Even On The Hardest Days Quotes

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfil themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form, to represent themselves. Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. And every young farmboy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow. Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live. When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. Let God speak within you, and your thoughts will grow silent. You are anxious because your path leads away from mother and home. But every step and every day lead you back again to the mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all. A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother. So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees have long thoughts, long-breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.

A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office, and the podiatrist’s office says, “What seems to be the problem, moth?” The moth says “What’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? I go to work for Gregory Illinivich, and all day long I work. Honestly doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Illinivich knows. He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. But I don’t know, I wake up in a malaise, and I walk here and there… at night I…I sometimes wake up and I turn to some old lady in my bed that’s on my arm. A lady that I once loved, doc. I don’t know where to turn to. My youngest, Alexendria, she fell in the…in the cold of last year. The cold took her down, as it did many of us. And my other boy, and this is the hardest pill to swallow, doc. My other boy, Gregarro Ivinalititavitch… I no longer love him. As much as it pains me to say, when I look in his eyes, all I see is the same cowardice that I… that I catch when I take a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. If only I wasn’t such a coward, then perhaps…perhaps I could bring myself to reach over to that cocked and loaded gun that lays on the bedside behind me and end this hellish facade once and for all…Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth, just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, “Moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?” And the moth says, “‘Cause the light was on.

If I've given the impression that trust is easy - with your spouse, with your kids, with anybody you care about - if I've made it seem like it's easy to do....then I've misspoken. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But you have nothing without it. Nothing meaningful at all. That's why I chose to do it. Over and over and over. Even when it bit me in the ass. And I will keep choosing it until the day I die

The hardest thing about being an outcast isn't the love you don't receive. It's the love you long to give that nobody wants. After a while, it backs up into your system like stagnant water and turns toxic, poisoning your spirit. When this happens, you don't have many choices available. You can become a bitter loner who goes through life being pissed off at the world; you can fester with rage until one day you murder your classmates. Or, you can find another outlet for your love, where it will be appreciated and maybe even returned.

What about you?You stay by my side day and night and take the hardest hits of them all.Why,Will?Why have you stayed with me all these centuries?You watch me die again and again,yet you never leave. You keep trying to save me, even though you know I'm doomed. All because some angel told you to?Come on.No more secrets,you said.Tell me.

Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter — the hardest season, the most implacable — dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.

What matters, she tells herself, is that even on the hardest days, when the grief is so heavy she can barely breathe, she must carry on. She must get up, get dressed, and go to work. She will take each day as it comes. She will keep moving.

Inside all of us, she reflected, were smiling bones. She would do her best to remember from now on that even on the hardest days there was always a smile underneath her skin.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

Today, the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love -- all love -- love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a café. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.

And were you being good to yourself? i don’t think so. but, i forgive you, girl, who tallied stretch marks into reasons why no one should get close. i forgive you, silly girl, sweet breath, decent by default. i forgive you for being afraid. did everything betray you? even the rain you love so much made rust out of your jewelry? i forgive you, soft spoken girl speaking with fake brash voice, fooling no one. i see you, tender even on your hardest days. i forgive you, waiting for him to call, i forgive you, the diets and the cruel friends. especially for that one time you said ‘i fucking give up on love, it’s not worth it, i’d rather be alone forever’. you were just pretending, weren’t you? i know you didn’t mean that. your body, your mouth, your heart, made specifically for loving. sometimes the things we love, will kill us, but weren’t we dying anyway? i forgive you for being something that will eventually die. perishable goods, fading out slowly, little human, i wouldn’t want to be in a world where you don’t exist.

The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses. Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter - the hardest season, the most implacable - dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.

I believe in love, Kay. I believe that each of us have someone out there that will love us no matter what. I like to believe that. Otherwise, what would be the point? Love is beautiful, it's free from judgment and it never condemns. It enlightens, it embraces, and it makes even the hardest day worth living through. Who wouldn't want to believe in that?

Change You can draw a path for your life and have all of your goals set. You can change yourself as much as possible and change things around you just to reach those goals. Here’s the catch. Never underestimate the power of fate. It can knock down the highest of goals that seem guaranteed in your life. Plan, yes, and decide, yes, but be prepared for plans not to work. If they don’t work despite your hardest efforts, there must be a reason. You may not be able to see the reason at the time, but you will one day, maybe even years later. Did your efforts go to waste? If you don’t learn from them, then yes, they did go to waste. Even after changing yourself and your surroundings for the sake of reaching that one goal, you may realize that it was waiting for you at the place where you started, when you were the true you who did not need to change or be changed. Change for yourself, not just for a goal.

Answers seemed to float through the space around him. It was about love. It was about getting handed at conception a gift that sets you apart from everyone and you spend your whole life drifting through the margins of time, not understanding hours like everyone else seems to: glancing at wristwatches, checking timetables - you hardly know what it is people are trying to accomplish when they go through their days: morning, noon, evening, night. Wake up and sleep and wake up. This was about family, how blood superseded death; it was about trying your hardest, it was about snow.

Hemingway never said any of this. It's all AI-generated bullshit. The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn as an adult is the relentless need to keep going, no matter how shattered I feel inside." This truth is both raw and universal. Life doesn’t pause when our hearts are heavy, our minds are fractured, or our spirits feel like they’re unraveling. It keeps moving—unrelenting, unapologetic—demanding that we move with it. There’s no time to stop, no pause for repair, no moment of stillness where we can gently piece ourselves back together. The world doesn’t wait, even when we need it to. What makes this even harder is that no one really prepares us for it. As children, we grow up on a steady diet of stories filled with happy endings, tales of redemption and triumph where everything always falls into place. But adulthood strips away those comforting narratives. Instead, it reveals a harsh truth: survival isn’t glamorous or inspiring most of the time. It’s wearing a mask of strength when you’re falling apart inside. It’s showing up when all you want is to retreat. It’s choosing to move forward, step by painful step, when your heart begs for rest. And yet, we endure. That’s the miracle of being human—we endure. Somewhere in the depths of our pain, we find reserves of strength we didn’t know we possessed. We learn to hold space for ourselves, to be the comfort we crave, to whisper words of hope when no one else does. Over time, we realize that resilience isn’t loud or grandiose; it’s a quiet defiance, a refusal to let life’s weight crush us entirely. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, there are days when it feels almost impossible to take another step. But even then, we move forward. Each tiny step is proof of our resilience, a reminder that even in our darkest moments, we’re still fighting, still refusing to give up. That fight—that courage—is the quiet miracle of survival.

So I was a stone in the sea. Gravity gave up on keeping me above the surface. I did not try to swim and so I sank to the bottom with no will to turn back. ”I’m tired,” I told him. ”I’m done”. But he wouldn’t let me and he held me up even on his hardest days and he was a lighthouse when all I saw was darkness.

I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?

It takes courage, humiliating courage, to step aside from your own sovereignty and imagined control and begin looking for the gift that comes unmerited. Yes, I’m talking about grace. Grace by my definition is the gift that comes unearned. In a world of unbelievably able bodies, where new diets are fashioned every day to keep my brand of story away, it is hard to realize you may be living in the middle of the best story ever told. That the story of breast cancer could possibly be a good story? A great story even? It would be easier to shake my fist at the test results and scream that this isn’t the right story, but to receive—humbly receive—the story no one would ever want, and know there is goodness in the midst of its horror, is not something I could ever do in my own strength. I simply cannot. That receiving comes from the One who received His own suffering for a much greater purpose than my own.

I had no more value after I became an author than when I was in my home tending to runny noses, little bumps and bruises. . . Our value can't be wrapped inside what others think or we think, because that is too dependent on this ever-shifting world. The value God places on us makes us more than we think we are, even on our hardest days, weeks, or years.

Remembering your mistakes more acutely than any minor success. This was the worst. The things that kept you up at night. Tip a waiter that was too small. The words that didn't fit the moment. Words that didn't come till to late. You could kill yourself in increments, punishing your spirit day after day-regret. Guilt. Not the guilt of the little girl who woke in the night embarrassed God was mad at her because she had ticked balls under her shirt, pretending to have breasts. "I even felt sexy." That was sweet, and pure, no crime at all. But the crime of obsessive replay-get rid of it, get rid of it. Who could ever have known that hardest punishments would be the ones you gave yourself?

Love is beautiful, it's free from judgment and it never condemns. It enlightens, it embraces, and it makes even the hardest day worth living through.

That's how, on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate-factory roof in 1950 ending up sitting in a row at ten o'clock on a spring morning, drinking Black Label beer supplied by the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank Prison. That beer was piss-warm, but it was still the best I ever had in my life. We sat and drank it and felt the sun on our shoulders, and not even the expression of half-amusement, half-contempt on Hadley's face - as if he was watching apes drink beer instead of men - could spoil it. It lasted twenty minutes, that beer-break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men. We could have been drinking beer and tarring the roof of one of our own houses.

Relief doesn’t have to be postponed until a trial is over; it can come with a change of mind-set, a mind-set of hope, seeking, and noticing the small but significant blessings from God that witness He’s there. A mind-set and realization that you’re still here, you’re still standing, and you are not broken. A mind-set that allows yourself to have open eyes to see past our narrow and mortal desires. Even our loneliest and hardest days are, in fact, rich with direction and guidance to move you forward, not backward, on the path God has for you to the best and most fulfilling journey.

How can I explain to her that I just can't come home? It's too soon, it's too late; I do want to be with Helen every second of the day but at the same time I don't want to be with her at all. I want to have back what I felt at the beginning. I could no more leave her then than leave my arms or legs. How do you find the beginning, though? There are no roads or signs. You start to doubt it even exists. The hardest thing isn't deciding that I want to go back to when Helen and Gracie and I were us. The most difficult thing is finding the map to get there.

Tenways showed his rotten teeth. ‘Fucking make me.’ ‘I’ll give it a try.’ A man came strolling out of the dark, just his sharp jaw showing in the shadows of his hood, boots crunching heedless through the corner of the fire and sending a flurry of sparks up around his legs. Very tall, very lean and he looked like he was carved out of wood. He was chewing meat from a chicken bone in one greasy hand and in the other, held loose under the crosspiece, he had the biggest sword Beck had ever seen, shoulder-high maybe from point to pommel, its sheath scuffed as a beggar’s boot but the wire on its hilt glinting with the colours of the fire-pit. He sucked the last shred of meat off his bone with a noisy slurp, and he poked at all the drawn steel with the pommel of his sword, long grip clattering against all those blades. ‘Tell me you lot weren’t working up to a fight without me. You know how much I love killing folk. I shouldn’t, but a man has to stick to what he’s good at. So how’s this for a recipe…’ He worked the bone around between finger and thumb, then flicked it at Tenways so it bounced off his chain mail coat. ‘You go back to fucking sheep and I’ll fill the graves.’ Tenways licked his bloody top lip. ‘My fight ain’t with you, Whirrun.’ And it all came together. Beck had heard songs enough about Whirrun of Bligh, and even hummed a few himself as he fought his way through the logpile. Cracknut Whirrun. How he’d been given the Father of Swords. How he’d killed his five brothers. How he’d hunted the Shimbul Wolf in the endless winter of the utmost North, held a pass against the countless Shanka with only two boys and a woman for company, bested the sorcerer Daroum-ap-Yaught in a battle of wits and bound him to a rock for the eagles. How he’d done all the tasks worthy of a hero in the valleys, and so come south to seek his destiny on the battlefield. Songs to make the blood run hot, and cold too. Might be his was the hardest name in the whole North these days, and standing right there in front of Beck, close enough to lay a hand on. Though that probably weren’t a good idea. ‘Your fight ain’t with me?’ Whirrun glanced about like he was looking for who it might be with. ‘You sure? Fights are twisty little bastards, you draw steel it’s always hard to say where they’ll lead you. You drew on Calder, but when you drew on Calder you drew on Curnden Craw, and when you drew on Craw you drew on me, and Jolly Yon Cumber, and Wonderful there, and Flood – though he’s gone for a wee, I think, and also this lad here whose name I’ve forgotten.’ Sticking his thumb over his shoulder at Beck. ‘You should’ve seen it coming. No excuse for it, a proper War Chief fumbling about in the dark like you’ve nothing in your head but shit. So my fight ain’t with you either, Brodd Tenways, but I’ll still kill you if it’s called for, and add your name to my songs, and I’ll still laugh afterwards. So?’ ‘So what?’ ‘So shall I draw?

If you think acting like you don't exist isn't the hardest thing I've ever done, you're wrong. I hate not talking to you, I hate not bickering like we're an old married couple, and I hate not spending every day right next to you. But this is how it has to be. Brandon hates me, and, Princess, trust me when I say he has every reason to. So if after everything I've done to you, you'll still even consider being my friend, then it has to be Sundays only.

I am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrast. In the light and the dark days. In the hope and the hurt. In the fire and in the ash. I am a firm believer in the fall and in the rise; in the sin and in the saving. I am a firm believer in the broken, the people who hold their pieces together with belief, who bandage their fear in faith. I am a firm believer in the souls who have always managed to protect their soft; who have always known, even when it ached the most, that their wounds were healing them, that the hardest parts of life were growing them from the inside. I am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrast—you have not lived until you have died.

You know, that's the thing that made me cry the hardest last night, even after what you did to me? Even with how mad I am. how fucking gross I feel every time I even look at your mouth or think about hearing what I heard-thinking about how you made me hear it-it's even worse to think I'm going to leave and you're going to drive back to Silt and die there. Die there every day.

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece. Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can’t do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that. This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day.

So yeah, you were part of the job. Don't get me wrong, Mercer, I like you. You're smart, fluent in sarcasm, and, Bad Dog incident aside, pretty kick-ass at magic. And it's not like you're hard to look at." "Be still my beating heart." "But to answer your question, no part of the Archer Cross you knew at Hecate exists. That day in the cellar, I kissed you back because it was my job to stay close to you. If that's where you wanted to take things, then that's where I was going to go. I kissed you because I had to. Not exactly the hardest assignment I've ever had, but an assignment nonetheless." I stood there absorbing his words like blows, my heart aching. But it wasn't what he said that made me feel like I'd been punched in the chest. It's that I knew he was lying. That speech came out way too quickly and way too smooth, almost like he'd been practicing it in his head. The same way I'd been practing what I'd say to him if I ever saw him again. I couldn't even begin to handle that right now, so instead I just said, "Okay,then. Yay for honesty. Now that we're done with the confessional part of the evening, why don't you tell me why we're here." There was another pause, then he started walking again. I followed, leaves crunching under my feet. "Like I said, Hacte Hall has always made The Eye nervous." "Why? Are they allergic to plaid?" I thought he might laugh, but instead, he said, "Think about it,Mercer.One place where Prodigium round up their most powerful members? Don't tell me that's not suspicious." That had never occurred to me. I'd always just thought of all us at Hecate as giant screwups, but in a way, Archer was right. We'd all been sentenced to Hex Hall because of spells that were powerful and dangerous. I thought of Cal saying I created "too big." Wasn't that what just about everyone at Hecate had done? Still, the idea that the place I'd called home for nearly a year was actually some evil farm for powerful Prodigium was unsettling to say the least.

He found the first skipped meals were the hardest, the hunger a hollow ache. The longer he went without eating, though, the second day, the third, the pain would subside from an ache to the memory of an ache and finally to only the memory of a memory. Until you ate you didn't know how hungry you were, how empty you'd become. Wallace's visits had shown him that being lonesome was its own fast, that after going unnourished for so long, even the foulest bite could remind your body how much it needed to eat. That you could be starving and not even know it.

Just work, work, work, even at the risk of making mistakes. And if and when you do make mistakes, and you do hurt someone, ask for forgiveness. Asking forgiveness and admitting you've made a mistake is the hardest thing of all. But if someone else does you good, remember it always. Showing gratitude is every bit as complicated.

...if I have a daughter I will tell her she can do anything, and I will mean it, because I have no other intention of informing her otherwise. As my mother did with me, and my mother's mother before her, I shall simply hide the truth from her. I will tell her that despite what others may whisper, there is no difference between her and any boy. I will tell her to work her hardest and try her best. And that if one day she looks around and finds that, despite her very best efforts, lesser men have superseded her, then she probably could have done better. These words may not be true, nor will they be fair, but I would hope that they ensure she never becomes a victim of her own femininity. I hope she will be empowered to pick herself up, study harder, work longer, and exceed her own expectations. I don't want my daughter to break any glass ceilings. I'd rather she never even contemplated their existence. Because glass ceilings, closed doors, and boys clubs are notions, they're ideas, and they're not tangible. You can't see, touch, or feel them. They can only exercise power over us if we choose to believe in them. So why lay down your own gauntlet? The cliche rings true, if you reach for the moon, you might just land on the stars. Throw a glass ceiling into the works, and it can only get in the way. And I suspect that deep down, every woman who ever truly excelled thought exactly this way. I doubt they ever gave much thought to the fact that they are women. I think they just really wanted to rock out. And they did; louder, harder, and better than anyone else around them. And at some point down the line, enough people took note.

Engage with the world and it will hone you, more connected, more able to love all the world, even the hard parts we're going through right now and the hardest parts yet to come.

The hardest war to win is one you don’t even realize you are fighting, and the hardest enemy to defeat is the one you don’t even know exists. Every day you are at war with resistance.

I have to believe that if we didn't need to protect ourselves, we wouldn't be so prone to avoiding rest. When fear enters the story, something changes. In response to the risk and need around us, we have constructed systems around labor that leave even the hardest workers vulnerable, in deficit. Labor is no longer a gift. How could it be when one is withering from hunger? Labor instead becomes a means to an end, not an avenue for flourishing but a transaction for survival. This is a grim human development, for no one wants to spend their days merely surviving. And this transaction is nearly always incongruent with the amount of labor one does. You can work, as my gramma did in California, for a full month just to be able to finally move from the shelter into low-income housing. Meanwhile, the powerful convince us that there is not enough while their pocket spill out in the open. They distract us from this by dangling opportunity in the opposite direction. They appear as rescuers, demanding ceaseless labor from us but presenting it as a gift. We are expected to feel deeply lucky and even indebted to a society that allows us to work, even if that work cannot satisfy our most basic needs.

Writing is hard. Writing that is good, writing that is powerful enough to evoke a change or an authentic emotion or even just an idea in another human being is about as mysterious as an alchemical recipe, but there are a few known ingredients. Craft? Yes, absolutely. Devotion? A load - yes! Humility? Not vital, I suppose, but all my favorites include at least a dash. Before those can be added to the cauldron though, you must have a base of Honesty. Honesty is difficult to find in public spaces these days (and getting harder every goddamn day) but if you're quiet, and patient, you can usually find some hidden in your room somewhere. (It helps to turn off the lights, for some reason.) Problem is, Honesty is invariably bound to Vulnerability and the only thing that cuts the bitterness of Vulnerability is Courage. And Courage? Well. Courage is the hardest thing of all.

How was my day? It was a lifetime. It was the best of times and the worst of times. I was both lonely and never alone. I was simultaneously bored out of my skull and completely overwhelmed. I was saturated with touch—desperate to get the baby off of me and the second I put her down I yearned to smell her sweet skin again. This day required more than I’m physically and emotionally capable of, while requiring nothing from my brain. I had thoughts today, ideas, real things to say and no one to hear them. I felt manic all day, alternating between love and fury. At least once an hour I looked at their faces and thought I might not survive the tenderness of my love for them. The next moment I was furious. I felt like a dormant volcano, steady on the outside but ready to explode and spew hot lava at any moment. And then I noticed that Amma’s foot doesn’t fit into her Onesie anymore, and I started to panic at the reminder that this will be over soon, that it’s fleeting—that this hardest time of my life is supposed to be the best time of my life. That this brutal time is also the most beautiful time. Am I enjoying it enough? Am I missing the best time of my life? Am I too tired to be properly in love? That fear and shame felt like adding a heavy, itchy blanket on top of all the hard. But I’m not complaining, so please don’t try to fix it. I wouldn’t have my day or my life any other way. I’m just saying—it’s a hell of a hard thing to explain—an entire day with lots of babies. It’s far too much and not even close to enough. But

It's the hardest thing I've ever done. Because it's not a one-time thing. It's not a magic moment. Every single day, I have to choose to believe he has forgiven me, Even though I still haven't worked out how to forgive myself.

I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home. I loved you enough to insist you buy a bike with your own money even though we could afford it. I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to the drugstore and confess, “I stole this.” I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you cleaned your bedroom, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes. I loved you enough to say, “Yes, you can go to Disney World on Mother’s Day.” I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment, disgust and tears in my eyes. I loved you enough not to make excuses for your lack of respect or your bad manners. I loved you enough to admit that I was wrong and ask for your forgiveness. I loved you enough to ignore what every other mother did or said. I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail. I loved you enough to let you assume the responsibility for your own actions at age 6, 10 or 16. I loved you enough to figure you would lie about the party being chaperoned but forgave you for it—after discovering I was right. I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I wanted you to be. But, most of all, I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.

Perhaps someone may say 'But surely, Socrates, after you have left us you can spend the rest of your life in quietly minding your own business.' This is the hardest thing of all to make some of you understand. If I say that this would be disobedience to God, and that is why I cannot 'mind my own business', you will not believe that I am serious. If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the best thing that a man can do, and that life without this sort of examination is not worth living, you will be even less inclined to believe me. Nevertheless, that is how it is, gentlemen, as I maintain; though it is not easy to convince you of it.

In Behavior Design we match ourselves with new habits we can do even when we are at our most hurried, unmotivated, and beautifully imperfect. If you can imagine yourself doing the behavior on your hardest day of the week, it’s probably a good match. It’s probably a Golden Behavior.

Laugh. We’re all going to be dead anyway some day. So while you should try your hardest to make the most of your life, when something funny happens, when you make a mistake, or even (and perhaps especially) when bad things happen, it’s easier if you can laugh about yourself and the world.

Your happiness is all I’ve ever wanted, even if it’s at the cost of mine. You deserve to be happy with the man of your own choosing, and I should never have gotten in your way. My selfishness cost you so much, and there’s nothing I can do to make that right, but this I can do — I’ll let you go, even if it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, even if I’ll regret it for a million years and a day. I love you, Sierra. Thank you for allowing me to experience real happiness for the first time in my life, even if it didn’t last. I’ll never regret you, Kitten. You will always be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Welcome back our old friend imposter syndrome. The inescapable feeling that you do not belong. You could have worked your hardest, put your blood, sweat and tears into getting where you are today and still feel like at any moment the rug will be pulled from beneath your feet when everyone realises the failure you really are. With anxiety you worry, and even when you've put your most into this world, you will still worry, because anxiety is stupid and hateful. You worry that you're not doing well enough, you worry that your colleagues don't like you, you worry your boss thinks your work is fucking awful, you worry about talking to people, you worry about the commute, you worry and you worry and worrying is fucking exhausting. This all happens before you have even started work that day. This is the pre-game: inescapable fear, irrational dread, complete implosion of self-confidence, and you're only halfway through pouring your first coffee.

Listen. I don’t know how to do this right, but I really, really love you,” he said, and cleared his throat. He licked his lips and started talking fast. “I think you’re the sweetest, most beautiful girl in the world, and I’ve been living for our telephone conversations. It’s the only thing that gets me through these days, knowing that I get to talk to you every night. Keeping the secret about this job was the hardest thing for me to do, but I wanted to tell you in person. And ever since I knew I was going to come here and ask you this, I couldn’t eat or drink anything. And I know I’m different from you, and I’m probably never going to be cool, but I love yourpaintings, I love that you do art, I get it, and I won’t ever tell you that you should do paintings that match somebody’s couch. I will keep you in paint and canvases for the rest of your life, and if you really want to teach elementary school, then I think you’ll be the best teacher there ever was. And I love that you dress so cute, and I love the way you smell and the way you sing in the shower. I used to camp out on the floor outside the door when you were showering just so I could hear you, and the first time we made love was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I was so afraid you were going to say it couldn’t happen again. I just want to spend all my time looking at you and telling you things, and even though I’m just some nerd who thinks about strikes and contracts all the time, I want you to know that I’m financially solvent right now, I have some investments, and I’ll always do anything I can to make you happy. Your happiness is going to be the main thing for me. From now on. Forever. I mean that.

am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrast. In the light and the dark days. In the hope and the hurt. In the fire and in the ash. I am a firm believer in the fall and in the rise; in the sin and in the saving. I am a firm believer in the broken, the people who hold their pieces together with belief, who bandage their fear in faith. I am a firm believer in the souls who have always managed to protect their soft; who have always known, even when it ached the most, that their wounds were healing them, that the hardest parts of life were growing them from the inside. I am a firm believer in there being beauty in the contrast—you have not lived until you have died.

There are four things I need you to always remember alright?" "Sure," she said. "One, always breathe," he said "It sounds simple but breathing is sometimes the hardest thing in the world. If you're ever struggling, stop, and take a couple of deep, slow breaths. Count them out loud if you need to. Two, always have dreams and ideals and never let anyone tell you it's impossible. Something impossible is only something possible that hasn't yet been done. Three, get out of bed every single day. Especially if you don't want to. Because yes, even without you the world keeps turning, it's simply a little more interesting with you in it. Four, never give up. That means on life and yourself.

The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses. Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise. Summer in its turn soon begins to sweat for something to quench its heat, and the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness. Even winter—the hardest season, the most implacable—dreams, as February creeps on, of the flame that will presently melt it away. Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself. So August gave way to September and there were few complaints.

Mary was proud of her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but because he was a blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right woman, she honored the manhood that could do hard work. The day will come, and may I do something to help it hither, when the youth of our country will recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in the old true sense a more _gentle_ thing, to follow a good handicraft, if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping books, and making up accounts, though therein the hands should remain white--or red, as the case may be. Not but that, from a higher point of view still, all work, set by God, and done divinely, is of equal honor; but, where there is a choice, I would gladly see boy of mine choose rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in the scale of reality, than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, besides, easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor, of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty! But the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do.

1. Just Keep Breathing Lauren told me that after Bob died, she couldn’t imagine getting through the rest of her life without him. She told herself she just needed to get through the next year, which would be the hardest one, but that was too overwhelming. Little by little, she kept reducing the length of time she needed to get through in order to make it. A month was too daunting; even a week or a day felt like too much. Finally, she realized that all she had to do at any given moment was just keep breathing and eventually she would make it through. “Just keep breathing” became her motto. I remember a time when I experienced a major loss and I kept saying, “Just get up and put one foot in front of the other.” I felt I needed to just keep moving so I didn’t sink into the despair I felt.

They always came at dawn, I knew that. And so I spent my nights waiting for that dawn. I've never liked being surprised. If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there. That's why I ended up sleeping only a little bit during the day and then, all night long, waited patiently for the first light to show on the pane of sky. The hardest time was that uncertain hour when I knew they usually set to work. After midnight, I would wait and watch .. My ears had never heard so many noises or picked up such small sounds. One thing I can say, though, is that in a certain way I was lucky that whole time, since I never heard footsteps. Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about. In my prison, when the sky turned red and a new day slipped into my cell, I found out that she was right. Because I might just as easily have heard footsteps and my heart could have burst. Even though I would rush to the door at the slightest shuffie, even though, with my ear pressed to the wood, I would wait frantically until I heard the sound of my own breathing, terrified to find it so hoarse, like a dog's panting, my heart would not burst after all, and I would have gained another twenty-four hours.

Split in two,” he sang, “Loved by one, and then another. Pulled in a direction and then the other. If I could breathe you in, all of you, every day of my life, it wouldn’t be enough. My heart was captive long ago — then you stole it away, you helped me grow. Now I’m staring at my crossroads with a choice to make, wondering how in the world I even thought there was one way to take.” His hands flew over the piano, muscles tightened in his forearms as he leaned forward and continued singing. “My biggest fear, is not the ending of this life, but going through it without you by my side.” He repeated the chorus and closed his eyes, humming the haunting melody in such a way that I felt hypnotized. “Letting her go will be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do — but I’m doing it so I can say goodbye to her — and good morning to you. Tell me it’s not too late to ask for a second.” He smirked but continued singing. “Third, fourth, tenth date.” His hands slowed. “Loving you will always be easy because when I look into your eyes I know you see the real me, so be my love, be my rain, be my clouds, be my pain.” “My biggest fear, is not the ending of this life, but going through it without you by my side.” He stopped playing. The room fell silent.

Motherhood is hard, and no mom in the history of the entire world has been a perfect mama—no one. With that in mind, even in your worst mama moments, cut yourself some slack. God has used some of the hardest times I’ve had as a mom—times when I wasn’t sure if I would survive the day, much less eighteen years—to show me how to depend on Him. And in order for God to use these trials to help me learn and grow, I have to let go of them and give them to God. Only He can make our paths—and our children’s paths—straight.

Know that by the very nature of your earth-time existence you are learning lessons daily. Life is how you perceive it. Live each day on the tiptoes of excitement. And know that everything in the universe is good, even the hardest experiences, and everything is working toward your evolvement. Go with the flow of life, and do not resist your lessons. Give everything away that you receive. You will find that what you receive in return is a greater understanding of your oneness with all. All is one, and one is all. Know this from the knowing level.

The tide of our national meanness rises incrementally, one brutalizing experience at a time, inside one person at a time in a chain of working-class Americans stretching back for decades. Back to the terror-filled nineteen-year-old girl from Weirton, West Virginia, who patrols the sweat-smelling halls of one of the empire's far-flung prisons at midnight. Back to my neighbor's eighty-year-old father, who remembers getting paid $2 apiece for literally cracking open the heads of union organizers at our textile and sewing mills during the days of Virginia's Byrd political machine. (It was the Depression and the old man needed the money to support his family.) The brutal way in which America's hardest-working folks historically were forced to internalize the values of a gangster capitalist class continues to elude the left, which, with few exceptions, understands not a thing about how this political and economic system has hammered the humanity of ordinary working people. Much of the ongoing battle for America's soul is about healing the souls of these Americans and rousing them from the stupefying glut of commodity and spectacle. It is about making sure that they—and we—refuse to accept torture as the act of "heroes" and babies deformed by depleted uranium as the "price of freedom." Caught up in the great self-referential hologram of imperial America, force-fed goods and hubris like fattened steers, working people like World Championship Wrestling and Confederate flags and flat-screen televisions and the idea of an American empire. ("American Empire! I like the sound of that!" they think to themselves, without even the slightest idea what it means historically.)

By January 2020, about 1,095 days into his administration, the number of false or misleading claims made by President Trump reached 16,241 ... He told outright lies, repeated lies even after having been fact-checked repeatedly, and made up stories when the truth would do. He lied about little things and he lied about the most important issues a president must handle. He took credit for things he had nothing to do with and denied involvement in matters he orchestrated. To list the individual examples would fill the next twenty pages. Even the president's supporters admit this.

It’s a lonely business, and then sometimes strangely claustrophobic, but this is it. This is what I wanted and what Liz was pulled away from, against her every fiber. This abstract performance art called Family Life is our one run at the ultimate improv. Our chance to be great for someone, to give another person enough of what they need to be happy. Ours to overlook or lose track of or bemoan, ours to recommit to, to apologize for, to try again for. Ours to watch disappear into their next self—toddler to tyke, tween to teen—ours to drop off somewhere and miss forever. It’s happening right now, whether we attend to it or not. Like after preparing a nutritious meal that no one really liked and a lot of blame-gaming over who forgot to take out the compost, your peevish, greasy “young adult” tramps off to take the shower she should have taken two days ago and the evening is shot to shit and not one minute of it looked like the thing you prayed for so long ago, but then you hear something. You head up the stairs, hover outside the bathroom door. “All the single ladies, all the single ladies…” — The kid is singing in the shower. Your profoundly ordinary kid is singing in the shower and you get to be here to hear it.

Funny thing about death. It seems to come so unexpectedly to those who aren’t looking for it. They’re not thinking this could be their last day on earth. They drink their coffee, go to work, or hang with their friends. They laugh. They talk. They easily forget about the people they’ve hurt, even a little bit, because there’s always time to say sorry. Always tomorrow. They don’t seek out their family members and forgive them. Forgiveness is powerful, and when we hurt, we wield this gift like a weapon, choosing to slice and dice as we please. Sometimes, all people want is that smile and the words of forgiveness that follow. Sometimes that’s the hardest gift to give or receive.

Did I know this brutality was wrong? Even that first time, when my brother was the victim? I have asked myself a thousand times, and the answer is always the same: of course. That day was the hardest, because I could have said no. Every time after that, it became easier, because if I didn't do it again, I would be reminded of that first time I did not say no. Repeat the same action over and over again, and eventually it will feel right. Eventually, there isn't even any guilt. What I mean to tell you, now, is that the same truth holds. This could be you, too. You think never. You think, not I. But at any given moment, we are capable of doing what we least expect. I always knew what I was doing, and to whom I was doing it. I knew, very well. Because in those terrible, wonderful moments, I was the person everyone wanted to be.

Make out a schedule for yourself, on paper if necessary, that requires you to be busy with housework or anything else while your baby is awake. Go at it with a great bustle—to impress your baby and to impress yourself. Say you are the mother of a baby boy who has become accustomed to being carried all the time. When he frets and raises his arms, explain to him in a friendly but very firm tone that this job and that job must get done this afternoon. Though he doesn’t understand the words, he does understand the tone of voice. Stick to your busywork. The first hour of the first day is the hardest. One baby accepts the change better if his mother stays out of sight a good part of the time at first and talks little. This helps him to become absorbed in something else. Another adjusts more quickly if he can at least see his mother and hear her talking to him, even if she won’t pick him up. When you bring him a plaything or show him how to use it, or when you decide it’s time to play with him, sit down beside him on the floor. Let him climb into your arms if he wants, but don’t get back into the habit of walking him around. If you’re on the floor with him, he can crawl away when he eventually realizes you won’t walk. If you pick him up and walk him, he’ll surely object noisily just as soon as you start to put him down again. If he keeps on fretting indefinitely when you sit with him on the floor, remember another job and get busy again. What you are trying to do is to help your baby begin to build frustration tolerance—a little at a time. If she does not begin to learn this gradually between six and twelve months, it is a much harder lesson to learn later on.

One of the hardest things for me to accept about having anxiety and depression is the two contrasting versions of me that seem to co-exist in me. I can go from happy to angry to suicidal in 0.01 seconds. One moment I’m fine, and before I blink, I go into self-destruct mode. One version is hell-bent on destroying myself, while the other version dreams of conquering Mount Everest, and these two versions are in a continuous power struggle with one another, as if I live a double life, where some people know one version, and others another altogether; few in my closest inner circle will get to see both versions. I fight daily to reconcile the two vastly different personas and this often makes me feel like a counterfeit. Some days I’m not even sure which version will wake up the next day and I hope for the ‘good’ version’ to greet dawn.

By looking after his relatives' interests as he did, Napoleon furthermore displayed incredible weakness on the purely human level. When a man occupies such a position, he should eliminate all his family feeling. Napoleon, on the contrary, placed his brothers and sisters in posts of command, and retained them in these posts even after they'd given proofs of their incapability. All that was necessary was to throw out all these patently incompetent relatives. Instead of that, he wore himself out with sending his brothers and sisters, regularly every month, letters containing reprimands and warnings, urging them to do this and not to do that, thinking he could remedy their incompetence by promising them money, or by threatening not to give them any more. Such illogical behaviour can be explained only by the feeling Corsicans have for their families, a feeling in which they resemble the Scots. By thus giving expression to his family feeling, Napoleon introduced a disruptive principle into his life. Nepotism, in fact, is the most formidable protection imaginable : the protection of the ego. But wherever it has appeared in the life of a State—the monarchies are the best proof—it has resulted in weakening and decay. Reason : it puts an end to the principle of effort. In this respect, Frederick the Great showed himself superior to Napoleon—Frederick who, at the most difficult moments of his life, and when he had to take the hardest decisions, never forgot that things are called upon to endure. In similar cases, Napoleon capitulated. It's therefore obvious that, to bring his life's work to a successful conclusion, Frederick the Great could always rely on sturdier collaborators than Napoleon could. When Napoleon set the interests of his family clique above all, Frederick the Great looked around him for men, and, at need, trained them himself. Despite all Napoleon's genius, Frederick the Great was the most outstanding man of the eighteenth century. When seeking to find a solution for essential problems concerning the conduct of affairs of State, he refrained from all illogicality. It must be recognised that in this field his father, Frederick-William, that buffalo of a man, had given him a solid and complete training. Peter the Great, too, clearly saw the necessity for eliminating the family spirit from public life. In a letter to his son—a letter I was re-reading recently—he informs him very clearly of his intention to disinherit him and exclude him from the succession to the throne. It would be too lamentable, he writes, to set one day at the head of Russia a son who does not prepare himself for State affairs with the utmost energy, who does not harden his will and strengthen himself physically. Setting the best man at the head of the State—that's the most difficult problem in the world to solve.

Finding Water On Mars As An April Fool’s Prank. Every April Fool’s Day, which is the first day of every April, we all try our hardest to prank and pun each other. All this is done for fun and laughter. According to “Universe Today,” not even big science hotshots like NASA are above a few harmless pranks. Never was this more obvious than in 2005, when NASA pranked the world about finding water on Mars. On March 31, 2005, a teaser was posted on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website. It was titled “Water on Mars!” with a presentation to follow the next day, on April 1. This left people ecstatic. This was an incredible find for the human race. If there was water on Mars, then that meant there could have been life on Mars at one stage. Science was about to make a huge leap forward. The next day, April 1, 2005, NASA posted their presentation of water on Mars, and it left the whole world either in tears or crying from laughter. Their presentation was a picture of a glass of water standing on top of two Mars chocolate bars. It was water on Mars, but not the kind that everyone was hoping for.

The hurricane was almost upon her. If she didn’t leave right now, dragons on the lost continent would die. Dragons who might one day be her friends, if she saved them. Dragons who had no idea what was bearing down on them, because there was no one there to warn them. Yet. Clearsight took a deep breath, vaulted into the sky, and pointed herself west. Her mind immediately started flashing through all the ways she could die in the next two days. This was why she hated flying in storms. They were too unpredictable; the smallest twitch of the wind in the wrong direction could send her plummeting to the rocks below, or drive a stray palm branch into her heart. Don’t think about that. Think about the dragons who need you. The other vision was fading; the one where she flew southeast and hid. In that one, she’d arrived on the lost continent in the hurricane’s aftermath. The images of the devastation and dead bodies would be hard to shake off, even if she prevented them in reality. Will they believe me? Will they listen to me? In some of her visions, they did; in some, they didn’t. All she could do was fly her hardest and hope. The hurricane fought her at every wingbeat, as if it knew she was trying to snatch victims from its claws. Rain battered her ferociously. She felt like she’d be driven into the endless sea at any moment. Or maybe she’d drown up here, in the waterlogged sky. But this was only the outer edge of the storm; there was far worse still to come. Clearsight was trying to reach land before the really terrible fury behind her did. She couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow down for a moment. At one point she glanced back and saw a spout of water sucked into the air. In the middle of it, an orca flailed desperately, before the storm flung it away. A while later, after the sun had apparently been swallowed for good, Clearsight saw an entire hut fly by her, then splinter apart. She had to duck quickly to a lower air current to avoid the debris. Where had it come from? Who had lived in it? She would never know, her visions told her. And then, when Clearsight was beginning to lose all feeling in her wings, she saw a shape loom out of the clouds ahead. A cliff. Land. A lot of land. A whole continent, in fact.

So far, aging often feels like an exercise in gaslighting. You might feel great. You might look great. And yet everyone and everything is telling you it’s terrible. It’s all terrible. Eventually every day becomes an endless decision to choose reality over consensus. I am feeling this, so it must be true versus everyone says this is true, so I will feel it too. The disconnect is so extreme at times, I find the result is I’ve come to distrust literally every story we’ve ever been told to expect as women, even when some of them have turned out to be true. To choose to enjoy things simply because they are enjoyable, even if no one quite believes you. To understand things are hard, even when you are constantly being told they are not as hard. This is true loneliness, I sometimes want to say. Because so much of enjoyment, and so much of bearing the hardest things, relies on the ability to do so with others. Misery loves company, but so does joy. And not the company of one other person. So many women in my life are told daily by their partner that they are beautiful, and yet move through the world feeling ugly. We need the company of a narrative.

Once, on the road, Prim met a meditating sage who had spent most of his life on top of a flat rock. They had black bread and shared some ajash, as was custom. The sage was thankful, as the road was not very frequently traveled in those days and he was very near the point of starvation. During his conversation, he was delighted to learn of Prim’s extensive mastery of Empty Palms and the fifty five earthly purities. Delighted, and as payment for his meal, he taught Prim the meaning of watchfulness. This was the old breathing and cold-atum technique often used by warrior monks in those days. It ran through the following methodology: Build a tower, and make it impregnable. Make every stone so tightly sealed that no insect can squeeze through, no grain of sand can make it inside. Your tower must have no windows or doors. It must not accept passage by friend or foe. No weapon, no act of violence, and not one mote of love may penetrate its stony interior. “Why build the tower this way?” said Prim? “It will make you invincible,” said the sage, “This is the way of Ya-at slave monks. Their skin is like iron, and so are their hearts. They are inured to death and fear. Grief shall never find them, and neither shall weakness.” Prim thought a moment, and came upon a realization, for she was wise, obedient, and an excellent daughter. “If a man built a tower this way, he would quickly starve, no matter how strong he became.” The sage was even more delighted. “Yes,” he said, “There is a better way, and I will teach it to you: Once you have built your tower, you must deconstruct it, brick by brick, stone by stone. You must do it meticulously and carefully, so that while you leave no physical trace of it remaining, your tower is still built in your mind and your heart, ready to spring anew at a moment’s notice. You can enjoy the fresh air, and eat fine meals, and enjoy a good drink with your friends, but all the while your tower remains standing. You are both prisoner and warden. This is the hardest way, but the strongest.” Prim saw the wisdom in this, and quickly made to return to the road, but the sage stopped her before she left. “As you to your earlier remark,” the sage said, “The man who builds his tower but cannot take it apart again – that man is at the pinnacle of his strength. But that man will surely perish.” – Prim Masters the Road

But I feel the exact opposite. I feel like it’s taken decades to get here. “You told me I was supposed to be the greatest player in the history of tennis. You said it since the day I was born! You told me it was all I was ever meant to be! And then one day I wasn’t anymore. You weren’t even sure that I could beat her!” I say. “Are we talking about Stepanova?” he says. “I asked you if you thought I could get the number one ranking over her, and you said, ‘I don’t know.’ ” “And you’ve never forgiven me for it,” he says. “I’m paying that price even today.” “You should pay it for the rest of your life!” I say. “For making me believe in myself like that and then pulling the rug out from under me. For giving up on me when things were at their hardest. I never gave up on this. Ever. And you did!” “Carrie, you asked me if I thought you could take number one from Paulina. And I said I didn’t know. Because I didn’t. I don’t know what the future holds. And I can’t promise the world is going to always turn out the way you want it to. “I owed you that honesty, I thought. So you could assess better—how to grow, how to widen your perspective. It felt like it was time for that. But you didn’t want to do that then, and you don’t want to do that now. “I’ve messed up a lot as your father, and I take responsibility for that. But this one, I’m sorry, only you can solve it. You have to make peace with not being a perfect player,” he said. “That is giving up. I won’t do it,” I said. My father shakes his head. “You have to find a way to be right with who you actually are, to face what life is really like. I expected you to figure that out by now. But you haven’t. And if you don’t, I can’t see how you ever get past this…this moment. You have accomplished so much, but you are instead so focused on keeping it, rather than going out and finding something else in the world.” He walks toward the door. “Everything we achieve is ephemeral. We have it, and then the next second it’s gone. You had that record, and you may lose that record. Or you may defend it now and lose it in two years all over again. I wish you’d accept that.” I shake my head and try to look at him. “I can’t.” “Well,” he says. “It kills me that I cannot fix that for you, hija. But I can’t. Nobody else can.” And then, as if the door were the lightest thing in the world, he opens it and walks right through, leaving me there alone.

Princess, stop walking and just talk to me.” “Why? So you can let me know again how much of a slut you think I am?” “I don’t,” he let out a half-growl, half-sigh, “I don’t think you’re a slut. You just caught me on a bad day.” “Let me guess Chase, you hurt me because you were just so damn mad … am I right?” I threw his line from a month ago back in his face and he paled. His hand came up and brushed my hair back, holding it away from my face as he stared into my eyes, “This is why I told you I would never be good enough for you, all I do is hurt you Princess.” “This isn’t about you being, or not being good enough for me. I just want to be your friend, and you’re making that impossible.” Friend, he mouthed and scratched his head before grabbing a fistful of hair, “Okay, fine, we’re friends. But I need you to stop approaching me around my house and at school.” “What? Then that puts us exactly where we’ve been the last three weeks, that doesn’t change anything.” “It needs to be that way.” He released both his hair and mine at the same time and turned away for a second before facing me again, “Sundays are the only day I get you. Those are the only days when you’re here with me.” I opened my mouth but he stopped me, “No, I know you’re not here for me … but you’re here. And he’s not.” He bent his knees so we were eye to eye, “I need these days with you Harper. But every other day, you’re his and it’s not a good idea for us to be around each other then. So stay away. Please.” “Chase …” “If you think acting like you don’t exist isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done, you’re wrong. I hate not talking to you, I hate not bickering like we’re an old married couple and I hate not spending every day right next to you. But this is how it has to be, Brandon hates me, and Princess trust me when I say he has every reason to. So if after everything I’ve done to you, you’ll still even consider being my friend, then it has to be Sundays only.” “Brandon won’t care if we’re friends.” Okay I wasn’t entirely sure that was true. He smiled and shook his head, “I know you’re not that naïve. Now go have lunch with Mom and Bree, then get your ass back here so I can have my few stolen hours with you.” I walked toward the entryway but stopped after a few feet, “Chase?” “Yeah Princess?” Looking over my shoulder, I held his gaze, “Will you please stop hurting me … in every way?” Chase closed the distance and pulled me into a tight hug, “Go eat sweetheart.” That

DAYS ONE THROUGH SIX, ETC. You keep on asking me that – “Which day was the hardest?” Blockheads! They were all hard – And of course, since I’m omnipotent, they were all easy. It was Chaos, to begin with. Can you imagine Primeval Chaos? Of course you can’t. How long had it been swirling around out there? Forever. How long had I been there? Longer than that. It was a mess, that’s what it was. Chaos is Rocky. Fuzzy. Slippery. Prickly. As scraggly and obstreperous as the endless behind of an infinite jackass. Shove on it anywhere, it gives, then slips in behind you, like smog, like lava, like slag. I’m telling you, chaos is – chaotic. You see what I was up against. Who could make a world out of that muck? I could, that’s who – land from water, light from dark, and so on. It might seem like a piece of cake now that it’s done, but back then, without a blueprint, without a set of instructions, without a committee, could you have created a firmament? Of course there were bugs in the process, grit in the gears, blips, bloopers – bringing forth grass and trees on Day Three and not making sunlight until Day Four, that, I must say, wasn’t my best move. And making the animals and vegetables before there was any rain whatsoever – well, anyone can have a bad day. Even Adam, as it turned out, wasn’t such a great idea – those shifty eyes, the alibis, blaming things on his wife – I mean, it set a bad example. How could he expect that little toddler, Cain, to learn correct family values with a role model like him? And then there was the nasty squabble Over the beasts and birds. OK, I admit I told Adam to name them, but – Platypus? Aardvark? Hippopotamus? Let me make one thing perfectly clear – he didn’t get that gibberish from Me. No, I don’t need a planet to fall on Me, I know something about subtext. He did it to irritate Me, just plain spite – and did I need the aggravation? Well, as you know, things went from bad to worse, from begat to begat, father to son, the evil fruit of all that early bile. So next there was narcissism, then bigotry, then jealousy, rage, vengeance! And finally I realized, the spawn of Adam had become exactly like – Me. No Deity with any self-respect would tolerate that kind of competition, so what could I do? I killed them all, that’s what! Just as the Good Book says, I drowned man, woman, and child, like so many cats. Oh, I saved a few for restocking, Noah and his crew, the best of the lot, I thought. But now you’re back to your old tricks again, just about due for another good ducking, or maybe a giant barbecue. And I’m warning you, if I have to do it again, there won’t be any survivors, not even a cockroach! Then, for the first time since it was Primeval Chaos, the world will be perfect – nobody in it but Me.

In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way. It says: Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. The road to back-to-back championships is just that, a road. And you travel along a road in steps. Excellence is a matter of steps. Excelling at this one, then that one, and then the one after that. Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether it’s pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field or simply surviving some awful or trying ordeal, the same approach works. Don’t think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn’t panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.

How was my day? It was a lifetime. It was the best of times and the worst of times. I was both lonely and never alone. I was simultaneously bored out of my skull and completely overwhelmed. I was saturated with touch—desperate to get the baby off of me and the second I put her down I yearned to smell her sweet skin again. This day required more than I’m physically and emotionally capable of, while requiring nothing from my brain. I had thoughts today, ideas, real things to say and no one to hear them. I felt manic all day, alternating between love and fury. At least once an hour I looked at their faces and thought I might not survive the tenderness of my love for them. The next moment I was furious. I felt like a dormant volcano, steady on the outside but ready to explode and spew hot lava at any moment. And then I noticed that Amma’s foot doesn’t fit into her Onesie anymore, and I started to panic at the reminder that this will be over soon, that it’s fleeting—that this hardest time of my life is supposed to be the best time of my life. That this brutal time is also the most beautiful time. Am I enjoying it enough? Am I missing the best time of my life? Am I too tired to be properly in love? That fear and shame felt like adding a heavy, itchy blanket on top of all the hard. But I’m not complaining, so please don’t try to fix it. I wouldn’t have my day or my life any other way. I’m just saying—it’s a hell of a hard thing to explain—an entire day with lots of babies. It’s far too much and not even close to enough.

Donald Trump repeatedly promised he would hire "the best people." He did not. That is not my opinion; it is President Trump's, which he expresses frequently. Trump has said that his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was "dumb as a rock" and "lazy as hell." His attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was "scared stiff and Missing in Action," "didn't have a clue," and "should be ashamed of himself." Trump described one of his assistants, Omarosa Manigault Newman, as "wacky," "deranged," "vicious, but not smart," a "crazed, crying lowlife," and finally a "dog." After lasting only eleven days as communications director, Anthony Scaramucci "was quickly terminated 'from' a position that he was totally incapable of handling" and was called "very much out of control." An anonymous adviser to the president was called "a drunk/drugged-up loser." Chief strategist Steve Bannon was "sloppy," a "leaker," and "dumped like a dog by almost everyone." His longtime lawyer Michael Cohen was "TERRIBLE," "hostile," "a convicted liar & fraudster," and a "failed lawyer." The president was "Never a big fan!" of his White House counsel Don McGahn and "not even a little bit happy" with Jerome Powell, his selection to head the Federal Reserve, whom he called an "enemy." His third national security advisor, John Bolton, was mocked as a "tough guy [who] got us into Iraq." When the president was irritated with his former chief of staff, John Kelly, the president's press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, declared that Kelly "was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great president.

If I’m ever tempted to let it get to my head, all I have to do is remember the first time I was recognized in public. I was with Jennie Garth, back in Season 3. She was way more famous than me (Derek Who?) and she was asked to the Eiffel Tower ceremony at the Paris Las Vegas hotel. They shut off half the strip and there were thousands of people outside the hotel lined up to see it. I was onstage supporting her, when I was suddenly hit with a wave of nausea. I knew instantly I had food poisoning from something I’d eaten earlier in the day. I knew if I didn’t get off the stage at that moment, I was going to throw up--and that would be the story on the evening news, not Jennie’s lighting! I jumped off the stage and just wanted to get back to my room where I could vomit in peace. As I was racing through the hotel lobby, a few people stopped me. “Aren’t you Derek Hough from Dancing with the Stars?” I was trying to be polite, but I just kept eyeing garbage cans in case I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Yeah, thanks,” I said. I signed a few autographs and tried to push my way to the elevators. “Wait! Derek! Can I get you to sign this?” More people started coming at me. I swear, I had to hold my breath so I wouldn’t hurl! When I finally got upstairs, I threw up thirty-two times. I was deathly ill. But somewhere, in that haze of hellish food poisoning, it hit me: This is pretty cool! People know who I am! But I’ve tried my hardest not to let that change me. I’m kind of a free spirit; what you see is what you get. Inside is still that crazy little boy who liked to bounce off his living room walls.

The fair awakened America to beauty and as such was a necessary passage that laid the foundation for men like Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. For Burnham personally the fair had been an unqualified triumph. It allowed him to fulfill his pledge to his parents to become the greatest architect in America, for certainly in his day he had become so. During the fair an event occurred whose significance to Burnham was missed by all but his closest friends: Both Harvard and Yale granted him honorary master’s degrees in recognition of his achievement in building the fair. The ceremonies occurred on the same day. He attended Harvard’s. For him the awards were a form of redemption. His past failure to gain admission to both universities—the denial of his “right beginning”—had haunted him throughout his life. Even years after receiving the awards, as he lobbied Harvard to grant provisional admission to his son Daniel, whose own performance on the entry exams was far from stellar, Burnham wrote, “He needs to know that he is a winner, and, as soon as he does, he will show his real quality, as I have been able to do. It is the keenest regret of my life that someone did not follow me up at Cambridge … and let the authorities know what I could do.” Burnham had shown them himself, in Chicago, through the hardest sort of work. He bristled at the persistent belief that John Root deserved most of the credit for the beauty of the fair. “What was done up to the time of his death was the faintest suggestion of a plan,” he said. “The impression concerning his part has been gradually built up by a few people, close friends of his and mostly women, who naturally after the Fair proved beautiful desired to more broadly identify his memory with it.

I found out Si was taking naps every day on Kay’s couch! I went to Phil and told him it was a problem. “Look, I know he’s your brother and he’s my uncle, but he’s not the kind of worker we need to have,” I told Phil, while trying to make a good first impression. I was trying to instill a new work ethic and culture in Duck Commander, and I couldn’t have Si sleeping on the job! “Don’t touch Si,” Phil told me. “You leave him alone. He’s making reeds and that’s the hardest thing we do. Si is the only guy who wants to do it, and he’s good at it. Si is fine.” Amazingly enough, in the ten years I’ve been running Duck Commander, we’ve never once run out of reeds. Six years ago, Si suffered a heart attack. He smoked cigarettes for almost forty years and then quit after his heart attack, so we were all so proud of him. Even before his heart attack, I wasn’t sure about putting Si on our DVDs because I thought he would just come across too crazy. He cracked us up in the duck blind and we all loved him, but I told Jep and the other camera guys to film around him. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would understand what he was saying. When we finally tried to put him on the DVDs, he clammed up in front of the camera and looked like a frog in a cartoon just sitting there. He wouldn’t perform. Finally, we put a hidden camera under a shirt on Si’s desk. We were near the end of editing a DVD and showed a shooting scene to Si. He always takes credit for shooting more ducks than he really did. He’s said before that he killed three ducks with one shot! We were watching patterns hitting the water, and Si started claiming the ducks like he always does and going off on one of his long tangents. After we recorded him, we ran the DVD back and showed it to him. I think Si saw that he was actually pretty funny and entertaining if he acted like himself. We started putting Si on the DVDs and he got more and more popular. Now he’s the star of Duck Dynasty!

Adrian and Sydney, I know each of you have your own ways of figuring out where I am. If that’s the course of action to choose to take, nothing I do can stop you. But, I’m begging you, please don’t. Please let me stay away. Let the guardians think I’ve gone AWOL. Let me wander the world, helping those I can. I know you think I should stay with Declan. Believe me, I wish I could. I wish more than anything that I could stay and raise Olive’s son – my son – and give him all the things he needs. But I can’t shake the feeling that we’d never be safe. Someday, someone might start asking about Olive and her son. Someone might connect the baby I’m raising to him, and then her fears would be realized. News of his conception would change our world. It would excite some people and scare others. Most of all, it’d make Olive’s predictions come true: people wanting to study him like a lab rat. And that’s why I’m proposing that no one finds out he’s my son or Olive’s. From now on, let him be yours. No one would question you two raising a dhampir. After all, your own children will be dhampirs, and from what I’ve seen, you two are smart enough to find a way to convince others he’s your biological child. I’ve also seen the way you two love each other, the way you support each other. Even with as challenging as your relationship has been, you’ve held true to yourselves and each other. That’s what Declan needs. That’s the kind of home Olive wanted for him, the kind I want for him. I know it won’t be easy, and walking away from this is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. If a day comes when I can feel convinced that it’s safe, beyond a doubt, for me to be in his life, then I will. You can use one of those magical methods of yours to find me, and I swear I’ll be there at his side in an instant. But until then, so long as the shadow of others’ fear and scrutiny hangs over him, I beg you to take him and give him the beautiful life I know you can give him. Best, Neil

But the man who owned the vineyard said to one of those workers, ‘Friend, I am being fair to you. You agreed to work for one coin. So take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same pay that I gave you. I can do what I want with my own money. Are you jealous because I am good to those people?’ “So those who are last now will someday be first, and those who are first now will someday be last.” (20:1–16 NCV) “Do you begrudge my generosity?” the landowner is saying. The answer, of course, is yes, they do. They begrudge it quite a bit. Even though it has no impact on them whatsoever, it offends them. We hate it when we are trying so hard to earn something, and then someone else gets the same thing without trying as hard. Think about this for a moment, in real, “today” terms. Someone gives you a backbreaking job, and you’re happy for it, but at the end of the day, when you’re getting paid, the guys who came in with five minutes left get the same amount you just got. Seriously? It’s imbalanced, unfair, maddening . . . and it’s also exactly what Jesus just said the kingdom of God is like. Not only is it maddening; it’s maddening to the “good” people! Common sense says you don’t do this. You don’t pay latecomers who came in a few minutes ago the same amount that you paid the hardworking folks you hired first. Jesus tells this story, knowing full well that the conscientious ones listening would find this hardest to take. And, as a matter of fact, as a conscientious one, I find this hard to take. I’m just being honest. This story does not fit my style. I’m all about people getting what they deserve. Oh, it’s offensive, too, when Jesus turns to a guy who’s being executed next to Him, and tells him, “Today, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). What did the guy do to deserve that? He did nothing. If you call yourself a Christian, and you want things to be fair, and you want God’s rewards given out only to the deserving and the upstanding and the religious, well, honestly, Jesus has got to be a complete embarrassment to you. In fact, to so many upstanding Christians, He is. He has always been offensive, and remains offensive, to those who seek to achieve “righteousness” through what they do. Always. People who’ve grown up in church (like me) are well acquainted with the idea that Jesus is our “cornerstone.” He’s the solid rock of our faith. Got it. Not controversial. It’s well-known. But what’s not so talked about: That stone, Jesus, causes religious people to stumble. And that rock is offensive to “good” people: So what does all this mean? Those who are not Jews were not trying to make themselves right with God, but they were made right with God because of their faith. The people of Israel tried to follow a law to make themselves right with God. But they did not succeed, because they tried to make themselves right by the things they did instead of trusting in God to make them right. They stumbled over the stone that causes people to stumble. (Rom. 9:30–32 NCV) And then Paul says something a couple verses later that angers “good Christians” to this day: Because they did not know the way that God makes people right with him, they tried to make themselves right in their own way. So they did not accept God’s way of making people right. Christ ended the law so that everyone who believes in him may be right with God. (Rom. 10:3–4 NCV) It’s not subtle, what Paul’s writing here. For anyone who believes in Him, Jesus ended the law as a means to righteousness. Yet so many think they can achieve—even have achieved—some kind of “good Christian” status on the basis of the rule-keeping work they’ve done. They suspect they’ll do good things and God will owe them for it, like payment for a job well done. Paul says, in effect, if you think you should get what you earn, you will . . . and you don’t want that.

I, Prayer (A Poem of Magnitudes and Vectors) I, Prayer, know no hour. No season, no day, no month nor year. No boundary, no barrier or limitation–no blockade hinders Me. There is no border or wall I cannot breach. I move inexorably forward; distance holds Me not. I span the cosmos in the twinkling of an eye. I knowest it all. I am the most powerful force in the Universe. Who then is My equal? Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook? None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Surely, I may’st with but a Word. Who then is able to stand before Me? I am the wind, the earth, the metal. I am the very empyrean vault of Heaven Herself. I span the known and the unknown beyond Eternity’s farthest of edges. And whatsoever under Her wings is Mine. I am a gentle stream, a fiery wrath penetrating; wearing down mountains –the hardest and softest of substances. I am a trickling brook to fools of want lost in the deserts of their own desires. I am a Niagara to those who drink in well. I seep through cracks. I inundate. I level forests kindleth unto a single burning bush. My hand moves the Universe by the mind of a child. I withhold treasures solid from the secret stores to they who would wrench at nothing. I do not sleep or eat, feel not fatigue, nor hunger. I do not feel the cold, nor rain or wind. I transcend the heat of the summer’s day. I commune. I petition. I intercede. My time is impeccable, by it worlds and destinies turn. I direct the fates of nations and humankind. My Words are Iron eternaled—rust not they away. No castle keep, nor towers of beaten brass, Nor the dankest of dungeon helks, Nor adamantine links of hand-wrought steel Can contain My Spirit–I shan’t turn back. The race is ne’er to the swift, nor battle to the strong, nor wisdom to the wise or wealth to the rich. For skills and wisdom, I give to the sons of man. I take wisdom and skills from the sons of man for they are ever Mine. Blessed is the one who finds it so, for in humility comes honor, For those who have fallen on the battlefield for My Name’s sake, I reach down to lift them up from On High. I am a rose with the thorn. I am the clawing Lion that pads her children. My kisses wound those whom I Love. My kisses are faithful. No occasion, moment in time, instances, epochs, ages or eras hold Me back. Time–past, present and future is to Me irrelevant. I span the millennia. I am the ever-present Now. My foolishness is wiser than man’s My weakness stronger than man’s. I am subtle to the point of formlessness yet formed. I have no discernible shape, no place into which the enemy may sink their claws. I AM wisdom and in length of days knowledge. Strength is Mine and counsel, and understanding. I break. I build. By Me, kings rise and fall. The weak are given strength; wisdom to those who seek and foolishness to both fooler and fool alike. I lead the crafty through their deceit. I set straight paths for those who will walk them. I am He who gives speech and sight - and confounds and removes them. When I cut, straight and true is my cut. I strike without fault. I am the razored edge of high destiny. I have no enemy, nor friend. My Zeal and Love and Mercy will not relent to track you down until you are spent– even unto the uttermost parts of the earth. I cull the proud and the weak out of the common herd. I hunt them in battles royale until their cries unto Heaven are heard. I break hearts–those whose are harder than granite. Beyond their atomic cores, I strike their atomic clock. Elect motions; not one more or less electron beyond electron’s orbit that has been ordained for you do I give–for His grace is sufficient for thee until He desires enough. Then I, Prayer, move on as a comet, Striking out of the black. I, His sword, kills to give Life. I am Living and Active, the Divider asunder of thoughts and intents. I Am the Light of Eternal Mind. And I, Prayer, AM Prayer Almighty.

Hyphen This word comes from two Greek words together meaning ‘under one’, which gets nobody anywhere and merely prompts the reflection that argument by etymology only serves the purpose of intimidating ignorant antagonists. On, then. This is one more case in which matters have not improved since Fowler’s day, since he wrote in 1926: The chaos prevailing among writers or printers or both regarding the use of hyphens is discreditable to English education … The wrong use or wrong non-use of hyphens makes the words, if strictly interpreted, mean something different from what the writers intended. It is no adequate answer to such criticisms to say that actual misunderstanding is unlikely; to have to depend on one’s employer’s readiness to take the will for the deed is surely a humiliation that no decent craftsman should be willing to put up with. And so say all of us who may be reading this book. The references there to ‘printers’ needs updating to something like ‘editors’, meaning those who declare copy fit to print. Such people now often get it wrong by preserving in midcolumn a hyphen originally put at the end of a line to signal a word-break: inter-fere, say, is acceptable split between lines but not as part of a single line. This mistake is comparatively rare and seldom causes confusion; even so, time spent wondering whether an exactor may not be an ex-actor is time avoidably wasted. The hyphen is properly and necessarily used to join the halves of a two-word adjectival phrase, as in fair-haired children, last-ditch resistance, falling-down drunk, over-familiar reference. Breaches of this rule are rare and not troublesome. Hyphens are also required when a phrase of more than two words is used adjectivally, as in middle-of-the-road policy, too-good-to-be-true story, no-holds-barred contest. No hard-and-fast rule can be devised that lays down when a two-word phrase is to be hyphenated and when the two words are to be run into one, though there will be a rough consensus that, for example, book-plate and bookseller are each properly set out and that bookplate and book-seller might seem respectively new-fangled and fussy. A hyphen is not required when a normal adverb (i.e. one ending in -ly) plus an adjective or other modifier are used in an adjectival role, as in Jack’s equally detestable brother, a beautifully kept garden, her abnormally sensitive hearing. A hyphen is required, however, when the adverb lacks a final -ly, like well, ill, seldom, altogether or one of those words like tight and slow that double as adjectives. To avoid ambiguity here we must write a well-kept garden, an ill-considered objection, a tight-fisted policy. The commonest fault in the use of the hyphen, and the hardest to eradicate, is found when an adjectival phrase is used predicatively. So a gent may write of a hard-to-conquer mountain peak but not of a mountain peak that remains hard-to-conquer, an often-proposed solution but not of one that is often-proposed. For some reason this fault is especially common when numbers, including fractions, are concerned, and we read every other day of criminals being imprisoned for two-and-a-half years, a woman becoming a mother-of-three and even of some unfortunate being stabbed six-times. And the Tories have been in power for a decade-and-a-half. Finally, there seems no end to the list of common phrases that some berk will bung a superfluous hyphen into the middle of: artificial-leg, daily-help, false-teeth, taxi-firm, martial-law, rainy-day, airport-lounge, first-wicket, piano-concerto, lung-cancer, cavalry-regiment, overseas-service. I hope I need not add that of course one none the less writes of a false-teeth problem, a first-wicket stand, etc. The only guide is: omit the hyphen whenever possible, so avoid not only mechanically propelled vehicle users (a beauty from MEU) but also a man eating tiger. And no one is right and no-one is wrong.

In every moment of every day, resistance is there, waiting to pounce. The hardest war to win is one you don’t even realize you are fighting, and the hardest enemy to defeat is the one you don’t even know exists. Every day you are at war with resistance.

In every moment of every day, resistance is there, waiting to pounce. The hardest war to win is one you don’t even realize you are fighting, and the hardest enemy to defeat is the one you don’t even know exists. Every day you are at war with resistance. Make no mistake, resistance is your enemy. It will not quietly go away and leave you alone. You have to slay it like a dragon, and you have to slay it anew each day.

Against All Odds --- Nobody taught me how to swim. So, I swam and followed the rivers, hoping that I'd end up in the ocean; the calm seas. To see some dolphins and the colourful fish. But the river that chose me was long with hard turns, blockages, and fishing traps. On some days, the river would run dry, leaving me nowhere but in the middle of hard cracks. While suffering underneath the hot sun, the rains would hit again on my sore flesh. Luckily by then, I'd still be breathing; even though affected, harmed, and bleeding. But, I had a dream that was heavier than my challenges. So I continued with my journey, following the stream of the river. Hoping to reach the ocean; the calm seas. Some days the current would be brutal, even though I was flowing with it. It would hit on my body, my bones would crack. Sometimes the river would eject me to the side. Where I'd need to survive while I found my way back to it. I'd have to fend off snakes, defending myself from harm and malice. Back in the river, I'd have to fend off scorpions, rocks, and the debris. So, there I went, alone in the river I flowed. At times I'd meet with swimmers who'd be cooling off from the same waters. Some were kayaking; others fishing. All oblivious to my dreams, and to my state of struggle. Some would greet me; smiling at me. While some laughed the hardest, laughing at me. Some would express pity, while some expressed their sympathy. Some would pretend that I wasn't even there. And those who ignored me equalled my presence to that of the debris. I remember that a few picked me up and placed me in their small boats; helping me to cruise afloat. But, eventually, they left me in my struggle too. Those who carried me, left me in the rivers where they'd found me. Those who passed me by, passed-by me again on the following days. Some shouted the loudest from their lungs encouraging me from the sides. Telling me that I was almost reaching the seas. That the ocean was at a hand's reach. But those who shouted the most rarely did anything else to help. I also learnt that those who picked me up rarely shouted about their help. Some used my vulnerability to gain charity points. They'd say, "see I helped her, now clap for me from your joints". But, above all the help, true or fake, my dream was carrying me for my sake. With my dream to reach the ocean, the calm seas, I held my head the highest and swam beyond all the peaks.

Practicing gratitude can shine a light on the darkest of days and soften even the hardest of hearts.

In that moment, he liked all the things she didn’t say more than the things she did. There was no “Good riddance,” or “You did what you had to do,” or even a simple “It will be all right.” Cyra didn’t have the patience for that kind of thing. She fell on the hardest, surest truth, again and again, like a woman determined to crush her own bones, knowing they would heal stronger. “Come on” was all she said. “Let’s find you some clean clothes.” She looked tired, but only in the way a person was tired when they’d had a long day at work. And that was another thing about her, too—because so much of her life had been hard, she was steadier than other people when hard things came. Maybe not in such a good way, sometimes.

Gandhi wrote: ‘I seem to have detected a flaw in me which is unworthy of a votary of truth and ahimsa. I am going through a process of self-introspection, the results of which I cannot foresee. I find myself for the first time during the past 50 years in a Slough of Despond.’ One wonders what readers of the press statement made of this decidedly odd interpolation. To them, the cause, manifestation and the precise nature of this flaw was left unelaborated. Gandhi’s close disciples knew the details; and the labours of the editors of his Collected Works have since made them public for us to examine it. Here is what happened. On 14 April 1938, Gandhi awoke with an erection; and despite efforts to contain his excitement, had a masturbatory experience. He was sleeping alone, and it was decades since he had been aroused in such a way. The details of the incident were kept from his ‘political’ followers such as Jawaharlal Nehru, but discussed with the spiritual followers who had stayed with him in Sabarmati and Segaon. To one Gujarati ashramite he wrote that ‘I was in such a wretched and pitiable condition that in spite of my utmost efforts I could not stop the discharge though I was fully awake.... After the event, restlessness has become acute beyond words. Where am I, where is my place, and how can a person subject to passion represent non-violence and truth?’ To Mira, Gandhi wrote in a language even more vivid in its self-abasement: ‘That dirty, degrading, torturing experience of 14th April shook me to bits and made me feel as if I was hurled by God from an imaginary paradise where I had no right to be in my uncleanliness.’ To his other close woman disciple, Amrit Kaur, Gandhi spoke of ‘an unaccountable dissatisfaction with myself’. But he had not lost faith, and was resolved to overcome the memory of his failure. ‘The sexual sense is the hardest to overcome in my case,’ he remarked. ‘It has been an incessant struggle. It is for me a miracle how I have survived it. The one I am engaged in may be, ought to be, the final struggle.’ Gandhi had taken a vow of brahmacharya, as far back as 1906. He thought sex was necessary only for procreation, and rejected the idea that sex might be pleasurable in and of itself. In his writings and speeches, he had often spoken of the importance of the preservation and husbanding of sperm, which he termed ‘the vital fluid’. After this (to him) shocking experience, how could Gandhi best control his passions, best preserve and husband that vital fluid? Several ashramites (Amrit Kaur among them) thought he should avoid close physical contact with women, especially younger women. He should abandon ashram girls as supports while walking (he rested his hands on their shoulders to propel his frail frame along), and discontinue the practice of having his nails cut or his body massaged by women disciples. Gandhi was not convinced of the sagacity of this advice. He had, he reminded one disciple, not ‘advocated total avoidance of innocent contact between the two sexes and I have had a certain measure of success in this’. To Amrit Kaur, he insisted that ‘it is not the woman who is to blame. I am the culprit. I must attain the required purity.’ Gandhi had wanted to write about the experience of 14 April in Harijan, baring to the world his failure and lack of self-control. He discussed this with Rajagopalachari, who was then in Segaon. Rajaji dissuaded him from making his experience public. Afterwards, Rajaji wrote to his son-in-law Devadas, who was also Gandhi’s son. The Mahatma, he said, was deeply worried ‘that he was still unable to overcome the reflex action of his flesh. He discovered, it seems, one day and he was so shocked and felt so unworthy that he was deceiving people and he wrote an article about it for publication in Harijan, which, thank God, I have stopped, after a very quarrelsome hour'.

As I’ve said throughout this book, networked products tend to start from humble beginnings—rather than big splashy launches—and YouTube was no different. Jawed’s first video is a good example. Steve described the earliest days of content and how it grew: In the earliest days, there was very little content to organize. Getting to the first 1,000 videos was the hardest part of YouTube’s life, and we were just focused on that. Organizing the videos was an afterthought—we just had a list of recent videos that had been uploaded, and you could just browse through those. We had the idea that everyone who uploaded a video would share it with, say, 10 people, and then 5 of them would actually view it, and then at least one would upload another video. After we built some key features—video embedding and real-time transcoding—it started to work.75 In other words, the early days was just about solving the Cold Start Problem, not designing the fancy recommendations algorithms that YouTube is now known for. And even once there were more videos, the attempt at discoverability focused on relatively basic curation—just showing popular videos in different categories and countries. Steve described this to me: Once we got a lot more videos, we had to redesign YouTube to make it easier to discover the best videos. At first, we had a page on YouTube to see just the top 100 videos overall, sorted by day, week, or month. Eventually it was broken out by country. The homepage was the only place where YouTube as a company would have control of things, since we would choose the 10 videos. These were often documentaries, or semi-professionally produced content so that people—particularly advertisers—who came to the YouTube front page would think we had great content. Eventually it made sense to create a categorization system for videos, but in the early years everything was grouped in with each other. Even while the numbers of videos was rapidly growing, so too were all the other forms of content on the site. YouTube wasn’t just the videos, it was also the comments left by viewers: Early in we saw that there were 100x more viewers than creators. Every social product at that time had comments, so we added them to YouTube, which was a way for the viewers to participate, too. It seems naive now, but we were just thinking about raw growth at that time—the raw number of videos, the raw number of comments—so we didn’t think much about the quality. We weren’t thinking about fake news or anything like that. The thought was, just get as many comments as possible out there, and the more controversial the better! Keep in mind that the vast majority of videos had zero comments, so getting feedback for our creators usually made the experience better for them. Of course now we know that once you get to a certain level of engagement, you need a different solution over time.

Fuck it. Whatever. The hardest part of my day is over and it’s not even eight a.m.

It’s easy to lose perspective when you have little kids. One of the hardest things about this season in your life is that you don’t see many results of your training. Even though you try to teach kindness, your kids still fight. Although you pray for patience, you lose yours. You sing “Jesus loves me” until you are blue in the face, yet you wonder if it’s really sinking in. This is a season of input and training, and you are not likely to see the results of this training for years. That’s hard because we really need to see tangible fruit of our labor. We live in an instant society. We expect instant results in so many other areas of our lives and then we don’t experience it in raising our kids. We need to recognize that looking for immediate results is an unrealistic expectation. We have to remember that God is patient. He is not in a hurry. He is not surprised by our mistakes. He knows and loves each one of our children even more than we do. And he has chosen the exact children in the exact birth order with the exact personalities for our family. He has given us our kids not merely so that we can raise them but also in order that they might be used by him to grow us up into the men and women he has created us to be. He will use our children in our lives. He is at work in our family even if we can’t see it right now, even when we feel like a bad parent, even when we fear we have messed up our child forever! We have to remember that there is no mess that God cannot redeem. He is not condemning us. Instead he is delighting in us! He is patiently working through us and in us. And as he does he will gently lead us.

Maggie.” He’d warned her this time a moment before he slid his arms around her. After a minute pause to discard the dictates of good sense, she turned to hide her face against his chest. For a long moment, she let him hold her, until words rose up in her aching throat. “I want to cry.” Stupid words. Maybe he hadn’t heard them. “I think it’s worse,” he said, his hand stroking across her back, “when you want to and you can’t. It’s an indignity to cry, a worse indignity when you can’t even cry.” She nodded against his chest. Why did he know such a thing? Was it because his sisters had been through an ordeal? Because he knew half of the beau monde’s sins and mistakes? “Stop thinking, Maggie Windham. Everybody is occasionally blue-deviled.” His voice was very quiet, right near her ear. She liked the sound and feel of it, but he was wrong. Years and years of looking over her shoulder, dreading each day’s mail, pinching pennies and carrying secrets was not simply a case of the blue devils. And the worst, hardest, most difficult part was she could see the rest of her life falling into the same dismal pattern, with only death promising her any relief. Hazlit’s hand went from tracing patterns on her back to cradling her jaw. He shifted his hold subtly, turning Maggie’s face up to his. When his lips settled on hers, it was so softly Maggie wanted to groan with the pleasure of it. He tasted of the almond icing on the tea cake, his mouth sweet and warm against hers. She leaned into him, knowing he had the physical strength to support them both. There was no hurry in his kiss, no fumbling or force. It dawned on her that it was a kiss of invitation, an offer for her to explore him intimately. A gesture of trust. She

I was barely breathing now, my head felt light. I stumbled to the nearest bench and I clasped my hands together, my fingers gripping each other painfully in an attempt to feel useful. Their job had been to hold fast and it had been so long since they had been empty. They had done their job well, they had clung to those memories even in the dead of night when I was fast asleep, remaining vigilant, keepers of my heart’s most inner desires. My icy hands with their narrow fingers had done my heart's work for so long that they felt bereft now. Good sense was still with me and it reminded me that it was time, way past time. It spoke of better days and of substance, of actuality. It asked for the hardest thing, trust.

Really, anyone can have a good attitude when everything is going well. We can all celebrate and be grateful when we’re on the mountaintop, but where are the people who give God praise even as the bottom falls out? Where are the people who rise up each morning and prepare for victory and increase in spite of all the news reports predicting doom and gloom? Where are the people who say, “God, I still praise You even though the medical report wasn’t good” or “God, I still thank You even though it didn’t turn out my way”? I believe you are one of those people. I believe you are of great faith. Your roots go down deep. You could be complaining. You could be discouraged. You could have a chip on your shoulder, but instead you just keep giving God praise. You’ve got that smile on your face. You’re doing the right thing even though the wrong thing is happening. That’s why I can tell you with confidence that you are coming into greater victories. Enlarge your vision. Take the limits off God. You have not seen your best days. God has victories in your future that will amaze you. He will show up and show out in unusual ways. You may be in a tough time right now, but remember this: The enemy always fights you the hardest when he knows God has something great in store for you. You are closest to your victory when it is the darkest. That is the enemy’s final stand. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t start complaining. Just keep offering up that sacrifice of praise.

You want the party line or the real answer?” “You know what I want.” His eyes shine as he shakes his head. “Penn, these girls…they’re not the girls we went to school with, okay? There’s a group of girls here who have a club called the Bald Eagles. Know why?” “Do I want to know?” “They all shave their pussies.” “Is that a big deal?” Wade raises his eyebrows. “They’re in the eighth grade.” “Jesus.” Even in our frankest discussions, Mia and I have not gotten to this level of detail. “And the juniors and seniors? Man, they put it right in your face. Day in and day out. Sex is no big deal to them. I’ll be honest with you, Penn, the hardest thing I’ve ever done is said no to the girls who’ve come on to me in this office. I’ve had ’em start changing clothes right in front of me, like they forgot I was here, then ask if I want to see more.” Wade’s honesty surprises me. But is he playing me as well? “Do you always say no, Wade?” His jaw tightens. “Yessir, I do. Know why?” “Why?” “My mama taught me one lesson. Don’t shit where you eat.” He glances at the door again. “I need this job, Penn. And screwing a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old would eventually lose it for me. Because these girls can’t handle what they’re playing with. They have sex, but they don’t understand what it really is,

Hello. Hey. Hi. Aye/aye mate. Oi. Holã. Aloha. There are a lot of ways to say 'hi' or 'hello', but just by a simple smile or grin can make ANYBODY'S day go from bad to good or horrible to great! Even a wave. Now on the other hand bye/goodbyes are one of the worlds hardest and the most saddest tings to ever do... Yeah surly there is the same amount of ways to say it but yet it's ALWAYS the hardest. Gets you to thinking huh?? A lot of people ask, 'well why is it the hardest thing to say?', well of course it's easy to say it to someone you just meet but to say it to a loved one or someone you care about deeply it's one of the hardest thing ever to say. Is "goodbye" or "bye".

Perhaps trying, despite it seeming too idealistic - to apply a speck of your imagination and generate 10 background stories a day about the people you meet - is what could help to see that it might be in fact one of the important things in life to care for. I am fully aware of how unnatural the task and believing in it could seem but my own experience has brought me to a point where i could defend this idea (and not merely an idea but also a posture in practise) tirelessly. having experienced the exuberance and richness that can be ones personal gain from looking behind facades, showing love where it's hardest to do (and yes, it can be incredibly difficult), has taught me that the task could be an incipient of ones own integral transfiguration in addition to a gentle move towards another. Remembering how undeserving we ourselves often are of this kind of gentleness (yet very much in need of, no matter what we think of ourselves or the world) makes it easier to sacrifice the time and patience to think in a considerate manner of another, even a stranger. I see this as one of the channels into the more unfathomable depths of life: every human being (i like to think that even a fragment of them) is a new story with thousands of nuances told by life itself. To see, behind hideous apperances, another human that is not too much different from ourselves may open us up to a closer understanding of other people, ourselves, situations and then help as obtain resilience useful in debilitating times. Love itself, this way, can turn into an inner resource, a little sun somewhere between your ribs, and if needed into a form of true fruitful rebellion.

On Loving a Stranger: Perhaps trying, despite it seeming too idealistic - to apply a speck of your imagination and generate 10 background stories a day about the people you meet - is what could help to see that it might be in fact one of the important things in life to care for. I am fully aware of how unnatural the task and believing in it could seem but my own experience has brought me to a point where i could defend this idea (and not merely an idea but also a posture in practise) tirelessly. having experienced the exuberance and richness that can be ones personal gain from looking behind facades, showing love where it's hardest to do (and yes, it can be incredibly difficult), has taught me that the task could be an incipient of ones own integral transfiguration in addition to a gentle move towards another. Remembering how undeserving we ourselves often are of this kind of gentleness (yet very much in need of, no matter what we think of ourselves or the world) makes it easier to sacrifice the time and patience to think in a considerate manner of another, even a stranger. I see this as one of the channels into the more unfathomable depths of life: every human being (i like to think that even a fragment of them) is a new story with thousands of nuances told by life itself. To see, behind hideous apperances, another human that is not too much different from ourselves may open us up to a closer understanding of other people, ourselves, situations and then help as obtain resilience useful in debilitating times. Love itself, this way, can turn into an inner resource, a little sun somewhere between your ribs, and if needed into a form of true fruitful rebellion.

Courage is making a difference in your life and in the world; Courage is standing up for yourself and against injustice; Courage is appreciating differences despite what others think; Courage is taking risks no matter how terrified you are; Courage is daring to do what most people are afraid of doing; Courage is standing tall after the hardest fall; Courage is starting fresh after you lost everything you owned; Courage is living every day with a purpose despite obstacles; Courage is getting up and voicing your opinion without fear; Courage is accepting change, moreover being the change; Courage is fighting for your rights even it costs your life; Courage is apologizing and saying sorry for wrongdoing; Courage is standing firm against racism and anybody who is racist; Courage is taking actions to save the lives of others; Courage is telling the truth no matter what; Courage is spending your life towards improving the human existence; Courage is...

Life is a gift from God. When you wake up in the morning, thank Him for giving you another day. Live that day joyously, even if it turns out to be the hardest day of your life.

Each tribe’s solution to its central problem is a brilliant, hard-won advance. But the true Master Algorithm must solve all five problems, not just one. For example, to cure cancer we need to understand the metabolic networks in the cell: which genes regulate which others, which chemical reactions the resulting proteins control, and how adding a new molecule to the mix would affect the network. It would be silly to try to learn all of this from scratch, ignoring all the knowledge that biologists have painstakingly accumulated over the decades. Symbolists know how to combine this knowledge with data from DNA sequencers, gene expression microarrays, and so on, to produce results that you couldn’t get with either alone. But the knowledge we obtain by inverse deduction is purely qualitative; we need to learn not just who interacts with whom, but how much, and backpropagation can do that. Nevertheless, both inverse deduction and backpropagation would be lost in space without some basic structure on which to hang the interactions and parameters they find, and genetic programming can discover it. At this point, if we had complete knowledge of the metabolism and all the data relevant to a given patient, we could figure out a treatment for her. But in reality the information we have is always very incomplete, and even incorrect in places; we need to make headway despite that, and that’s what probabilistic inference is for. In the hardest cases, the patient’s cancer looks very different from previous ones, and all our learned knowledge fails. Similarity-based algorithms can save the day by seeing analogies between superficially very different situations, zeroing in on their essential similarities and ignoring the rest. In this book we will synthesize a single algorithm will all these capabilities:

Jesus, forgive me for ever thinking that you’ve forgotten about me, don’t really care about me, or have even abandoned me. I confess that sometimes, especially when life seems the hardest, loneliest, most unfair, and most broken, I entertain these foolish, unfounded, disbelieving notions.

Men are indeed wretched... Everything beautiful happens without them. Cholera and catchwords are what they make. The foam with jealousy or die of boredom, which comes down to the same thing, if they're not allowed to interfere. And whenever they do interfere, there's a premium on hypocrisy and raving. One need only be up here o in the wilderness that I rode through the other day, to realize where the true battles lie, to become very particular about the victories one strives for. In short, to cease being content with little. As soon as you're alone, things lay hold of you by themselves and always force you to take the roads that are hardest to climb. And even if you don't get there, what fine views you have, and how reassuring everything is.

Most observant Judeans were content to pray the morning and the evening services. The teachers often said that the afternoon prayers carried a greater sense of divine connection, because they were the hardest to observe. People could more easily find time to address the Holy One at the beginning and the end of each day, but to stop in the middle of activities and pray, this signified a special calling.

Again, the hardest part of the equation here is starting. So we must remember to make what we want to do attractive and possible. In other words, we need to make it as easy as possible to begin. It can take a long time to get started, even with something we’ve had success with starting before. Each day I want to go for a run, I still sense some resistance in myself because

Just FYI. It’s not like other rocket scientists were huge idiots who wanted to throw their rockets away all the time. It’s fucking hard to make something like this. One of the hardest engineering problems known to man is making a reusable orbital rocket. Nobody has succeeded. For a good reason. Our gravity is a bit heavy. On Mars this would be no problem. Moon, piece of cake. On Earth, fucking hard. Just barely possible. It’s stupidly difficult to have a fully reusable orbital system. It would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of humanity. That’s why it’s hard. Why does this hurt my brain? It’s because of that. Really, we’re just a bunch of monkeys. How did we even get this far? It beats me. We were swinging through the trees, eating bananas not long ago.

I’m sick of waking up every day with that boredom gnawing away at my soul. I’m sick of being unable to reciprocate the things people say they feel for me — all I can do is mirror and mimic them. I’m sick of knowing I should be angry or sad about my past, but being unable to feel those things even when I try my hardest. It’s like I’ve been banished from my own body, and no fucking key is going to let me back in.

9-14-18 A date that will forever be drilled into my mind. A date that holds a lot of pain for me. A date that I could have ever emotionally prepared for. Pa, i’m not going to lie. These past 2 years have been the hardest years of my entire life, especially these last 6-7 months. But i have also had some of the greatest moments in these two years. I wish you were here to see me through both. The world is so different now that you are gone. So many things i wish you could have seen.. So many things i wish i could have came and talk to you about. So many nights i have laid in bed missing you so much that i couldn’t even sleep. So many days where everything reminded me of you. So many tears. So many hurts. I try and take everyone’s advice and only think about the good stuff. but even the good stuff holds pain. I try and think of all the laughs we had together but then it just makes me miss hearing your laugh ten times more... along with our long talks.. our motorcycle rides... our random pickle runs.. the many many many nights i stayed with you. All the beautiful memories that me and you hold together... I don’t know when the pain of loosing you will start to not hurt as much.. i don’t think it ever will... Because pain of loosing your best friend.. someone you spent so much of ur time with. someone you shared so many things with.. it doesn’t just go away.. i just become stronger and learn how to handle it better. some days i am weak and i can’t do anything but cry and miss you.. but other days i just keep the good memories in mind and it keeps me smiling through the day. I try and bring you up as often as i can. I continue to tell our adventures to everyone. i continue to talk about you to my siblings. i keep ur name going. because i don’t want anyone to forgot how amazing you truly were pa. When i’m older and start my own family i will share all of this with them too.. and we will keep ur name very close in our hearts... Not a day goes by where you don’t cross my mind. Gone but never forgotten. I love and miss you endlessly pa..

Time flew by fast. My hardest job wasn’t working late hours; it was attempting to avoid Mike and praying that he wouldn’t make any late-night rendezvous for the next few weeks. I really didn’t want to leave Mike, but I couldn’t turn him into the man that I wanted him to be. All I ever wanted was an unconditional love in my life. Some days he can be the sweetest person in the world, but other days he acts as if he could beat my brains out. How could I love someone who treated me so badly? For the sake of my children, I had to get them out of the mess that I created. I hated even the idea of something happening to one of my kids because I was too stupid to get out of a bad relationship. All my dreams and fantasies—that’s all they ever were—floated around in my imagination.

Prayer Works Lessons from a prayerful Mother In the darkest hour of the night During the hardest time of life When unsure if things will be alright You should pray! When your mind lacks peace And your heart is too broken to beat When you struggle to stand on your feet You ought to pray! When some things do not make sense And everyone close becomes distant When your faith is shaken in an instant You must pray! When the sun is about to set And your noontime is filled with tears When midnight is covered with fear Wake up and pray! When on the battlefield And you seem to have lost your shield When there is no sign you could win Look upon the hills and pray! When the race becomes too long And you cannot keep going on When everything seems over Kneel and pray! For prayer will: Put you back together Set you in a good place forever Keep you going no matter what Give you something to smile about Remove the weight off your shoulders Relieve you of discomfort Heal even a gaping wound Help you follow the right way Take you through another day Each and every day Remember to pray Because prayer works!

There’s a beautiful old practice in Hawaii called Hoʻoponopono. It’s hard to translate, but it means something like ‘to make good and tidy up.’ It has to do with restitution and forgiveness—putting things right again. The modern version goes something like this: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.  You’ve already done the second hardest part, which is admitting that you were wrong. You’ve apologized. If you haven’t expressed your gratitude and love, now’s the time.  And the hardest part, Sorry? The part that comes after the apology? You show them every day that you meant what you said. You don’t mess up the same way again. When you inevitably do mess up again in a new way, as we all do, back to basics: I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.  Show them the same unfailing support that they’ve given you, and eventually it will even out.  Sincerely, Andy

That will be the easy part. Compared to what invariably follows, this will be the sweet phase of the process. The next phase will be bitter and prolonged; even unpalatable to the point of insufferable when you’re back at home. “It’s the other parts,” I continued, “the mental, emotional, and spiritual parts, that are harder because these are the parts that you have to do. Not only do you have to begin this healing while you’re here, but you now have to accomplish it without the old crutch of the alcohol. Sure, alcohol can ruin your life in the long run, but it served the purpose of being a pretty powerful coping mechanism for a very long time. It was an aid that helped you survive. Now you take the alcohol away and you deal with your life sober. All that stuff that was drowned out by the alcohol when you were little, before you went to war, when you went to war, when you came back from war—now you face that stuff without the drink. We are here to help, but even with the therapists, social workers, groups, and medications, it will be challenging—but worth it. You’re a strong man, and you’ll get beyond this to be stronger than you’ve ever been, stronger than most people will ever be in their entire lives. You’ll get beyond this so you can be happy, so you can have a job that fulfills you, so you can be the father you want to be to your son, so you can tell the story of your survival and your victory. This is the story that will save your life and the lives of many others, so it is truly all well worth it. And you’ll need to remember this end goal every hour of every day because this will likely be the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. And you can do this.

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You know what I have learnt, when you can't stand up for others you lack the spine, which means you can never truly stand up for your own self. And vice versa. It is as basic and simple as that, when you can't man up the courage and voice up against the evils of this society, you become a part of that evil cycle, you become the very vacuum through which the injustices flow. But it's not your fault, it's called Spine, and God hasn't really graced everyone with it. Anyway, this isn't gonna be a talk invested on such creatures, neither on those who try their hardest to pull others down by body-shaming, age-shaming, ganging up to mock and ridicule, in short being a bully to those their darkness can't withstand the Light of. This is for everyone, Woman and Man, who's faced such a bully in their personal space, workspace or even in their random space. You guys, stay in your Light and remember when someone is literally shaken by your power and feel their failures as a living success on your being, they try to pull you down. It's like their mind cannot fathom how you shine all along that too so spontaneously and palpably, while those poor insecure beings have to literally wear a mask or turn in tactics that their soul knows the cost of. This is for everyone, who stands up for their own selves and for every other soul who they see deserve (no, not need but deserve, these two words have very different connotations) their support at the moment, to fight the menaces of this evil system. This is a Thank You note to every soul who fights these Bullies with a fierce strength and sunshine. You go, guys. You've got this. Every day, we lose countless people from suicides to depression, and one of the core reasons to that is always going to be these cruel and worthless beings who try to pull down another only to feel their worth, because of their own insecurities; we lose good people from children to adults, because certain dark creatures are too loud in their derogatory treatment, and certain 'neutral' people find it difficult to take a stand (after all, those words weren't hurled at you, right?), but you see that's the thing we gotta tell the good people, that their goodness is their strength not weakness, we gotta tell them to raise their voices for themselves, because honestly one clear voice is enough, always enough. You don't have to be loud to be heard. And if you think, they are too many and you're just one, remember a sheep moves in a herd, a lioness, oh she roars baby, and that's just pretty much enough. And if this gives you Strength, remember every time someone tries to pull you down, someone bullies you, it's just a reflection of their own insecurities; it has absolutely nothing to do with you. Remember who you are, and walk with your Head up. And if you're fortunate, you will find some support coming your way in the shape of like-minded souls, true friends and souls who know what it takes to be human and stand up with a clear spine, and then be gracious enough to thank them with all your soul. So this one's for them, who know their worth and have the heart to stand up for what's important not only for their own sake but for others around. Because when you fight to let your goodness shine on an individual level, you also channelise the spirit of fighting for the good at the collective level. Hope this reaches and gives courage and strength to at least a single being, remember you've got this, already. Love & Light, always - Debatrayee

Beyond putting yourself in one box or another, you worry about the future. About college or work or even your physical safety. Trying to create that mental picture of your life—of what on earth is going to happen to you—can crush you a little bit every day. It is toxic and painful and deeply unfair. If we took just five minutes to recognize each other’s beauty, instead of attacking each other for our differences. That’s not hard. It’s really an easier and better way to live. And ultimately, it saves lives. Then again, it’s not easy at all. It can be the hardest thing, because loving other people starts with loving ourselves and accepting ourselves.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate yhe pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one.

I know I will never see that smile the same way again, it will never bring me instant comfort nor warm my soul the same again. I know I will miss the flood of emotions that released for your touch to point of dehydration. I will miss the small, pulsating, vibrations running through my body as your voice ricochet in my ear. I will miss the beauty I saw in your pain as you took me on a journey through your soul, thu conversations I will miss our inner child's spontaneous and planned play dates. I will miss the silence in my mind commanded by you taking the lead. I will miss daydreaming about loving you forever, because I still had an ounce of hope leftover after a lifetime of searching for you. I will miss you forgiving me after, I recovered from a trigger, never appreciated the punishment that came with it tho. I will miss not being able to protect your heart from the pain I recognize, that your ego guards from your souls innocents that your mind can't tolerate yet. I will miss the feeling I felt knowing you could really be here with me forever because the exchange of laughter, wisdom and moments never ended. I will miss loving the man you are now in life, because even without the potential I see, you are worthy just as you are . I will miss things about you that you will never know, it was never about status or statuses I didn't want the spotlight, I wanted to be behind the scenes. I just wanted to support and love you. I wanted to guide you through parts of life that almost broke me, that I see you encountering. I will miss having somewhere to pour almost all of me. I will miss the possibility of being loved forever, I know I felt it though the roughness of your sore hands as I caressed trying to alleviate the pain. I will miss your grumpy days and I still regret not knowing how to comfort you on the hardest ones. I will miss who I sometimes selfishly dreamed I could be if you could just love me in the way I could feel. I'd dream of waiting for u to get home, (its the one we talked about getting after winning the lottery) . In that moment I swear it was the first time my soul wanted another day voluntarily. I will miss you not understanding my text, but we would see eye to eye when they physically met. I will miss you teaching me, and correcting me softly. I will miss you being gentle, when I didn't even know I needed it. I know it was hard sometimes. I will miss how you kept things together, always calm and steady, I was the complete opposite, clumsy and messy. You were everything I wasn't, and I loved you for that the most. I will miss thinking of you as my sun, and I will miss you calling me Starr I will miss loving you beyond myself. I will miss all those moments I wanted to pull u into me and just feel you and kiss you. I wanted you all the time, it took so much to hold back from showing you, it was out of fear of rejection of not being enough. I SHOULD of done it, would of got to this point faster. I regret not loving you with all me authenticly. I will miss what never was a friend, but everything I never had In one

Even though Christ knew Judas would betray Him, I believe He was still devastated by it. Heart-shattering betrayal is one of the hardest experiences we ever encounter. To know how best to bind up the heart it breaks, Christ chose to experience it.

We fight for mass especially with a reusable upper stage, which nobody has ever succeeded in,” he said. “Just FYI. It’s not like other rocket scientists were huge idiots who wanted to throw their rockets away all the time. It’s fucking hard to make something like this. One of the hardest engineering problems known to man is making a reusable orbital rocket. Nobody has succeeded. For a good reason. Our gravity is a bit heavy. On Mars this would be no problem. Moon, piece of cake. On Earth, fucking hard. Just barely possible. It’s stupidly difficult to have a fully reusable orbital system. It would be one of the biggest breakthroughs in the history of humanity. That’s why it’s hard. Why does this hurt my brain? It’s because of that. Really, we’re just a bunch of monkeys. How did we even get this far? It beats me. We were swinging through the trees, eating bananas not long ago.

What matters, she tells herself, is that even on the hardest days, when the grief is so heavy she can barely breathe, she must carry on. She must get up, get dressed, and go to work. She will take each day as it comes. She will keep moving. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Mila and Felicia Warsaw, German-Occupied Poland ~ February 1943 When her mother told her she had finally found a safe place for her to live—a convent, she called it—Felicia was dubious.

On my first day I realized why investment bankers make a lot of money: They work longer and more controlled hours than I knew humans could handle. Actually, most can’t handle it. Going home before midnight was considered a luxury, and there was a saying in the office: “If you don’t come to work on Saturday, don’t bother coming back on Sunday.” The job was intellectually stimulating, paid well, and made me feel important. But every waking second of my time became a slave to my boss’s demands, which was enough to turn it into one of the most miserable experiences of my life. It was a four-month internship. I lasted a month. The hardest thing about this was that I loved the work. And I wanted to work hard. But doing something you love on a schedule you can’t control can feel the same as doing something you hate. There is a name for this feeling. Psychologists call it reactance. Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania, summed it up well: People like to feel like they’re in control—in the drivers’ seat. When we try to get them to do something, they feel disempowered. Rather than feeling like they made the choice, they feel like we made it for them. So they say no or do something else, even when they might have originally been happy to go along.25 When you accept how true that statement is, you realize that aligning money towards a life that lets you do what you want, when you want, with who you want, where you want, for as long as you want, has incredible return.

CONSIDER IT ALL JOY WHEN YOU ENCOUNTER VARIOUS TRIALS. You can consider something a joyful opportunity even when you are feeling quite joyless. Some definitions of “consider” are: “to think about seriously; to regard as; to believe after deliberation.” You may need to ponder your circumstances at length before you can view them in a positive light. You need to give yourself time for your feelings to settle down. It’s hard to think clearly with high levels of emotions surging through your brain. Once you have calmed down, you will be able to think seriously about your situation. Invite Me into this process of deliberation, and My Presence will improve your perspective: helping you see your trials in the Light of eternity. As you look at your circumstances from My perspective, you come to understand that these multiple problems are testing your faith. This is both an opportunity (to strengthen your faith) and a temptation (to let your feelings “trump” your faith). One of the hardest things about trials is the uncertainty about how long they will last. Usually, you can’t predict or control the unpleasant circumstances. You just have to live with them indefinitely. At times you may feel as if you can endure no more, but you can always reach out to Me for help. As you cling to Me moment by moment, I enable you to persevere. This produces in you not only endurance but also a harvest of righteousness and peace. Consider it pure joy . . . whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. JAMES 1:2–3 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” MATTHEW 19:26 NKJV No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. HEBREWS 12:11

The real power of abuse isn't the big things. It's the subtle drip. The slow wearing down of a person by small comments, looks or actions. It wears on you, day after day, sand blown hard against even the hardest of rocks,

memoir A Ride in the Neon Sun. Here’s what she says about traveling: Some people travel with firm ideas for a journey, following in the footsteps of an intrepid ancestor whose exotic exploits were happened upon in a dusty, cobweb-laced attic containing immovable trunks full of sepia-curled daguerreotypes and age-discoloured letters redolent of bygone days. Others travel for anthropological, botanical, archaeological, geological, and other logical reasons. Some are smitten by a specific country brewed from childhood dreams. For others, travel is a challenge, a release, an escape, a shaking off of the shackles, and even if they don’t know where they will end up they usually know where they will begin. The very hardest part of writing this book was that I was unable to stop working on it. I kept reading even after the initial manuscript was turned in, discovering new titles and authors whose works I just couldn’t bear to leave out. I even envisioned myself watching the book being printed and shouting periodically, “Stop the presses!” so that I could add yet another section or title. But of course the day actually came when I knew I had to stop or there would never be an end to the project.And here is the result, in your hands right now. So, before your next trip—either virtual or actual—grab a pen and begin making notes about the titles that sound good to you. And enjoy the journeys. I’d love to hear from you. My email address is nancy@nancypearl .com.

Other thin places aren’t places at all, but states of being or circumstances or seasons. Christmas is a thin place, a season during which even the hardest-hearted of people think about what matters, in the face of the deep beauty and hope of Christmas. The shimmer of God’s presence, not always plainly visible in our world, is more visible at Christmas.

But if writing is one of the best jobs in the world, it’s also one of the hardest—it’s all decision-making, all day long. This word or that one, over and over and over again, all the way to the end of the sentence. And even if you get to the end of a sentence, you still have to start again at the beginning of the next.

Prayer Works Lessons from a prayerful Mother In the darkest hour of the night During the hardest time of life When unsure if things will be all right You should pray! When your mind lacks peace And your heart is too broken to beat When you struggle to stand on your feet You ought to pray! When some things do not make sense And everyone close becomes distant When your faith is shaken in an instant You must pray! When the sun is about to set And your noontime is filled with tears When the midnight is covered with fear Wake up and pray! When in the battlefield And you have misplaced your shield When there is no sign you could win Look upon the hills and pray! When the race becomes too long And you cannot keep going on When everything seems over Kneel and pray! For prayer will: Put you back together Set you in a good place forever Keep you going no matter what Give you something to smile about Remove the weight off your shoulders Relieve you from discomfort Heal even a gaping wound Help you follow the right way Take you through another day Each and everyday Remember to pray Because prayer works!

From parent to teenager, I love you is not I love you the way our interactions leave me feeling useful and appreciated and like I am definitely in the top percentile of parents working today. It's Even though I delivered you at permanent expense to my genitals and you rolled your eyes at me when I tried to hit the dab, and you trapped me in that modern-day torture chamber of club music and olfactory assault, Abercrankie and Filth, then later that day, impatient to be taken to Bridget's house, you beeped at me from the passenger's seat in the driveway, like maybe I worked for you, I love you.

Even though every single second of filming was stressful and panicked and done completely illegally and the very hardest way, I’d never felt more alive doing anything in my life. There was a joy that I’d never felt before, because I was PLAYING with my friends.

Choosing authenticity is not an easy choice. E. E. Cummings wrote, “To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody but yourself—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight—and never stop fighting.” “Staying real” is one of the most courageous battles that we’ll ever fight. When we choose to be true to ourselves, the people around us will struggle to make sense of how and why we are changing. Partners and children might feel fearful and unsure about the changes they’re seeing. Friends and family may worry about how our authenticity practice will affect them and our relationships with them. Some will find inspiration in our new commitment; others may perceive that we’re changing too much—maybe even abandoning them or holding up an uncomfortable mirror. It’s not so much the act of authenticity that challenges the status quo—I think of it as the audacity of authenticity. Most of us have shame triggers around being perceived as self-indulgent or self-focused. We don’t want our authenticity to be perceived as selfish or narcissistic. When I first started mindfully practicing authenticity and worthiness, I felt like every day was a walk through a gauntlet of gremlins. Their voices can be loud and unrelenting: “What if I think I’m enough, but others don’t?” “What if I let my imperfect self be seen and known, and nobody likes what they see?” “What if my friends/family/co-workers like the perfect me better … you know, the one who takes care of everything and everyone?” Sometimes, when we push the system, it pushes back. The pushback can be everything from eye rolls and whispers to relationship struggles and feelings of isolation. There can also be cruel and shaming responses to our authentic voices. In my research on authenticity and shame, I found that speaking out is a major shame trigger for women. Here’s how the research participants described the struggle to be authentic: Don’t make people feel uncomfortable but be honest. Don’t upset anyone or hurt anyone’s feelings but say what’s on your mind. Sound informed and educated but not like a know-it-all. Don’t say anything unpopular or controversial but have the courage to disagree with the crowd. I also found that men and women struggle when their opinions, feelings, and beliefs conflict with our culture’s gender expectations. For example, research on the attributes that we associate with “being feminine” tells us that some of the most important qualities for women are thin, nice, and modest.1 That means if women want to play it totally safe, we have to be willing to stay as small, quiet, and attractive as possible. When looking at the attributes associated with masculinity, the researchers identified these as important attributes for men: emotional control, primacy of work, control over women, and pursuit of status.2 That means if men want to play it safe, they need to stop feeling, start earning, and give up on meaningful connection.

the early stage of forming a new habit is the hardest. For the first thirty to sixty days, any new routine will feel challenging, even unnatural. But once it becomes a habit, it requires less effort. So, for now, I’ll just keep blundering through these prayers. Perhaps over time my concentration will improve.

In a day we can live a lifetime, and the day is filled with uncertainties, a day is charged with positive energy, the day has its humor and we laugh, the day has given us the opportunity to be useful to help others who need help and support, it is not always about money, it’s about empathy it’s about rapport, it’s about giving little of your time, your words have the power to uplift people, your words have the power to heal, the day is long and within that long day, you have thousands of thoughts there is plenty of time in the day for reflection, hopes and dreams, the day presents us with beautiful thoughts as well as plague of negative thoughts, and the inspiration of hope for the future, in our hearts we carry love and sorrow, hope and disappointments, and a few friends who make the world a better place to be in and none more so then your friendship with yourself that guides you along the turbulent oceans of life, that sometimes intoxicates us with beauty and elegance, that lifts our vibrations to be more in life, even though our lives do not belong to use but to the country we reside in, for we are part of the rules regulations and laws that govern the country and govern us, and the hardest thing to do is keep our individuality to be able to think outside the box, to be the captains of our own lives, in this vast oceans of uncertainty in the world we live in, love has the power to change lives lets pray for all the leaders of all the countries in the world, to have love in their hearts, so they can help change the world, to the change we want to see in the world, where we can all live in peace,

A buzz of warmth shoots down to my stomach at the sound of him calling me that. No matter how much I want to stay here with him, I pull myself away. It feels like the hardest step I’ve ever taken, but at the end of the day, I’m proud of myself. I’m finally advocating for the love I think I deserve. He should be proud of me, too. Even if it costs us everything.

WhatsApp info:+12723  328 343 A few months ago, I went through one of the hardest experiences of my life. I invested my savings into what I believed was a real and promising online opportunity. Everything about it looked professional and trustworthy, until the day I tried to withdraw my money. That’s when I discovered it was all a scam. The realization crushed me. I lost sleep, I couldn’t think clearly, and I blamed myself endlessly for being deceived. Just when I thought there was no way out, I came across Adware Recovery Specialist. At first, I doubted whether they could really help, after losing money, it’s natural to question everything. But from the very beginning, they stood out. They listened to my story with patience, explained every part of the process clearly, and kept me updated step by step. Their professionalism slowly rebuilt my confidence. The best moment came when they actually succeeded in recovering my lost funds. Seeing my account credited again felt like a miracle. I can’t even describe the relief, it wasn’t just about the money; it was about knowing I wasn’t alone and that there are still genuine people who care enough to help others in these situations. Today, I can confidently say that trusting Adware Recovery Specialist was the best decision I made during that dark period. They restored not only my finances, but also my peace of mind and trust in people. If you’ve gone through what I did, don’t give up, there truly is hope. I’ll forever be thankful for the way they turned my painful experience into a powerful testimony I can share today.

I felt liberated the day I confessed what lived in the dark corners of my heart — that I hated everyone, that I was not afraid of them, and that I wanted to murder everyone. At least in my heart, that’s how it felt: raw, unfiltered rage that burned like freedom. But then came the process God intended for my life. The process of feeling the hate, the pride, the unforgiveness — and overcoming it. Overcoming the betrayals, the neglect, the humiliations, the apologies that never came. Some people never said they were sorry; some even died before the words could reach me. And I was left holding wounds I could never hand back, words I could never hear. Yet God, in His mercy, didn’t leave me there. He let me face the poison inside me — the hate, the silence, the hunger for revenge — so that I could learn the deeper work: how to love again and how to forgive again. It was not easy. Forgiveness felt like ripping open scars, and love felt like laying my heart back on the altar to be broken again. But God is love. And when you choose to walk in His love, you begin to find freedom where there was bondage. You begin to see strength where there was only anger. And you learn that true power is not in holding hatred, but in releasing it. Because if you can overcome the hardest test of all — to love again after being hated, to forgive again after being wounded — then you can truly stand and say: I am a warrior of Christ.

That day in mid-August, at the eastern edge of the “Soccer Field” now occupied by tents and surrounded by demolished five-story apartment complexes, I encountered a middle-aged man wearing an eye-patch. Introducing himself as Mohammed Fathi Al Areer, he led Dan, Ebaa, and me through the first floor of his home, which was now little more than a cave furnished with a single sofa, then into what used to be his backyard, where the interior of his bedroom had been exposed by a tank shell. It was here, Al Areer told me, that four of his brothers were executed. One of them, Hassan Al Areer, was mentally disabled and likely had little idea he was about to be killed. Mohammed Al Areer said he found bullet casings next to the victims’ heads when he discovered their decomposing bodies days later. Just next door lived the Shamala family, one of the hardest hit clans from Shujaiya. Hesham Shamaly, twenty-five, described to me what happened when five members of his family decided to stay in their home to guard the thousands of dollars of clothing and linens they planned to sell through their family business. When soldiers approached the home with weapons drawn, Shamaly said his father, Nasser, emerged with his hands up and attempted to address them in Hebrew. ”He couldn’t even finish a sentence before they shot him,” Shamaly told me. “He was only injured and fainted, but they thought he was dead so they left him there and moved on to the others. They shot the rest — my uncle, my uncle’s wife, and my two cousins — they shot them dead.

Sometimes things don’t always work.” I kept my voice even. “It’s not anyone’s fault. It doesn’t happen, no matter how hard you try.” He shrugged. “Maybe. But then you have to ask yourself if you really tried at all, you know? One day, when I’m ready, I’m going to make sure I try my hardest. Because if you don’t give it your all, you might as well not be doing anything.

Even on his hardest days, he breathes life into my decaying lungs and I can’t publicly shower him in the affection he deserves. Hiding who he is to me feels wrong. More than wrong. It’s criminal.

I never thought I would be the type of person to get scammed. I considered myself careful, always double-checking before making financial decisions. But when I got involved in what I believed was a legitimate cryptocurrency trading platform, everything seemed too perfect to doubt. For months I invested more and more, watching what I thought were “profits” grow on the screen—until the day I tried to withdraw. That’s when the truth hit me. My funds were gone. The platform vanished, the people behind it disappeared, and with them went all my savings. The shock was unbearable. I felt like the ground had been pulled from under me. Sleepless nights, endless self-blame, and a heavy silence I carried because I was too embarrassed to admit what had happened—even to my closest friends. The hardest part was the feeling of helplessness. In traditional banking, you can call the bank or authorities, but in the crypto world, losing your coins often feels final. Out of desperation, I began searching online for any possible solution. That’s when I came across HACKATHON TECH SOLUTIONS. Honestly, I was doubtful. I thought, “What if this is another scam preying on desperate victims like me?” But their professionalism, clear process, and the way they handled my concerns with patience gave me the courage to take a chance. From day one, their team treated me with compassion. They explained every step of the recovery process in detail, never making false promises, but assuring me that my case would be handled with utmost seriousness. They used advanced blockchain analysis to trace where my funds had gone. Each update they shared gave me a little more hope. After weeks of waiting and constant communication, I received the news I thought I’d never hear: they had successfully recovered my stolen cryptocurrency. I cannot put into words the relief and gratitude I felt in that moment. It wasn’t just about the money—it was about getting my life back, lifting the weight of despair, and knowing that justice was possible even in the unpredictable world of crypto. To anyone who feels the same hopelessness I once felt—please know you are not alone, and your loss does not have to be permanent. HACKATHON TECH SOLUTIONS gave me back my stolen funds and restored my faith when I had almost given up. If you’ve lost Bitcoin or any type of cryptocurrency to scams or theft, I strongly encourage you to reach out to them. My story is proof that recovery is possible. Contact them using the details provided below. Email: hackathontechservice@mail.com  Whatsapp:‪‪‪‪ ‪‪‪‪+31 (6 47) 999-256‬‬‬‬  Telegram: ‪ ‪‪‪‪+1(659) 217-9239‬‬‬‬

The hardest part of being an actor is finding that family/work balance. This is true in so many professions, but it's the distance apart for long periods of time and the constant changing of shooting schedules and locations that make it even more difficult....But fundamentally I believe that children want and need consistency of place and people. It keeps them grounded and secure. I chose this profession, they did not, and therefore it's up to me to travel back and forth for as often as possible. That said, having them there for those few days, my strange soulless apartment was transformed into a home. It was my happiest time in Rome.

The hardest part of my job,” Tina began in a heartsick voice, “is allowing patients to make their own choices. I cannot tell them what to do or what not to do, even when the right choice is clear as day to me. My role as a shrink is to provide people with a framework to understand what drives them and informs their behavior. A person’s childhood shapes everything about that framework.

I thread her fingers with mine, stroke her knuckle with my thumb. “I want to remember everything we shared, this entire life.” I pause, trying to articulate my thoughts, the feelings surfacing on this pilgrimage, wistful for those two young kids, their life just beginnning. “The best way I can think to say goodbye is to revisit it all…falling in love, having our children, all of it…even the days we were lost. It’s not only the happiest days, though they’re a part of it.” Her lower lip begins to tremble. “But it was also the hardest days. The days I was lost, the days I thought I’d lose you. When everything fell apart but you were all I needed.” A tear falls down her cheek, her hand clasped in mine, a hold so tender I never want to let go. “Those are the days I loved you most.