Happily Single Quotes

Single is no longer a lack of options – but a choice. A choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status but to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out.

Not everyone has to ride off into the sunset with a man. Some of us just want a tan.

Happily Single" is recognizing that you don’t need or want to be rescued from your life by a handsome prince because your life is pretty awesome, as is.

Happily Single is permission to CHOOSE your life rather than having it handed to you, and it’s living life on your own terms instead of those that are expected of you.

Happily Single is holding out for the best and letting go of the rest. It’s saying “I will and I can” to YOURSELF before you say “I do” to someone else.

I wound up happily married because I lived in an era in which I could be happily single.

Happy is still Happy, with or without the Ever After.

I will not deny that my heart has long occupied itself with the most tender feelings for another. So strong were these impulses that I indulged myself by thinking that if I could not have him whom I admired whom I will admit it now when I would not before I loved then I would never want another. However those are sentiments best saved for one of Lily's romances. The heart is a far more practical thing and in its life is happily capable of more than a single attachment.

I'm twenty-nine, happily single and getting it on a regular basis' I said, enjoying the way their thin lips hung open in an impressive O. 'Well I've never,' Jane gasped. 'Clearly. You should try it some time. I understand Mr Smith is so vision impaired you might have a shot there.' Their appalled shrieks were music to my ears and I quickly made my escape.

Love is a beautiful, wonderful, and even sacred thing, but until it arrives, shouldn’t we give ourselves permission to thrive?

Happily Single is holding out for the best and letting go of the rest. It’s saying “I will and I can” to yourself before you say “I do” to someone else. It means you’re not looking for a better half because you are already whole. And ultimately, it means that someday when you do invite someone to join you on your journey, it will be because he complements your life, not because he completes it.

Lucern was worth giving up chocolate. Dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate - she would happily give it all up for him.

You don't have to live happily ever after with every single person in your life in order to live happily ever after. Some unfortunate endings are necessary.

I think…Have I given up anything by living with another person? Has there been a trade-off? Always, there is a trade-off. And the answer comes to me instantly. I have given up a certain degree of freedom. The ability to plow through my life with utter disregard for the thoughts and feelings of other people. I can no longer read a magazine and throw it on the floor. In exchange, I get unlimited access to the one person I have met in my life whom I automatically felt was out of my league. My favorite human being, the single person I cherish above all others. This is the person I get to share the oxygen in the room with . And for this, I will happily scrub the toilet.

Happily Single is also the precursor to Happily Taken. You simply can’t have one without the other.

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

Women crave the chemical rush that comes from suspicion and indignation. If you don’t provide it, they’ll happily get it from tabloids, romance novels, The View, Tyra Banks or otherwise living vicariously through their single girlfriends.

Here's an exclusive, Tanner Graham. I love you like crazy." "My favorite kind of story," he said. "I already know how this one ends." "How?" "Happily ever after.

Who do you want to surround yourself with? People who can pull you up to their level of greatness? Or people who will happily pull you down to theirs?

There is a whole community out there who loves love, who loves romance, and I’m one of them. It’s a world I love living in, where there are happily ever afters, the odd girl gets the good looking guy, and where chivalry isn’t lost. I know it can’t all be true, that life isn’t as grand as some novels make it out to be, but I still love every single story because it’s an escape from reality, a moment in time where you can daydream of the impossible, where there is a chance of watching true love unfold right in front of you.

Something that’s bothered me for a while now is the current profligacy in YA culture of Team Boy 1 vs Team Boy 2 fangirling. [...] Despite the fact that I have no objection to shipping, this particular species of team-choosing troubled me, though I had difficulty understanding why. Then I saw it applied to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy – Team Peeta vs Team Gale – and all of a sudden it hit me that anyone who thought romance and love-triangles were the main event in that series had utterly missed the point. Sure, those elements are present in the story, but they aren’t anywhere near being the bones of it, because The Hunger Games, more than anything else, is about war, survival, politics, propaganda and power. Seeing such a strong, raw narrative reduced to a single vapid argument – which boy is cuter? – made me physically angry. So, look. People read different books for different reasons. The thing I love about a story are not necessarily the things you love, and vice versa. But riddle me this: are the readers of these series really so excited, so thrilled by the prospect of choosing! between! two! different! boys! that they have to boil entire narratives down to a binary equation based on male physical perfection and, if we’re very lucky, chivalrous behaviour? While feminism most certainly champions the right of women to chose their own partners, it also supports them to choose things besides men, or to postpone the question of partnership in favour of other pursuits – knowledge, for instance. Adventure. Careers. Wild dancing. Fun. Friendship. Travel. Glorious mayhem. And while, as a woman now happily entering her fourth year of marriage, I’d be the last person on Earth to suggest that male companionship is inimical to any of those things, what’s starting to bother me is the comparative dearth of YA stories which aren’t, in some way, shape or form, focussed on Girls Getting Boyfriends, and particularly Hot Immortal Or Magical Boyfriends Whom They Will Love For All Eternity. Blog post: Love Team Freezer

God made us complete. We have all we need to live happily within "One single Us".

No, what Great Aunt Winifred was suffering from was the persecution every happily single woman suffers: the predictable social condemnation of her independence and childlessness. Dorothy reminded herself of what she'd learned during a university course on feminist history (with a strong Marxist slant): spinsters are a threat to patriarchy.

A fulfilling long-term relationship is not accomplished by just finding the one. It is rather a co-operation between two passionate and highly motivated partners working together, figuring out every single situation holding hands. If there is trust at the root of the relationship, if the partners make an effort to keep it interesting, if difficulties are handled tactfully and if you can appreciate every single deed of your partner no matter how insignificant it is, the flames of love would never burn out and your love can truly live happily ever after.

The freedom to be single, to create a path through life that does not look like everyone else's, can be unsettling to people who feel more secure with fewer choices.

Some people are happily single. Some are unhappily married.

[F]rom my years of understanding ... I happily chose this kind of life in which I yet live [i.e., unmarried], which I assure you for my own part hath hitherto best contented myself and I trust hath been most acceptable to God. From the which if either ambition of high estate offered to me in marriage by the pleasure and appointment of my prince ... or if the eschewing of the danger of my enemies or the avoiding of the peril of death ... could have drawn or dissuaded me from this kind of life, I had not now remained in this estate wherein you see me. But so constant have I always continued in this determination ... yet is it most true that at this day I stand free from any other meaning that either I have had in times past or have at this present.

Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as single and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. 

She was tipping her head back to inquire, when two men entered the great hall and the question flew right out of her head. They were simply two of the most gorgeous men she'd ever seen. Twins, though different. They were both tall and powerfully built. One was taller by a few inches, with dark hair that swept just past his shoulders and eyes like shard of silver and ice while the other had long black hair falling in a single braid to his waist, and eyes as gold as Adam's torque. They were elegantly dressed in tailored clothing of dark hues, with magnificent bodies that dripped with raw sex appeal. Oh, my, she marveled, they don't amek men like these in the States. Were these typical Scotsmen? If so, she was going to have to get Elizabeth over here somehow. A connoisseur of romance novels, Elizabeth's favorites were the Scottish ones, and these two men looked as if they'd just stepped straight off one of those covers. "Try not to gape, ka-lyrra. They're only human. Mortal. Puny. And married. Both of them. Happily.

I wished for you on every shooting star when I was little. Now, if I gathered all of the stars I wished for you on, none could ever shine brighter than you. You are my shooting star, Ren. You are here with me walking this beach. I may have fucked up, but I swear to you, to God, and every single star in this sky, I will never give you up!” Stefan

The choice for devoted Latter-day Saint women is not just to simply go forward and try to be happy and create a fulfilling life. As women of covenant our goal is to go forward and develop stron testimonies and nurturing and caring hearts that will prepare us for our roles as mothers in eternity. With that end in mind, I determined to go on happily, to become 'anxiously engaged in a good cause' (D&C 58:27), and to believe that the rest would take care of itself.

He knew that if Michelle entered into the walls of the Vatican, she’d corrupt every single clergyman within, causing them to forsake their vows in trade for a few moments with her. With one glance men would happily follow her to the bowels of hell and swim across the lake of fire to get to her.

He's single. And is about to have clean socks. That's better than half the men you've gone out with lately already.

Do you know, when I am with you I am not afraid at all. It is a magic altogether curious that happens inside the heart. I wish I could take it with me when I leave. It is sad, my Grey. We are constrained by the rules of this Game we play. There is not one little place under those rules for me to be with you happily. Or apart happily, which is what makes it so unfair. I have discovered a curious fact about myself. An hour ago I was sure you were dead, and it hurt very much. Now you are alive, and it is only that I must leave you, and I find that even more painful. That is not at all logical. Do you know the Symposium, Grey? The Symposium of Plato. [He] says that lovers are like two parts of an egg that fit together perfectly. Each half is made for the other, the single match to it. We are incomplete alone. Together, we are whole. All men are seeking that other half of themselves. Do you remember? I think you are the other half of me. It was a great mix-up in heaven. A scandal. For you there was meant to be a pretty English schoolgirl in the city of Bath and for me some fine Italian pastry cook in Palermo. But the cradles were switched somehow, and it all ended up like this…of an impossibility beyond words. I wish I had never met you. And in all my life I will not forget lying beside you, body to body, and wanting you.

What defines a romance? All scholars seem to converge on a single point: it is a story that must have a happy ending. And why is that? I say, it is because a romance is a belief in the impossible: that anything ends happily. For the only true end is death - and in this way, is romance not a rebuke of mortality? When love is here, I am not. When love is not, I am gone. Perhaps a romance is a story with no end at all; where the end is but a wardrobe with a false back, leading to stranger and more merciful words. From an epistemological theory of romance by Dr. Edmund Huber, collected in the Llyrian Journal of Literary Criticism, 199 AD

She looks like peaches and cream, like Saturday afternoons down by the frog pond, innocence and the American dream wrapped up in a single startlingly lovely package. It’s a lie, all of it. He believes in exploiting the world for his own gains, but she’d happily ignite the entire thing, if only to roast marshmallows in its embers.

The next time you check the box “S” for single, remember this: singleness is no longer a lack of options but a choice—a choice to refuse to let your life be defined by your relationship status and to live every day Happily and let your Ever After work itself out. Whether or not you have someone in the passenger seat, you are still the driver of your own life and can take whatever road you choose. So the next time you hit a speed bump, otherwise known as the age-old question, “Why are you still single?” look ’em in the eye and say, “Because I’m too strong, too smart, and too fabulous to settle.

Claire Kingsley writes smart, sexy romances with sassy and often quirky heroines, swoony heroes who love their women hard, panty-melting sexytimes, romantic happily ever afters, and ALL the big feels.

The other side of mental blanketing - the buffing and puffing up of marriage to keep it seeming shiny and magical - is up against a formidable fact. Statistically speaking, the act of marrying is banal. Even though many Americans wait longer than ever to marry, and often do not stay long in the marriages they do enter, most Americans - close to 90 percent - still do marry at some point in their lives. Some try it over and over again. Marrying, then, does not make people special; it makes them conventional.

A simple intuition, a single observation, can open vistas of unimagined potential. Once caught in the web of an idea, the researcher is happily doomed, for the outcome is always uncertain, and the resolution of the mystery may take years to unfold. Such was the case in my encounter with the magic toads of the Americas.

Mrs Touchet allowed herself a private smile. As long as we profess to believe that two people may happily - or feasibly - invest all love and interest in the world solely in one another, till death do them part - well, then life, short as it is, will continue to be a human comedy, punctuated by tragedy. So she generally thought. Then there were those moments of grace, when she startled herself with the idea that if anybody truly understood what is signified by the word 'person', they would consider twelve lifetimes too brief a spell ion which to love a single soul.

I have brought peace to this land, and security," he began. "And what of your soul, when you use the cleverness of argument to cloak such acts? Do you think that the peace of a thousand cancels out the unjust death of one single person? It may be desirable, it may win you praise from those who have happily survived you and prospered from your deeds, but you have committed ignoble acts, and have been too proud to own them. I have waited patiently here, hoping that you would come to me, for if you understood, then some of your acts would be mitigated. But instead you send me this manuscript, proud, magisterial, and demonstrating only that you have understood nothing at all." "I returned to public life on your advice, madam," he said stiffly. "Yes; I advised it. I said if learning must die it should do so with a friend by its bedside. Not an assassin.

I fought it hard, because trust me, this is the last thing I want. But now you consume me, Soph, every single part of me, and I like it. I can't drive without thinking about your impractical car, can't run without thinking about the way you run, can't put on a fucking hard hat without picturing the way you looked in that stupid yellow hat. Somehow you've become my centre, and God help me, it feels right.

You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact. Let it end here then, let the quest end. Is the world any the worse for losing the unicorns, and would it be any better if they were running free again? One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end. Marry the prince and live happily ever after.” The

All I could do was what I had done each morning for all these years. Light my lamp. Every Single. Day.

Family comes in many shapes and forms. It’s a single mom that happily gives up the things she wants or needs in order to provide that extra special something for her child. It’s the single father that’s trying to be a mother and father to his kids. It’s the parents that were never able to have children of their own and adopt a child. Family doesn’t show prejudice based on race, age or sex. Family isn’t only defined by blood; it’s defined by love. Something that Lily and I have in leaps and bounds. Family's what we make it, what we want it to be.

I have many friends who are married—not many who are happily married, but many married friends. The few happy ones are like my parents: They’re baffled by my singleness. A smart, pretty, nice girl like me, a girl with so many interests and enthusiasms, a cool job, a loving family. And let’s say it: money. They knit their eyebrows and pretend to think of men they can set me up with, but we all know there’s no one left, no one good left, and I know that they secretly think there’s something wrong with me, something hidden away that makes me unsatisfiable, unsatisfying.

Jesus showed us love by dying on the cross for our sins. He loved us then, and He continues to display love for us every single day. God loves you so much, and He will forever cherish your heart.

The best lover you could ever have will sit on this very bench 270 years from now. You two will never meet. And will never know you’ll never meet. They are, however, currently sitting with you because if you two did meet, you’d spend your time sitting as you are now. Because returning to that bench every afternoon, happily single, was like spending a day with every soul who wants to sit there too.

I feared that there would not be a single thing left capable of surprising me, I feared that the impression of returning would never leave me. Happily, after a few sleepless nights, forgetfulness worked on me again.

I’m happily married, but supposedly the grocery store is a great place for singles to meet. I’m not sure how this works. “I see you got the Charmin there in your cart. It really is more absorbent. Wanna grab a cup of coffee?

There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge.

Yes. I do. And I am. You can be happily married and a feminist.’ ‘I don’t think so. I think that you can only be a feminist if you’re single.’ ‘Oh. That’s an interesting counterpoint. Can you elaborate?’ ‘I shouldn’t need to, Alix. You should understand what I’m saying.

He was devastatingly, breathtakingly beautiful—like an avenging angel, all darkness and light, cruelty and tenderness, destruction and salvation. A single look from him could shatter her as much as it could bring her heavenly bliss, and she would happily take ruin or rapture at his hand.

[written 2,600 years ago] Another Sama After twenty-five years on the Path, I'd experienced almost everything-- except peace. When I was young, my mother told me that I would find true happiness only in marriage. Remembering her words all those years later, something in me began to tremble. I gave myself to the trembling-- and it showed me all the pain this little heart had ever known. And how countless lives of searching had brought me at last to the present moment, which I happily married. Can you imagine? We've been living together ever since, without a single argument.

I probably should say that this is what makes you a good traveler in my opinion, but deep down I really think this is just universal, incontrovertible truth. There is the right way to travel, and the wrong way. And if there is one philanthropic deed that can come from this book, maybe it will be that I teach a few more people how to do it right. So, in short, my list of what makes a good traveler, which I recommend you use when interviewing your next potential trip partner: 1. You are open. You say yes to whatever comes your way, whether it’s shots of a putrid-smelling yak-butter tea or an offer for an Albanian toe-licking. (How else are you going to get the volcano dust off?) You say yes because it is the only way to really experience another place, and let it change you. Which, in my opinion, is the mark of a great trip. 2. You venture to the places where the tourists aren’t, in addition to hitting the “must-sees.” If you are exclusively visiting places where busloads of Chinese are following a woman with a flag and a bullhorn, you’re not doing it. 3. You are easygoing about sleeping/eating/comfort issues. You don’t change rooms three times, you’ll take an overnight bus if you must, you can go without meat in India and without vegan soy gluten-free tempeh butter in Bolivia, and you can shut the hell up about it. 4. You are aware of your travel companions, and of not being contrary to their desires/​needs/​schedules more often than necessary. If you find that you want to do things differently than your companions, you happily tell them to go on without you in a way that does not sound like you’re saying, “This is a test.” 5. You can figure it out. How to read a map, how to order when you can’t read the menu, how to find a bathroom, or a train, or a castle. 6. You know what the trip is going to cost, and can afford it. If you can’t afford the trip, you don’t go. Conversely, if your travel companions can’t afford what you can afford, you are willing to slum it in the name of camaraderie. P.S.: Attractive single people almost exclusively stay at dumps. If you’re looking for them, don’t go posh. 7. You are aware of cultural differences, and go out of your way to blend. You don’t wear booty shorts to the Western Wall on Shabbat. You do hike your bathing suit up your booty on the beach in Brazil. Basically, just be aware to show the culturally correct amount of booty. 8. You behave yourself when dealing with local hotel clerks/​train operators/​tour guides etc. Whether it’s for selfish gain, helping the reputation of Americans traveling abroad, or simply the spreading of good vibes, you will make nice even when faced with cultural frustrations and repeated smug “not possible”s. This was an especially important trait for an American traveling during the George W. years, when the world collectively thought we were all either mentally disabled or bent on world destruction. (One anecdote from that dark time: in Greece, I came back to my table at a café to find that Emma had let a nearby [handsome] Greek stranger pick my camera up off our table. He had then stuck it down the front of his pants for a photo. After he snapped it, he handed the camera back to me and said, “Show that to George Bush.” Which was obviously extra funny because of the word bush.) 9. This last rule is the most important to me: you are able to go with the flow in a spontaneous, non-uptight way if you stumble into something amazing that will bump some plan off the day’s schedule. So you missed the freakin’ waterfall—you got invited to a Bahamian family’s post-Christening barbecue where you danced with three generations of locals in a backyard under flower-strewn balconies. You won. Shut the hell up about the waterfall. Sally

...go live happily alone requires a serious amount of intentional thought. It's not as simple as signing the lease on your own apartment and leaving it at that. You must figure out what you need to feel comfortable at home and in the world, no matter your means (indeed, staying within your means), and arrange your life accordingly--a metaphorical architecture.

All of those years that Ella and I wrote to each other, I dated here and there, but never anything serious, and nothing to warrant my reputation. Even then, before I’d met her in person, Ella was the only one I wanted. I’d been waiting for her to turn eighteen. I planned to fly out to Boston after her birthday to meet her and her mother in person. I was ready to explain to them who I was and how I felt. “After Ella’s accident, when I thought I’d lost her forever, a part of me died. The women that followed were nothing but my way of trying to fill the void Ella’s disappearance created. It was a stupid way to grieve, but that’s what I was doing. Not one of those women ever came close to giving me even a fraction of the happiness I get from a single text from Ella.” Okay,

BACHELOR NUMBER ONE IS A NO-GO, she texted Trish. HE TALKED TOO MUCH. Within seconds, Trish texted back. ISN’T TALKING A GOOD THING ON A FIRST DATE? Of course, Trish was trying to put a positive spin on things. As the happily-married-with-child best friend of a single, thirty-three-year-old woman, it was part of the job description. AS IN, DONKEY FROM SHREK TOO MUCH, Sidney typed back. OUCH. THAT’S NOT GOOD. No kidding.

This is not the “rom-com” depiction of love. Authentic love doesn’t always feel “good” or even romantic. The cycles of emotional addiction that we commonly associate with romance aren’t activated, so it doesn’t have the charge of excitement born of fear of abandonment or withdrawal of love and support. It is a grounded state. You do not need to perform in a certain way or hide parts of yourself to receive love. You will still feel bored or unsettled. You will still find yourself attracted to other people and may even mourn the loss of the single life. Conscious relationships aren’t fairy tales. There’s no “You complete me.” There’s no smile and poof!—living happily ever after. Like everything else you have encountered so far, authentic love requires work. The path forward is to become aware of the role of self-betrayal in your trauma bonds and the role that you can play in honoring your own needs.

Sugar substitutes aren’t any better. Many people (including me when I was overweight) turn to artificial sugars to quell their cravings without packing on the pounds. Back then I would have happily performed heart surgery with a Diet Coke in my hand if only I could have found a way to sterilize it! But ironically, although these products are supposed to aid in weight loss, they do just the opposite. That’s because products such as sucralose, saccharin, aspartame, and other nonnutritive artificial sweeteners kill your gut buddies and allow the bad bugs to multiply. Believe it or not, a Duke University study28 showed that a single Splenda packet kills 50 percent of normal intestinal flora! It’s sad but true: if you eat too much of anything sweet, your gut buddies will starve to death, and your bad bugs will live long and prosper—and multiply. Even fructose, the sugar in fruit, has been shown to be a mitochrondrial poison! There goes the neighborhood.

The gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never fully be closed, which is why even those who happily embrace their sex assigned at birth still have to do performative work to embody that assignment in social life. Genders are not just assigned. They have to be realized or undertaken, or done, and no single act of doing secures the deal. Have I finally achieved the gender I have been seeking to become, or is becoming the name of the game, the temporality of gender itself?

I thought it was a wife’s place to obey. And I like a mouthy,rude woman with her own ideas and her own emotions. I want you to have a coat as prickly as a porcupine and a hide as thick as a buffalo and a spine as solid as the Rocky Mountains. I don’t want you doing a single thing you don’t want to do. I can’t be happily married to a woman who doesn’t nag me a little. All this polite, ‘Yes, Red,’ and ‘Whatever you say, Red,’ is making me crazy. You work on it and I’ll tell you when you’re finally doing it enough.

One final note here: you’ve probably noticed that whenever I mention serial killers, I always refer to them as “he.” This isn’t just a matter of form or syntactical convenience. For reasons we only partially understand, virtually all multiple killers are male. There’s been a lot of research and speculation into it. Part of it is probably as simple as the fact that people with higher levels of testosterone (i.e., men) tend to be more aggressive than people with lower levels (i.e., women). On a psychological level, our research seems to show that while men from abusive backgrounds often come out of the experience hostile and abusive to others, women from similar backgrounds tend to direct the rage and abusiveness inward and punish themselves rather than others. While a man might kill, hurt, or rape others as a way of dealing with his rage, a woman is more likely to channel it into something that would hurt primarily herself, such as drug or alcohol abuse, prostitution, or suicide attempts. I can’t think of a single case of a woman acting out a sexualized murder on her own. The one exception to this generality, the one place we do occasionally see women involved in multiple murders, is in a hospital or nursing home situation. A woman is unlikely to kill repeatedly with a gun or knife. It does happen with something “clean” like drugs. These often fall into the category of either “mercy homicide,” in which the killer believes he or she is relieving great suffering, or the “hero homicide,” in which the death is the unintentional result of causing the victim distress so he can be revived by the offender, who is then declared a hero. And, of course, we’ve all been horrified by the cases of mothers, such as the highly publicized Susan Smith case in South Carolina, killing their own children. There is generally a particular set of motivations for this most unnatural of all crimes, which we’ll get into later on. But for the most part, the profile of the serial killer or repeat violent offender begins with “male.” Without that designation, my colleagues and I would all be happily out of a job.

Some people still assume that, because we got legally married, he was the love of my life—and I was his,” Steinem confided, years later, to the journalist Rebecca Traister, who was investigating the history of single women in the US. “That’s such a misunderstanding of human uniqueness. He had been married twice before and he had wonderful grown children. I had been happily in love with men who are still my friends and chosen family. Some people have one partner for life, but most don’t—and each of our loves is crucial and unique.

The Story Of Your Life: The world and everyone you meet will not revolve around you. You're not always going to get what you want. You are going to make compromises every single day. You're going to get smacked down a time or two, or three, or fifty. Throwing tantrums, sitting in the corner pouting and crying over what you didn't get that you wanted isn't going to help you get it. Likewise, pissing and moaning to other people about it all being so unfair. We're all in the same boat, my friends. You can chose to sit in the corner and sulk your life away, crying about the unfairness of it all, bemoaning how everyone is making you miserable, or you can do just the opposite. You can stand up and BE GRATEFUL for everything you do have. You can look back and see how many obstacles you've already overcome, realizing that with each conquest you've become a stronger person. You can realize that your happiness is not and should never be dependent on other people. None of us is going to get out of this Story alive, dear reader. Make the best of the time you have. Make a positive difference. Make your own happily ever after.

They told me they were headed for a planet the name of which I had not heard before, and they talked among themselves, gaily and happily, but in such a way that I did not seem to be left out. From their talk I gained the fact that some form of art was being presented at the festival on this planet. The art form was not alone of music or painting, but was composed of sound and color and emotion and form and other qualities for which there seem to be no words in the language of the Earth, and which I do not entirely recognize, only gaining the very faintest inkling of what they were talking of in this particular regard. I gained the impression of a three-dimensional symphony, although this is not entirely the right expression, which had been composed, not by a single being, but by a team of beings. They talked of the art form enthusiastically and I seemed to understand that it would last for not only several hours, but for days, and that it was an experience rather than a listening or seeing and that the spectators or audience did not merely sit and listen, but could, if they wished, and must, to get the most out of it, be participants.

The portraits were intended to parade their fellows like specimens in a zoo. Yet at the same time most show the castizos, mestizos, and mulattos dressed sumptuously, moving happily about their daily business, tall and robustly healthy each and every one. Looking at the smooth, smiling faces now, one would never know that on the streets of the cities where they were painted these people were scorned for their very diversity. One would also never know that the casta paintings were not diverse enough—not a single one portrayed New Spain’s Asian population, by far the biggest outside Asia. SHOOK-UP

On the contrary, it is when we have nothing more to lose that we lose the will to face risks which we should have taken quite happily when in health. The desire for revenge is part of life; more often than not—in spite of exceptions which, within a single character, are mere human contradictions—it fades at the approach of death. When he had thought about the Verdurins for a moment. M. de Charlus felt too tired, turned toward the wall and stopped thinking altogether. It was not that he had lost his eloquence, but it now cost him less effort. It still flowed from him spontaneously, but had lost its previous character.

As much as I find the soulmate concept sappy and silly, I also understand its appeal. The soulmate promises an all-in-one solution. Find that one perfect person and you have—for starters—your best friend, your sexual partner, your comforter and caretaker, your cheerleader, your escort to every social function, your consultant on matters large and small, and the one and only teammate you will ever need in home management, money management, and vacation planning. And that list doesn’t even include any of the potential coparenting possibilities. The soulmate mythology is the ultimate seduction: Find that one right person and all of your wishes will come true.

I was halfway out the door before Daniel had even stopped. I slipped off his coat and gloves. "Thanks," I told him. "Hey." Quick as a snake, he leaned across the passenger seat and thrust out his hand, stopping the door from closing. "Hey! I have something to say here." "Absolutely.Shoot." "You're welcome," he said. "That's the something?" "Nope.That's a something. This is the something..." He pinned me with those almost-black eyes, and I had absolutely no doubt as to why his invisible girl climbed happily into the back of the Jeep with him. "You listening?" "Sure." A little hypnotized, maybe, but functioning. "There is not a single ordinary thing about you,Loco Girl." He pulled the door closed with a snap and was gone.

A late arrival had the impression of lots of loud people unnecessarily grouped within a smoke-blue space between two mirrors gorged with reflections. Because, I suppose, Cynthia wished to be the youngest in the room, the women she used to invite, married or single, were, at the best, in their precarious forties; some of them would bring from their homes, in dark taxis, intact vestiges of good looks, which, however, they lost as the party progressed. It has always amazed me - the capacity sociable weekend revelers have of finding almost at once, by a purely empiric but very precise method, a common denominator of drunkenness, to which everybody loyally sticks before descending, all together, to the next level. The rich friendliness of the matrons was marked by tomboyish overtones, while the fixed inward look of amiably tight men was like a sacrilegious parody of pregnancy. Although some of the guests were connected in one way or another with the arts, there was no inspired talk, no wreathed, elbow-propped heads, and of course no flute girls. From some vantage point where she had been sitting in a stranded mermaid pose on the pale carpet with one or two younger fellows, Cynthia, her face varnished with a film of beaming sweat, would creep up on her knees, a proffered plate of nuts in one hand, and crisply tap with the other the athletic leg of Cochran or Corcoran, an art dealer, ensconced, on a pearl-grey sofa, between two flushed, happily disintegrating ladies. At a further stage there would come spurts of more riotous gaiety. Corcoran or Coransky would grab Cynthia or some other wandering woman by the shoulder and lead her into a corner to confront her with a grinning imbroglio of private jokes and rumors, whereupon, with a laugh and a toss of her head, he would break away. And still later there would be flurries of intersexual chumminess, jocular reconciliations, a bare fleshy arm flung around another woman's husband (he standing very upright in the midst of a swaying room), or a sudden rush of flirtatious anger, of clumsy pursuit-and the quiet half smile of Bob Wheeler picking up glasses that grew like mushrooms in the shade of chairs. ("The Vane Sisters")

I’ve realized, though, we can either choose to be vulnerable or have moments of vulnerability sneak up on us. Like when you’re happily alone, strutting around your house naked, but then hear a sound. Suddenly, the comfort and confidence you felt in your own skin evaporates. You run to the nearest room, hurrying to shut the door. Then you wait, and listen quietly for an opportunity to make an escape. Your mind races trying to think of an excuse for your current nude state. You’re embarrassed. But, if you live your life listening for the Lord, obeying when He asks you to be vulnerable, you never have to worry about being walked in on. Your soul is ready to be seen. And, He won’t allow your life to be marked by shame or embarrassment.

I used to think love was supposed to be perfect…like a beautiful, flawless fairy tale.  That when you met your soul mate, the universe magically shifted, and everything fell into place.  That being in love meant never experiencing any more pain.  But I was wrong.  Love isn’t a fairy tale.  It’s getting the best parts of someone…but also getting their worst. Love isn’t always beautiful.  Sometimes it’s ugly and painful.  Love isn’t happily ever after.  It’s the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  But you’re in it together. Because when one of you hurts, so does the other.  Love isn’t flawless…it’s imperfectly perfect.  It’s taking on their demons and being vulnerable enough to show them yours…because you want every single part of them.  I

The whole power, beauty, and (for want of a better word) piety of the sciences lie in that fruitful narrowness of focus that I mentioned above, that austere abdication of metaphysical pretensions that permits them their potentially interminable inductive and theoretical odyssey through the physical order. It is the purity of this vocation to the particular that is the special glory of science. This means that the sciences are, by their very nature, commendably fragmentary and, in regard to many real and important questions about existence, utterly inconsequential. Not only can they not provide knowledge of everything; they cannot provide complete knowledge of anything. They can yield only knowledge of certain aspects of things as seen from one very powerful but inflexibly constricted perspective. If they attempt to go beyond their methodological commissions, they cease to be sciences and immediately become fatuous occultisms. The glory of human reason, however, is its power to exceed any particular frame of reference or any single perspective, to employ an incalculable range of intellectual faculties, and to remain open to the whole horizon of being’s potentially infinite intelligibility. A wise and reflective person will not forget this. A microscope may conduct the eye into the mysteries of a single cell, but it will not alert one to a collapsing roof overhead; happily we have more senses than one. We may even possess spiritual senses, however much we are discouraged from trusting in them at present. A scientist, as a reasoning person, has as much call as anyone else to ponder the deepest questions of existence, but should also recognize the threshold at which science itself falls silent—for the simple reason that its silence at that point is the only assurance of its intellectual and moral integrity.

There is a deep gulf between what a man is and what he represents, between what he is as an individual and what he is as a collective being. His function is developed at the expense of his individuality. Should he excel, he is merely identical with his collective function; but should he not, then, though he may be esteemed as a function in society, his individuality is wholly on the level of his inferior, undeveloped functions, and he is simply a barbarian, while in the former case he has happily deceived himself as to his actual barbarism. This one-sidedness has undoubtedly brought society advantages that should not be underestimated, and acquisitions that could have been gained in no other way, as Schiller finely observes: Only by concentrating the whole energy of our spirit in one single focus, and drawing together our whole being into one single power, do we attach wings, so to say, to this individual power and lead it by artifice far beyond the bounds which nature seems to have imposed upon

I steel my spine. “I told you, you can’t have me again.” “Is it because you have a boyfriend?” “I don’t have—” Oh, fuck. Joe. I keep forgetting about him. “No. Not because of him. We broke up anyway.” Why did I just say that? Joe was a solid alibi. “You don’t seem too upset about that.” I shrug. “It was inevitable. Long distance and all.” He seems to weigh that for a moment. “So, you’re single again?” I’m struggling to suppress my smile. Shane so blatantly pursuing me isn’t as easy to shrug off as I expected. “More like happily unattached.” “Is it because you’re not attracted to me anymore?” He manages a straight face for all of two seconds before it splits into a smug grin. I can’t help my laugh, even as my cheeks flush. We both know damn well that I am; he’s caught me gawking too many times to argue otherwise. “Someone came back from his brush with nature loving himself a bit too much.” I’m sure it serves him well when he’s posing for calendars and selling his wares on stage for charity come December. “Nah.” He reaches out to snap a spent Shasta daisy off its stem. “I just had a lot of time to think about things while I was away. About things I want in life.

So she closed her eyes and swung high, with the wind pushing her hair back and the scent of the day in her lungs. Her feet kicked toward the sun, and she imagined her anger was a fire that could scour everything clean, leaving nothing behind but a single solitary truck buried in the sand. She’d swung like this as a little girl. Back when she’d still thought she could fly. She’d fought gravity and thrown her little body against the chains until the swing arced so high the chains started to go slack, and she got that little excited twist of fear in the pit of her stomach when it felt like nothing was holding her up. She’d always thought she would rip loose from the seat, and wings would sprout from her back and carry her away. She’d laughed until she was dizzy, then screamed happily as the earth dragged her back down in a plunging descent—and she’d always waited for just that perfect moment to thrust her legs out and saw them against the air so she could fight coming to ground for just a few seconds longer. Just a few seconds while her nanny shouted that she’d hurt herself. Seconds when the giggles of the other children sounded like wind-chime music, and she’d felt like she’d had the sky in her veins.

A strange structure untangled itself out of the background like a hallucination, not part of the natural landscape. It was a funny-shaped, almost spherical, green podlike thing woven from living branches of trees and vines. A trellis of vines hung down over the opening that served as a door. Wendy was so delighted tears sprang to her eyes. It was her Imaginary House! They all had them. Michael wanted his to be like a ship with views of the sea. John had wanted to live like a nomad on the steppes. And Wendy... Wendy had wanted something that was part of the natural world itself. She tentatively stepped forward, almost swooning at the heavy scent of the door flowers. Languorously lighting on them were a few scissorflies, silver and almost perfectly translucent in the glittery sunlight. Their sharp wings made little snickety noises as they fluttered off. Her shadow made a few half-hearted attempts to drag back, pointing to the jungle. But Wendy ignored her, stepping into the hut. She was immediately knocked over by a mad, barking thing that leapt at her from the darkness of the shelter. "Luna!" Wendy cried in joy. The wolf pup, which she had rescued in one of her earliest stories, stood triumphantly on her chest, drooling very visceral, very stinky dog spit onto her face. "Oh, Luna! You're real!" Wendy hugged the gray-and-white pup as tightly as she could, and it didn't let out a single protest yelp. Although... "You're a bit bigger than I imagined," Wendy said thoughtfully, sitting up. "I thought you were a puppy." Indeed, the wolf was approaching formidable size, although she was obviously not yet quite full-grown and still had large puppy paws. She was at least four stone and her coat was thick and fluffy. Yet she pranced back and forth like a child, not circling with the sly lope Wendy imagined adult wolves used. You're not a stupid little lapdog, are you?" Wendy whispered, nuzzling her face into the wolf's fur. Luna chuffed happily and gave her a big wet sloppy lick across the cheek. "Let's see what's inside the house!" As the cool interior embraced her, she felt a strange shudder of relief and... welcome was the only way she could describe it. She was home. The interior was small and cozy; plaited sweet-smelling rush mats softened the floor. The rounded walls made shelves difficult, so macramé ropes hung from the ceiling, cradling halved logs or flat stones that displayed pretty pebbles, several beautiful eggs, and what looked like a teacup made from a coconut. A lantern assembled from translucent pearly shells sat atop a real cherry writing desk, intricately carved and entirely out of place with the rest of the interior. Wendy picked up one of the pretty pebbles in wonder, turning it this way and that before putting it into her pocket. "This is... me..." she breathed. She had never been there before, but it felt so secure and so right that it couldn't have been anything but her home. Her real home. Here there was no slight tension on her back as she waited for footsteps to intrude, for reality to wake her from her dreams; there was nothing here to remind her of previous days, sad or happy ones. There were no windows looking out at the gray world of London. There was just peace, and the scent of the mats, and the quiet droning of insects and waves outside. "Never Land is a... mishmash of us. Of me," she said slowly. "It's what we imagine and dream of- including the dreams we can't quite remember.

We've been here three days already, and I've yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo's pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don't ever really feel at home anywhere until I've cooked a meal. The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that's been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments. If you're a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o'clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela's, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh. On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It's a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There's even a bakery called Bruno's that sells only biscotti- at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant until he retired from Mellon Bank at the age of sixty-five to bake biscotti full-time. There's a little hand-scrawled sign in the front of window that says, GET IN HERE! You can't pass it without smiling. It's a little after eight when Chloe and I finish up at the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company where, in addition to the prosciutto, soppressata, both hot and sweet sausages, fresh ricotta, mozzarella, and imported Parmigiano Reggiano, all essential ingredients for pizza rustica, I've also picked up a couple of cans of San Marzano tomatoes, which I happily note are thirty-nine cents cheaper here than in New York.

Merry Christmas.” he says quietly, pulling something from his back pocket. I frown in confusion then smile in delight when I see what it is. It’s a shiny, sharp trowel with a holly green handle. It’s stolen from the gardens for sure. It is the single greatest gift I’ve ever received. “It’s so pretty.” I whisper happily, turning it over to test its edge. “I promised you something shiny.” “And you delivered.” I press my finger against the tip then pull it back quickly. “It’s sharp.” “Why else have it, right? Keep it with you when you can. If something goes down while I’m gone I want to know you have it.” I nod my head as I slip it into my back pocket. The handle sticks up but the point is hidden. When I look up at Vin my heart skips. His eyes are sharp, intense. “Come with me.” he commands quietly. “No.” I reply immediately. I was waiting for this. From the moment he woke me up, the second I saw his eyes, I knew. And just as quickly as I recognized it, I knew what my answer would be. He shakes his head in disbelief. “You know I’m not coming back here. Not for you, not for anyone.” “Maybe not, but if I go with you then you definitely won’t.” “It’s not going to work, Joss.” he tells me seriously. “The Hive won’t bite. They don’t want to rock the boat with the Colonies and the pot isn’t sweet enough to convince them to try. They’ll pass and everyone here is going to either stay here forever or die in a revolt.” “Nats included.” I remind him coolly. “She’s a big girl. She knows how it really is. She can yell at me all she wants, but she knows just as well as I do that no one will come here to help.” “Especially if you don’t ask.” “What the hell do you want from me?” he whispers fiercely. “You want me to go out there and rally the troops, bring them back here riding on a tall white horse and save the day? I’m no hero. I never have been. It’s how I’ve stayed alive.” “It’s also a great way to stay alone. And if you do this, if you go and pretend we don’t exist, then I’ll pretend I never knew you. Nats will too, I’m sure. You’ll be nothing to no one and won’t that make life easier for you? So go on and go, you coward, and don’t ever look back because there’s nothing to look back on. You were never even here far as I’m concerned.” I turn to leave him standing there in the cold beside the words I wrote to Ryan, words that have gone unnoticed and feel like nothing in the night. I’m spun around roughly and pinned against Vin’s chest. His breath is coming even and hard, sharp inhales and exhales that burst against my face leaving my skin freezing in their absence. “Don’t turn your back on me.” he growls. I can see the enforcer in him now. The hard ass who lived on the outside by the skin of his teeth and grit under his knuckles. It’s something I understand, something I can respect. Something I can relate to. I lean closer, no longer being pulled but rather pushing against him until our faces almost touch. “No, don’t you turn your back on me. On us.” I whisper harshly, pushing at him aggressively. He lets me go and I stumble back from him. “I’m no hero.” he repeats. “How do you know until you’ve tried?” * * * “You’ll come back for us, Vin.” I whisper in his ear. “I know you will.” I know no such thing, but I want it to be true and I can tell he does too so I tell him that it is. I lie to us both and I hope it makes it real. Vin nods his head beside mine and buries his face in my shoulder. I do the same. We stand huddled together against the cold and the uncertainty of everything tomorrow will bring.

The psyche exists (quite happily, one might add) on an entirely different plane than the body: whereas the body is inextricably bound to time, degrading day-by-day on its 85-year death trek, the psyche is, indeed, ageless, blending its memories into a single unit. It simply collects information—and “maturing” is really nothing more than a judgement of the quality of that information.

It turns out that people who choose to be single are very satisfied with their lives. “Singles are stereotyped, stigmatized, and ignored,” psychologist Bella DePaulo finds, “and still live happily ever after.

Home isn't only about pillows and scented candles either. It's about people. Whether a person is single, in a relationship, has a family, or in a community.

Every single person deals with their own special trauma—there is no hierarchy of pain that makes one’s suffering superior to that of others. We work from our own baselines, moving up in our understanding of how it all fits together.

My deep desire for motherhood was a yearning that overshadowed any accomplishment I could claim as mine.

I was already missing large parts of Shreya’s life by being away at work for long hours and because of her weekends with her father. Yet I had never considered sending her away either for her benefit or mine. We were yoked together by biology and karma. Our situation was not ideal, but at least we had each other.

Could she be happy outside my daily, direct control? The answer was yes. It was a blow to my ego, but it was true. The epiphany lifted a great weight off my shoulders. Even though I could not understand the grand scheme of things, I could see what was truly important when I applied a simple filter—my child’s well-being—to the situation.

When the walls reverberated with the innocent laughter and joy that children bring to the present moment without the baggage of the past or worries about the future, a great weight lifted from my shoulders.

Books have always been my best companions. They have not only provided entertainment but also served as wise, nonjudgmental mentors whenever I needed advice. The problem with my situation was that I had not come across a single book to guide me or at least accompany me as I laid out the roadmap for the rest of my life. In fact, I had no idea how I had arrived at this unfamiliar crossroad. I certainly did not deserve to be in this predicament.

Because she didn’t want any of them to know just how unhappy she was being single. Especially since Serena knew a good number of women who preferred being single and that many of them were happily living their lives to the fullest.

Net of love! What are these scenes unfolding, Over the water of the lake, Where boats are sailing though water is randomly flowing, Is it a sight of motion with no mistake? As the fisherman casts his net, And its octagonal boundaries gradually sink into the water, Where they now lie in their world wet, And wait as octagonal shapes and one single net, when put together, A shoal of fish swims freely and maybe happily too, As they enter this octagonal mesh that waits in silence, The fisherman feels something stir in his mind too, And pulls the net breaking his wait of prolonged patience, And he smiles at the fish struggling to break free, He holds them one by one and tosses them on the floor, This is how it has always been and this is how it shall always be, The struggle for the floor to be the sky and for the sky to even invade the floor, For what spring and summer tames as beauty, Shall be confounded by the Autumn that appears to appear too soon, For in the temple of life there is no deity, There is only the law of bane and the boon, So I watch the fish wriggle on the floor of the boat, As my thoughts sail away with the one I love, And I cast my net over the vast expanse of fate as I wait, To notice in her the same feeling of love reflecting all over my net of love, That I cast only to seek her attention and few smiles, While her beauty glides throughout the universe, Her charm is rendered eternal across the universe’s infinite miles, And my net of love also gets cast across this endless universe!

So let’s go down another level of niching and call our product…. “Time Management for B2B Outbound Sales Reps.” Following the same principles of specificity, now we know our sales people probably have very experienced deals and commissions. A single sale would easily net this salesman $500 (or more), so it would be easy to justify a $499 price tag. This is already a 25x increase in price for almost an identical product. I could stop here, but I’m going to go one step further. Let’s just niche down one last level…. “Time Management for B2B Outbound Power Tools & Gardening Sales Reps.” Boom. Think about it for a second, if you were a power tools outbound sales rep, you would think to yourself “This is made exactly for me” and would happily fork over maybe $1000 to $2000 for a time management program that could help you achieve your goal. The actual pieces of the program may be the same as the generic $19 course, but since they have been applied, and the sales messaging could speak so much to this avatar, they will find it more compelling and get more value from it in a real way.

Only with her - PART II For when it comes to love and life, prestige loses its significance, All that matters is the moment where you can love her with every heartbeat and the mind’s complete faithfulness, I had fallen in love long ago, but my mind took a while to love what I realised as the most loving feeling, While my heart instantly began beating for her and it immediately recognised her as its most endearing feeling, Now I live in this world created by my mind that is unaware it is obeying my heart’s fancies, Her thoughts, her imaginations, creating for me a world where she fills all my emotional vacancies, I do not mind my current existence in this world, where my mind thinks for my heart and my heart beats neither for me nor for my mind, But only for her, and when in both of them, I my own identity try to find, I realise she occupies every part of this world, where my mind and my heart patronise her alone, And I too begin to favour their sentimental inclinations with a feeling that is too prone, To fall in love again and again, with my own heart that loves her unfailingly, And then my mind doesn't mind loving her willingly, For it partly still lives for me, because without me what can it be, Just a mind that thinks endlessly, leading to feelings that it can neither feel nor see, So, it lets me be the master who depends on the feelings of his revolting heart, Finally we all are ring fenced by her feelings, from which now none of us can depart, And my heart beats one beat at a time, the mind thinks one thought at a time, while I live my life in single moments, I have to deal with my heart and my mind’s ever shifting sentimental arrangements, Where the heart always wants her feelings to be the dominant sentiment, But the mind knows then it will dissolve my existence and this becomes its predicament, Because without me it will be reduced to just a whim, that arises whenever the heart feels something, And in the kingdom of my heart she comprises everything, So, the mind fears its own identity crisis, because it is only her thoughts that continuously flow from my heart, But now all three of us realise that from beautiful thoughts none of us can part, Because to each one of us, she offers reasons to: beat, to think and to keep falling in love, And maybe this is what the wise refer to as a true and fulfilling feeling of love. So, I have left the mind alone, I let the heart beat for whatever sensation it pleases to, Because only then I admit to them both that I love her and I want to! And the heart happily beats for her, the mind only thinks about her, As they leave me alone, just to be with her!

Only with her - PART II For when it comes to love and life, prestige loses its significance, All that matters is the moment where you can love her with every heartbeat and the mind’s complete faithfulness, I had fallen in love long ago, but my mind took a while to love what I realised as the most loving feeling, While my heart instantly began beating for her and it immediately recognised her as its most endearing feeling, Now I live in this world created by my mind that is unaware it is obeying my heart’s fancies, Her thoughts, her imaginations, creating for me a world where she fills all my emotional vacancies, I do not mind my current existence in this world, where my mind thinks for my heart and my heart beats neither for me nor for my mind, But only for her, and when in both of them, I my own identity try to find, I realise she occupies every part of this world, where my mind and my heart patronise her alone, And I too begin to favour their sentimental inclinations with a feeling that is too prone, To fall in love again and again, with my own heart that loves her unfailingly, And then my mind doesn't mind loving her willingly, For it partly still lives for me, because without me what can it be, Just a mind that thinks endlessly, leading to feelings that it can neither feel nor see, So, it lets me be the master who depends on the feelings of his revolting heart, Finally we all are ring fenced by her feelings, from which now none of us can depart, And my heart beats one beat at a time, the mind thinks one thought at a time, while I live my life in single moments, I have to deal with my heart and my mind’s ever shifting sentimental arrangements, Where the heart always wants her feelings to be the dominant sentiment, But the mind knows then it will dissolve my existence and this becomes its predicament, Because without me it will be reduced to just a whim, that arises whenever the heart feels something, And in the kingdom of my heart she comprises everything, So, the mind fears its own identity crisis, because it is only her thoughts that continuously flow from my heart, But now all three of us realise that from beautiful thoughts none of us can part, Because to each one of us, she offers reasons to: beat, to think and to keep falling in love, And maybe this is what the wise refer to as a true and fulfilling feeling of love. So, I have left the mind alone, I let the heart beat for whatever sensation it pleases to, Because only then I admit to them both that I love her and I want to! And the heart happily beats for her, the mind only thinks about her, As they leave me alone, just to be with her!

Life is a party you create; don’t wait to be invited to one. I’m sure if we were on an episode of Family Feud with the question things singles are guilty of, we would hear the host happily quip, 'Survey says … They put their lives on hold!' Even I have to put up a guilty finger on this one. Thank heaven this season of my life is over and I finally got a clue. The only thing that should be reserved for marriage is sex (but we’ll talk about that later). Otherwise, it’s time to let the games begin. Stop waiting for someone else to make your life happen. There is an endless world of possibilities for pleasure and fulfilling living at your fingertips. Fortunately, as a single person all your resources are yours to invest into living the life you want without having to check with anyone else. This makes for options and opportunities that are sure to be the envy of your married friends. There is no time like the present to enjoy what you might not be able to do tomorrow because of different priorities. What does a no-holds-barred life look like? It’s downright exciting. I repeatedly tell people I meet to finish this statement: 'I’ve always wanted to _______________.' Well, what’s stopping you? Certainly your excuse should not be 'Because I have no man.' Until that blessed addition to your life shows up to claim you, your life should be full of fulfilling activities and amazing experiences that broaden you intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually as a person. In other words, get a life. Get one that will make you interesting and intriguing to others. A well-lived life full of passion and interests is like a magnet. It will draw other exciting people to you. So go ahead and mix it up.

Esmeralda wrinkled her nose, realizing what her big transmogrifying spell had actually done. Trevelyan scented the fumes.  “Smog?”  His brow furrowed, piecing it together.  “Log.  Hog.  Grog.  …Smog.” “But still not a single frog.”  She muttered. His mouth curved, as he finally recognized what was happening with the rhymes.  Something glinted deep in his eyes.  Some kind of spark.  “Regardless, the army was soundly defeated… as if you’d wielded a flog.”  He offered in false commiseration. “Oh, shut up.” “Why, it was a spell worthy of any blog.  Everyone watching was agog!” “Shut up, Trev.

In a low wind on a single bearing in an open boat, time stretches, expands. There are hours for everything, it feels. An unhurriedness seeps into you. So we sailed happily on, into the long northern dusk, telling stories as we went, up and down the hills of water, past porpoises and under kittiwakes making their cat's cradles of flight, and at last into a darkness that seemed to lift from the sea rather than falling from the sky, starting as a black dye upon the surface and then wicking upwards into the cloudless air.

Run and I will catch you, witch.  Every single time.

A single look from him could shatter her as much as it could bring her heavenly bliss, and she would happily take ruin or rapture at his hand.