Fit Journey Quotes

You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.

Returning home is the most difficult part of long-distance hiking; You have grown outside the puzzle and your piece no longer fits.

Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.

My wandering has led me to the beginning of our journey together. I suppose it's only fitting for me to be here at that journey's end.

The only cure to all this madness; is too dream, far and wide, if possibility doesn't knock, create a damn door. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't make it. If the journey your travelling seems to far fetched and wild beyond your imagination; continue on it, great things come to the risk takers. And last but not least, live today; here, right now, you'll thank your future self for it later.

Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recognition of the fact that you choose to live--that productive work is the process by which man's consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one's purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one's values--that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others--that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human--that to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind's full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay--that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live--that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road--that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up--that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.

As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones. There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside. The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.

Dissociation, a form of hypnotic trance, helps children survive the abuse…The abuse takes on a dream-like, surreal quality and deadened feelings and altered perceptions add to the strangeness. The whole scene does not fit into the 'real world.' It is simple to forget, easy to believe nothing happened.

I quote much scripture in this book. I do so intentionally, without references, because that is how I believe scripture should fit into the fabric of our lives. It is not tacked on; it is woven in.

True acceptance doesn’t require you to fit in or change who you are. It doesn’t have to be sought; it’s given to you.

By the time survivors are compelled to leave their psychologically abusive relationships, they do not see any other viable option but to leave. They have tried anything and everything to keep their relationship going. No matter how hard they tried to fit the mold the abuser wanted, it was never enough.

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Most people in America, when they are exposed to the Christian faith, are not being transformed. They take one step into the door, and the journey ends. They are not being allowed, encouraged, or equipped to love or to think like Christ. Yet in many ways a focus on spiritual formation fits what a new generation is really seeking. Transformation is a process, a journey, not a one-time decision.

It’s about finding your place at the table and knowing there will always be enough to fill your plate.

I couldn't see where the collection of Burger King figurines fit in, but I supposed there was no reason why psychopaths shouldn't have unrelated hobbies.

The shame, embarrassment, feeling of low self-worth, and scores of "labels" we give ourselves are not fitting. I am beginning to see how I had no control over the situation. He was a big man, I was a little boy.

If you feel anxiety or depression, you are not in the present. You are either anxiously projecting the future or depressed and stuck in the past. The only thing you have any control over is the present moment; simple breathing exercises can make us calm and present instantly.

Seek the fashion which truly fits and befits you. You will always be in fashion if you are true to yourself, and only if you are true to yourself.

Fatalism accounts for life as a whole. Whatever happens can be fit within the large generality of individuation, or my journey, or growth. Fatalism comforts, for it raises no questions. There's no need to examine just how events fit in.

So there are two ways you can live: you can devote your life to staying in your comfort zone, or you can work on your freedom. In other words, you can devote your whole life to the process of making sure everything fits within your limited model, or you can devote your life to freeing yourself from the limits of your model.

you label everything that doesn’t fit as wrong, bad, or unfair. If anything happens that challenges how you view things, you fight. You defend. You rationalize. You get frustrated and angry over simple little things.

The ability of the abuser to harm someone close to him or her fits perfectly into the lack of relational attachment that is present within all psychological abusers.   Even

I believe in not trying to control things that are out of my control or none of my business.

The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.

Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there? Should he not seek his own country? His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. Let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain – money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent self – it’s not worth it.

How much epic poetry does the world really need? Every conflict joined, every war fought, every city besieged, every town sacked, every village destroyed. Every impossible journey, every shipwreck, every homecoming: these stories have all been told, and countless times. Can he really believe he has something new to say? And does he think he might need me to help him keep track of all his characters, or to fill those empty moments where the metre doesn’t fit the tale?

We adjust ourselves to fit, to adapt to others’ ideas of who we should be. We shift ourselves not in sweeping pivots but in movements so tiny that they are hardly perceptible even in our view. Years can pass before we finally discover that after handing over our power, piece by small piece, we no longer even look like ourselves.

I stared out the window for the rest of the journey. Building, tree, car, car, van, wall, vacant lot, van. I stared hard, trying to find a pattern. Thinking if I kept looking hard enough, maybe the pieces of the world would fit back together into something I could understand.

The heart never fits the journey. Always one ends first.

People want so desperately to fit in that they forget what makes them stand out. Be loud. Take up space. Our differences are our strengths.

There is one way, then, in which a man can be free from all anxiety about the fate of his soul - if in life he has abandoned bodily pleasures and adornments, as foreign to his purpose and likely to do more harm than good, and has devoted himself to the pleasures of acquiring knowledge, and so by decking his soul not with a borrowed beauty but with its own - with self-control, and goodness, and courage, and liberality, and truth - has fitted himself to await his journey in the next world.

From a historical perspective, the spiritual journey is always tragic, for it is a lonely path fit for individuals rather than for entire societies. Human cooperation requires firm answers rather than just questions, and those who foam against stultified religious structures end up forging new structures in their place.

Accept that not everyone will understand you... every soul has a unique signature. It's okay to be temporarily accommodating in situations where you're being helpful and extending kindness and compassion, but you shouldn't change who you are. Live authentically, don't dumb down or dull your shine just to "fit in" or "get along" with anyone, including friends and even family you've outgrown.

We declare that the world is not a mosaic, where a plurality of worlds which are essentially strangers to one another are fitted together, but that it is an organism—all of whose parts are governed by the same principle, revealing it and allowing reduction to it.

...then we'll journey until we find the world in which we both fit. And when the path grows too dark to see even the bright parts of me, have faith in the sound of my voice. I'm here. I'm still the one leading.

For all the successes of Western civilization, the world paid a dear price in terms of the most crucial component of existence - the human spirit. The shadow side of high technology - modern warfare and thoughtless homicide and suicide, urban blight, ecological mayhem, cataclysmic climate change, polarization of economic resources - is bad enough. Much worse, our focus on exponential progress in science and technology has left many of us relatively bereft in the realm of meaning and joy, and of knowing how our lives fit into the grand scheme of existence for all eternity.

FOR THE NEXT TWO DAYS Eddie and I walked together, we played charades trying to communicate and fell into fits of hysteria at each other’s antics. We stalked rabbits and missed, picked bush foods and generally had a good time. He was sheer pleasure to be with, exuding all those qualities typical of old Aboriginal people — strength, warmth, self-possession, wit, and a kind of rootedness, a substantiality that immediately commanded respect.

Pursuit of optimal fitness is a journey, a constant struggle, a lifestyle; a process where intensity during each exercise session, what you eat every single day and patience over years is what's required... AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN OVERNIGHT!

When they had understood the hoopoe's words, A clamour of complaint rose from the birds: 'Although we recognize you as our guide, You must accept - it cannot be denied - We are a wretched, flimsy crew at best, And lack the bare essentials for this quest. Our feathers and our wings, our bodies' strength Are quite unequal to the journey's length; For one of us to reach the Simorgh's throne Would be miraculous, a thing unknown. [...] He seems like Solomon, and we like ants; How can mere ants climb from their darkened pit Up to the Simorgh's realm? And is it fit That beggars try the glory of a king? How ever could they manage such a thing?' The hoopoe answered them: 'How can love thrive in hearts impoverished and half alive? "Beggars," you say - such niggling poverty Will not encourage truth or charity. A man whose eyes love opens risks his soul - His dancing breaks beyond the mind's control. [...] Your heart is not a mirror bright and clear If there the Simorgh's form does not appear; No one can bear His beauty face to face, And for this reason, of His perfect grace, He makes a mirror in our hearts - look there To see Him, search your hearts with anxious care.

Things will fit eventually. Maybe not right away. Maybe not today. But as long as you keep trying things on, and shedding things, you'll eventually find the right fit.

Sadly, that is exactly what happened. You were fully being yourself and the abuser was a chameleon. The abuser morphed to fit your ideal role.   Within

Caregiving will never be one-size-fits-all.

We must experience Heaven on earth; May your homes, surroundings and work places portray a safe clean environment.

You can only regret something and truly call it a mistake if you don't learn and grow from it.

You're never going to do something by accident. You have to believe in yourself to want to become something.

Here, Lin,' he puffed. 'You are such a big fellow, I hope we can get a good fits. These are from Fat Satish. He is so fat, I think they might fit you. I told him a story, and then he gave it this two pairs for you. I told him that on the journey you had loose motions, and you made such a mess in your over-underpants that we had to throw them away.' 'You told him,' I asked, 'that I shit my pants?' 'Oh, yes, Lin. I certainly couldn't tell him that you have no over-underpants!' 'Well, of course not.

Every plainsman knows he has to find his place. The man who stays in his native district wishes he had arrived there after a long journey. And the man who travels begins to fear that he may not find a fitting end to his journey. I've spent my life trying to see my own place as a journey I never made.

So we grow up in a sea of stories told in a way that fits what we want others to know about us. The stories told in most families are a kind of propaganda. The tragedy is that often these stories are simply a form of dis-information... But our families name us without knowing the consequences. So our life is a journey to discover our true name, though; sadly many of us never choose to begin that search.

Reflection offers a retrospective exploration, a way to figure out how everything fits and connects now on your journey- and being done so without regret or remorse. Reflection is the birthplace of discernment, an insightful and awakening place that grants you to keep what you need and smartly sift away the rest.

Just as we don’t move without first sorting through what we’ve gathered through the years, throwing away what is broken and can’t be fixed, and what no longer fits, so too, should we do the same with what we’ve mentally gathered, before we move on. So let us do our sorting, throwing away regrets and old hurts, and taking for our journey only the treasures worth keeping: The lessons, the love, the best of what we’ve lived.

You don’t need to fit into any square, round or triangular holes anymore. You don’t need to fit into a pretty package or be the same as everybody else. You just need to accept and love yourself exactly as you are.

I have come to the conclusion, by way of various observations, that man is composed of a soul and a beast. These two beings are absolutely distinct, but closely fitted together, or one on top of the other, that the soul must have a certain superiority over the beast to be in a position to draw a distinction between them.

She knew it was time, What for was the mystery but focused; she remained. She turned her back on anything that no longer served her strengths nor taught her vital lessons with her weaknesses. She said no without explanation & assigned validation back just to parking spots. She was fierce but gentle and authentic in her approach to live even if it meant standing alone. She knew the hard days weren't over but stood proud that she had already survived some of the worst. She laughed in the midst of a mindfuck & gathered her worth with all the pieces of herself that have held her together throughout the years. She knew it was time What for was the mystery, but focused; she remained. She learnt that motherhood provided unconditional love doesn't have boundaries, it's pure in all its forms. Family are rare connections. Friendships are like shoes, not all will fit but when some do it's like you have won the lotto. She learnt that every love was different and how important it was to keep her heart open for the possibility of being able to experience it just one more time.

We adjust ourselves to fit, to adapt to others’ ideas of who we should be. We shift ourselves not in sweeping pivots, but in movements so tiny that they are hardly perceptible, even in our view. Years can pass before we finally discover that, after handing over our power piece by small piece, we no longer even look like ourselves.

As a refugee who fled civil war as a child, I am still trying to figure out where I fit in - which is perhaps why the most important note I found sticking to the wall outside my office had only three words. You belong here.

I yearn for a complete sense of self; I’m not sure it’s something I can find or something I just have to wait for. I want to be authentic. I yearn to find the real me. I feel I am missing a connection with myself. But the thing is I want to find it while “life-ing.” I want to have yearning and be in this life. Everything seems to be fractured, rather than unified as my gut tells me ought to be the case. This stems from a yearning for the world to make sense, to fit together. I yearn for life direction and purpose. My dad’s illness made me question what I REALLY want to be doing with my life as I could inherit the illness and I don’t want to waste time. I want to wake up. I feel like a zombie going through the motions of work and married life and the real me is dormant. I want to know the real me, even if I have no idea what the real me is. To know the connection to a bigger force. To know that the universe has got this one. It burns at me every day to know that everything I’m doing makes sense.

Relationships are a great way to work with yourself. Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. If you’re not trying to make people fit into your preconceived notions of what you like and dislike, you will find that relationships are not really that difficult. If you’re not so busy judging and resisting people based upon what is blocked inside of you, you will find that they are much easier to get along with—and so are you. Letting go of yourself is the simplest way to get closer to others.

Show up with stories to tell. Your whole life prepares you for the big moments, so go in confidently knowing you have years of experience to your name. This goes for interviews, dates, or any important conversations. It's ultimately about whether they're a fit for you than you a fit for them, so be funny and self-assured and wear hot pink if you feel like it.

People can fall into habitual programmed patterns of thinking, underpinned by long-held beliefs and blind acceptance of conventional wisdom. Lying beneath such surface thoughts are mental cues that operate on the subconscious level, compelling people to act in certain ways, yielding conclusions that fit within their pre-existing biases. Many people are unaware that these processes are even occurring.

Roosevelt had never allowed himself to fear death, famously writing, “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die.” From a very young age, he had been prepared to die in order to live the life he wanted. When a doctor at Harvard told him that his heart was weak and would not hold out for more than a few years unless he lived quietly, he had replied that he preferred an early death to a sedentary life.

Whether if fits our national self-image or not, much of American history is gathered in the grass, strewn haphazardly behind old barns and in fields, cached in undiscovered archaeological sites and ghost towns, and harbored in the little clumps of wilderness that still remain.

Even in a realm as historically dogmatic as religion, I don’t believe one size fits all. Faith is a pathway to life, but not just any life. Your life. My life. And none of us lives the same life. To wrestle with belief is to apply it within the context of your own circumstances.

it’s a fitting salute to a heroine who rose over bad costumes and unflattering cinematography (remember those days of relentless soft-focus?) to become the sole reason many of us watched Hindi films at one time. And all these years on, Madhuri Dixit still makes it look as easy as ek, do, teen.

The odd group of well-wishers slowly moved down the hallway as Moshe’s sobs cascaded up and down the walls, bouncing from one side to the other. The discourse on Doc Roberts was forgotten now as the group tromped forward, a ragtag assortment of travelers moving fifteen feet as if it were fifteen thousand miles, slow travelers all, arrivals from different lands, making a low trek through a country that claimed to be so high, a country that gave them so much yet demanded so much more. They moved slowly, like fusgeyers, wanderers seeking a home in Europe, or erú West African tribesmen herded off a ship on a Virginia shore to peer back across the Atlantic in the direction of their homeland one last time, moving toward a common destiny, all of them—Isaac, Nate, and the rest—into a future of American nothing. It was a future they couldn’t quite see, where the richness of all they had brought to the great land of promise would one day be zapped into nothing, the glorious tapestry of their history boiled down to a series of ten-second TV commercials, empty holidays, and sports games filled with the patriotic fluff of red, white, and blue, the celebrants cheering the accompanying dazzle without any idea of the horrible struggles and proud pasts of their forebears who had made their lives so easy. The collective history of this sad troupe moving down the hospital corridor would become tiny blots in an American future that would one day scramble their proud histories like eggs, scattering them among the population while feeding mental junk to the populace on devices that would become as common and small as the hot dog that the dying woman thought she smelled; for in death, Chona had smelled not a hot dog but the future, a future in which devices that fit in one’s pocket and went zip, zap, and zilch delivered a danger far more seductive and powerful than any hot dog, a device that children of the future would clamor for and become addicted to, a device that fed them their oppression disguised as free thought. Had the group of stragglers moping down the hallway seen that future, they would have all turned en masse and rushed from the hospital out into the open air and collapsed onto the lawn and sobbed like children. As it was, they moved like turtles toward Chona’s room as Moshe’s howl rang out. They were in no hurry. The journey ahead was long. There was no promise ahead. There was no need to rush now.

Baldwin saw clearly what he was up against; he fully understood the power of the American lie. It is the engine that moves this place. It transforms facts and events that do not quite fit our self-understanding into the details of American greatness or features of our never-ending journey to perfection. The lie is the story that warps reality in this country, which means that resisting it involves telling in each moment a truer story, one that casts the lie into relief, showing it for what it is.

Our hearts and minds desire clarity. We like to have a clear picture of a situation, a clear view of how things fit together, and clear insight into our own and the world’s problems. But just as in nature colors and shapes mingle without clear-cut distinctions, human life doesn’t offer the clarity we are looking for. The borders between love and hate, evil and good, beauty and ugliness, heroism and cowardice, care and neglect, guilt and blamelessness are mostly vague, ambiguous, and hard to discern.

Human beings are wired for survival. As little kids we instinctually place a mask called personality over parts of our authentic self to protect us from harm and make our way in the world. Made up of innate qualities, coping strategies, conditioned reflexes and defense mechanisms, among lots of other things, our personality helps us know and do what we sense is required to please our parents, to fit in and relate well to our friends, to satisfy the expectations of our culture and to get our basic needs met.

During this journey I realized that my robe had fallen open and he could see my nightie. Pale lavender satin, short, hitting me at the upper thighs but there was a three-inch hem of smoky gray lace below that. The same lace was at the bodice over the cups of material covering my breasts. The nightie fit close at my chest and midriff but there was room to move around my hips and thighs. It was nowhere near as risqué as Kenzie’s teddy. It left something to the imagination and that was good, unless you had an imagination. Carefully, I pulled the edges of my robe together and his eyes speeded up to hit mine and I knew the instant they did, without any doubt, he had an imagination.

As long as he is around, I don't fit into your life." - Nathan

Self care, self love. Self esteem, self confidence

The human being is given by Nature little more energy than what is needed to maintain the species; to reproduce and to live out our (very short) spans. But if we want to be fit for the journey up and out of the limits of ordinary life, we have to learn not to waste energy. Which we do by busying ourselves too much with material things, and by using our minds in wasteful and damaging ways. You will have seen that I am describing concepts familiar to us from religions, put here in a different context, rescued from being 'sins' or sources of guilt, reintroduced, simply, as tools. It is not 'wicked' to eat and drink too much, not a 'sin' to be envious, but gluttony makes 'the Way' difficult; and thoughts of enmity keep the mind in a seethe, making subtler inputs impossible. And, besides, laws operate that we have not been taught about, whether we have had the benefits of religions or not. Thoughts of anger, jealousy, enmity, revenge, bring retribution. There is nothing theoretical about this: slowly you learn to see patterns where before you saw nothing, because you were over-emotional.

After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe.

Any life, & any life's work, is a hidden journey, a secret code, deciphered in fits & starts. The details only given truth by the whole, & the whole dependent on the details." "...having the powerful characteristics of captaincy or leadership of any form is almost always an outward sign of a person inhabiting their physical body & the deeper elements of their own nature.

Without you on this journey I would have fallen apart. You’re my brother, Cassius.” He thinks I speak in hyperbole. “What’s next then, when this journey ends?” he asks. “Cassius. I wasn’t just talking about this trip. By journey, I meant my life.” He looks over at me, touched and more than a bit surprised. “You’re my brother. We let ten years slip past. Ten years we should have fought side by side. I won’t make that mistake again. Whether you like it or not, you’re with me to the end.” A very small “Oh,” is all he can manage. He thinks for a long moment. “I mean that’s a lot of commitment, Darrow.” I knew the sarcasm was coming but I still almost burst a stitch laughing. “Brothers,” he murmurs. “It does feel like it fits. We’ll try it on.

Do you realise that it is God who chose you, in Christ Jesus, before he put the earth together? His ultimate goal is to make you holy & completely blameless, by the time he has finished working with you. It's not always a quick process, following a quick line fit on a graph. You are on a journey, full of ups and downs, stopping and waiting; as God develops character in you. The specific characteristics, which God wants to develop in your life are: patience; long suffering; and trust. And God may need to make several attempts at developing these characteristics in all of our lives. Have you ever wondered why the journey with God, to develop such characteristics in our lives, takes so long? It's because such characteristics will stay with us for eternity.

People even talk of being “on the wrong side of history,” as though they knew not only what the last twenty years had produced, but what the next twenty years were going to produce as well. The idolization of “progress,” of “moving with the times,” is part of the same movement. “Now that we live in the twenty-first century . . .” people begin, as though it were obvious that one’s ethics or theology ought to change with the calendar. All this is a form of creeping pantheism, of looking at certain trends in the wider world and deducing that they are what “God” is doing. (It’s also very selective; it cheerfully screens out all the inventions of modernism, such as guillotines and gas chambers, which do not exactly fit the picture of an upward journey into light.)

If I’d known then what I know now, I would have told my little baby self that being strong and masculine has everything to do with having the courage and audacity to be different. It’s such a better way to be a man—bold and courageous—than squashing it down and trying to fit into a very basic idea of how men are supposed to be. Not to mention that the concepts around masculinity are as tired as the day is long.

In your madness you said you loved me," she murmured shyly. His humor fled, and the smile left her lips as she continued, "You said it before, too. When the storm struck, I asked you to love me, and you said you did." Her voice was the barest of whispers. Ruark's gaze turned away from her, and he rubbed the bandage on his leg before he spoke. "Strange that madness should speak the truth, but truth it is." He met her questioning eyes directly. "Aye, I love you." The pain of longing marked his face with a momentary sadness. "And that is madness, in all truth." Shanna raised herself form his side and sat on her heels, staring down at him. "Why do you love me?" Her tone was wondrous. "I beset you at every turn. I deny you as a fit mate. I have betrayed you into slavery and worse. There is no sanity in your plea at all. How can you love me?" "Shanna! Shanna! Shanna!" he sighed, placing his fingers on her hand and gently tracing the lines of her finely boned fingers. "What man would boast the wisdom of his love? How many time has this world heard, 'I don't care, I love.' Do I count your faults and sins to tote them in a book?" ... "I dream of unbelievable softness. I remember warmth at my side the likes of which can set my heart afire. I see in the dark before me softly glowing eyes of aqua, once tender in a moment of love, then flashing with defiance and anger, now dark and blue with some stirring I know I have caused, now green and gay with laughter spilling from them. There is a form within my arms that I tenderly held and touched. There is that one who has met my passion with her own and left me gasping." Ruark caressed Shanna's arm and turned her face to him, making her look into his eyes and willing her to see the truth in them as he spoke. "My beloved Shanna. I cannot think of betrayal when I think of love. I can count no denials when I hold you close. I only wait for that day when you will say, 'I love." Shanna raised her hands as if to plead her case then let them fall dejectedly on her knees. Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she begged helplessly, "But I do not want to love you." She began to sob. "You are a colonial. You are untitled, a murderer condemned, a rogue, a slave. I want a name for my children. I want so much more of my husband." She rolled her eyes in sudden confusion. "And I do not want to hurt you more." Ruark sighed and gave up for the moment. He reached out and gently wiped away the tears as they fell. "Shanna, love," he whispered tenderly, "I cannot bear to see you cry. I will not press the matter for a while. I only beg you remember the longest journey is taken a step at a time. My love can wait, but it will neither yield nor change.

The journey of a hero I learned from writer Joseph Campbell, that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in, they are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self the final goal is to find the elixir, the magic potion – that is the answer to unlocking her. Then she comes home to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others.

Frame the spiritual journey as a stark good-vs.-evil battle of warring sides long enough and you’ll eventually see the Church and those around you in the same way too. You’ll begin to filter the world through the lens of conflict. Everything becomes a threat to the family; everyone becomes a potential enemy. Fear becomes the engine that drives the whole thing. When this happens, your default response to people who are different or who challenge you can turn from compassion to contempt. You become less like God and more like the Godfather. In those times, instead of being a tool to fit your heart for invitation, faith can become a weapon to defend yourself against the encroaching sinners threatening God’s people—whom we conveniently always consider ourselves among. Religion becomes a cold, cruel distance maker, pushing from the table people who aren’t part of the brotherhood and don’t march in lockstep with the others.

You see, when God’s assignment and purpose over your life enters the core of your very being, it pushes you into unknown dimensions. All of a sudden your dreams become larger than life, and you are open to a world of possibilities as you confront fear face-to-face and move boldly in your assignment. Despite your feelings of fear or insecurity, you are propelled to move forward. Your assignment becomes a lifestyle. You move in your assignment and live your life as a vessel used by God.

One of the first things that greet your eye in Rouen is the beautiful monument erected to Flaubert in the very wall of the Museum, which is Rouen's holy of holies. Just across from him, in front of a dense cluster of sycamores, is his friend and pupil Guy de Maupassant. The Maupassant statue at rouen is, I think, quite as impressive as that in Paris—perhaps more so—and it is even more happily placed. Besides there is something very fitting in the idea of commemorating together the master and the pupil who surpassed him.

The Place Faidherbe had the characteristic atmosphere, the overdone décor, the floral and verbal excess, of a subprefecture in southern France gone mad. The ten cars left the Place Faidherbe only to come back five minutes later, having once more completed the same circuit with their cargo of anemic Europeans, dressed in unbleached linen, fragile creatures as wobbly as melting sherbet. For weeks and years these colonials passed the same forms and faces until they were so sick of hating them that they didn’t even look at one another. The officers now and then would take their families out for a walk, paying close attention to military salutes and civilian greetings, the wives swaddled in their special sanitary napkins, the children, unbearably plump European maggots, wilted by the heat and constant diarrhea. To command, you need more than a kepi; you also need troops. In the climate of Fort-Gono the European cadres melted faster than butter. A battalion was like a lump of sugar in your coffee; the longer you looked the less you saw. Most of the white conscripts were permanently in the hospital, sleeping off their malaria, riddled with parasites made to order fo every nook and cranny of the body, whole squads stretched out flat between cigarettes and flies, masturbating under moldy sheets, spinning endless yarns between fits of painstakingly provoked and coddled fever.

If or when you feel like you’re suffocating in your own thoughts, beliefs and circumstances you can either stay there and be buried alive, meaning you become numb, you become mentally and spiritually dead to your life and the world, or keep digging and sorting through your thoughts, circumstances and beliefs until you break through to the other side, until you see light and you’re free. See the light in the sense of clarity. You’ll come through no longer carrying the things that weighed you down because they could not fit through the journey you’ve made to your healing.

What I have called Appreciative love is no basic element in Affection. It usually needs absence or bereavement to set us praising those to whom only Affection binds us. We take them for granted: and this taking for granted, which is an outrage in erotic love, is here right and proper up to a point. It fits the comfortable, quiet nature of the feeling. Affection would not be affection if it was loudly and frequently expressed; to produce it in public is like getting your household furniture out for a move. It did very well in its place, but it looks shabby or tawdry or grotesque in the sunshine.

As you explore the Marvel story, it becomes another world you can call your own, one that's constantly expanding and full of unfinished wonders. You can no more exhaust its possibilities than the real world's. (I have tried.) And spending time in that world can make you better equipped to live in the real one: more curious about how its systems fit together; more willing to explore what you don't yet understand, and accept that you can't know everything; more open to hope in the face of catastrophe; more aware that no matter how overwhelming your own life may seem, it's only part of a much bigger picture.

Like many of the kids I write about, I once was a runaway myself—and a few (but not all) of the other writers in the series also come from troubled backgrounds. That early experience influences my fiction, no doubt, but I don't think it's necessary to come from such a background in order to write a good Bordertown tale. To me, "running away to Bordertown" is as much a metaphorical act as an actual one. These tales aren't just for kids who have literally run away from home, but also for every kid, every person, who "runs away" from a difficult or constrictive past to build a different kind of life in some new place. Some of us "run away" to college . . . or we "run away" to a distant city or state . . . or we "run away" from a safe, secure career path to follow our passions or artistic muse. We "run away" from places we don't belong, or from families we have never fit into. We "run away" to find ourselves, or to find others like ourselves, or to find a place where we finally truly belong. And that kind of "running away from home"—the everyday, metaphorical kind—can be just as hard, lonely, and disorienting as crossing the Nevernever to Bordertown . . . particularly when you're in your teens, or early twenties, and your resources (both inner and outer) are still limited. I want to tell stories for young people who are making that journey, or contemplating making that journey. Stories in which friendship, community, and art is the "magic" that lights the way. (speaking about the Borderland series she "founded")

In no particular order, I read what I could, sometimes with Fadiman as my docent, sometimes not: Flaubert, Twain, Kerouac, Brontë, Kafka, Camus, Ibsen, James, Thurber, Shakespeare. But in the course of reading great books, something happened. My reading molded me, the tool hammering its hand into shape. By some miracle—and by miracle, I mean great teachers—I pushed past the shallowness and stupidity of my own motivations. I fell in love with the actual literature and the actual ideas of great literature. As an immigrant, as a Vietnamese kid, as a poor kid, I had collected so many scarlet letters of alienation that I connected profoundly to the great works. As I read, I began to understand that all the great works wrangled with big questions, important questions: our place in the world, the value of our experience, the fairness and meaning of our suffering, our quest for love and belonging. Universal themes bound these great works together, and they bound me to their oaky, yellowed pages like Odysseus lashed to the mast of his ship. I felt a connective and humanizing resonance in books: I wasn’t alone in my aloneness. I wasn’t alone in my longing for love. I wasn’t alone in my fear of being rejected, my fear of never finding my place, my fear of failing. The snarl of my journey was untangled and laid out clearly by books.

The operative word here is 'gifts', plural, meaning not everyone will necessarily have the same combination of gifting that God has ordained for them to utilize in fulfilling their purpose within the Body of Christ. In other words, we all have different gifts and therefore niches within which we fit in The Body of Christ 'universal' ". ~R. Alan Woods [2012]

What it means to live spiritually is to not participate in this struggle. It means that the events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you. They have nothing to do with you. You must stop defining yourself in relationship to them, and just let them come and go. Don’t allow events to leave impressions inside of you. If you find yourself thinking about them later on, just let go. If an event happens that doesn’t fit your conceptual model, and you see yourself struggling and rationalizing to make it fit, just notice what you’re doing. An event in the universe didn’t match your model and it’s causing disturbance inside of you. If you will simply notice this, you will find that it is actually breaking up your model. You’ll get to the point where you like this because you don’t want to keep your model. You’ll define this as good because you are no longer willing to put any energy into building and solidifying your façade. Instead, you will actually permit the things that disturb your model to act as the dynamite to break it up and free you. This is what it means to live spiritually.

But creativity, she doesn’t fit in a box. She’s a wild, fluid, uncontrollable energy that spreads out sensuously from a curious, wide open mind in large expanses of aimless time on dreamy liminal train journeys or in subtle moments between waking and sleep. She can’t be pushed, or coughed up, or beaten into submission by a brutal and unmerciful regime. She needs light, and breath, and space and then, maybe, if the mood takes her, she’ll unfurl her wings and let her colors run into the atmosphere. And this energy, this wild, fun, unpredictable magic that I’d played with so happily as a child, that had flowed through me like it was my very life force up until this point; I didn’t understand it anymore. Creativity was this swirling wild mysterious language, but now I lived in a colorless angular world that promised me a certainty I valued above all else. And where before, I was just scribbling, writing, moving for the mere joy of it, now I tried to commodify my creativity. I tried to squeeze it out and make it do something worthwhile, be special, be important, be good. I could no longer see the point of art if it wasn’t good. But that’s the tricky thing about art, it’s never strictly good or bad, it’s just expression, or excretion. It couldn’t be measure by scales or charts, or contained in small manageable segments in the day. It was always, by its very nature, so imperfect. And the imperfections drove me mad. The anxiety and frustration with my creative endeavors turned into an actual fear of blank pages and pallets of paint. There was too much potential and too much room to fail so day by day, I chose perfection over creativity. I chose no more creativity, and no more mistakes. There are things that eating disorders takes from you that are more important, much greater and more profound a loss, and much much more difficult to recover and restore completely than body fat. And that reckless urge to create, just for the pure, senseless joy of it, would become the one I missed the most.

We have rendered ourselves independent, outside its (the church's) control. We have stepped out onto our own path. For some reason this scares people senseless. It terrified me just pondering it. Women grow afraid at this moment because it means giving up a world where everything is neat and safe. In that world we feel secure, taken care of; we know where we're going. Then we wake up and find the old way doesn't work., that it no longer fits our identity, that by clinging to it, we're cutting ourselves off from something profound. But we cling anyway because it's all we've got. We call our desire for security loyalty. We yearn for the something we've lost as women, but it's so unknown, so unbearably unknown. And then one day it all comes down to this: Can we trust ourselves, our inmost selves, our feminine wisdom?

This is not my first road trip and it's not my first marriage either. I know that my hissy fit in Fougeres and our bad luck on the road to Bordeaux does not spell doom for either our love affair or our journey. Love affairs are like road trips, and road trips are like love affairs -- from beginning to end the emotions are equally intense, the phases just as predictable. Love and travel. They both have their ups and downs.

It’s out there, all right,’ the Prior insists. ‘Since God has given me — given us three — this holy mission of serving him in absolute seclusion, he will have prepared a fit place for us.’ ‘Amen,’ Trian murmurs. Cormac’s thinking, it will have to possess a spring or a well, to supply them with water. So, a scrap of land far from the mainland, and well south of all the other islands. Capable of cultivation . . . but where no one is living, nor ever tried living. For the first time, Cormac registers how unlikely that sounds. ‘It will be defended by waves against the world’s encroachings,’ the Prior goes on. ‘All we have to do is wait for a wind, Brothers, and let it take us there.’ This is sounding to Cormac less and less like an actual island. As if the three of them have stepped out of everyday life into a magical boat, and their journey is a fable.

Whatever the final cost of HS2, all those tens of billions could clearly buy lots of things more generally useful to society than a quicker ride to Birmingham. Then there is all the destruction of the countryside. A high-speed rail line offers nothing in the way of charm. It is a motorway for trains. It would create a permanent very noisy, hyper-visible scar across a great deal of classic British countryside, and disrupt and make miserable the lives of hundreds of thousands of people throughout its years of construction. If the outcome were something truly marvellous, then perhaps that would be a justifiable price to pay, but a fast train to Birmingham is never going to be marvellous. The best it can ever be is a fast train to Birmingham. Remarkably, the new line doesn’t hook up to most of the places people might reasonably want to go to. Passengers from the north who need to get to Heathrow will have to change trains at Old Oak Common, with all their luggage, and travel the last twelve miles on another service. Getting to Gatwick will be even harder. If they want to catch a train to Europe, they will have to get off at Euston station and make their way half a mile along the Euston Road to St Pancras. It has actually been suggested that travelators could be installed for that journey. Can you imagine travelling half a mile on travelators? Somebody find me the person who came up with that notion. I’ll get the horsewhip. Now here’s my idea. Why not keep the journey times the same but make the trains so comfortable and relaxing that people won’t want the trip to end? Instead, they could pass the time staring out the window at all the gleaming hospitals, schools, playing fields and gorgeously maintained countryside that the billions of saved pounds had paid for. Alternatively, you could just put a steam locomotive in front of the train, make all the seats inside wooden and have it run entirely by volunteers. People would come from all over the country to ride on it. In either case, if any money was left over, perhaps a little of it could be used to fit trains with toilets that don’t flush directly on to the tracks, so that when I sit on a platform at a place like Cambridge or Oxford glumly eating a WH Smith sandwich I don’t have to watch blackbirds fighting over tattered fragments of human waste and toilet paper. It is, let’s face it, hard enough to eat a WH Smith sandwich as it is.

I GUIDE YOU IN THE WAY OF WISDOM AND LEAD you along straight paths. I know how confused you sometimes feel—and how much you long to find the way forward. You have tried so many different things; you have been so hopeful at times. Yet your hope-filled paths have led to disappointment. I want you to know that I fully understand how hard your journey has been. I also assure you that I can bring good out of every bit of it. This is the way of wisdom: trusting Me no matter what happens in your life. It is through trust that you follow Me along the right path. There are many things that seem random or wrong as you go along your journey. Yet I am able to fit them all into a comprehensive plan for good—My Master Plan. So don’t be fooled by the way things appear at a given point in time. You are looking at only a very small piece of a massively big picture. From your limited perspective, your journey may be confusing, with puzzling twists and turns. However, from My limitless, big-picture perspective, I am indeed leading you along straight paths.

 I find myself humming as I reach the top of the steps, but then I halt. “Really now, Kearan,” I say. He’s facedown on the ground. Likely passed out in his own vomit, yet again. This can’t continue. I’ll have to think of some fitting punishment for him. I couldn’t care less what he does in his free time, but when he’s on duty, he’d better be ready to perform at his best. Suddenly his whole body jerks upward, and I take a step back in case he’s having some sort of sleeping fit. “Three,” he says on a raspy breath before leaning down to the ground again. Is he sleep talking? He’s been known to do that even with his eyes open. No, wait—“Are you doing push-ups?” I ask. “F-f-four,” he says as he rises again. “Sweet stars, you are. What’s gotten into you?” After five, he lies on the ground and rolls onto his back, breathing heavily. “Just passing the time, is all. We’ve a long journey ahead of us.” Yes, but he usually passes the time with drink. He reaches into one of his pockets. Ah, there he is. But what he pulls out isn’t a flask. It’s a canteen. The kind we use on the ship for storing water. He sits up and takes a few sips. “What’s in that?” He holds the canteen out to me, and I take a sniff. It’s water. “She dumped all of my flasks into the sea while I slept,” Kearan says. “Didn’t realize she cared so much.” He searches across the ship for Sorinda, but she must be belowdecks because he focuses on me once more. “Any more questions, Captain?” His tone sounds bored. “Are we headed in the right direction?” “Course, I’m keeping her steady.” “Good,” I say before moving on quickly. Lest Kearan break into song or sprout wings.

Reflect: A call to pause before you start the journey and then at various steps along the way, understanding that change and choice occur from the inside out. Connect: A step where you request feedback and counsel from trusted friends and guides, recognizing that isolation is fatal—no one should make this journey alone. Explore: A beginning of the journey of discovery, a step of testing different possibilities, both inside and out, in the knowledge that curiosity and courage are essential to finding the way forward. Choose: A narrowing of options in which you focus on your priorities and do both a deeper dive and a reality check, exploring a smaller number of choices to see which fit your emerging sense of what’s right for you. Repack: A step of deciding what’s essential for the road ahead—what to let go of and what to keep, how to lighten your load, both tangible and intangible, for the new way that is opening up. Act: A first step toward making the possibilities real in the recognition that taking action doesn’t drain energy, it releases energy through the optimism that comes with choice, curiosity, and courage.

But you don't think her fit to go to Liverpool?" asked Mary, still in the anxious tone of one who wishes earnestly for some particular decision. "To Liverpool-yes," replied he. "A short journey like that couldn't fatigue, and might distract her thoughts. Let her go by all means,-it would be the very thing for her." "Oh, sir!" burst out Mary, almost sobbing; "I did so hope you would say she was too ill to go." "Whew-" said he, with a prolonged whistle, trying to understand the case; but, being, as he said, no reader of newspapers, utterly unaware of the peculiar reasons there might be for so apparently unfeeling a wish,-"Why did you not tell me sooner? It might certainly do her harm in her weak state! there is always some risk attending journeys-draughts, and what not. To her they might prove very injurious,-very. I disapprove of journeys or excitement, in all cases where the patient is in the low, fluttered state in which Mrs. Wilson is. If you take my advice, you will certainly put a stop to all thoughts of going to Liverpool." He really had completely changed his opinion, though quite unconsciously; so desirous was he to comply with the wishes of others.

For my speaking gigs, the title of my presentation is always the same: 'The journey of a hero'. I learned from writer Joseph Campbell, that a hero is someone born into a world where they don’t fit in. They are then summoned on a call to an adventure that they are reluctant to take. What is the adventure? A revolutionary transformation of self. The final goal is to find the elixir. The magic potion that is the answer to unlocking HER. Then she comes "home" to this ordinary life transformed and shares her story of survival with others... My journey was like a war movie, where at the end, the hero has been bruised and bloodied, traumatized from witnessing untold amounts of death and destruction, and so damaged that she cannot go back to being the same woman who went to war. She may have even seen her death but was somehow resurrected. But to go on THAT journey, I had to be armed with the courage of a lioness... Individuals on the journey eventually find themselves experiencing a baptism by fire. It's that moment when they are just about to lose their lives, and they, miraculously, courageously find the answer that gives their life meaning. And that meaning saves them. In the words of Joseph Campbell, in "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", "The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero. The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth, or the dreamer in a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposites, his own unsuccessful self, either by swallowing it or being swallowed. I still see my younger self so clearly from that fateful day in my therapist's office. She stands up, in tears, on a mound of snow. Pissed off, she shouts, "Bitch!!! I'm not going to be swallowed!