door and look in. The sewing machine is gone. During our day’s absence somebody has come and swiped it. I go back to the sitting room and make my spooky announcement. “The sewing machine is gone. Somebody has swiped it.” “I’m glad,” says Ima Dean, throwing her legs over the arm of her chair. “Old no-account hunk of garbage. Mrs. Connell knew it was on its last legs when she gave it to us for five dollars. I thank whoever took it. The only thing makes me mad is it didn’t happen sooner. Nobody should have to drive themselves crazy learning how to sew after they’ve worked all day at making a living. Don’t fret, Mary Call. I don’t need any new dresses. When I start to school again if people don’t like the way I look in my old ones they can look the other way. We don’t owe anybody anything and this is a free country. If I went to school in a gunnysack wouldn’t be anybody’s business but yours and mine. Clothes aren’t important, it’s brains that count. My, this is a good book. When I grow up I think I’m going to be a medical missionary and go somewheres far off and work. I don’t want to waste my life. I want it to count for something and be of some good to humanity.” “I have decided either to become an explorer or an archaeologist,” says Romey. “I haven’t settled on which yet but either way I won’t be wasting my life either. I’ll be working for the good of humanity too. You are raising Ima Dean and me right, Mary Call, and we will always be grateful to you for the way you have sacrificed yourself for us.” End of dream. The sewing machine has not been swiped. Ima Dean and Romey have not forgotten we don’t have television. They don’t give a whoop or a holler about the great men and great women in our history. Or about humanity or what sacrifices I might be making for their good. Distant shores do not beckon them. They spend their evenings wrangling with each other and listening to radio music. Sometimes, when they feel kind toward each other, they dance. I love these two but can hardly stand them.

Here’s what to include in your notebook: • Your SMART goals, including progress, successes, setbacks, and challenges • Your thoughts, feelings, and moods, not only about food but about your life in general • Your meals and snacks • Your exercise, sleep, and other activities

In 1933, the U.S. Senate approved legislation introducing a thirty-hour workweek. Although the bill languished in the House of Representatives under industry pressure, a shorter workweek remained the labor unions’ top priority. In 1938, legislation protecting the five-day workweek was finally passed. The following year, the folk song “Big Rock Candy Mountain” climbed to the top of the charts, describing a utopia in which “hens lay soft-boiled eggs,” cigarettes grow on trees, and “the jerk that invented work” is strung up from the tallest tree. After World War II, leisure time continued its steady rise. In 1956, Vice President Richard Nixon promised Americans that they would only have to work four days a week “in the not too distant future.” The country had reached a “plateau of prosperity,” and he believed a shorter workweek was inevitable.8 Before long, machines would be doing all the work. This would free up “abundant scope for recreation,” enthused an English professor, “by immersion in the imaginative life, in art, drama, dance, and a hundred other ways of transcending the constraints of daily life.”9 Keynes’ bold prediction had become a truism. In the mid-1960s, a Senate committee report projected that by 2000 the workweek would be down to just fourteen hours, with at least seven weeks off a year. The RAND Corporation, an influential think tank, foresaw a future in which just 2% of the population would be able to produce everything society needed.10 Working would soon be reserved for the elite.

Life’s problems were too limited, that it was a pity, that the function of the artist was to increase these problems, to cause upheavals in the brain, to make people wild and free so that there would be more drama to their lives.

Until now, we may have told many stories to ourselves and others to explain or justify what has happened to us in our lives. We may have thought long and hard about how others caused us to suffer needlessly or unjustly. But if we take the time to look in the mirror, we begin to see through the storylines of our personal drama. We realize that our self-cherishing is the author, the director, and the star of everything that is happening around us. These outer enemies are just our partners in the dance of life, here for a moment and then gone. But our thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the people and events in our lives have endured, making these momentary encounters ever present and vivid within the mind. Thus our attachment to momentary happiness and suffering stays with us, and we have roiled in misery as a result.

A peaceful life isn’t drama-free or pain-free. A peaceful life refers to how you’re able to handle things when they do indeed fall apart.