Everyone Is Temporary Quotes

Calvin: Look, a dead bird! Hobbes: It must've hit a window. Calvin: Isn't it beautiful? It's so delicate. Sighhh... once it's too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary, and precious. But to go on with your daily affairs, you can't really think about that...which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly. It's very confusing. I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up. Hobbes: No doubt.

Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren't real, or if I was.

You were never a pawn. You were always my queen. Everyone knew it but you.

It is growing up different. It is extreme hypersensitivity. It is a bottomless pit of feeling you're failing, but three days later, you feel you can do anything, only to end the week where you began. It is not learning from your mistakes. It is distrusting people because you have been hurt enough. It is moments of knowing your pain is self inflicted, followed by blaming the world. It is wanting to listen, but you just can’t anymore because your life has been to full of people that have judged you. It is fighting to be right; so for once in your life someone will respect and hear you for a change. It is a tiring life of endless games with people, in order to seek stimulus. It is a hyper focus, so intense about what bothers you, that you can’t pay attention to anything else, for very long. It is a never-ending routine of forgetting things. It is a boredom and lack of contentment that keeps you running into the arms of anyone that has enough patience to stick around. It wears you out. It wears everyone out. It makes you question God’s plan. You misinterpret everything, and you allow your creative mind to fill the gaps with the same old chains that bind you. It narrows your vision of who you let into your life. It is speaking and acting without thinking. It is disconnecting from the ones you love because your mind has taken you back to what you can’t let go of. It is risk taking, thrill seeking and moodiness that never ends. You hang your hope on “signs” and abandon reason for remedy. It is devotion to the gifts and talents you have been given, that provide temporary relief. It is the latching onto the acceptance of others---like a scared child abandoned on a sidewalk. It is a drive that has no end, and without “focus” it takes you nowhere. It is the deepest anger when someone you love hurts you, and the greatest love when they don't. It is beauty when it has purpose. It is agony when it doesn’t. It is called Attention Deficit Disorder.

What, in all the world, could I do to earn my living and still live as myself, as I knew myself to be. Temporary masks, I knew, had their place; everyone was wearing them, they were the human rage; but not masks cemented in place until the wearer could not breathe and was eventually suffocated.

We are all the same eternal constant pure consciousness. We are all the same life-force electricity that gives us all life. Treat everyone with love because they are you underneath these bodies and temporary thought forms.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did it, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics at the time. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe, the entire government gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Everyone expected him to succeed, no matter what the arena, and so failure, even temporary failure, had ceased to be an option.

Every garden looks beautiful in May.' Meaning: Everyone is somewhat attractive when she's young.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure I spent a good part of the day making everyone uncomfortable as I stalked Anna, trailing her through Patti's house. And it's just my luck the whole lot would be here to witness my temporary madness - Kope, Zania, Jay, the twins, Blake, and worst of all, Patti.

Missing girls had a way of working their way into someone's head. You couldn't help but see them in everyone - how temporary and fragile we might be. One moment here, and the next, nothing more than a photo staring from a storefront window.

You were never a pawn,” he says, his voice soft. “You were always my queen. Everyone knew it but you.

Where I'm going, anything may happen. Nothing may happen. Maybe I will marry a middle-aged widower, or a longshoreman, or a cattle-hoof-trimmer, or a barrister or a thief. And have my children in time. Or maybe not. Most of the chances are against it. But not, I think, quite all. What will happen? What will happen. It may be that my children will always be temporary, never to be held. But so are everyone's. I may become, in time, slightly more eccentric all the time. I may begin to wear outlandish hats, feathered and sequinned and rosetted, and dangling necklaces made from coy and tiny seashells which I've gathered myself along the beach and painted coral-pink with nail polish. And all the kids will laugh, and I'll laugh, too, in time. I will be light and straight as any feather. The wind will bear me, and I will drift and settle, and drift and settle. Anything may happen, where I'm going.

Jimmy looks down at the ring in his hand. He sighs before looking at me. “I understand what you’re saying, and if I were you, I’d feel the same way. I know I’m not the best man out there, but I look at you and you make me want to be better. I know what people think of me. I know you and everyone else thinks I’m a man-whore or I’m too young to be tied down. Maybe this will be temporary or maybe it will be for life, I don’t know, but it feels right. I don’t do commitments, but when I look at you, I see a future. I see my future.

The thing about secrets is they’re mostly regrets, aren’t they? I mean, “good news” secrets aren’t really meant to be kept. Just the embarrassing, shameful kind. Everyone’s said or done something they wish they hadn’t. Maybe they were young and immature, or drunk and displayed temporary poor judgment. Do these things need to be broadcast? Should mistakes be tattooed on forearms?

Jealousy is like a hangover: When you are in the midst of it you want to die, you are poisoned, useless. Nothing stretches before you but an expanse of ashes and regret; yet despite the intensity of your suffering, no one feels sorry for you, no one cosigns your fury. No sympathy for you! Look how wantonly you indulged! Of course it hurts, but your suffering is nothing unique, everyone has suffered like that, so get ahold of yourself, show some backbone and discretion, for god’s sake. Don’t go making any major decisions. Jealousy and hangovers, as common wisdom goes, are temporary.

These stars were a temporary, beautiful gift of our era—the era that we all shared, a human era. I’d die one day, just like everyone else, so I had better try to live.

Beauty has no other origin than a wound, unique, different for each person, hidden or visible, that everyone keeps in himself, that he preserves and to which he withdraws when he wants to leave the world for a temporary but profound solitude.

When people ask me that question that everyone asks: "What do you do?" I'd say, "I'm in customer service," which was true. To me, it's nice day's work when you make a lot of people smile. I know that sounds too earnest, but it's true. I mean, I would rather be a librarian, but I worry about the job security. Books may be temporary; dicks are forever.

To cheat fate, Victor signed a three-year contract at a big industrial site two thousand miles away. He reckoned that in three years they’d all forget about him, including Alla, who’d find herself a husband. It was like a temporary suicide, he thought, a thing that everyone desires at some point—to step out for a while, then come back to see what happened.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. "It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. "Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. "I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? "That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed at home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could point your finger at. ... "Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful.

Everyone left, eventually. Wasn’t just Rachel Price. People were temporary. It was the one thing you could count on: people always left, even Carter.

Boy everyone in this country is running around yammering about their fucking rights. "I have a right, you have no right, we have a right." Folks I hate to spoil your fun, but... there's no such thing as rights. They're imaginary. We made 'em up. Like the boogie man. Like Three Little Pigs, Pinocio, Mother Goose, shit like that. Rights are an idea. They're just imaginary. They're a cute idea. Cute. But that's all. Cute...and fictional. But if you think you do have rights, let me ask you this, "where do they come from?" People say, "They come from God. They're God given rights." Awww fuck, here we go again...here we go again. The God excuse, the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument, "It came from God." Anything we can't describe must have come from God. Personally folks, I believe that if your rights came from God, he would've given you the right for some food every day, and he would've given you the right to a roof over your head. GOD would've been looking out for ya. You know that. He wouldn't have been worried making sure you have a gun so you can get drunk on Sunday night and kill your girlfriend's parents. But let's say it's true. Let's say that God gave us these rights. Why would he give us a certain number of rights? The Bill of Rights of this country has 10 stipulations. OK...10 rights. And apparently God was doing sloppy work that week, because we've had to ammend the bill of rights an additional 17 times. So God forgot a couple of things, like...SLAVERY. Just fuckin' slipped his mind. But let's say...let's say God gave us the original 10. He gave the british 13. The british Bill of Rights has 13 stipulations. The Germans have 29, the Belgians have 25, the Sweedish have only 6, and some people in the world have no rights at all. What kind of a fuckin' god damn god given deal is that!?...NO RIGHTS AT ALL!? Why would God give different people in different countries a different numbers of different rights? Boredom? Amusement? Bad arithmetic? Do we find out at long last after all this time that God is weak in math skills? Doesn't sound like divine planning to me. Sounds more like human planning . Sounds more like one group trying to control another group. In other words...business as usual in America. Now, if you think you do have rights, I have one last assignment for ya. Next time you're at the computer get on the Internet, go to Wikipedia. When you get to Wikipedia, in the search field for Wikipedia, i want to type in, "Japanese-Americans 1942" and you'll find out all about your precious fucking rights. Alright. You know about it. In 1942 there were 110,000 Japanese-American citizens, in good standing, law abiding people, who were thrown into internment camps simply because their parents were born in the wrong country. That's all they did wrong. They had no right to a lawyer, no right to a fair trial, no right to a jury of their peers, no right to due process of any kind. The only right they had was...right this way! Into the internment camps. Just when these American citizens needed their rights the most...their government took them away. and rights aren't rights if someone can take em away. They're priveledges. That's all we've ever had in this country is a bill of TEMPORARY priviledges; and if you read the news, even badly, you know the list get's shorter, and shorter, and shorter. Yeup, sooner or later the people in this country are going to realize the government doesn't give a fuck about them. the government doesn't care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety. it simply doesn't give a fuck about you. It's interested in it's own power. That's the only thing...keeping it, and expanding wherever possible. Personally when it comes to rights, I think one of two things is true: either we have unlimited rights, or we have no rights at all.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes. Here what comes? I said. You wait, she said. They've been building up to this. It's you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but she wasn't intending to be funny.

It just doesn’t make sense,” Elizabeth insisted. “Are we supposed to believe that civilization has just come to an end?” “Well,” Clark offered, “it was always a little fragile, wouldn’t you say?” They were sitting together in the Skymiles Lounge, where Elizabeth and Tyler had set up camp. “I don’t know.” Elizabeth spoke slowly, looking out at the tarmac. “I’ve been taking art history classes on and off for years, between projects. And of course art history is always pressed up close against non-art history, you see catastrophe after catastrophe, terrible things, all these moments when everyone must have thought the world was ending, but all those moments, they were all temporary. It always passes.” Clark was silent. He didn’t think this would pass.

Some of you may feel that if you don't do something soon to change your life, you will be left by the roadside, alone, homeless and in despair. But is the despair not there as you reach and grapple to create or manifest your desires through your own effort and will? What happens if or when those things appear in your life? Joy? Peace? Or a temporary sense of relief? What if it is relief from the wanting you have been craving for so long, not the outcome, but the relief from the constant wanting.

The truth is - people won't believe you, they won't care for you, they won't give you time or attention, but once you do something that is 'big' in their eyes, you will get it all. Then suddenly you become everyone's friend, everyone seems to have time for you. The people who ignored you earlier will tag you in their posts to gain publicity. And all of a sudden, you become the 'new' inspiration. But the ones who always support you will still call you by your pet name, tease you by those old names and will be there for you like before. The 'key' to life is - knowing who is permanent and who is temporary. The people who are with you in your struggle, are the people who deserve to eat a slice of your success, and the people who are there right after your success, are the ones who should be kept at a distance, for those people would be the first ones to run away if you are in any problem. This life is too short to be lived in any fake fame or publicity. Know your real friends, and know their worth, because if they're lost, the meaning of your life is lost...

Missing girls had a way of working their way into someone's head. You couldn't help but see them in everyone - how temporary and fragile we might be.

Remember, everyone makes mistakes. Most successful people have made many of them! Learn from them when you can, and realize the pain is temporary.

Happiness will come to you when it comes from you. Others can only bring temporary happiness and not everyone understands you.

Everyone, even Kai, looks like a tourist in a snorkel mask. And maybe we are all tourists in this underwater world—snorkels are our temporary visas, allowing us to visit this mysterious country for brief slices of time.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

We all know that rainbows are temporary optical illusions based on the factors of sunlight, moisture, and heat. The environment creates each rainbow like the mind creates a self. Both creations are relatively real, in that we can genuinely experience them temporarily; but just as the factors that created the illusion (whether rainbow or self) arose, so will they also pass. There is no permanent self; there is no permanent rainbow. It is not true to say that there is no self at all or that everything is empty or illusory, but it is true that everything is constantly changing and that there is no solid, permanent, unchanging self within the process that is life. Everything and everyone is an unfolding process.

Noah pipes up, “Well, are you two going to stand here all day and make out in my foyer, or are you going to come out back and catch up with everyone else?” “Sorry, I can’t seem to keep her off me. It’s such a hard life,” Daniel adds, shaking his head in jest.

Perhaps it is better to conceptualize it this way: Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal—an ambition, and a purpose—to limit chaos and make intelligible sense of his or her life. But all such concrete goals can and should be subordinated to what might be considered a meta-goal, which is a way of approaching and formulating goals themselves. The meta-goal could be “live in truth.” This means, “Act diligently towards some well-articulated, defined and temporary end. Make your criteria for failure and success timely and clear, at least for yourself (and even better if others can understand what you are doing and evaluate it with you). While doing so, however, allow the world and your spirit to unfold as they will, while you act out and articulate the truth.” This is both pragmatic ambition and the most courageous of faiths.

Don’t forget that before he turned traitor, Benedict Arnold was a hero of the Revolution. He betrayed everyone he knew—everyone he had fought beside, everything he had fought for—not for money or ideals but out of pride. Injuries and insults eventually became too much for him to bear.

When the Hôtel Lutetia began processing refugees, there was some hope. The Red Cross set up there, and they kept careful lists of the former prisoners and those who were seeking them. Everyone who survived was given food, a temporary place to stay, two thousand francs, and a coupon for a new suit.

It seems like everyone these days is putting on a mask to feel beautiful, trying to fit into some pre-established norms of how we should look. This isn’t only painful, it’s ignorant. Saying like we know, better than nature does, what is beautiful and what is not is like a two-year-old lecturing an old man about patience. Nature’s been creating beauty for millennia and you are part of that creation process. Stop the madness. Stop fighting who you are. Let the mask fall. It’ll be strange at first, yes. But, over time, you’ll see beyond the temporary discomfort of stepping outside social norms and learn to see the beauty you were born with, the beauty you’ve been taught to ignore and cover up. You’ll see beauty that will take your breath away, like a sunset. That’s how beautiful you are—like a sunset, like a forest, like a million fireflies on a calm warm night lighting up the sky. You are made by nature. Nature is wiser in the ways of beauty than cosmetics companies or magazines. Break the spell. Gain back your sanity. Go find that brilliant beauty within every single part of you. Go find the universe in your eyes. Remove that cloak that’s been pulled over your eyes and see yourself for who you really are.

The commitment to forgive everyone, in all situations, without exception, including ourselves, is an intensely transformative commitment. The nature of forgiveness is such that it cannot be pretended or intellectualised. It is a practice which involves deep surrender to God and sincere humility. Surrender and humility are the two qualities which will advance our evolution most significantly. The practice of forgiveness brings quietness, stillness, peace, and happiness. If we want to be happy, we must be willing to let go of that which is most painful to us. The ego will put up a vicious fight, reminding us of how justified we are in holding onto all those things. The ego gets its life force from such resentments and so it is hardly going to co-operate with its own demise. However, with a sincere desire for happiness and peace, one finds the ability to let things go. The end result more than compensates for any temporary discomfort.

Now then, Adam Young,’ said the Metatron, ‘while we can of course appreciate your assistance at this point, we must add that Armageddon should take place now. There may be some temporary inconvenience, but that should hardly stand in the way of the ultimate good.’ ‘Ah,’ whispered Crowley to Aziraphale, ‘what he means is, we have to destroy the world in order to save it.’ ‘Azz to what it standz in the way of, that hazz yet to be decided,’ buzzed Beelzebub. ‘But it muzzt be decided now, boy. That izz thy deztiny. It is written.’ Adam took a deep breath. The human watchers held theirs. Crowley and Aziraphale had forgotten to breathe some time ago. ‘I just don’t see why everyone and everything has to be burned up and everything,’ Adam said. ‘Millions of fish an’ whales an’ trees an’, an’ sheep and stuff. An’ not even for anything important. Jus’ to see who’s got the best gang. It’s like us an’ the Johnsonites. But even if you win, you can’t really beat the other side, because you don’t really want to. I mean, not for good. You’ll just start all over again. You’ll just keep on sending people like these two,’ he pointed to Crowley and Aziraphale, ‘to mess people around. It’s hard enough bein’ people as it is, without other people coming and messin’ you around.

there is just one energy in the universe. Everything, everyone are just forms of it. When you get enlightened, you see that oneness everywhere, in everything. You realize that a human body, any body for that matter, is just a temporary vessel for that energy to express itself so the body’s birth or death is inconsequential.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the congress, and the army declared the state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics at the time. "Keep calm," they said on television, "everything is under control." I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe the entire government gone like that. How did they get in? How did it happen? That was when they suspended the constitution. They said it would be temporary, there wasn't even any rioting in the streets, people stayed at home at night, watching television, waiting for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put a finger on.

When dusk at last comes it comes from the corners, where it’s been waiting all day and seeps through Slough House the way ink seeps through water; first casting tendrils, then becoming smoky black cloud and at last being everywhere, the way it always wants to be. Its older brother night has broader footfall, louder voice, but dusk is the family sneak, a hoarder of secrets. In each of the offices it prowls by the walls, licking the skirting boards, testing the pipes and out on the landings it fondles doorknobs, slips through keyholes, and is content. It leans hard against the front door – which never opens, never closes –and pushes softly on the back, which james in all weathers; it presses down on every stair at once, making none of them creak, and peers through both sides of each window. In locked drawers it hunts for its infant siblings, and with everyone it finds it grows a little darker. Dusk is a temporary creature, and always has been. The faster it feeds, the sooner it yields to the night.

Seventy percent of US companies now use open-plan offices and hot desking in the hope that these free-form physical structures will provoke free-form thinking. This architectural determinism isn’t entirely convincing—there’s plenty of evidence that people find open workspaces noisy, distracting, and impersonal. Walking through several such workspaces recently, I couldn’t help but notice how hard everyone was working to simulate privacy. Plugged into headphones, surrounded by stacks of books and temporary dividers, defensiveness was more evident than openness. Architecture alone won’t change mindsets and tearing down physical walls won’t demolish the mental silos that trap thinking.

You are the sun. You are powerful beyond measure. You are life-giving. You nurture those around you. You bring warmth and love to the world. You lift everyone’s mood. You are pure energy. You radiate and shine. But then the clouds come. And they feel more powerful than you. They dim your spirit and hold you back. They cause you to question your authentic self. They bring you into darkness. And make the ground feel heavier. The weight is sometimes too much to bear. But you are the sun. You are life-giving. And you are forever. And when you harness that power, the clouds have nothing to say and away they float to bring their struggle to another star. They are temporary and you are forever. You are the sun.

Write a two-page reflection about your life. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What do you live for? There’s a French term for the latter question. Raison d ’être. It means “reason for being.” My mum used to say that Elliot and I were her raison d’être. Mum had a reason, now she lacks a being. I have a being, I just lack a reason. I live because of the law of inertia. An object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. If I were to reflect on my life, I would say it’s like being engulfed in quicksand, and as much as I want to get out, I slowly sink deeper, towards an inevitable end. I want someone to pull me out, but I don’t know how they can. Their only reactions are to stand on dry land and watch me with concerned expressions, urging me to just walk like they are. Living is being in the middle of a dark tunnel, claustrophobic and boxed in, and feeling something closing in behind you, and realising you can only beat it by running. But the tunnel never ends, and you come to realise that you can’t run forever. You go for as long as you possibly can, hoping to God that you’ll see a light before you can’t run anymore. You desperately want to live. But everyone has their limit. And when you eventually hit yours, there’s nothing more you can do. Life is temporary. Nothing is certain about it except for the fact that it will end. It can end on your terms or as a surprise. The thing is . . . I don’t like surprises.

In the fall he picked up his phone one afternoon to hear Grandma Lynn. 'Jack,' my grandmother announced, 'I am thinking of coming to stay.' My father was silent, but the line was riddled with his hesitation. 'I would like to make myself available to you and the children. I've been knocking around in this mausoleum long enough.' 'Lynn, we're just beginning to start over again,' he stammered. Still, he couldn't depend on Nate's mother to watch Buckley forever. Four months after my mother left, her temporary absence was beginning to take on the feel of permanence. My grandmother insisted. I watched her resist the remaining slug of vodka in her glass. 'I will contain my drinking until'- she thought hard here- 'after five o'clock, and,' she said,' what the hell, I'll stop altogether if you should find it necessary.' 'Do you know what you're saying?' My grandmother felt a clarity from her phone hand down to her pump-encased feet. 'Yes, I do. I think' It was only after he got off the phone that he let himself wonder, Where will we PUT her? It was obvious to everyone. ~pgs 213-214; Grandma Lynn and Jack;

When most people sing karaoke, they think of themselves as contestants on American Idol, and they sing and perform their hearts out. But I really think people should be thinking of themselves more as temporary DJs for the party. It’s kind of a responsibility. It’s up to you to sing a kick-ass upbeat song that sets the mood for your friends to have fun, drink, and pick up girls and guys.

The limitless wrath of Achilles can end only once he recognizes that no absolute, permanent victory is ever possible. Everyone must bear unbearable losses, for which no compensation could ever be enough. In the end, we all lose. Our best hope is to accept partial, temporary limits on conflict, accepting human companionship and community as our only, always inadequate compensation, for the pervasive experience of loss.

The Jealous Sun The sunlight whispers in my ear, his breath a warm, sultry tease. I shrink and duck beneath a tree. My eyes squint to scan the horizon for a glimpse of the wind, but there are no ashen ribbons or golden waves in sight. He is missing. Trickling, tinkling notes reflect loudly off a chandelier of glimmering droplets. The rain sings to me, and I shield my eyes, admiring the song. Far off in my western view I expect to see snow, but the sun grows hot with jealousy, knowing this. He refuses my snowman a place to set. My sight drops to search for the man in the moon. Normally he rises dripping wet from out of the lake, often pale and naked, supple and soft to my caressing gaze. On rare occasions he dons a pumpkin robe as luminous as fire. Today he is draped in silks of the saddest blue. My heart weeps as he steals up and away. An army of stars in shining armor come to my aid, and they force the sun into the ground—a temporary grave. I am fed with a billion bubbles of laughter until I feel I will burst. But the stars will not stop giving, and I will not stop taking. A kiss brands my cheek, and I turn abruptly to find my snowman. He landed safely in the dark. We hide from the man in the moon behind a curtain of flurries to dance on polished rainbows and feast on stars until I hear a fire-red growl. The sun claws its way out of the soil, and everyone scatters.

The essential point of the system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and N.C.O.S. but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society. Of course there was no perfect equality, but there was a nearer approach to it than I had ever seen or than I would have thought conceivable in time of war.

Everyone knows that a quick-fix usually doesn’t work, yet we have all been sold on the idea time and time again. Most of us would like to believe in miracle drugs and fast relief. The truth is that most of the quick fixes for stress focus on temporary relief from tension or pain. Temporary, as in, the problem will return with a vengeance. This doesn’t mean we should never take drugs to alleviate tension or pain, it just means that taking drugs is not a viable permanent solution; it’s just a temporary relief.

Agile coach: The individual is an agile expert who provides guidance for new agile implementations as well as existing agile teams. The agile coach is experienced in employing agile techniques in different environments and has successfully run diverse agile projects. The individual builds and maintains relationships with everyone involved, coaches individuals, trains groups, and facilitates interactive workshops. The agile coach is typically from outside the organization, and the role may be temporary or permanent.

When the individual people have the freedom to engage in permaculture activity, the effect is that ultimately the standards of living are improved for everyone, such that poverty is ultimately eradicated and even the people with the least among all still enjoy considerable wealth. When government or central planning agencies forcefully redistribute wealth, it has the ultimate effect of eradicating wealth such that eventually most people among all are poor; while even those people who have some temporary riches do not have real wealth

EVERYONE IS BORN BASICALLY THE SAME WAY: bloody and screaming. We come out of our mothers, shriek with our first breath, and find ourselves lost in a world that we don’t understand. But we’re hungry for understanding, hungry for life, and so we learn. We grow. We wrap the world around our shoulders like a blanket or a coat, and we wear it proudly every day of our lives, for however long those lives may last. We are temporary creatures, and we know it—that’s why we fear the dark, after all, that’s why we build walls and light candles to keep it out.

The responsibility/fault fallacy allows people to pass off the responsibility for solving their problems to others. This ability to alleviate responsibility through blame gives people a temporary high and a feeling of moral righteousness. Unfortunately, one side effect of the Internet and social media is that it’s become easier than ever to push responsibility—for even the tiniest of infractions—onto some other group or person. In fact, this kind of public blame/shame game has become popular; in certain crowds it’s even seen as “cool.” The public sharing of “injustices” garners far more attention and emotional outpouring than most other events on social media, rewarding people who are able to perpetually feel victimized with ever-growing amounts of attention and sympathy. “Victimhood chic” is in style on both the right and the left today, among both the rich and the poor. In fact, this may be the first time in human history that every single demographic group has felt unfairly victimized simultaneously. And they’re all riding the highs of the moral indignation that comes along with it. Right now, anyone who is offended about anything—whether it’s the fact that a book about racism was assigned in a university class, or that Christmas trees were banned at the local mall, or the fact that taxes were raised half a percent on investment funds—feels as though they’re being oppressed in some way and therefore deserve to be outraged and to have a certain amount of attention. The current media environment both encourages and perpetuates these reactions because, after all, it’s good for business. The writer and media commentator Ryan Holiday refers to this as “outrage porn”: rather than report on real stories and real issues, the media find it much easier (and more profitable) to find something mildly offensive, broadcast it to a wide audience, generate outrage, and then broadcast that outrage back across the population in a way that outrages yet another part of the population. This triggers a kind of echo of bullshit pinging back and forth between two imaginary sides, meanwhile distracting everyone from real societal problems. It’s no wonder we’re more politically polarized than ever before. The biggest problem with victimhood chic is that it sucks attention away from actual victims. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The more people there are who proclaim themselves victims over tiny infractions, the harder it becomes to see who the real victims actually are. People get addicted to feeling offended all the time because it gives them a high; being self-righteous and morally superior feels good. As political cartoonist Tim Kreider put it in a New York Times op-ed: “Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but over time devour us from the inside out. And it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure.” But

Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.

People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual. Whites hold the social and institutional positions in society to infuse their racial prejudice into the laws, policies, practices, and norms of society in a way that people of color do not. A person of color may refuse to wait on me if I enter a shop, but people of color cannot pass legislation that prohibits me and everyone like me from buying a home in a certain neighborhood.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.

They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on. Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes. Here what comes? I said. You wait, she said. They’ve been building up to this. It’s you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother’s, but she wasn’t intending to be funny.

win. I thought the bureaucrats who had overseen the Emergency Rental Assistance program deserved a parade. They had to settle for scattered applause. When the ERA program was sputtering in the unsteady early days, it seemed that everyone was writing and tweeting about it. Later, when the rollout was working, it was ignored. Because journalists and pundits and social influencers did not celebrate the program, ERA garnered few champions in Washington. Elected leaders learned that they could direct serious federal resources to fighting evictions, make a real dent in the problem, and reap little credit for it. So, the Emergency Rental Assistance program became a temporary program, and we returned to normal, to a society where seven eviction filings are issued every minute.[31] Imagine if we had met the results of the ERA program with loud cheers. Imagine if we had taken to social media and gushed over what a difference it had made. Imagine if newspapers had run headlines that read, “Biden Administration Passes Most Important Eviction Prevention Measure in American History.” Imagine if we’d worked together to ensure that the low eviction regime established during the pandemic became the new normal. But we chose to shrug instead. Poor renters in the future will pay for this, as will the Democratic Party, incessantly blamed for having a “messaging problem” when perhaps the matter is that liberals have a despondency problem: fluent in the language of grievance and bumbling in the language of repair. Meaningful, tangible change had arrived, and we couldn’t see it. When we refuse to recognize what works, we risk swallowing the lie that nothing does.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on. Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes. Here what comes? I said. You wait, she said. They've been building up to this. It's you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother's, but she wasn't intending to be funny.   Things

In a house, as in a garden, there is a point when over-mingling can occur. At first, when the new plants are dug in, there is too much space between them. They seem artificial, temporary. Then, as they grow, the bed finds a point of balance, the taller trees occupying the upper layers, the sprawling shrubs - the hydrangeas, buddleia, pittosporum - filling out the middle, and the smaller bulbs and ground covers punctuating the under-spaces. Then, without warning, equilibrium is lost. A rampant jasmine covers an adolescent tree; a hydrangea thrives, forcing out a lilly pilly that struggles for light beneath a spreading magnolia. The spaces are subsumed. In the house, there was a period when everyone thrived. Even Heloise had been noticed by Jerome, who was sitting down with her on most days and doing sums and geography, and reading poetry. 'She has real talent,' he said to Helena, over the kitchen bench. She raised an eyebrow ambiguously but didn't comment. Then, slowly, the balance began to slip.

She knows she should feel excited about her acceptance to Emory and the promise of spring break. She should feel infinite and hopeful, like the growing earth around her. Like the sunlight, which stretches longer each day, asking for one more minute, one more oak tree to shimmer on. Like the late March mornings, which arrive carrying a gentle heat, rocking it back and forth over the pavement in the parking lot, letting it crawl forth over the grass and the tree roots, nurturing it while it is still nascent and tender, before it turns into swollen summer. But while the whole earth prepares for spring, Hannah feels a great anxiety in her heart, for something dangerous has grown in her, something she never planted or even wanted to plant. It’s there. She knows it’s there. If she’s truthful with herself, she’s probably known it all along. But now, as the days grow longer and the Garden District grows greener, she can actually see it. It has sprung up at last, and it refuses to be unseen. She tells herself it’s passing. It’s temporary. It’s intensified only because she’s a senior and all of her emotions are heightened. It’s innocent. It’s typical for a girl her age. It’s no more or less of a feeling than everyone else has had at 17. But deep down, deep below the topsoil of her heart, she knows it’s not. Still, she pushes it down inside of her, buries it as far as it can go, suffocates it in the space between her stomach and her heart. She tells herself that she is stronger, that she can fight it, that she has control. That no one else has to know. I can ignore it, she thinks. I can refuse to look at it. I can stomp on it every time it springs up within me. So she lies to herself that everything is normal. That she is normal. She carries herself through the end of the school week by refusing to acknowledge it. By refusing to align her heart with the growing sunlight and the nurturing heat and the flowering plants and the tall, proud trees. ‘You alright?’ Baker asks, when Hannah says goodbye to her after school on Friday. Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I’m good.

In 2017, Greg Duncan, the education economist, along with psychologist Drew Bailey and colleagues, reviewed sixty-seven early childhood education programs meant to boost academic achievement. Programs like Head Start did give a head start, but academically that was about it. The researchers found a pervasive “fadeout” effect, where a temporary academic advantage quickly diminished and often completely vanished. On a graph, it looks eerily like the kind that show future elite athletes catching up to their peers who got a head start in deliberate practice. A reason for this, the researchers concluded, is that early childhood education programs teach “closed” skills that can be acquired quickly with repetition of procedures, but that everyone will pick up at some point anyway. The fadeout was not a disappearance of skill so much as the rest of the world catching up. The motor-skill equivalent would be teaching a kid to walk a little early. Everyone is going to learn it anyway, and while it might be temporarily impressive, there is no evidence that rushing it matters.

He looked up at her and saw that she wore the face of Everyone. It was the face of the two women who talked in the seat behind him on the bus; it was the face of Mrs. Leslie, saying to him, "Some of us are going to organize a Pretentionist Club ..." It was the face of those who did not dare sit down and talk with themselves, the people who could not be alone a minute, the people who were tired without knowing they were tired and afraid without knowing that they were afraid. And, yes, it was the face of Mrs. Leslie's husband, crowding drink and women into a barren life. It was the grinding anxiety that had become commonplace, that sent people fleeing for psychological shelters against the bombs of uncertainty. Gaiety no longer was sufficient, cynicism had run out, and flippancy had never been more than a temporary shield. So now the people fled to the drug of pretense, identifying themselves with another life and another time and place--at the movie theater or on the television screen or in the Pretentionist movement. For so long as you were someone else you need not be yourself. Clifford D. Simak. Ring Around the Sun (Kindle Locations 1207-1215). Avon. Kindle Edition.

The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully without interfering too much in each other’s projects. This is the dominant ethic in individualistic societies. You find it in the writings of utilitarians such as John Stuart Mill and Peter Singer11 (who value justice and rights only to the extent that they increase human welfare), and you find it in the writings of deontologists such as Kant and Kohlberg (who prize justice and rights even in cases where doing so may reduce overall welfare). But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous—a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends. The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.13

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time. Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on. Look out, said Moira to me, over the phone. Here it comes. Here what comes? I said. You wait, she said. They’ve been building up to this. It’s you and me up against the wall, baby. She was quoting an expression of my mother’s, but she wasn’t intending to be funny. Things continued in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

No one acts in a void. We all take cues from cultural norms, shaped by the law. For the law affects our ideas of what is reasonable and appropriate. It does so by what it prohibits--you might think less of drinking if it were banned, or more of marijuana use if it were allowed--but also by what it approves. . . . Revisionists agree that it matters what California or the United States calls a marriage, because this affects how Californians or Americans come to think of marriage. Prominent Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, no friend of the conjugal view, agrees: "[O]ne thing can be said with certainty [about recent changes in marriage law]. They will not be confined to adding new options to the familiar heterosexual monogamous family. They will change the character of that family. If these changes take root in our culture then the familiar marriage relations will disappear. They will not disappear suddenly. Rather they will be transformed into a somewhat different social form, which responds to the fact that it is one of several forms of bonding, and that bonding itself is much more easily and commonly dissoluble. All these factors are already working their way into the constitutive conventions which determine what is appropriate and expected within a conventional marriage and transforming its significance." Redefining civil marriage would change its meaning for everyone. Legally wedded opposite-sex unions would increasingly be defined by what they had in common with same-sex relationships. This wouldn't just shift opinion polls and tax burdens. Marriage, the human good, would be harder to achieve. For you can realize marriage only by choosing it, for which you need at least a rough, intuitive idea of what it really is. By warping people's view of marriage, revisionist policy would make them less able to realize this basic way of thriving--much as a man confused about what friendship requires will have trouble being a friend. . . . Redefining marriage will also harm the material interests of couples and children. As more people absorb the new law's lesson that marriage is fundamentally about emotions, marriages will increasingly take on emotion's tyrannical inconstancy. Because there is no reason that emotional unions--any more than the emotions that define them, or friendships generally--should be permanent or limited to two, these norms of marriage would make less sense. People would thus feel less bound to live by them whenever they simply preferred to live otherwise. . . . As we document below, even leading revisionists now argue that if sexual complementarity is optional, so are permanence and exclusivity. This is not because the slope from same-sex unions to expressly temporary and polyamorous ones is slippery, but because most revisionist arguments level the ground between them: If marriage is primarily about emotional union, why privilege two-person unions, or permanently committed ones? What is it about emotional union, valuable as it can be, that requires these limits? As these norms weaken, so will the emotional and material security that marriage gives spouses. Because children fare best on most indicators of health and well-being when reared by their wedded biological parents, the same erosion of marital norms would adversely affect children's health, education, and general formation. The poorest and most vulnerable among us would likely be hit the hardest. And the state would balloon: to adjudicate breakup and custody issues, to meet the needs of spouses and children affected by divorce, and to contain and feebly correct the challenges these children face.

subtler ways, powerful people may show their ability to come and go by leaning back during a meeting and putting their hands behind their heads to show temporary withdrawal or superiority over everyone else. It’s arrogant but effective. You will know when you are in the presence of someone who believes she is powerful because of the signals I’ve described as well as others, such as your own tendency to be obeisant in front of the person.

Allow yourself to figure out what temporary or permanent friends mean for you, and what you are supposed to do for them, and no human connection will be wasted. Everyone is an experience to learn from.

Letting go of that hope meant letting go of James, which was like letting go of air, toes letting go of nails, and fairly comparable to everyone letting go of electricity in our time. That bad. But in the meantime, this would be a distraction. Purgatory. With drinks and meeting new people, more time to focus on lesson planning and craftwork, art galleries, miniature museums. Anything to keep the thoughts away from drowning the itsy bit of sanity left. She’d even settle for a state of temporary trance.

I fell into the temporary role of spokesman for America, trying to answer questions as best I could: Why do Americans eat so much processed food? Why do they get so little vacation time? (Everyone in our group had more or less taken off the last month of summer.) Why do they love guns? Having been placed in this situation frequently during my travels, I blamed everything on the Republicans, which always satisfies Europeans.

But as soon as you step outside of Western secular society, you hear people talking in two additional moral languages. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes, and nations. These larger entities are more than the sum of the people who compose them; they are real, they matter, and they must be protected. People have an obligation to play their assigned roles in these entities. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism. In such societies, the Western insistence that people should design their own lives and pursue their own goals seems selfish and dangerous—a sure way to weaken the social fabric and destroy the institutions and collective entities upon which everyone depends. The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly. The body is a temple, not a playground. Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights when a man has sex with a chicken carcass, he still shouldn’t do it because it degrades him, dishonors his creator, and violates the sacred order of the universe. Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity’s baser instincts.13

The only reason for a child not to be aware of his own vulnerability is that it has become too much to bear, his wounds too hurtful to feel. In other words, children overwhelmed by emotional hurt in the past are likely to become inured to this same experience in the future. The relationship between psychological wounds and the flight from vulnerability is quite obvious in children whose experience of emotional pain has been profound. Most likely to develop this extreme type of defensive emotional hardening are children from orphanages or multiple foster homes, children who have experienced significant losses or have suffered abuse and neglect. Given the trauma they have endured, it is easy to appreciate why such children would have developed powerful unconscious defenses. What is surprising is that, without any comparable trauma, many children who have been peer-oriented for some time can manifest the same level of defensiveness. It seems that peer-oriented kids have a need to protect themselves against vulnerability to as great a degree as traumatized children. Why should that be, in the absence of any overtly similar experiences? Before discussing the reasons for the increased fragility and emotional stiffening of peer-oriented children, we need to clarify the meaning of the phrase defended against vulnerability and its near synonym, flight from vulnerability. We mean by them the brain's instinctive defensive reactions to being overwhelmed by a sense of vulnerability. These unconscious defensive reactions are evoked against a consciousness of vulnerability, not against actual vulnerability. The human brain is not capable of preventing a child from being wounded, only from feeling wounded. The terms defended against vulnerability and flight from vulnerability encapsulate these meanings. They convey a sense of a child's losing touch with thoughts and emotions that make her feel vulnerable, a diminished awareness of the human susceptibility to be emotionally wounded. Everyone can experience such emotional closing down at times. A child becomes defended against vulnerability when being shut down is no longer just a temporary reaction but becomes a persistent state.

TEN WAYS A PARTNER CAN HELP Before the baby’s born, help stock the freezer with meals that can be eaten with one hand. Find a good phone number for help and call it as needed. (La Leche League’s website, llli.org, and U.S.-based phone line, 877–4-LA LECHE (877–452–5324), can both lead you to your closest local group, and that’s a fast route to anything else you might need.) Buy the grocery basics, and keep easy, healthy snacks on hand. Get dinner—any dinner! Nights can be tough at first. Be flexible about where and when everyone sleeps. Going to bed early helps! Do more than your share. You may be what keeps the household running for a while. Everything won’t get done. Talk about what’s most important to her—a clean kitchen? a cleared desk?—and do that first. Get home on time. You’re like a breath of fresh air for mother and baby both. Helping out means helping emotionally, too. Remind her how much you love her, how wonderful she looks, and what a great job she’s doing. There she is, holding your child. She really is beautiful, isn’t she? Remind her that this part is temporary. Most women feel it takes at least six weeks to start to have a handle on this motherhood thing. Life will settle down. But it takes a while.

Hi Tim, Patience. Far too soon to expect strength improvements. Strength improvements [for a movement like this] take a minimum of 6 weeks. Any perceived improvements prior to that are simply the result of improved synaptic facilitation. In plain English, the central nervous system simply became more efficient at that particular movement with practice. This is, however, not to be confused with actual strength gains. Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise. And accept that quality long-term results require quality long-term focus. No emotion. No drama. No beating yourself up over small bumps in the road. Learn to enjoy and appreciate the process. This is especially important because you are going to spend far more time on the actual journey than with those all too brief moments of triumph at the end. Certainly celebrate the moments of triumph when they occur. More importantly, learn from defeats when they happen. In fact, if you are not encountering defeat on a fairly regular basis, you are not trying hard enough. And absolutely refuse to accept less than your best. Throw out a timeline. It will take what it takes. If the commitment is to a long-term goal and not to a series of smaller intermediate goals, then only one decision needs to be made and adhered to. Clear, simple, straightforward. Much easier to maintain than having to make small decision after small decision to stay the course when dealing with each step along the way. This provides far too many opportunities to inadvertently drift from your chosen goal. The single decision is one of the most powerful tools in the toolbox.

The mind says everyone is temporary but the heart fills you with the hope that someone will prove your mind wrong.

In that first all-hands meeting, Si told his employees how to stay neutral. He told them to focus only on what they could control. He reminded them that they couldn’t control every outcome. He told them to stop reading and watching the news if they wanted to avoid negativity. “Watch it for entertainment if you want,” he said, “but the company has better information, and it will be shared with the employees.” Si also told his employees not to rely on positivity either. This was going to be difficult and that was okay. Si and his staff began giving the entire team a daily checklist. Read the plan of the day. Execute your assignment. Take care of your family. Once everyone had downshifted, then it was time to figure out what to do next. For Si’s company, that was a temporary change in

Maybe the closed door, the bad break, the disappointment, is setting you up for something that you have yet to see? Most people, when they have a setback, let it affect their spirit. They seek revenge; they let feelings of bitterness and resentment into their hearts. They become disconnected from God and live a limited life where they blame everyone but themselves for their shortcomings. Don't let a hurt, a betrayal, or a delay; keep you from your destiny.  What you’re unable to see is God behind the scenes orchestrating things in your favour. Lining up the circumstances to lead you in the right direction, moving the wrong people out of the way. What may seem permanent is only temporary.

Crush approached the table. “Let me tell you a little something about love. Maybe I haven’t been around as long as you, but I’ve lived a full life. We all want love. It’s in our nature to need someone who’s there for us. I get where you’re coming from, because I was destructive. I lost the only woman I’ll ever love, and that’s a fact. But I got Raven, and I got friends who I never thought would stick around this long. Love comes in different forms. Don’t get fixated on the one that everyone’s chasing, or you’ll never see what you’ve already got. Look around. You think the chuckleheads you work with are just temporary? You marked your skin to show unity, and you’re willing to lay down your life for the other. That’s love. It’s a different kind of love. You can’t pick and choose what fate deals you.” He leaned in and took the shot, sinking the ball. “Once you figure all that shit out, you won’t need the drugs anymore.

is clear to everyone in Meryton that Mr. Bennett had a temporary infatuation with her so-called vaulted beauty!

Miss Taggart, it is not my place to call you, but nobody else will,” said the voice that came on the wire, this time; the voice sounded young and too calm. “In another day or two, a disaster’s going to happen here the like of which they’ve never seen, and they won’t be able to hide it any longer, only it will be too late by then, and maybe it’s too late already.” “What is it? Who are you?” “One of your employees of the Minnesota Division, Miss Taggart. In another day or two, the trains will stop running out of here—and you know what that means, at the height of the harvest. At the height of the biggest harvest we’ve ever had. They’ll stop, because we have no cars. The harvest freight cars have not been sent to us this year.” “What did you say?” She felt as if minutes went by between the words of the unnatural voice that did not sound like her own. “The cars have not been sent. Fifteen thousand should have been here by now. As far as I could learn, about eight thousand cars is all we got. I’ve been calling Division Headquarters for a week. They’ve been telling me not to worry. Last time, they told me to mind my own damn business. Every shed, silo, elevator, warehouse, garage and dance hall along the track is filled with wheat. At the Sherman elevators, there’s a line of farmers’ trucks and wagons two miles long, waiting on the road. At Lakewood Station, the square is packed solid and has been for three nights. They keep telling us it’s only temporary, the cars are coming and we’ll catch up. We won’t. There aren’t any cars coming. I’ve called everyone I could. I know, by the way they answer. They know, and not one of them wants to admit it. They’re scared, scared to move or speak or ask or answer. All they’re thinking of is who will be blamed when that harvest rots here around the stations—and not of who’s going to move it. Maybe nobody can, now. Maybe there’s nothing you can do about it, either. But I thought you’re the only person left who’d want to know and that somebody had to tell you.

You were never a pawn. You were always my queen. Everyone knew it but you. - Luca Windsor

Everyone is temporary in a way, but there are the few that refuse to leave, they plant roots in your soul, and weather every storm life throws at you. They are built of concrete, even if they crumble, they find a way to remain.

The notion that everyone will eventually cease to exist brings me great comfort and temporary courage.

I nod and lean back against the sofa, my eyes drifting over her body. When did she go from being the woman I hated more than anything to becoming the one I trust above everyone else?

Black students at a predominantly white university, for example, might be particularly prone to feel that they don’t fit in or belong at that university, especially if they experience an academic setback, as many students do in their first semester. If so, then an intervention designed to redirect their narratives from “I don’t fit in here” to “Everyone experiences bumps in the road” might increase their sense of belonging and improve their academic performance. To find out, researchers conducted a study with black and white first-year students at a predominantly white university. In the treatment condition, the students received statistics and read interviews with upper-class students indicating that most students worry that they don’t belong when they begin college, but that these worries lessen over time. To reinforce this message, the students wrote a speech illustrating how this lesson applied to them; that is, how their own worries about belonging were likely to be temporary. They delivered this speech in front a video camera, ostensibly so that it could be shown to future students at their school. Participants in the control group underwent the same procedure, except that they learned that social and political attitudes change over the course of one’s college career—they heard nothing about changes in one’s sense of belonging. The entire session lasted only an hour. Yet, as with other story-editing interventions, it had dramatic long-term effects on the black students’ performance and well-being. Those who got the message about belonging, relative to those in the control group, believed they fit in better at college, became more engaged in college academically (by studying more, attending more review sessions, and asking more questions in class), and achieved better grades in the rest of their college careers. Not only that, but on a questionnaire they completed right before they graduated, black students who had received the “belonging” intervention reported that they were in better health, had visited a doctor fewer times, and were happier than did black students in the control group. The “belonging” message had no effect on the white students, because most of them already felt that they fit in at their university.22

1 = Very important. Do this at once. 2 = Worth doing but takes more time. Start planning it. 3 = Yes and no. Depends on how it’s done. 4 = Not very important. May even be a waste of effort. 5 = No! Don’t do this. Fill in those numbers before you read further, and take your time. This is not a simple situation, and solving it is a complicated undertaking. Possible Actions to Take ____ Explain the changes again in a carefully written memo. ____ Figure out exactly how individuals’ behavior and attitudes will have to change to make teams work. ____ Analyze who stands to lose something under the new system. ____ Redo the compensation system to reward compliance with the changes. ____ “Sell” the problem that is the reason for the change. ____ Bring in a motivational speaker to give employees a powerful talk about teamwork. ____ Design temporary systems to contain the confusion during the cutover from the old way to the new. ____ Use the interim between the old system and the new to improve the way in which services are delivered by the unit—and, where appropriate, create new services. ____ Change the spatial arrangements so that the cubicles are separated only by glass or low partitions. ____ Put team members in contact with disgruntled clients, either by phone or in person. Let them see the problem firsthand. ____ Appoint a “change manager” to be responsible for seeing that the changes go smoothly. ____ Give everyone a badge with a new “teamwork” logo on it. ____ Break the change into smaller stages. Combine the firsts and seconds, then add the thirds later. Change the managers into coordinators last. ____ Talk to individuals. Ask what kinds of problems they have with “teaming.” ____ Change the spatial arrangements from individual cubicles to group spaces. ____ Pull the best people in the unit together as a model team to show everyone else how to do it. ____ Give everyone a training seminar on how to work as a team. ____ Reorganize the general manager’s staff as a team and reconceive the GM’s job as that of a coordinator. ____ Send team representatives to visit other organizations where service teams operate successfully. ____ Turn the whole thing over to the individual contributors as a group and ask them to come up with a plan to change over to teams. ____ Scrap the plan and find one that is less disruptive. If that one doesn’t work, try another. Even if it takes a dozen plans, don’t give up. ____ Tell them to stop dragging their feet or they’ll face disciplinary action. ____ Give bonuses to the first team to process 100 client calls in the new way. ____ Give everyone a copy of the new organization chart. ____ Start holding regular team meetings. ____ Change the annual individual targets to team targets, and adjust bonuses to reward team performance. ____ Talk about transition and what it does to people. Give coordinators a seminar on how to manage people in transition. There are no correct answers in this list, but over time I’ve

Managing the Neutral Zone: A Checklist Yes No   ___ ___ Have I done my best to normalize the neutral zone by explaining it as an uncomfortable time that (with careful attention) can be turned to everyone’s advantage? ___ ___ Have I redefined the neutral zone by choosing a new and more affirmative metaphor with which to describe it? ___ ___ Have I reinforced that metaphor with training programs, policy changes, and financial rewards for people to keep doing their jobs during the neutral zone? ___ ___ Am I protecting people adequately from inessential further changes? ___ ___ If I can’t protect them, am I clustering those changes meaningfully? ___ ___ Have I created the temporary policies and procedures that we need to get us through the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I created the temporary roles, reporting relationships, and organizational groupings that we need to get us through the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I set short-range goals and checkpoints? ___ ___ Have I set realistic output objectives? ___ ___ Have I found the special training programs we need to deal successfully with the neutral zone? ___ ___ Have I found ways to keep people feeling that they still belong to the organization and are valued by our part of it? And have I taken care that perks and other forms of “privilege” are not undermining the solidarity of the group? ___ ___ Have I set up one or more Transition Monitoring Teams to keep realistic feedback flowing upward during the time in the neutral zone? ___ ___ Are my people willing to experiment and take risks in intelligently conceived ventures—or are we punishing all failures? ___ ___ Have I stepped back and taken stock of how things are being done in my part of the organization? (This is worth doing both for its own sake and as a visible model for others’ similar efforts.) ___ ___ Have I provided others with opportunities to do the same thing? Have I provided them with the resources—facilitators, survey instruments, and so on—that will help them do that? ___ ___ Have I seen to it that people build their skills in creative thinking and innovation? ___ ___ Have I encouraged experimentation and seen to it that people are not punished for failing in intelligent efforts that do not pan out? ___ ___ Have I worked to transform the losses of our organization into opportunities to try doing things a new way? ___ ___ Have I set an example by brainstorming many answers to old problems—the ones that people say we just have to live with? Am I encouraging others to do the same? ___ ___ Am I regularly checking to see that I am not pushing for certainty and closure when it would be more conducive to creativity to live a little longer with uncertainty and questions? ___ ___ Am I using my time in the neutral zone as an opportunity to replace bucket brigades with integrated systems throughout the organization?

Unfortunately, I knew exactly what I was suffering from. LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women. My roommates and I had come up with the term in college, to explain the baffling phenomenon of nostalgia for one’s most recent ex. No matter how absolutely awful that person had been at the time, after a few weeks, the relationship would take on a rosy tint, and wistful little phrases would begin to creep into conversation, like, “I know he cheated on me with three people at the same time, but he was such a fabulous dancer,” or “All right, so he was a raging alcoholic, but when he was sober he did such sweet things! Remember those flowers he bought for me that one time?” Inexplicable, but inevitable. A few weeks of singledom render even the most inexcusable ex charming in retrospect. Hence, LIPID syndrome. As everyone knows, lipids are fats, and fats are bad for you, and therefore ex-boyfriends must be avoided at all costs. This is what comes of having a bio major as a roommate for four years. The one sure way to fight off LIPID syndrome was to distract oneself. True, the only foolproof cure is a new relationship, thus knocking the LIPID back down the dating chain into harmless obscurity, but there are other, temporary diversions. Reading a novel, watching a movie, or delving into the private lives of historical characters. With an anticipatory

Learned Optimism: Expecting a Positive Outcome In Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman provides information that has tremendous implications for teams that want to develop the persistence to achieve their business goals. Optimistic team members believe they will be successful and believe they are responsible for their success. Pessimistic team members do not believe they will be successful and believe that nothing they do will improve their results. For these reasons, optimistic team members are resilient and will persist when things get tough, while pessimistic team members give up. Seligman led a research team that demonstrated that optimism and helplessness are learned. His work suggests that when team members decide that nothing they do matters, they feel helpless and will do little to improve their situation. The good news that came from discovering that helplessness can be learned is the revelation that optimism can also be learned. Of particular importance is how team members explain setbacks to themselves. Optimistic team members explain setbacks as temporary, specific, and, where appropriate, externally caused. They do not view the event as long-lasting or permanent. They believe that the event is a temporary setback that can be corrected and refuse to consider it a catastrophe. For them, it is a single event with a specific negative impact. Finally, they only own the result if they should. Optimistic team members don't own the negative returns if the market goes down. Pessimistic team members are on the other end of the continuum. They explain setbacks as permanent, pervasive, and personal. They believe the negative setback is long-lasting. They globalize the setback and believe “all hell is breaking loose.” Pessimistic team members also believe that they are responsible for the setback even when they are not. To make matters worse, pessimistic team members tend to play the setback over and over again in their minds. Because we tend to move toward those things we think about, this ruminating can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teams reflect the attitudes of the individual team members. If team members explain setbacks as temporary, specific, and (where appropriate) externally caused, the team will be optimistic about their future success and will continue to persist. However, if as a group a team tends to explain setbacks as permanent, pervasive, and caused by the team members, the team will develop a pessimistic explanatory style and will quit, giving up on their goals. What seems to be of lesser importance in developing team persistence is how teams and their members explain successes to themselves. It is interesting that explanatory styles are completely turned around when they experience success. Optimistic teams explain the success as permanent, pervasive, and personally caused. Pessimistic teams explain successes as temporary, specific, and externally caused.

What’s my big beef with capitalism? That it desacralizes everything, robs the world of wonder, and leaves it as nothing more than a vulgar market. The fastest way to cheapen anything—be it a woman, a favor, or a work of art—is to put a price tag on it. And that’s what capitalism is, a busy greengrocer going through his store with a price-sticker machine—ka-CHUNK! ka-CHUNK!—$4.10 for eggs, $5 for coffee at Sightglass, $5,000 per month for a run-down one-bedroom in the Mission. Think I’m exaggerating? Stop and think for a moment what this whole IPO ritual was about. For the first time, Facebook shares would have a public price. For all the pageantry and cheering, this was Mr. Market coming along with his price-sticker machine and—ka-CHUNK!—putting one on Facebook for $38 per share. And everyone was ecstatic about it. It was one of the highlights of the technology industry, and one of the “once in a lifetime” moments of our age. In pre-postmodern times, only a divine ritual of ancient origin, victory in war, or the direct experience of meaningful culture via shared songs, dances, or art would cause anybody such revelry. Now we’re driven to ecstasies of delirium because we have a price tag, and our life’s labors are validated by the fact it does. That’s the smoldering ambition of every entrepreneur: to one day create an organization that society deems worthy of a price tag. These are the only real values we have left in the twilight of history, the tired dead end of liberal democratic capitalism, at least here in the California fringes of Western civilization. Clap at the clever people getting rich, and hope you’re among them. Is it a wonder that the inhabitants of such a world clamor for contrived rituals of artificial significance like Burning Man, given the utter bankruptcy of meaning in their corporatized culture? Should we be surprised that they cling to identities, clusters of consumption patterns, that seem lifted from the ads-targeting system at Facebook: “hipster millennials,” “urban mommies,” “affluent suburbanites”? Ortega y Gasset wrote: “Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilized world.” Tragedy plays like the IPO were bound to pale for those who felt the call of real tragedy, the tragedy that poets once captured in verse, and that fathers once passed on to sons. Would the inevitable descendants of that cheering courtyard crowd one day gather with their forebears, perhaps in front of a fireplace, and ask, “Hey, Grandpa, what was it like to be at the Facebook IPO?” the way previous generations asked about Normandy or the settling of the Western frontier? I doubt it. Even as a participant in this false Mass, the temporary thrill giving way quickly to fatigue and a budding hangover, I wondered what would happen to the culture when it couldn’t even produce spectacles like this anymore.

With each step you make on the path of kundalini sadhana, you unlock a new level of your consciousness. The clarity of your thought begins to improve noticeably. Your memory improves and an inexplicable stillness arises in the body. You feel more grounded, you find it hard to react to other’s criticism, and you begin to maintain an awareness without being affected about what is going on around you. You start to see that your thoughts have started manifesting in real life, they begin to materialize. You are able to attract your desired objects with greater ease. Your sense of individuality starts to find its place in your life, lifestyle and living. You and everyone around you notice a definitive positive change in you. Your imperfections no longer are like the thumb in front of your eye blocking your vision of the bright sun or the glorious moon, instead, they become like the temporary clouds that dissipate on their own. Even your imperfections, like the tiny and twinkling stars add beauty to the universe of your existence.

Dealing with the temporary frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellence was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home. A blue collar work ethic married to indomitable will. It is literally that simple. Nothing interferes. Nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge. Refuse to compromise.

Like everyone he knew, Luka possessed a wide assortment of pocket-sized alternate-reality boxes, and spent much of his spare time leaving his own world to enter the rich, colorful, musical, challenging universes inside these boxes, universes in which death was temporary (until you made too many mistakes and it became permanent) and a life was a thing you could win, or save up for, or just be miraculously granted because you happened to bump your head into the right brick, or eat the right mushroom, or pass through the right magic waterfall, and you could store up as many lives as your skill and good fortune could get you.

LET’S ALL GET FAT AND JUMP OFF BRIDGES How many times have you heard how few people exercise and eat enough fruits and vegetables, choosing to binge on TV and sugar- and fat-laden foods instead? These types of statistics are supposed to “scare us straight,” but to those addicted to reruns and junk food, the data is music to their ears. It reminds them of the comforting reality that they’re not alone—that everyone else is just like them. And if everyone is doing it, how wrong can it really be? You may not be one of those people, but don’t think you’re immune to the underlying psychological mechanisms. It’s comforting to think that we singularly chart our own course in our lives, uninfluenced by how other people think and act, but it’s simply not true. Extensive psychological and marketing research has shown that what others do—and even what we think they do—has a marked effect on our choices and behaviors, especially when the people we’re observing are close to us.29 In the world of marketing, this effect is known as “social proof,” and it’s a well-established principle used in myriad ways to influence us to buy. When we’re not sure how to think or act, we tend to look at how other people think and act and follow along, even if subconsciously. Whenever we justify behaviors as acceptable because of all the other people doing it too or because of how “normal” it is, we’re appealing to social proof. We can pick up anything from temporary solutions to long-term habits this way, and both people we know and even people we see in movies can influence us.30 For example, having obese friends and family members dramatically increases your risk of becoming obese as well.31 The

Of more angst to drivers are the customer ratings systems imposed by the app companies. While most drivers do not have a problem with the notion of being rated, they are concerned that they will receive poor marks for circumstances beyond their control. Customers can give even the most earnest drivers bad ratings for any reason such as bumpy rides over pothole strewn roads, traffic congestion and passengers underestimating how much time they need to reach their destinations. Miscommunication between passengers and drivers can occur because passengers cannot speak the local language, are drunk, or fall asleep and cannot direct the driver to their remote destinations. Perhaps some passengers just do not like the ethnic group to which some drivers appear to belong. Circumstances such as these are clearly the fault of passengers who may rate drivers poorly nonetheless. Drivers with low ratings can be expelled from on-demand taxi services. This unfairness is compounded to the extent that drivers make large investments in their cars, insurance and fuel. Making drivers, who basically invested in a franchise, vulnerable to expulsion from a system because of unfair ratings seems to me to be a potential source of dissention or even litigation. Another concern associated with the taxi app business model is that drivers only have 15 seconds to respond to notices of pick up opportunities. Drivers that fail to respond in such tight windows lose the business. Repeat failures to make timely responses can result in temporary suspensions. This pressure, and related distractions associated with interacting with handsets, is applied simultaneously with all of the challenges of navigating traffic in a variety of weather conditions. Foremost, this is a driving hazard that imperils everyone in the vicinity. It also ties in with the ratings systems because drivers are only rated on the rides they complete. Drivers who claim rides but abandon the customer if it looks like the pickup will be delayed have no ratings risk. Paradoxically, no ratings result in the worst customer service as passengers end up stranded.

never let a temporary situation cause you to make a wrong permanent decision.

everyone in your life is temporary, except God.