Engaged Forever Quotes

I am forever engaged in a silent battle in my head over whether or not to lift the fork to my mouth, and when I talk myself into doing so, I taste only shame. I have an eating disorder.

There is no stability in this world. Who is to say what meaning there is in anything? Who is to foretell the flight of a word? It is a balloon that sails over tree-tops. To speak of knowledge is futile. All is experiment and adventure. We are forever mixing ourselves with unknown quantities. What is to come? I know not. But, as I put down my glass I remember; I am engaged to be married. I am to dine with my friends tonight. I am Bernard.

Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew—or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.

It was told to me, it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects, and told me, as I thought, with triumph. This person's suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested; and it has not been only once; I have had her hopes and exultations to listen to again and again. I have known myself to be divided from Edward forever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had to content against the unkindness of his sister and the insolence of his mother, and have suffered the punishment of an attachment without enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at the time when, as you too well know, it has not been my only unhappiness. If you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that I have suffered now.

I am forever engaged in a silent battle in my head over whether or not to lift the fork to my mouth...

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.” —Chinese proverb

Either I shall find it, or I shall not find it. I examine my note-case. I look in all my pockets. These are the things that forever interrupt the process upon which I am eternally engaged of finding some perfect phrase that fits this moment exactly.

Your judgments about another person say more about your own character than the character of the person you are pointing a finger at. This is the key and one of the most fundamental insights about the ‘red flags’ that we often dismiss regarding the people in our lives. If someone complains a lot to you about other people, guess what? That is part of their current character. And, as quickly as the tide changes, you can just as easily become the person they target and criticize, point fingers at, and negatively judge. Forever and always, until vibrations are raised, this will be the cycle of the relationship. So, it’s your choice to continue to engage in the cycle with them, or to move on. There are plenty of people who do not criticize, point fingers, or judge. THIS is the kind of character we want to foster within ourselves. THIS is the character of the kind of people we DO want to develop close relationships with.

There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?

The death of the spirit is the price of progress. Nietzsche revealed this mystery of the Western apocalypse when he announced that God was dead and that He had been murdered. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrificed God to civilization. The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the great enterprise of salvation through world–immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit. And since the life the spirit is the source of order in man and society, the very success of a Gnostic civilization is the cause of its decline. A civilization can, indeed, advance and decline at the same time—but not forever. There is a limit toward which this ambiguous process moves; the limit is reached when an activist sect which represents the Gnostic truth organizes the civilization into an empire under its rule. Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of Gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization.

Well, if it’s not an engagement ring, what is it?" He lifted my hand again and studied the ring. “It’s a... ‘I promise to be with you forever, or at least until you’re totally sick of me’ ring,” he declared. “I see. A bit wordy. But seriously, next time you want to buy me jewelry - think ‘small’.

Diamonds aren’t forever. Diamond engagement rings have only been a “necessary luxury” for about eighty years. We take the tradition of a diamond engagement ring for granted, as if it were as old as marriage itself. It’s not. In fact, it’s only about as old as the microwave oven.

Mallory asked sympathetically, reaching for the syrup, her engagement ring catching the light. Amy shielded her eyes. "Jeez, Mallory, stop waving that thing around—you're going to blind us. Couldn't Ty have found one smaller than a third world country? Or less sparkyly?

Your body is the temporary temple of your Spirit. What you keep around you in the extended temple of your home needs to change as you change and grow, so that it reflects who you are. Particularly if you are engaged in any kind of self-improvement work, you need to update your environment regularly. So get into the habit of leaving a trail of discarded clutter in your wake, and start to think of it as a sign of your progression!

By failing to engage it in intellectually challenging activities, your brain will fail to grow new connections, and it will indeed become disorganized and ultimately dysfunctional. The converse is also true for both body and brain. If someone who has not been physically active for a sustained period starts a program of physical therapy and regular exercise, she can regain her muscle mass and tone within a matter of months. The same thing is true of your brain.

Calm down, it isn't a ring” I laughed and he pushed the box across the table to me and I blushed and opened it.

In LaLa Land, there is only one kind of sex that's logical. In a made-up land, such as LaLa Land, the citizens are forever engaging in make-up sex.

If Alice had a post-engagement policy, it was to pass.

A good thing? Or a strong omen...Only time would tell what these newfangled neutrons and fission reactions would give to our ever-changing world.In all probability,this new scientific birth would change all of our lives forever and perhaps end the brutal war we were now engaged in?

Seek out the moments when you felt your heart move. When something changed forever, even if that moment seems minuscule compared to the rest of the story. That will be your five-second moment. Until you have it, you don’t have a story. When you find it, you’re ready to begin crafting your story.

The sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the Veda are the best repositories of the ideas that mattered most to our ancestors, and to ignore them is an act of childish conceit. But it is equally naive to believe that whatever was written down in the past contains an absolute truth that lasts forever.

When our hopes are most alive, it is less from a view of the imperfect beginnings of grace in our hearts, than from an apprehension of him who is our all in all. His person, his love, his sufferings, his intercession, his compassion, his fullness, and his faithfulness—these are our delightful themes, which leave us little leisure, when in our best frames, to speak of ourselves... If any people have contributed a mite to their own salvation, it was more than we could do. If any were obedient and faithful to the first calls and impressions of his Spirit, it was not our case. If any were prepared to receive him beforehand, we know that we were in a state of alienation from him. We needed sovereign, irresistible grace to save us, or we would be lost forever! If there are any who have a power of their own, we must confess ourselves poorer than they are. We cannot watch, unless he watches with us; we cannot strive, unless he strives with us; we cannot stand one moment, unless he holds us up; and we believe we must perish after all, unless his faithfulness is engaged to keep us. But this we trust he will do, not for our righteousness, but for his own name's sake, and because, having loved us with an everlasting love, he has been pleased in loving kindness to draw us to himself, and to be found by us when we sought him not.

Its main thesis is that not only the emerging Christianity drew on contemporary Judaism but that rabbinic Judaism, too, tapped into ideas and concepts of Christianity to shape its own identity; that, far from being forever frozen in ingrained hostility, the two sister religions engaged in a profound interaction during late antiquity.

Somebody put a Fascist Toejam cassette, 300 watts of sonic apocalypse, on to the van stereo, Isaiah gallantly handed Prairie up into the lurid fuchsia padding of this rolling orgy room, where she became indistinct among an unreadable pattern of Vomitones and their girlfriends, and quickly, in an arc unexpectedly graceful, they had all turned outward, tached up, engaged, and like a time machine departing for the future, forever too soon for Zoyd, boomed away up the thin, cloudpressed lane.

In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. If I persist in beating my fist against a stone wall, my freedom exhausts itself in this useless gesture without succeeding in giving itself a content. It debases itself in a vain contingency. Yet, there is hardly a sadder virtue than resignation. It transforms into phantoms and contingent reveries projects which had at the beginning been set up as will and freedom. A young man has hoped for a happy or useful or glorious life. If the man he has become looks upon these miscarried attempts of his adolescence with disillusioned indifference, there they are, forever frozen in the dead past. When an effort fails, one declares bitterly that he has lost time and wasted his powers. The failure condemns that whole part of ourselves which we had engaged in the effort. It was to escape this dilemma that the Stoics preached indifference. We could indeed assert our freedom against all constraint if we agreed to renounce the particularity of our projects. If a door refuses to open, let us accept not opening it and there we are free. But by doing that, one manages only to save an abstract notion of freedom. It is emptied of all content and all truth. The power of man ceases to be limited because it is annulled. It is the particularity of the project which determines the limitation of the power, but it is also what gives the project its content and permits it to be set up. There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything. But no one would dream of considering this gloomy passivity as the triumph of freedom

Every life has choices. Do we take the job or don’t we? Do we buy the house or not? Do we break off the engagement or go through with the wedding? Do we go through the yellow light or wait? Our path—the people we love, the life we lead—is forever altered by each decision large and small.

The Sufi is free from beliefs and disbeliefs, and yet gives every liberty to people to have their own opinion. There is no doubt that if an individual or a multitude believe that a teacher or a reformer will come, he will surely come to them. Similarly, in the case of those who do not believe that any teacher or reformer will come, to them he will not come. To those who expect the Teacher to be a man, a man will bring the message; to those who expect the Teacher to be a woman, a woman must deliver it. To those who call on God, God comes. To those who knock at the door of Satan, Satan answers. There is an answer to every call. To a Sufi the Teacher is never absent, whether he comes in one form or in a thousand forms he is always one to him, and the same One he recognizes to be in all, and all Teachers he sees in his one Teacher alone. For a Sufi, the self within, the self without, the kingdom of the earth, the kingdom of heaven, the whole being is his teacher, and his every moment is engaged in acquiring knowledge. For some, the Teacher has already come and gone, for others the Teacher may still come, but for a Sufi the Teacher has always been and will remain with him forever.

Regardless of who leads it, the professional-class liberalism I have been describing in these pages seems to be forever traveling on a quest for some place of greater righteousness. It is always engaged in a search for some subject of overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness with which it can identify itself and under whose umbrella of virtue it can put across its self-interested class program. There have been many other virtue-objects over the years: people and ideas whose surplus goodness could be extracted for deployment elsewhere. The great virtue-rush of the 1990s, for example, was focused on children, then thought to be the last word in overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness. Who could be against kids? No one, of course, and so the race was on to justify whatever your program happened to be in their name. In the course of Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, It Takes a Village, the favorite rationale of the day—think of the children!—was deployed to explain her husband’s crime bill as well as more directly child-related causes like charter schools. You can find dozens of examples of this kind of liberal-class virtue-quest if you try, but instead of listing them, let me go straight to the point: This is not politics. It’s an imitation of politics. It feels political, yes: it’s highly moralistic, it sets up an easy melodrama of good versus bad, it allows you to make all kinds of judgments about people you disagree with, but ultimately it’s a diversion, a way of putting across a policy program while avoiding any sincere discussion of the policies in question. The virtue-quest is an exciting moral crusade that seems to be extremely important but at the conclusion of which you discover you’ve got little to show for it besides NAFTA, bank deregulation, and a prison spree.

I love you, Levi.” “Thank God for it because I love you too.” Her laugh was back in his house again. Her scent on his sheets. Her crap on his bathroom counter and her stuff in the drawers in his armoire. She lived in him and he had no plans to ever let that change. It didn’t matter that she was younger than he was. All that mattered was that she loved him and he loved her. The rest they could work out as time passed. She’d keep him in line. Decorate their house and fill it with music and love. And one day with children. They had time, he realized. Time to be in love and be engaged. Time for her art and his job, time for weddings and honeymoons and nesting. She was his, forever. As deeply as he was hers. Made the groveling worth it. ~~Sway

Do you love her?” “Of course I bloody love her. Frankly, I don’t know how you were engaged to her for fifteen years without falling in love with her. She’s intelligent and kind and completely aggravating. She’s honest, brutally so at times, but it’s always because she wants to make things better than they are. And I want her in my life forever.” I want her in my life forever. Saying the words out loud tattooed them onto his very soul. I want her in my life forever.

While photographs certainly attest to Nazi crimes, the magnitude of Nazi genocide demands that every trace of the regime be forever remembered. The various symbols devised by the Nazi image-makers for the most sophisticated visual identity of any nation are a vivid reminder of the systematic torture and murder engaged in by this totalitarian state. These pictures, signs, and emblems are not merely clip art for contemporary designers to toy with as they please, but evidence of crimes against humanity.

Suddenly she said to him with extraordinary beauty: "I engage myself to you forever." The beauty was in everything, and he could have separated nothing—couldn't have thought of her face as distinct from the whole joy. Yet her face had a new light. "And I pledge you—I call God to witness!—every spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life.

If you were you ask ten couples how they got engaged, each of them would have a different story. If you asked ten Christians how they came to know Christ, they would have different stories as well. God treats us as individuals. He knows what makes our hearts sing. He knows our love language. Jesus orchestrates His “proposal” moment with us and knows what it takes to woo us. He desires for us to rise up and leave all other pursuers. He wants us to be His alone, knowing that one day He will return when all is ready for the wedding. He will call to us to come away and be with Him forever. Until that day, we can live with unwavering confidence, knowing that we are promise to Him. We are spoken for.

The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are.

...the very greatest satire, I came to think -- the kind that lives forever -- ultimately grew out of a debunking attitude toward the self. To see the world mock-heroically was necessarily to engage in a sort of preliminary self-burlesque. You couldn't take yourself *that* seriously. You were part of it. All the Lilliputian preening and pomposity was, at bottom, one's own.

He was forever trying to find ways to stay inside and avoid engagement with humans in real space. And though he carried a low-intensity outrage about privacy issues, he prized convenience above all,

I was half expecting him to pop out of a forested area nearby locked in mortal engagement with a panther, or make a dramatic appearance by falling out of the sky with a parachute. Something death defying.

The avatar smiled silkily as it leaned closer to him, as though imparting a confidence. "Never forget I am not this silver body, Mahrai. I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. "We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, too. Never forget I have had the chance to compare and contrast the ways of dying. [...] "I have watched people die in exhaustive and penetrative detail," the avatar continued. "I have felt for them. Did you know that true subjective time is measured in the minimum duration of demonstrably separate thoughts? Per second, a human—or a Chelgrian—might have twenty or thirty, even in the heightened state of extreme distress associated with the process of dying in pain." The avatar's eyes seemed to shine. It came forward, close to his face by the breadth of a hand. "Whereas I," it whispered, "have billions." It smiled, and something in its expression made Ziller clench his teeth. "I watched those poor wretches die in the slowest of slow motion and I knew even as I watched that it was I who'd killed them, who at that moment engaged in the process of killing them. For a thing like me to kill one of them or one of you is a very, very easy thing to do, and, as I discovered, absolutely disgusting. Just as I need never wonder what it is like to die, so I need never wonder what it is like to kill, Ziller, because I have done it, and it is a wasteful, graceless, worthless and hateful thing to have to do. "And, as you might imagine, I consider that I have an obligation to discharge. I fully intend to spend the rest of my existence here as Masaq' Hub for as long as I'm needed or until I'm no longer welcome, forever keeping an eye to windward for approaching storms and just generally protecting this quaint circle of fragile little bodies and the vulnerable little brains they house from whatever harm a big dumb mechanical universe or any conscience malevolent force might happen or wish to visit upon them, specifically because I know how appallingly easy they are to destroy. I will give my life to save theirs, if it should ever come to that. And give it gladly, happily, too, knowing that trade was entirely worth the debt I incurred eight hundred years ago, back in Arm One-Six.

We never made it to the store. Holly slipped off her own engagement ring, looked down at it with tears in her eyes, and then pressed it into my palm. I remember finding the letters H+T inside the band, Jennie’s parents’ initials etched right next to a heart, the way I held the ring and just knew their love was the forever kind, the type that doesn’t end despite the distance. Now, on the other side of the heart, J+G lives.

Where do I belong?” “With me,” my mother and Galen say in unison. They exchange hard glares. Galen locks his jaw. “I’m her mother,” she tells Galen, her voice sharp. “Her place is with me.” “I want her for my mate,” Galen says. The admission warms up the space between us with an impossible heat and I want to melt into him. His words, his declaration, cannot be unspoken. And how he’s declared it to everyone who matters. It’s out there in the open, hanging in the air. He wants me for his mate. Me. Him. Forever. And I’m not sure how I feel about that. How I should feel about that. I’ve known for some time that he wanted that eventually, but how soon? Before we graduate? Before I go to college? What does it mean to mate with him? He’s a Triton prince. His place is with the Syrena, in the ocean. And let’s not forget that my place with them is dead-no Half-Breeds allowed. We have so much to talk about before this can even happen, but I feel saying so might make him feel rejected, or embarrass him in front of his older brother, the great Triton king. Or like I’m having second thoughts, and I’m not. Not exactly. I peer up at him, wanting to see his eyes, to see the promise in them that I heard in his voice. But he won’t look at me. He’s not looking at Mom, either. He keeps his iron glare on Grom, unyielding and demanding. But Grom doesn’t wither under the weight of it. In fact, he deflects it with an indifferent expression. They are definitely engaging in some sort of battle of will via manly staring contest.

As Stephen Krashen and Joanne Ujiie (2005) assert, “Many people are fearful that if children engage in ‘light reading,' if they read comics and magazines they will stay with this kind of reading forever, that they will never go on to more ‘serious' reading. The opposite appears to be the case. The evidence suggests that light reading provides the competence and motivation to continue reading and to read more demanding texts” (p. 6).

Familiar words chanted through his mind, demanding he speak them. He tried to bite his tongue. Now was hardly the time, and she'd likely laugh. Once spoken, the words would bind him to her for the rest of his life, even if she refused him, which was likely. And once she did, he could never touch another... not that he'd want to, since he hadn't almost from the moment he clapped eyes on her. Unless... what if she spoke the Binding? Whatever she decided, the Mating Call was forever. Despite that, he could not stop. "Become a part of me, as I become a part of you. And ever after—" "Oh my God." She gasped. "Ice, I—" "I promise myself to thee." Sabelle might not want him to finish this Call, and saying it might doom him, but the taste of her still rolled around on his tongue like ambrosia. Instinct reeled, roared. No way would she stop him from trying to stake his claim and make her his. "Ice," she implored. "My brother—" "Is not involved here." He felt his eyes burning into her. "This is between you and me." "But... I—I don't... He won't approve." Bram wouldn't. That went without question. And right now, he could give a shit. But he noticed that she hadn't said she didn't want him. "What do you want? Because I know I want you, princess. Any and every way you'll let me have you." God, her lips were right beneath his, and he needed another taste of her so badly, every cell in his body craved it. Damning caution, he layered his mouth over hers again. She was like sinking into sugar, sweet, light, tempting... addictive. He nibbled at her lips, then prowled deeper, engaging her tongue. Then deeper still, consuming as much of her as he could with a single taste. Again, the urge to claim, to mate, scraped down his instincts, clear, loud, strong. He lifted his mouth, panting over her lips. "Each day we share, I shall be honest, good and true. If this you seek, heed my call. From—" "Stop!" She grabbed him by the sleeves of his robe. "Ice, think. If you say the rest, it's done. Even if I refuse, as long as I live, you'll be bound to me." "I want nothing else." He stared deep into her eyes, as a feeling of rightness, inevitability settled into his gut. "From this moment on, there is no other for me but you.

What is personal death? Asking this question and pausing to look inward - isn't personal death a concept? Isn't there a thought-and-picture series going on in the brain? These scenes of personal ending take place solely in the imagination, and yet they trigger great mental ad physical distress - thinking of one's cherished attachments an their sudden, irreversible termination. Similarly, if there is 'pain when I let some of the beauty of life in' - isn't this pain the result of thinking, 'I won't be here any longer to enjoy this beauty?' Or, 'No one will be around and no beauty left to be enjoyed if there is total nuclear devastation.' Apart from the horrendous tragedy of human warfare - why is there this fear of 'me' not continuing? Is it because I don't realize that all my fear and trembling is for an image? Because I really believe that this image is myself? In the midst of this vast, unfathomable, ever-changing, dying, and renewing flow of life, the human brain is ceaselessly engaged in trying to fix for itself a state of permanency and certainty. Having the capacity to think and form pictures of ourselves, to remember them and become deeply attached to them, we take this world of pictures and ideas for real. We thoroughly believe in the reality of the picture story of our personal life. We are totally identified with it and want it to go on forever. The idea of "forever" is itself an invention of the human brain. Forever is a dream. Questioning beyond all thoughts, images, memories, and beliefs, questioning profoundly into the utter darkness of not-knowing, the realization may suddenly dawn that one is nothing at all - nothing - that all one has been holding on to are pictures and dreams. Being nothing is being everything. It is wholeness. Compassion. It is the ending of separation, fear, and sorrow. Is there pain when no one is there to hold on? There is beauty where there is no "me".

Research shows that adults who regularly engage in intense exercise have significantly longer telomeres, those protective caps on the ends of chromosomes that you read about earlier. As a result, people who exercise regularly are a full decade younger than their peers on a cellular level.

His temper can’t quite mask the hurt, the sense of betrayal he feels at my engagement to Peeta. This will be my last chance, this meeting today, to not lose Gale forever. I could take hours trying to explain, and even then have him refuse me. Instead I go straight to the heart of my defense.

We need to cease allowing the past to define us. We are evolving as a human race, and just because war and aggressive competition has always been a part of our heritage, that doesn’t mean we are forever destined to war and engage in aggressive competition. We are moving forward to a time when the heart will guide us. We once had to fight to survive, and some still do. Yet now it is time to lay down our weapons and open our hearts to the expansive potential of human compassion and creativity. Where our attention goes, energy flows. Do we continue to focus on opposition and give it our energy? Or do we begin to focus our energy on our own authentic freedom to shine and help to illuminate the world? The choice is ours. There are no mistakes – you are exactly where you need to be, and you were born with the precise gifts needed to transform a dying world into a thriving planet.

You are the son of a kind, strong, and engaged Father, a Father wise enough to guide you in the Way, generous enough to provide for your journey, offering to walk with you every step. This is perhaps the hardest thing for us to believe—really believe, down deep in our hearts, so that it changes us forever, changes the way we approach each day.

Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face. In the last analysis, therefore, they lead to an autoerotic or autistic condition in which one dreams a world whose reality remains forever unattainable. The resultant sentiment d’incomplétude and the still worse feeling of sterility are in their turn explained by projection as the malevolence of the environment, and by means of this vicious circle the isolation is intensified. The more projections are thrust in between the subject and the environment, the harder it is for the ego to see through its illusions. A forty-five-year-old patient who had suffered from a compulsion neurosis since he was twenty and had become completely cut off from the world once said to me: “But I can never admit to myself that I’ve wasted the best twenty-five years of my life!” It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going. Not consciously, of course – for consciously he is engaged in bewailing and cursing a faithless world that recedes further and further into the distance. Rather, it is an unconscious factor which spins the illusions that veil his world. And what is being spun is a cocoon, which in the end will completely envelop him.

In your whole life, only in young childhood, and only if you were very fortunate, could you get a measure of innocence—a time free of knowing what will come, of what must come. Those moments, that simple engagement of only what was wonderful about being alive, that love, really, would be at the center of you forever; deep inside, you would have this tender core that believed everything would be okay.

There’s no “winning” when it comes to dealing with Internet trolls. Conventional wisdom says, “Don’t engage. It’s what they want.” Is it? Are you sure our silence isn’t what they want? Are you sure they care what we do at all? From where I’m sitting, if I respond, I’m a sucker for taking the bait. If I don’t respond, I’m a punching bag. I’m the idiot daughter of an embarrassed dead guy. On the record. Forever.

With the explosion of technology over the last 15+ years, we are in the process of a complete paradigm shift in regards to how we communicate in our marketing, public relations and advertising. Social Media has forever changed the way businesses and customers communicate and the beauty of it is that, through your channels, you can reach your audience directly and at lightning speed. Social Media has also changed the way customers make their buying decisions. Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, have made it easy to find and connect with others who share similar interests, to read product reviews and to connect with potential clients. Within these networks there is an amazing and wide open space for your unique voice to be heard. As the web interacts with us in more personal ways and with greater portability, there is no time better than the present to engage with and rally your community.

Superusers …   1. Check in frequently and consistently—not just once a year for an intense engagement.   2. Create content that others can access.   3. “Police” the community and ensure that cultural norms that strengthen the group are enforced.   4. Have a two-way relationship with the organization itself—providing feedback and suggestions.   5. Demonstrate genuine desire to help other members.   6. Attract new members.   7. Aid in the onboarding of new members.

I have a lot of friends who are positive life isn't worth living without True Love Forever. They're always on the prowl and sulk against the gods when they go to a party and don't fall in love. Women, especially, engage themselves in ghastly self-inflicted tortures for which they've been primed since childhood. After all, historically it's always been dreadful for women, and the logic given them was "It's going to be dreadful so you may as well learn to enjoy it.

Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.

I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier." "Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?" She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?" "Well, I'm kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. But ma'am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I've got enough, ma'am, I'm gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I'll never leave the ground again." "There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves." "I see that, ma'am, and I envy you; but I ain't got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I'm just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain't been told nothing about kinda troubling." "lorek Byrnison's quarrel with his king is part of it too," said the witch. "This child is destined to play a part in that." "You speak of destiny," he said, "as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

The truth is Matt Groening and David X. Cohen created a program that was much more than your typical cartoon. In fact, they created the gold standard of high-quality TV. The quality of Futurama has been recognized both by its fans and its peers. It has won five Emmys, seven Annie Awards, and two Writers Guild of America Awards, as well as receiving two Environmental Media Awards. With crisp 3-D animation and challenging storylines that engage issues in philosophy, mathematics, physics, normalcy, and the environment, Futurama has forever changed the public’s perception of what’s possible with a TV cartoon.

Do tell the story,” says Shadow. Cal taps a finger against his cup. “It was almost as if she just appeared in my room one day, out of the blue.” “Oh! Who is she?” cries the duchess. “A lady I met in Renovia,” he answers, as Shadow’s cheeks burn. “In a castle.” “Renovian,” says the duchess with distaste. “What is she like?” “Shadow is about to answer when Cal cuts her off. He looks right at her when he speaks. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. Brave, courageous, loyal. In all the kingdoms of Avantine I have never met her equal.” “And how did you propose, brother? Seeing that you had sworn off marriage and children to look after Mother’s estate,” says Shadow softly. “Ah, but she too had vowed not to marry,” Cal answers. “So we promised to be unmarried to each other, but together forever.” “What an atypical arrangement,” says Shadow, not quite meeting his eye. The duchess was fully agitated by now. “Sworn off marriage and children? How strange! What kind of engagement is this?” She takes an aggressive bite of toast. “A promise between two souls,” he says, but he only has eyes for Shadow. “A promise can be broken,” Shadow replies. “Not mine,” he says, so quietly that he’s not sure she can hear him. “Nor mine,” she says, which means that she did. They catch each other’s eye, and Cal wants nothing more than to reach across the table for her hand and to pull her to him. But they are at the Duke and Duchess of Girt’s table, and must conform to propriety.

The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged. . .This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. . .The first step, detachment or withdrawal, consists in a radical transfer of emphasis from the external to the internal world. . .a retreat from the desperations of the waste land to the peace of the everlasting realm that is within. But this realm, as we know from psychoanalysis, is precisely the infantile unconscious. It is the realm that we enter in sleep. We carry it within ourselves forever. . . all the life-potentialities that we never managed to bring to adult realization, those other portions of our self, are there; for such golden seeds do not die.

Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work, only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion. In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten. Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage. Where will the family patterns collide? In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low. Where will they go now? In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end? But the skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays. Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all? Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers? Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own! At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. What few prepare them for is the upcoming struggle, the conflict over the unanswered question: the two shall become one, but which one? Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.

Victory can be created. For even if the enemy is numerous, I can prevent him from engaging. . . . [I]f he does not know my military situation, I can always make him urgently attend to his own preparations so that he has no leisure to plan to fight me. Therefore, determine the enemy's plans and you will know which strategy will be successful and which will not. Agitate him and ascertain the pattern of his movement. Determine his dispositions and so ascertain the field of battle. Probe him and learn where his strength is abundant and where deficient. The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you. It is according to the shapes that I lay the plans for victory, but the multitude does not comprehend this. Although everyone can see the outward aspects, none understands the way in which I have created victory. Therefore, when I have won a victory I do not repeat my tactics but respond to circumstances in an infinite variety of ways. Now an army may be likened to water, for just as flowing water avoids the heights and hastens to the lowlands, so any army avoids strength and strikes weakness. And as water shapes its flow in accordance with the ground, so an army manages its victory in accordance with the situation of the enemy. And as water has no constant form, there are in war no constant conditions. Thus, one able to gain the victory by modifying his tactics in accordance with the enemy situation may be said to be divine. Of the five elements, none is always predominant: of the four seasons, none lasts forever; of the days, some are long and some short, and the moon waxes and wanes.

The Proposal The diamond industry has pulled a fast one over on us. It has convinced us that there is no way to make public a lifetime commitment to another person without a very large, sparkly rock on a very slim band. This is, of course, nonsense. Often wedding books have engagement chapters that read like diamond-buying guides. But the truth is, the way to get engaged is for the two of you to decide that you want to get married. So the next time someone tries to imply that you are not engaged because you don’t have a dramatic enough engagement story or a ring, firmly say, “You know, I like to think of my partner as my rock,” and slowly raise your eyebrow. The modern wedding industry—along with a fair share of romantic comedies—has set a pretty high bar for proposals. We think they need to be elaborate and surprising. But they don’t. A proposal should be: • A decision to get married • Romantic (because you decide to spend the rest of your lives together, not necessarily because of its elaborate nature) • Possibly mutual • Possibly discussed in advance • Possibly instigated by you • Not used to judge the state of your relationship • An event that may be followed by the not-at-all-romantic kind of sobbing, because you realize your life is changing forever It’s exciting to decide to get married. And scary. But the moment of proposal is just that: a moment. It moves you to the next step of the process; it’s not the be-all, end-all. So maybe you have a fancy candlelight dinner followed by parachutists delivering you a pear-shaped, seven-carat diamond. Or maybe you decide to get married one Sunday morning over the newspaper and a cup of coffee. Either way is fine. The point is that you decided to spend your life with someone you love.

The Mystery of Futile Debate: Why do we engage endlessly in futile political debates? We can argue politics forever, with nary a hint of progress. The likelihood of anyone changing his or her mind as the result of a political argument is negligible, but we debate anyway. Whether on street corners or on "Meet the Press," political discussions go on and on, and are only rarely resolved by polite compromise. It would be astonishing if a presidential candidate were to decide, mid-debate, that the other candidate was right: CANDIDATE: You know, Senator, I never looked at it that way before, but you're actually completely right! Since it's such an important point, I guess I'll just concede the whole election to you right now -- you are definitely the better candidate. Congratulations! If a candidate actually did say something like that, he or she would soon face overpowering citizen anger** -- at having violated the unspoken rule that debates are supposed to be futile. ** Not to mention, a free one-way ticket to a psychiatric institution.

The woman who wrote in to upbraid Orwell for talking about roses seemed to think that paying attention to that which does not need to be changed is idleness, dissipation, and distraction. Those focused on injustice, on those things that the more we contemplate them the more we want to change them, tend to think of contemplation of what we don’t want to change as akin to shirking one’s duty or dodging awareness of what we do want to change. I’ve talked about it as, instead, regeneration of the energy to face destruction, but Scarry suggests it might also matter as a study of the templates of the desirable and the good. What is the goal of social change or political engagement? Can studying what good already exists or has existed be part of the work? There is, of course, a meaningful difference between the dour (and widespread) position that we are forever starting from scratch because everything is contaminated or corrupt and the position that the good exists as a kind of seed that needs to be tended more energetically or propagated more widely.

Here’s something I learned along the way. Happiness is pleasure, and happiness is joy. It could be either one. Pleasure is short lived. It lasts an hour, a minute a month, and it peaks very high. It’s like drugs, like anything—whether you’re shopping, engaged in any pleasure, it all has the same quality to it. Joy doesn’t go as high as pleasure, but it stays with you. It’s something you can recall. Pleasure you can’t. So the joy will last a lot longer. People who get the pleasure say, “Oh, if I can just get richer, I can get more cars. . . .” You will never relive the moment you got your first car. That’s the highest peak. . . .                Pleasure’s fun, but just accept the fact that it’s here and gone. Joy lasts forever. Pleasure’s purely self-centered. It’s all about your pleasure. It’s about you. A selfish, self-centered emotion created by a selfish moment for you.                Joy is compassion. Joy is giving yourself to something else, or somebody else. It is much more powerful than pleasure. If you get hung up on pleasure, you’re doomed. If you pursue joy you’ll find everlasting happiness.

Soldiers of the Eastern Front! In countless battles in the year 1941, you not only removed from the Finnish, German, Slovak, Hungarian, and Romanian borders the enemy who was ready to launch an attack, but you also drove him back over a thousand kilometers into his own land. In attempting to bring about a turn of events in the winter of 1941–1942 and to move against us once more, he must and will fail! Yes, on the contrary, in the year 1942, after all the preparations that have been made, we will engage this enemy of mankind anew and do battle with him for as long as it takes to break the destructive will of the Jewish-capitalist and Bolshevik world. Germany will not and cannot be dragged into a new war for its existence or nonexistence by the same criminals every twenty-five years! Europe cannot and will not tear itself to pieces forever, just so that a bunch of Anglo American and Jewish conspirators can find satisfaction for their business machinations in the dissatisfaction of the people. It is our hope that the blood that is spilled in this war will be the last in Europe for generations. May the Lord help us with this in the coming year! Address to the Wehrmacht: January 1, 1942

Nowadays, enormous importance is given to individual deaths, people make such a drama out of each person who dies, especially if they die a violent death or are murdered; although the subsequent grief or curse doesn't last very long: no one wears mourning any more and there's a reason for that, we're quick to weep but quicker still to forget. I'm talking about our countries, of course, it's not like that in other parts of the world, but what else can they do in a place where death is an everyday occurrence. Here, though, it's a big deal, at least at the moment it happens. So-and-so has died, how dreadful; such-and-such a number of people have been killed in a crash or blown to pieces, how terrible, how vile. The politicians have to rush around attending funerals and burials, taking care not to miss any-intense grief, or is it pride, requires them as ornaments, because they give no consolation nor can they, it's all to do with show, fuss, vanity and rank. The rank of the self-important, super-sensitive living. And yet, when you think about it, what right do we have, what is the point of complaining and making a tragedy out of something that happens to every living creature in order for it to become a dead creature? What is so terrible about something so supremely natural and ordinary? It happens in the best families, as you know, and has for centuries, and in the worst too, of course, at far more frequent intervals. What's more, it happens all the time and we know that perfectly well, even though we pretend to be surprised and frightened: count the dead who are mentioned on any TV news report, read the birth and death announcements in any newspaper, in a single city, Madrid, London, each list is a long one every day of the year; look at the obituaries, and although you'll find far fewer of them, because an infinitesimal minority are deemed to merit one, they're nevertheless there every morning. How many people die every weekend on the roads and how many have died in the innumerable battles that have been waged? The losses haven't always been published throughout history, in fact, almost never. People were more familiar with and more accepting of death, they accepted chance and luck, be it good or bad, they knew they were vulnerable to it at every moment; people came into the world and sometimes disappeared at once, that was normal, the infant mortality rate was extraordinarily high until eighty or even seventy years ago, as was death in childbirth, a woman might bid farewell to her child as soon as she saw its face, always assuming she had the will or the time to do so. Plagues were common and almost any illness could kill, illnesses we know nothing about now and whose names are unfamiliar; there were famines, endless wars, real wars that involved daily fighting, not sporadic engagements like now, and the generals didn't care about the losses, soldiers fell and that was that, they were only individuals to themselves, not even to their families, no family was spared the premature death of at least some of its members, that was the norm; those in power would look grim-faced, then carry out another levy, recruit more troops and send them to the front to continue dying in battle, and almost no one complained. People expected death, Jack, there wasn't so much panic about it, it was neither an insuperable calamity nor a terrible injustice; it was something that could happen and often did. We've become very soft, very thin-skinned, we think we should last forever. We ought to be accustomed to the temporary nature of things, but we're not. We insist on not being temporary, which is why it's so easy to frighten us, as you've seen, all one has to do is unsheathe a sword. And we're bound to be cowed when confronted by those who still see death, their own or other people's, as part and parcel of their job, as all in a day's work. When confronted by terrorists, for example, or by drug barons or multinational mafia men.

Making the most of an experience: Living fully is extolled everywhere in popular culture. I have only to turn on the television at random to be assailed with the following messages: “It’s the best a man can get.” “It’s like having an angel by your side.” “Every move is smooth, every word is cool. I never want to lose that feeling.” “You look, they smile. You win, they go home.” What is being sold here? A fantasy of total sensory pleasure, social status, sexual attraction, and the self-image of a winner. As it happens, all these phrases come from the same commercial for razor blades, but living life fully is part of almost any ad campaign. What is left out, however, is the reality of what it actually means to fully experience something. Instead of looking for sensory overload that lasts forever, you’ll find that the experiences need to be engaged at the level of meaning and emotion. Meaning is essential. If this moment truly matters to you, you will experience it fully. Emotion brings in the dimension of bonding or tuning in: An experience that touches your heart makes the meaning that much more personal. Pure physical sensation, social status, sexual attraction, and feeling like a winner are generally superficial, which is why people hunger for them repeatedly. If you spend time with athletes who have won hundreds of games or with sexually active singles who have slept with hundreds of partners, you’ll find out two things very quickly: (1) Numbers don’t count very much. The athlete usually doesn’t feel like a winner deep down; the sexual conqueror doesn’t usually feel deeply attractive or worthy. (2) Each experience brings diminishing returns; the thrill of winning or going to bed becomes less and less exciting and lasts a shorter time. To experience this moment, or any moment, fully means to engage fully. Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual’s world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at least one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: You send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you. Notice how often you don’t do that. You stand back and insulate yourself, sending out only the most superficial signals and receive little or nothing back. The same circle must be present even when someone else isn’t involved. Consider the way three people might observe the same sunset. The first person is obsessing over a business deal and doesn’t even see the sunset, even though his eyes are registering the photons that fall on their retinas. The second person thinks, “Nice sunset. We haven’t had one in a while.” The third person is an artist who immediately begins a sketch of the scene. The differences among the three are that the first person sent nothing out and received nothing back; the second allowed his awareness to receive the sunset but had no awareness to give back to it—his response was rote; the third person was the only one to complete the circle: He took in the sunset and turned it into a creative response that sent his awareness back out into the world with something to give. If you want to fully experience life, you must close the circle.

As I thought of the leaders of the land and the populace in general, I wondered where our Washington was today. Where is the leader who will stand unashamed of his love and trust in God? Who will rise up and invoke the covenants of old? Who will lead the nation in shunning sin, promoting righteousness, and preserving that liberty God has granted? Where is our Captain Moroni? 'Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men' (Alma 48:17). We the people of this covenant nation need to find men and women like this. We need to engage them, promote them, elect them. We need to become them. And we need to do it quickly. In so many ways, it seems, we are falling further and further away from this ideal. ...Speaking of America and her covenant, President Gordon B. Hinckley declared: 'For a good while there has been going on in this nation a process that I have termed the secularization of America. . . . We as nation are forsaking the Almighty, and I fear that He will begin to forsake us. We are shutting the door against the God whose sons and daughters we are. . . . Future blessings will come only as we deserve them. Can we expect peace and prosperity, harmony and goodwill, when we turn our backs on the Source of strength? If we are to continue to have the freedoms that evolved within the structure that was the inspiration of the Almighty to our Founding Fathers, we must return to the God who is their true Author. . . . God bless America, for it is His creation.

We ought to recognize the darkness of the culture of death when it shows up in our own voices. I am startled when I hear those who claim the name of Christ, and who loudly profess to be pro-life, speaking of immigrants with disdain as “those people” who are “draining our health care and welfare resources.” Can we not see the same dehumanizing strategies at work in the abortion-rights activism that speaks of the “product of conception” and the angry nativism that calls the child of an immigrant mother an “anchor baby”? At root, this is a failure to see who we are. We are united to a Christ who was himself a sojourner, fleeing political oppression (Matt. 2:13–23), and our ancestors in Israel were themselves a migrant people (Exod. 1:1–14; 1 Chron. 16:19; Acts. 7:6). Moreover, our God sees the plight of the fatherless and the blood of the innocent, but he also tells us that because he loves the sojourner and cares for him so should we, “for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:18–19). We might disagree on the basis of prudence about what specific policies should be in place to balance border security with compassion for the immigrants among us, but a pro-life people have no option to respond with loathing or disgust at persons made in the image of God. We might or might not be natural-born Americans, but we are, all of us, immigrants to the kingdom of God (Eph. 2:12–14). Whatever our disagreements on immigration as policy, we must not disagree on whether immigrants are persons. No matter how important the United States of America is, there will come a day when the United States will no longer exist. But the sons and daughters of God will be revealed. Some of them are undocumented farm-workers and elementary-school janitors now. They will be kings and queens then. They are our brothers and sisters forever. We need to stand up against bigotry and harassment and exploitation, even when such could be politically profitable to those who stand with us on other issues. The image of God cannot be bartered away, at the abortion clinic counter or anywhere else.

For our part, we thought we would be following her path from a distance in the press. Our friends called to tell us when the photo of Diana pushing Patrick in his stroller appeared in Newsweek, or when our name was mentioned in a news magazine or paper. We were generally mislabeled as the Robinsons. Everyone asked if we would be going to the wedding, and we would reply, “Us? No, of course not.” We truly never expected to hear from Diana again, so her January letter became especially precious to us. We were stunned when a letter from Diana on Buckingham Palace stationary arrived in late March. She was clearly happy, writing, “I am on a cloud.” She missed Patrick “dreadfully.” She hoped that we were all “settled down by now, including your cat too--.” Diana had never even seen our cat. We’d left him with my brother because England requires a six-month quarantine for cats and dogs. How did she ever remember we had one? Then, “I will be sending you an invitation to the wedding, naturally. . . .” The wedding . . . naturally . . . God bless her. Maybe we weren’t going to lose her after all. She even asked me to send a picture of Patrick to show to “her intended(!), since I’m always talking about him.” As for her engagement, she could never even have imagined it the year before. She closed with her typical and appealing modesty: “I do hope you don’t mind me writing to you but just had to let you know what was going on.” Mind? I was thrilled and touched and amazed by her fondness and thoughtfulness, as I have been every single time she has written to us and seen us. This was always to be the Diana we knew and loved—kind, affectionate, unpretentious. I wrote back write away and sent her the two photographs I’d taken of her holding Patrick in our living room the previous fall. After Diana received the photographs, she wrote back on March 31 to thank me and sent us their official engagement picture. She said I should throw the photograph away if it was of no use. She added, “You said some lovely things which I don’t feel I deserve . . . .” Surely, she knew from the previous year that we would be her devoted friends forever.

The only way to avoid encountering someone is to follow him (according to a principle opposed to the principle of the labyrinth, where you follow someone so that you do not lose him). Implicit in the situation, however, is the dramatic moment when the one being followed, suddenly intuiting, suddenly becoming conscious that there is someone behind him, swings round and spots his pursuer. Then the rules are reversed, and the hunter becomes the hunted (for there is no escaping laterally). The only truly dramatic point is this unexpected turning-round of the other, who insists upon knowing and damns the consequences. This reversal does in fact occur in the Venice scenario. The man comes towards her and asks her: 'What do you want?' She wants nothing. No mystery story, no love story. This answer is intolerable, and implies possible murder, possible death. Radical otherness always embodies the risk of death. S.'s anxiety revolves entirely around this violent revelation: the possibility of getting herself unmasked - the very thing she is trying to avoid. 'I cannot go on following him. He must be uneasy, he must be wondering if I am here, behind him - surely he is thinking about me now - so I shall have to keep track of him in some other way.' S. could have met this man, seen him, spoken to him. But in that case she would never have produced this secret form of the existence of the Other. The Other is the one whose destiny one becomes, not by making his acquaintance in difference and dialogue but by entering into him as into something secret, something forever separate. Not by engaging in a conversation with him as interlocutor, but by entering into him as his shadow, as his double, as his image, by embracing the Other the better to wipe out his tracks, the better to strip him of his shadow. The Other is never the one with whom we communicate: he is the one whom we follow - and who follows us. The other is never naturally the other: the other must be rendered other by being seduced, by being made alien to himself, even by being destroyed - if there is no alternative (but in fact there are subtler ways of achieving this end).

Sometimes Marlboro Man and I would venture out into the world--go to the city, see a movie, eat a good meal, be among other humans. But what we did best was stay in together, cooking dinner and washing dishes and retiring to the chairs on his front porch or the couch in his living room, watching action movies and finding new and inventive ways to wrap ourselves in each other’s arms so not a centimeter of space existed between us. It was our hobby. And we were good at it. It was getting more serious. We were getting closer. Each passing day brought deeper feelings, more intense passion, love like I’d never known it before. To be with a man who, despite his obvious masculinity, wasn’t at all afraid to reveal his soft, affectionate side, who had no fears or hang-ups about declaring his feelings plainly and often, who, it seemed, had never played a head game in his life…this was the romance I was meant to have. Occasionally, though, after returning to my house at night, I’d lie awake in my own bed, wrestling with the turn my life had taken. Though my feelings for Marlboro Man were never in question, I sometimes wondered where “all this” would lead. We weren’t engaged--it was way too soon for that--but how would that even work, anyway? It’s not like I could ever live out here. I tried to squint and see through all the blinding passion I felt and envision what such a life would mean. Gravel? Manure? Overalls? Isolation? Then, almost without fail, just about the time my mind reached full capacity and my what-ifs threatened to disrupt my sleep, my phone would ring again. And it would be Marlboro Man, whose mind was anything but scattered. Who had a thought and acted on it without wasting even a moment calculating the pros and cons and risks and rewards. Who’d whisper words that might as well never have existed before he spoke them: “I miss you already…” “I’m thinking about you…” “I love you…” And then I’d smell his scent in the air and drift right off to Dreamland. This was the pattern that defined my early days with Marlboro Man. I was so happy, so utterly content--as far as I was concerned, it could have gone on like that forever. But inevitably, the day would come when reality would appear and shake me violently by the shoulders. And, as usual, I wasn’t the least bit ready for it.

The perfect girl what can I say; to be so close yet, feel miles away. I want to run to her, but have to walk out the door going the other way. The only words spoken to her are- ‘Have a nice day.’ I think about her and the summer, and what it could have been with her. It reminds me of- sixteen, you are on my mind all the time. I think about you. It is like a vision of the stars shining, ribbon wearing, bracelet making, and holding hands forever. All the sunflowers in the hayfields and kissing in the rain, no more brick walls, no more falling teardrops of pain, and no more jigsaw puzzle pieces would remain. True love should not be such a game; does she feel the same. She is everything that I cannot have, and everything I lack. What if every day could be like this- Diamond rings, football games, and movies on the weekends? It is easy to see she belongs to me; she is everything that reminds me of ‘sixteen’ everything that is in my dreams. Everything she does is amazing, but then again, I am just speculating, and fantasizing about Nevaeh Natalie, who just turned the age of sixteen! Nevaeh- I recall my first boy kiss was not at all, what I thought it was going to be like. I was wearing a light pink dress, and flip-flops that were also pink with white daisy flowers printed on them. I loosened my ponytail and flipped out my hair until my hair dropped down my back, and around my shoulders. That gets A guy going every time, so I have read online. He was wearing ripped-up jeans and a Led Zeppelin t-shirt. He said that- ‘My eyes sparkled in blue amazement, which was breathtaking, that he never saw before.’ Tell me another line… I was thinking, while Phil Collins ‘Take Me Home’ was playing in the background. I smiled at him, he began to slowly lean into me, until our lips locked. So, enjoy, he kissed me, and my heart was all aflutter. When it happened, I felt like I was floating, and my stomach had butterflies. My eyes fastened shut with no intentions of me doing so during the whole thing. When my eyes unfastened my feelings of touch engaged, and I realized that his hands are on my hips. His hands slowly moved up my waist, and my body. I was trembling from the exhilaration. Plus, one thing led to another. It was sort of my first time, kissing and playing with him you know a boy, oh yet not really, I had gotten to do some things with Chiaz before like, in class as he sat next to me. I would rub my hand on it under the desks- yeah, he liked that, and he would be. Oh, how could I forget this… there was this one time in the front seat of his Ford pickup truck, we snuck off… and this was my first true time gulping down on him, for a lack of a better term. As I had my head in his lap and was about to move up for him to go in me down there, I was about to get on top and let him in me. When we both heard her this odd, yet remarkably loud scream of bloody murder! Ava was saying- ‘You too were going to fuck! What the fuck is going on here? Anyways, Ava spotted us before he got to ‘Take me!

All this shows a very mediocre idea of oneself - always imputing misfortune to some objective cause. Once it has been exorcized by causes, misfortune is no longer a problem: it becomes susceptible of a causal solution and, above all, it originates elsewhere - in original sin, in history, in the social order, or in natural perversion. In short, it originates in an objectivity into which we exile it the better to be rid of it. Once again, this bespeaks very little pride and self-respect. In the past, what struck you down was your destiny, your personal fatum. You didn't look for some 'objective' cause of this or some attenuating circumstance, which would amount to saying we have no part in what happens to us. There is something humiliating in that. The intelligence of evil begins with the hypothesis that our ills come to us from an evil genius that is our own. Let us be worthy of our 'perversity' of our evil genius, let us measure up to our tragic involvement in what happens to us (including good fortune). In a word, let us not be imbeciles, for imbecility in the literal sense lies in the superficial reference to misfortune and exemption from evil. This is how we make imbeciles of the victims themselves, by confining them to their condition of victim. And by the compassion we show them we engage in a kind of false advertising for them. We take no account of what degree of choice and defiance, of connivence with oneself, of - unconscious or quasi-deliberate - provocative relation to evil there may be in AIDS, in drug-taking, in suffering and alienation, in voluntary servitude - in this acting-out in the fatal zone. It is the same with suicide, which is always ascribed to depressive motivations with no account taken of an originality of, an original will to commit, the act itself (Canetti speaks in the same way of the interpretation of dreams as a violence done to dreams that takes no account of their literalness). So, the understanding of misfortune is everywhere substituted for the intelligence of evil. Now, unlike the former, this latter rests on the rejection of the presumption of innocence. By contrast with that understanding, we are all presumptive wrongdoers - but not responsible ones, for, in the last instance, we do not have to answer for ourselves - that is the business of destiny or of the divinity. For the act we commit, it is right we should be dealt with - and indeed punished - accordingly. We are never innocent of that act in the sense of having nothing to do with it or being victims of it. But this does not mean we are answerable for it either, as that would suppose we were answerable for ourselves, that we were invested with total power over ourselves, which is a subjective illusion. It's a good thing we don't possess that power or that responsibility. A good thing we are not the causes of ourselves - that at least confers some degree of innocence on us. For the rest, we are forever complicit in what we do, even if we are not answerable to anyone. So we are both irresponsible and without excuses. Never explain, never complain.

He recognized her deft hand and eye for detail immediately. He flipped through the pages, past vignettes of the dairymaid and her vague-featured gentleman engaged in a courtship of sorts: a kiss on the hand, a whisper in the ear. By the book’s midpoint, the chit’s voluminous petticoats were up around her ears, and the illustrations comprised a sequence of quite similar poses in varying locales. Not just the dairy, but a carriage, the larder, in a hayloft lit with candles and strewn with…were those rose petals? I’ll be damned. Gray was fast divining the true source of the French painting master’s mythic exploits. More unsettling by far, however, as he perused the book, he noted a subtle alteration in the gentleman lover’s features. With each successive illustration, the hero appeared taller, broader in the shoulders, and his hair went from a cropped style to collar length in the space of two pages. The more pages Gray turned, the more he recognized himself. It was unmistakable. She’d used him as the model for these bawdy illustrations. She’d sketched him in secret; not once, but many times. And here he’d nearly gone mad with envy over each scrap of foolscap she’d inked for once crewman or another. His emotions underwent a dizzying progression-from surprised, to flattered, to (with the benefit of one especially inventive situation in an orchard) undeniably aroused. But as he lingered over a nude study of this amalgam of the real him and some picaresque fantasy, he began to feel something else entirely. He felt used. She’d rendered his form with astonishing accuracy, given that it must have been drawn before she’d any opportunity to actually see him unclothed. Not that she’d achieved an exact likeness. Her virgin’s imagination was rather generous in certain aspects and somewhat stinting in others, he noted with a bitter sort of amusement. But she’d laid him bare in these pages, without his knowledge or consent. God, she’d even drawn his scars. All in service of some adolescent erotic fantasy. And now he began to grow angry. He had been handling the leaves of the book with his fingertips only, anxious he might smudge or rip the pages. Now he abandoned all caution and flipped roughly through the remainder of the volume. Until he came to the end, and his hand froze. There they were, the two of them. He and she fully clothed and unengaged in any physical intimacies-yet intimate, in a way he had never known. Never dreamed. Sitting beneath a willow tree, his head in her lap. One of her hands lay twined with his, atop his chest. The other rested on his brow. The sky soared vast and expansive above, gauzy clouds spinning into forever. The hot fist of desire that had gripped his loins loosened, moved upward through his torso, churning the contents of his gut along the way. Then it clutched at his heart and squeezed until it hurt. Somehow, this illustration was the most dismaying of all. So naïve, so ridiculous. at least the bawdy situations were plausible, if sometimes physically improbable. This was utterly impossible. To her, he'd never been more than a fantasy. It occurred to Gray that more secrets might be packed within these trunks. If he sorted through her belongings, he might find the answers to all his questions. Perhaps answers to questions he'd never thought to ask. In spite of this, he let the lid of the trunk clap shut and fastened the strap with shaking fingers. He'd suffered as many of her fantasies as he could bear for one day. It was time to acquaint her with reality.

God’s great aim has always been, and will forever be, relationship with us. Sometimes, He may deprive us of something in order to draw us to Someone. And when we reciprocate—when we decide that we want Him more than we want His stuff—the most amazing thing happens. We are rewired and our requests are either altered as we grow to know and to prefer what He wants for us, or they are simply answered because, in seeking first the kingdom of God, “all these things” are given to us as well (Matt 6:33).

In America, my father began working as a clerk for a government agency. He rented an apartment in a place called Queens, New York. A year after he left us, he sent airplane tickets. The Delhi of the seventies is hard to imagine: the quietness, the streets empty of traffic, children playing cricket in the middle of the street and rarely having to move out of the way to let cars by, the vegetable vendors who came pushing their carts down the streets in the late afternoon, crying out their wares in tight, high-pitched voices. There weren't VCRs back then, let alone cable channels. A movie would play for twenty-five or fifty weeks in huge auditorium theaters, and then once the movie was gone, it was gone forever. I remembered feeling grief when the enormous billboards for Sholay at the end of our street were taken down. It was like somebody had died. It is also hard to remember how frugal we were. We saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. Our mothers used it to make wicks. This frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of the world in a way most people no longer are. When my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. When we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. This close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper split on paper slows down how it burns. By the time our airplane tickets arrived, not every family hired a band to play outside their house on the day of the departure to a foreign country. Still, many families did.

Strike had never confided in anyone how, during long hours in his hospital bed, he had wondered why it had been Anstis he had grabbed and pulled towards the back of the vehicle. He had gone over it in his mind: the strange presentiment, amounting almost to certainty, that they were about to explode, and the reaching out and seizing of Anstis, when he could equally have grabbed Sergeant Gary Topley. Was it because Anstis had spent most of the previous day Skyping Helen within earshot of Strike, looking at the newborn son he might otherwise never have met? Was that why Strike’s hand had reached without hesitation for the older man, the Territorial Army policeman, and not Red Cap Topley, engaged but childless? Strike did not know. He was not sentimental about children and he disliked the wife he had saved from widowhood. He knew himself to be merely one among millions of soldiers, dead and living, whose split-second actions, prompted by instinct as much as training, had forever altered others men’s fates.

What you learn and discard you will forget but what you learn and engage in you will remember forever

They went to a place which was called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I pray.” —Mark 14:32 (RSV) MAUNDY THURSDAY: LEARNING TO SAY YES I’m sitting in a car in the rain with my friend Linda, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, eating chicken satay. This will be our last meal forever, at least on this earth. Actually, I’m the only one eating. Linda is—as discreetly as possible—using a paper bag to, um, unload some of the chemotherapy from her stomach. When we arranged this trip—my flying in from Pennsylvania to California—we didn’t know it was the good-bye tour. Check that: I suspected but said nothing. Linda had been declining for two years. By the time I arrived, it was obvious this would be it. Ordinarily, I'm not an obedient servant nor a fully engaged human being. I am scattered, sarcastic, selfish, and way too proud. But for two days now I have answered her every wish the same way: Yes. I agree to even strange requests, like tossing back chicken satay while she tosses her cookies. Part of me can’t think of anything more tragic; another part of me realizes every moment of this visit is fully lived, fully engaged, and will be fully remembered for the rest of my life. Long ago, in centuries far away, another Last Supper took place among friends. I won’t pretend to know what that Passover meal felt like, but I can tell you it was fully lived and fully remembered. I can tell you that Someone said yes to what was asked that night, a sacrifice beyond sacrifice. But that’s what loved ones do for each other, something that redeems even the most scattered and selfish and proud among us sinners. Lord, help me to say yes more often—to You and to others. —Mark Collins Digging Deeper: Is 53:5; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 10:1–14

It was at Hermon in the land of Bashan, “the place of the Serpent,” that the two hundred rebels set up their supernatural fortress in the bowels of the mountain. From here, they engaged in their primeval plans of usurping Yahweh’s authority, corrupting his creation, and violating his image. They proclaimed themselves gods over the people and began to mate with human women. Their offspring were the Nephilim, giants of old, demigods who would be considered the first of the Seed of the Serpent, Nachash. Yahweh had most of the rebel Watchers bound into the earth, and drowned the land to stop the cancerous growth of this diabolical seed along with mankind’s violence and idolatry. He saved Noah and his family to start over with a purely human bloodline from which to bring forth a new Seed, a messiah king, who would destroy the power of the Serpent and his Seed forever. Yahweh allotted the nations of sinful mankind and their territories to the rebellious Watcher gods. But he kept for himself the nation of Israel and claimed the land of Canaan as his allotted territory.

But even with her record sales, the Barbie of the late eighties was not the vibrant virago of the early eighties. "We Girls Can Do Anything" gave way to "We're into Barbie," a slogan that suggests turning inward, away from active engagement with the world. "The viewpoint of people changed," Barbara Lui explained, "and the 'mommy track' came on, and women didn't believe anymore that they could do anything. We're in an era—perhaps we're leaving it now—where people did not give themselves goals that were as tough.

I define membership as the state of being formally engaged with an organization or group on an ongoing basis.

Business was booming for Tiffany & Co. in the late 1990s, thanks to the introduction of a new affordable silver jewellery line. The $110 silver charm bracelet inscribed with the Tiffany name was coveted by teenage girls, causing sales of the new silver product line to skyrocket 67% between 1997 and 2002. By 2003, company earnings had doubled and the silver jewellery line accounted for a third of Tiffany’s U.S. sales. And yet the queues of excited girls didn’t fill the store managers with joy. Sure, sales were up and stores were busy, but the people close to the brand, who understood its heritage, began to worry that this lower price point would forever change how the brand was perceived by its high-end customers. “We didn’t want the brand to be defined by any single product.” —Michael Kowalski, CEO, Tiffany & Co. Despite some unease from investors, Tiffany raised prices on their most popular silver products by 30% over the next three years and managed to halt the growth of their highly profitable silver line. And so the company sacrificed short-term gain and profits for the long-term good of the brand by telling the story they wanted customers to believe—that Tiffany’s represents something special. A client recently told me about her friend’s excited engagement announcement on Facebook. All she did was post a photo of the Tiffany blue box—not a picture of the ring in sight. The box alone was enough to say everything she wanted to say. QUESTIONS FOR YOU How are you least like the competition?

The only way to get the answers is to keep looking at living things and learning more about the process by which we all came to be. Evolution happens here no matter how we all got started. But now we can start to ask meaningfully about origins and destinies as well. We will go to thrilling places—unimaginable places—if only we keep our minds open to new ideas, our faculties keen to significant pieces of evidence, our youthful curiosities forever engaged. Where did we come from? Are we alone? Search on!

The opening of this letter is the easy part. Jesus praises the church for the positive things it is being and doing. The Lord repeats this pattern of opening each letter with encouraging words throughout this section of Scripture. Ironically, praise is crucial to recovery. It instills hope. Most men who struggle sexually have hidden their secret lives of sin for so long that they are hounded by a tremendous fear of being found out. If their fears come true, they may fall into a pit of despair. By contrast, it is the Lord’s nature to be gentle with his people, even when they are in sin. He truly is longsuffering. As the second chapter in Romans points out, “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” (2:4). By offering praise, Jesus gently affirms his love for them. He continued to John in Revelation, “Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols” (2:20). The Lord now transitions into the real issue. First, notice the use of the word tolerate. It appears this church knew what was going on but just looked the other way. Were the leaders merely putting up with open immorality? Not only that, but the woman somehow worked her way into a position of authority—a self-made leader. This situation isn’t unique to the first century. We see the same thing happening today. Many pastors refuse to believe that the men, women, and youth in their churches are viewing pornography and engaging in immoral sexual behaviors. Either they simply don’t want to believe it or they are trapped by the same problems and feel a lack of credibility to address those who are in the wrong. Today, the word tolerance is used as if it were a great virtue. I want to dispel this myth. No doubt God is patient, and we are all living proof of his patience. However, God is not tolerant in that he is consistent in what he does and doesn’t like in our behaviors and hearts. Otherwise Jesus would not have had to die for the sin of the world. The same things that upset him in Genesis upset him throughout Scripture. Remember, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

There are the moments you know you’ll remember forever as soon they happen: your engagement, standing at the altar and saying “I do,” the news of your spouse cheating, someone saying the words “you’re fired.” All those beautiful and wretched pieces of news available on your personal movie reel at any second and until the end of time. Still,

There’s a great Pixar video about telling stories. The video—“Pixar in a Box”—featured Pete Docter, director of the films Inside Out, Up, and Monsters, Inc. According to Docter, the power of story is that “it has an ability to connect with people on an emotional level.” He gives a bit of advice that I think is worth keeping in mind when you create a compelling story: Write what you know. Says Docter, even though you may be writing a story about explosions or monsters or car chases, “put something into it that talks about your own life—how you feel…. Something from your own life will make that story come alive.” Every good story has three elements: Characters. In a work situation, that might be you, your teammates, your customers or clients, and your boss. Who is in the story? Get your audience to feel an emotional investment in the characters. Plot. This could be, for example, the process of digitally transforming your business. A good plot keeps your audience engaged, wondering what’s coming up next. Story arc. This is the movement of the story from beginning to middle to end. You’ve got a problem and, through much trial and tribulation, you find a solution and become the hero of your team. Every story you tell—even if you’re writing about a technical problem, or starting your own business, or whatever it might be—needs to have these three elements. If you do this right, then people will care about your story. They don’t care about features, they care about the benefits of your idea—how what you’re pitching makes them better, smarter, more successful, happier, more fulfilled, more respected, and so on. They want to feel like a hero. And if you can make your audience feel like heroes, they will be engaged in your story and deeply connect with it on an emotional level.

When your brain feels safe, it can operate at its most sophisticated level. You’re more subtle in your thinking, better able to see and manage ambiguity. You assume positive intent of those around you, and you’re able to tap collective wisdom. You’re engaged and you’re moving forward.

Please take me home," she said. He turned the car and drove at a swift speed back over the silent road. And in silence they sat side by side, he in sorrow and she in hidden anger. Why, oh, why had she not spoken quickly and fended off this blow? For it would always be a blow, she could never forget that it was she who had somehow lost his love, and when love came again, she would always take it uneasily, fearful of some lack in herself be­ cause Lew had ceased to love her. True, she did not love him, but that was not the same. It was not at all the same when a woman refused a man. It did him no harm, at least not for long. But as long as a woman lived she could not for­ get. Forever there could be no friendship between Lew and her, because when she saw him she would always remember and the wound would bleed, not for love but for pride. "I shall always hate myself," he muttered in the darkness. Still she did not reply. Let him hate himself. Let him al­ways remember that he had done a hateful deed. Oh, he had the right to do it, they weren't living in yesterday, but it was strange how the old conventions held. There had been justice as well as mercy in the idea that a man must never be the one to break the bond of betrothal. He must contrive as a gentleman to let her do it. He must save her whole, because she had so little else except love and pride. The rest of the world was his, and was still his, she thought passionately, in spite of this most modem year.” ~ The Engagement

This was my errand in Kingston," he said. "Look inside." Lavender opened the case. A ring sparkled within. An exquisite one, gemstones patterned in a daisy cluster, gold band. She gasped at the diamond flower's intricate beauty. "Try it on," Robert urged. "Left hand, wedding finger." Her cheeks flamed. It fit. Then she felt terrible. "I shouldn't have doubted you, Robert." His eyes, beloved constellations. "No, you shouldn't have doubted me. But now, if you could just say yes, I'd be forever----" "Yes," she said. "Forever.

Before the 1940’s, if one woman in an audience stood up and shrieked at the top of her lungs throughout an entire show she’d have been carted off to an asylum. By the mid-forties, however, entire audiences behaved like that, screaming, tearing at their clothes and hair, leaving their seats to board the stage. On December 30th, 1942, while Frank Sinatra sang at the Paramount Theater in New York, the behavior of the audience changed, and a part of our relationship to well-known people changed forever. Psychiatrists and psychologists of the day struggled to explain the phenomenon. They recalled medieval dance crazes, spoke of “mass frustrated love” and “mass hypnosis.” The media age did bring a type of mass hypnosis into American life. It affects all of us to some degree, and some of us to a great degree. Before the advent of mass-media, a young girl might have admired a performer from afar, and it would have been acceptable to have a passing crush. It would not have been acceptable if she pursued the performer to his home, or if she had to be restrained by police. It would not have been acceptable to skip school in order to wait for hours outside a hotel and then try to tear pieces of clothing from the passing star. Yet that unhealthy behavior became “normal” in the Sinatra days. In fact, audience behavior that surprised everyone in 1942 was expected two years later when Sinatra appeared again at the Paramount Theater. This time, the 30,000 screaming, bobby-soxed fans were joined by a troop of reporters. The media were learning to manipulate this new behavior to their advantage. Having predicted a commotion, 450 police officers were assigned to that one theater, and it appeared that society had learned to deal with this phenomenon. It had not. During the engagement, an 18-year old named Alexander Ivanovich Dorogokupetz stood up in the theater and threw an egg that hit Sinatra in the face. The show stopped, and for a moment, a brief moment, Sinatra was not the star. Now it was Dorogokupetz mobbed by audience members and Dorogokupetz who had to be escorted out by police. Society had not learned to deal with this, and still hasn’t. Dorogokupetz told police: “I vowed to put an end to this monotony of two years of consecutive swooning. It felt good.” Saddled with the least American of names, he had tried to make one for himself in the most American way, and but for his choice of a weapon, he would probably be as famous today as Frank Sinatra. Elements in society were pioneering the skills of manipulating emotion and behavior in ways that had never been possible before: electronic ways. The media were institutionalizing idolatry. Around

Before the 1940’s, if one woman in an audience stood up and shrieked at the top of her lungs throughout an entire show she’d have been carted off to an asylum. By the mid-forties, however, entire audiences behaved like that, screaming, tearing at their clothes and hair, leaving their seats to board the stage. On December 30th, 1942, while Frank Sinatra sang at the Paramount Theater in New York, the behavior of the audience changed, and a part of our relationship to well-known people changed forever. Psychiatrists and psychologists of the day struggled to explain the phenomenon. They recalled medieval dance crazes, spoke of “mass frustrated love” and “mass hypnosis.” The media age did bring a type of mass hypnosis into American life. It affects all of us to some degree, and some of us to a great degree. Before the advent of mass-media, a young girl might have admired a performer from afar, and it would have been acceptable to have a passing crush. It would not have been acceptable if she pursued the performer to his home, or if she had to be restrained by police. It would not have been acceptable to skip school in order to wait for hours outside a hotel and then try to tear pieces of clothing from the passing star. Yet that unhealthy behavior became “normal” in the Sinatra days. In fact, audience behavior that surprised everyone in 1942 was expected two years later when Sinatra appeared again at the Paramount Theater. This time, the 30,000 screaming, bobby-soxed fans were joined by a troop of reporters. The media were learning to manipulate this new behavior to their advantage. Having predicted a commotion, 450 police officers were assigned to that one theater, and it appeared that society had learned to deal with this phenomenon. It had not. During the engagement, an 18-year old named Alexander Ivanovich Dorogokupetz stood up in the theater and threw an egg that hit Sinatra in the face. The show stopped, and for a moment, a brief moment, Sinatra was not the star. Now it was Dorogokupetz mobbed by audience members and Dorogokupetz who had to be escorted out by police. Society had not learned to deal with this, and still hasn’t. Dorogokupetz told police: “I vowed to put an end to this monotony of two years of consecutive swooning. It felt good.” Saddled with the least American of names, he had tried to make one for himself in the most American way, and but for his choice of a weapon, he would probably be as famous today as Frank Sinatra. Elements in society were pioneering the skills of manipulating emotion and behavior in ways that had never been possible before: electronic ways. The media were institutionalizing idolatry.

Spelled candles?” I asked. “The pillars. They have magic. They’ve been here forever. This is only the third time a witch has lit them.

First, we don’t know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people’s biases are now believed and spread among millions of people. Second,… we tend to only communicate with people that we agree with, and thanks to social media, we can mute, un-follow, and block everybody else. Third, online discussions quickly descend into angry mobs.… It’s as if we forget that the people behind screens are actually real people and not just avatars. And fourth, it became really hard to change our opinions. Because of the speed and brevity of social media, we are forced to jump to conclusions and write sharp opinions in 140 characters about complex world affairs. And once we do that, it lives forever on the Internet.… Fifth—and in my point of view, this is the most critical—today, our social media experiences are designed in a way that favors broadcasting over engagements, posts over discussions, shallow comments over deep conversations. It’s as if we agreed that we are here to talk at each other instead of talking with each other.

After comparing desired with available resources, it became crystal clear that the company was pursuing many more projects than it had people to staff. In particular, by trying to engage in many highly demanding platform launches at the same time, the company was unlikely to do justice to its portfolio of options. Nor was it likely to manage the enhancement launches (as opposed to platform launches) that current customers were demanding, because many of these were still on the drawing board and were competing for the same scarce design and engineering talent as the major platform launches. In short, the company was taking on too much. The results of this overcommitment meant that project deadlines perpetually slipped, promises to key customers were often broken, and people were beginning to feel burned out. This situation is not uncommon. The processes through which companies take on projects usually lead them to discover that they haven’t got the resources to do justice to everything on their plates. In particular, when managers have not clearly thought through which resources for projects will be needed to support their needs to either build new platforms or learn through options, the different types of projects compete with each other, creating confusion. This lack of coordination is also typical of companies that haven’t matched their strategy to available resources. A far wiser approach is to pursue a few well-run projects than to chase down a grab-bag of forever-behind-schedule and over-budget initiatives.

Identify some of the actual individuals who are your best customers. Evaluate those with the highest customer lifetime value (CLV) and develop hypotheses about their shared traits. Although demographics and psychographics might be the most obvious, you’ll find additional insights if you examine their behavior. What channels did they come through? What messages resonated? How did they onboard? How recently, frequently, and deeply have they engaged? Compare best customers and worst customers—those you acquired who weren’t ultimately profitable or who weren’t satisfied with your offering. Notice people who exhaust your free trial but don’t convert to paid, or who join but cancel within the first few months. The best customers have the greatest customer lifetime value (CLV); they will spend more with you over time than anyone else. Produce either a qualitative write-up of your best customer or use regression analysis to prioritize characteristics. Share these conclusions with your frontline team—retail workers, customer support, sales—to accrue early insights. With a concrete conception of your best customer, you can discern if the customer segment is sufficiently large to justify addressing. Test and adjust as needed. Then make these best customers and their forever promise as “real” as possible to the team. If you have actual customers who fit the profile, talk about them, invite them in, or have their pictures on your wall. You’re going to feel their pain, share their objectives, and design experiences for them. It’s important to know them well.

You have to help people do more of the work that has impact and meaning. The more we do work that has no real purpose, the less engaged and motivated we are.

One can waste one’s life very easily because it is so short. But it is strange: if you ask people, “Why are you playing cards? Why are you playing poker? Why are you so deeply engaged in chess?” they say, “To kill time.” As if they have more time than they need. As if time is so useless that you have to kill it. Time is the most precious thing. Once gone it is gone forever. And we don’t have much time: life is really very short. It flies so fast that between birth and death there is not much gap. And people are killing time, not knowing at all that in fact it is just the other way round: time is killing you.

You really like me, Church? I mean, I know you said you did at the hot springs, but … you shouldn’t have to be engaged to a girl you don’t want.” “Who said I’m engaged to a girl I don’t want?” he replies, setting his coffee on the dresser at the end of my bed and turning back to me. He captures my chin in long fingers and studies my face. “I don’t typically do things I don’t want to do.” “Yeah, but this was just to get me back to Adamson, right?” “Was it?” he replies, meeting my question with yet another of his own. Church leans forward and kisses my mouth, just so, a soft brush of lips, like the touch of a butterfly’s wings. “I like seeing you in my mother’s dress, Charlotte Farren Carson.