Hectic Day Quotes

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." [Letter to Miss Lewis, Oct. 1, 1841]

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.

Jean grinned down at her, and she handed him something in a small silk bag. 'What's this?' 'Lock of my hair, ' she said. 'Meant to give it to you days ago, but we got busy with all the raiding. You know. Piracy. Hectic life. ' 'Thank you, love, ' he said. 'Now, if you find yourself in trouble wherever you go, you can hold up that little bag to whoever's bothering you, and you can say, "You have no idea who you're fucking with. I'm under the protection of the lady who gave me this object of her favour. "' 'And that's supposed to make them stop?' 'Shit no, that's just to confuse them. Then you kill them while they're standing there looking at you funny.

By comparison with other less hectic days, the city is uncomfortable and inconvenient; but New Yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience- if they did they would live elsewhere.

When life gets hectic and you feel overwhelmed, take a moment to focus on the people and things you are most grateful for. When you have an attitude of gratitude, frustrating troubles will fall by the wayside.

Insomnia is the perfect medium to be creative and to elaborate about ideas without the hectic of the day. During the night perfect ideas are born.

In the early days, when they thought this epidemic was much like other epidemics, religion held its ground. But once these people realized their instant peril, they gave their thoughts to pleasure. And all the hideous fears that stamp their faces in the daytime are transformed in the fiery, dusty nightfall into a sort of hectic exaltation, an unkempt freedom fevering in their blood.

Democracy requires active participation, and sooner or later someone ‘offers’ to take all the difficult decision-making away from you and your hectic life. But the darknet throws those decisions back onto you. It hard-codes democracy into the DNA of civilization. You upvote and downvote many times a day on things that directly affect your life and the lives of people around you—not just once every few years on things you haven’t got a chance in hell of affecting.

Breakfast! My favorite meal- and you can be so creative. I think of bowls of sparkling berries and fresh cream, baskets of Popovers and freshly squeezed orange juice, thick country bacon, hot maple syrup, panckes and French toast - even the nutty flavor of Irish oatmeal with brown sugar and cream. Breaksfast is the place I splurge with calories, then I spend the rest of the day getting them off! I love to use my prettiest table settings - crocheted placemats with lace-edged napkins and old hammered silver. And whether you are inside in front of a fire, candles burning brightly on a wintery day - or outside on a patio enjoying the morning sun - whether you are having a group of friends and family, a quiet little brunch for two, or an even quieter little brunch just for yourself, breakfast can set the mood and pace of the whole day. And Sunday is my day. Sometimes I think we get caught up in the hectic happenings of the weeks and months and we forget to take time out to relax. So one Sunday morning I decided to do things differently - now it's gotten to be a sort of ritual! This is what I do: at around 8:30 am I pull myself from my warm cocoon, fluff up the pillows and blankets and put some classical music on the stereo. Then I'm off to the kitchen, where I very calmly (so as not to wake myself up too much!) prepare my breakfast, seomthing extra nice - last week I had fresh pineapple slices wrapped in bacon and broiled, a warm croissant, hot chocolate with marshmallows and orange juice. I put it all on a tray with a cloth napkin, my book-of-the-moment and the "Travel" section of the Boston Globe and take it back to bed with me. There I spend the next two hours reading, eating and dreaming while the snowflakes swirl through the treetops outside my bedroom window. The inspiring music of Back or Vivaldi adds an exquisite elegance to the otherwise unruly scene, and I am in heaven. I found time to get in touch with myself and my life and i think this just might be a necessity! Please try it for yourself, and someone you love.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

In a world where things are moving so fast, don't get lost in the midst of it all. Figure out what's more important to you and proceed with confidence. I know it gets a bit hectic at times and almost seems impossible. But, you can get there, even if you must pause along the way. Just don't come to a complete stop.

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love – that makes life and nature harmonize. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. [From a letter to Miss Lewis, 1841.]

At Starbucks 0 as in any business, in any life - there are so many hectic moments during the day when we are simply trying to do the job, trying to put out the fires, trying to solve any number of small problems, that we often lose sight of what it is we're really here to do.

It’s unsurprising that so many empaths these days seek solitude as a form of protection against feeling emotionally depleted. Our environments are so hectic and constantly busy that allowing our senses to be completely open often results in a sensory overload. How can you tell where you begin and others end when there is so much frantic energy surrounding you?

Now that the hockey season is underway, life is hectic as fuck. Practice is brutal, and our schedule is exhausting. Jamie’s my rock, though. He comes to all my home games, and when I drag my tired self home from the airport after an away game, he’s waiting there to rub my shoulders, or shove food down my throat, or screw me until I can’t see straight. Our apartment is my safe place, my haven. I can’t even believe I considered trying to make it through my rookie season without him. It’s easy to figure out where he got that nurturing gene from, because his mom has been fussing over me all day.

I pee day and night, and am constantly in a state of, Oh my gods I need to go, or I’m gonna wet my pants. It’s all very hectic. It really keeps the guys on their toes, too. The moment we get somewhere, they’re in a panic, making sure they find a toilet ASAP. I would laugh…except that would probably make me pee.

I wanted to sit still for a moment, to escape my job as a traveling, screaming, black-t-shirt salesman and just read and write for a bit. For quite some time, I had been longing to erect a barrier between myself and that noisy, hectic life; just long enough to catch my breath and relax without being “Randy from lamb of god.” I never imagined that that barrier would unexpectedly arrive in the shape of prison walls.

Recently I had breakfast with Dan Cathy, the president of Chick-fil-A, a fast food chain headquartered in the Atlanta area. I told him that I was working on this book and I asked him if he made thinking time a high priority. Not only did he say yes, but he told me about what he calls his “thinking schedule.” It helps him to fight the hectic pace of life that discourages intentional thinking. Dan says he sets aside time just to think for half a day every two weeks, for one whole day every month, and for two or three full days every year. Dan explains, “This helps me ‘keep the main thing, the main thing,’ since I am so easily distracted.” You may want to do something similar, or you can develop a schedule and method of your own. No matter what you choose to do, go to your thinking place, take paper and pen, and make sure you capture your ideas in writing.

It seems wrong to call it "business". It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher–and none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes" didn't mean "money". For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for use business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It's a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living–and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great business do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the life of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is–you're participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping other to live more fully, and if that's business, all right, call me a businessman.

Old and alone, thought Pelletier. Just one of thousands of old men on their own. Like the machine célibataire. Like the bachelor who suddenly grows old, or like the bachelor who, when he returns from a trip at light speed, finds the other bachelors grown old or turned into pillars of salt. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of machines célibataires crossing an amniotic sea each day, on Alitalia, eating spaghetti al pomodoro and drinking Chianti or grappa, their eyes half closed, positive that the paradise of retirees isn’t in Italy (or, therefore, anywhere in Europe), bachelors flying to the hectic airports of Africa or America, burial ground of elephants. The great cemeteries at light speed. I don’t know why I’m thinking this, thought Pelletier. Spots on the wall and spots on the skin, thought Pelletier, looking at his hands. Fuck the Serb.

This past soccer season, the league in which my son and daughter were playing had to make up two games due to rain (the price of living in Houston). The consensus in the league was that Sunday was the only available day, so the makeup games were scheduled for Sunday afternoon. My family and I sat down to discuss the matter, but no discussion was really necessary. There was no way we were going to participate. Sunday is the Lord's Day, and playing youth soccer games on Sunday makes a definite statement about the priorities in a community. Interestingly, the most flak from our decision came not from the irreligious people involved but from Christians! “You can go to church, then run home and change for the game,” one man said. One of my children's coaches added, “I'd be glad to pick them up if there is somewhere you have to be.” Nobody seemed to get it. We weren't making a decision based on the hectic nature of our Sunday schedule, nor was it a question of our adhering to a legalistic requirement handed down from our denomination. It was a matter of principle. Sunday is more than just another day. Youth sports leagues are great, but they are not sacred; Sunday is! Again, I do not believe that there is a legalistic requirement not to play games on a Sunday. Nor do I believe that the policeman, fireman, or airline mechanic who goes in to work on Sunday is out of the will of God. I do, however, think that there is a huge difference between someone whose job requires working on Sunday and a soccer league that just doesn't care.

WhatsApp forwards about love and kindness. I wonder if on a Sunday morning all these enthusiastic do-gooders could send out truly helpful things like ‘11 cures for a hangover’ or ‘How to clean puke stains from your dress’. I have no such luck; all I get are strange messages like ‘Little memories can last for years’. Very useful when you are trying hard to forget all the embarrassing things you did the night before. Do I really need messages saying, ‘A little hug can wipe out a big tear’ or ‘Friendship is a rainbow’? There is also a message saying, ‘God blues you’, which I am trying to guess could mean that either God wants to bless me, rule me or make a blue movie with me. Has it ever happened that a murderer just before committing his crime gets a message stating, ‘Life is about loving’, and stops in his tracks, or a banker reads ‘No greater sin than cheating’, and quits his job? So, what do these messages really do? I think they allow lazy people to think that they are doing a good deed in the easiest possible manner by sending these daft bits of information out into the universe. Go out there! Sweep a pavement, plant a tree, feed a stray dog. Do something, anything; rather than just using your fingers to tap three keys and destroy 600 people’s brain cells in one shot. 11 a.m.: This is turning out to be a hectic day. The

Stop being an adrenalin junkie. Yes, I’m talking to you Miss I-can-do-everything-and-I-can-do-it-faster-and-better-than-you. Slow down. Delegate. Your new motto is Rest is Radical. Why? When you survive on adrenalin, you really are surviving, not thriving. Yes, we no longer live in caves, but our bodies haven’t changed, so when your train is late or you have a hectic day at work, your body responds by going into fight or flight mode. It’s the modern-day equivalent of encountering a saber-tooth tiger.

There is another characteristic of George Washington I particularly admire. He thought in the long term. His correspondence is laced with the phrase “a century hence.” He thought about what our country would be like in a hundred or even two hundred years. And he did so in the crush of everyday political life, in which decisions had to be every day made under the pressure of events, in a hectic world like our own. He thought about us. He thought about the twenty-first century. He challenges us to think about a distant posterity—about the world we are making for generations yet unborn.

Ode to the West Wind I O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear! II Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine aëry surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lull’d by the coil of his crystàlline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flowers So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seem’d a vision; I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! A heavy weight of hours has chain’d and bow’d One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken’d earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

I propose that in our day this alternation of the market place and mountain requires the capacity for the constructive use of solitude. It requires that we be able to retire from a world that is “too much with us,” that we be able to be quiet, that we let the solitude work for us and in us. It is a characteristic of our time that many people are afraid of solitude: to be alone is a sign one is a social failure, for no one would be alone if he or she could help it. It often occurs to me that people living in our modern, hectic civilization, amid the constant din of radio and TV, subjecting themselves to every kind of stimulation whether of the passive sort of TV or the more active sort of conversation, work, and activity, that people with such constant preoccupations find it exceedingly difficult to let insights from unconscious depths break through. Of course, when an individual is afraid of the irrational—that is, of the unconscious dimensions of experience—he tries to keep busiest, tries to keep most “noise” going on about him. The avoidance of the anxiety of solitude by constant agitated diversion is what Kierkegaard, in a nice simile, likened to the settlers in the early days of America who used to beat on pots and pans at night to make enough din to keep the wolves away. Obviously if we are to experience insights from our unconscious, we need to be able to give ourselves to solitude.

These examinations and certificates and so on--what did they matter? And all this efficiency and up-to-dateness--what did that matter, either? Ralston was trying to run Brookfield like a factory--a factory for turning out a snob culture based on money and machines. The old gentlemanly traditions of family and broad acres were changing, as doubtless they were bound to; but instead of widening them to form a genuine inclusive democracy of duke and dustman, Ralston was narrowing them upon the single issue of a fat banking account. There never had been so many rich men's sons at Brookfield. The Speech Day Garden Party was like Ascot. Ralston met these wealthy fellows in London clubs and persuaded them that Brookfield was the coming school, and, since they couldn't buy their way into Eton or Harrow, they greedily swallowed the bait. Awful fellows, some of them--though others were decent enough. Financiers, company promoters, pill manufacturers. One of them gave his son five pounds a week pocket money. Vulgar . . . ostentatious . . . all the hectic rotten-ripeness of the age. . . . And once Chips had got into trouble because of some joke he had made about the name and ancestry of a boy named Isaacstein. The boy wrote home about it, and Isaacstein père sent an angry letter to Ralston. Touchy, no sense of humor, no sense of proportion--that was the matter with them, these new fellows. . . . No sense of proportion. And it was a sense of proportion, above all things, that Brookfield ought to teach--not so much Latin or Greek or Chemistry or Mechanics. And you couldn't expect to test that sense of proportion by setting papers and granting certificates...

There was one of those sunsets beginning — the kind we've been having for months. Buildings and telephone poles were punched black against a watercolour sky into which fresh colour kept washing and spreading, higher and higher. We've never seen so high before; every day the colours go up and up to a hectic lilac, and from that, at last, comes the night. People carry their drinks outside not so much to look at the light, as to be in it. It's everywhere, surrounding faces and hair as it does the trees. It comes from a volcanic eruption on the other side of the world, from particles of dust that have risen to the upper atmosphere. Some people think it's from atomic tests; but it's said that, in Africa, we are safe from atomic fallout from the Northern Hemisphere because of the doldrums, an area where the elements lie becalmed and can carry no pollution.

Unlike the rain-slicked streets of Oblakgrad, Dírorth was a stir of activity. The streets were lined with vendors selling greasy meat pies to passersby. The clogging crowd of Humans cramped together as they pushed past one another, rushing from one errand to the next. The shouting of a thousand voices melted together into a perpetual buzz, like a great swarm of bees hovering over the street. And yet a strange silence hung over the city. It filled in the background, inhabiting dark corners where the din of the crowd could not squelch it. It had a strange omnipresence, like something that you are subconsciously aware of, but do not consciously see with your eyes. It was a silence ignored, hidden by the façade of hectic traffic. You wouldn’t really notice it, not unless you were looking for it. Not unless you actually stopped to listen. If the city folk had stopped, frozen, if they had stilled themselves for a moment, the silence would have gaped wide open like a dark, hungry maw. But they ignored it. For the past century, they had covered that silence with the commotion of everyday life, refusing to let it control them. To define them. They did not hear it. They would not hear it. I myself did not hear it for years and years, not until the day that I actually stopped to listen. Can you hear it, now? Can you hear it in the words your reading, the words I say to you? Listen. Hear its empty resonance across the cobbles. Feel it in the dust beneath Notak’s boot, damp with last night’s rain. Smell it on the ragged clothes of the peasants, hidden in the folds of dirty fabric. See it in their eyes, latent beneath the gloss of the everyday. Taste it in the clamor of the streets, clamor born out of a unconscious urge to fill the quiet with something, anything to drive it away, anything to stave off the silence that reeked with defeat. It was the echo of a hundred years of slavery. It was the song of a people, waiting for God.

I did not have the luxury of perceiving my situation as difficult or painful. I could not give much thought to each passing day; I had to live from each passing day to the next. The day was always hectic, from morning to evening, leaving me no time to think about anything else but the most immediate and necessary tasks that had to be done before I had to quickly go to sleep or wake up again. It was only after I approached thirty that I got to thinking about how worn out and exhausted I must have been back then. I was about to turn thirty and one day I felt extremely, utterly tired. I realized, right away, that my fatigue dated back to those years, that I had already turned thirty, or even thirty-two, many years ago.

It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher—and none of us wavered in the belief that “stakes” didn’t mean “money.” For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn’t our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living—and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you’re helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.

The 1890s were apprentice years for Yeats. Though he played with Indian and Irish mythology, his symbolism really developed later. The decade was for him, as a poet, the years of lyric, of the Rhymers’ Club, of those contemporaries whom he dubbed the ‘tragic generation’. ‘I have known twelve men who killed themselves,’ Arthur Symons looked back from his middle-aged madness, reflecting on the decade of which he was the doyen. The writers and artists of the period lived hectically and recklessly. Ernest Dowson (1867–1900) (one of the best lyricists of them all – ‘I cried for madder music and for stronger wine’) died from consumption at thirty-two; Lionel Johnson (1867–1902), a dipsomaniac, died aged thirty-five from a stroke. John Davidson committed suicide at fifty-two; Oscar Wilde, disgraced and broken by prison and exile, died at forty-six; Aubrey Beardsley died at twenty-six. This is not to mention the minor figures of the Nineties literary scene: William Theodore Peters, actor and poet, who starved to death in Paris; Hubert Crankanthorpe, who threw himself in the Thames; Henry Harland, editor of The Yellow Book, who died of consumption aged forty-three, or Francis Thompson, who fled the Hound of Heaven ‘down the nights and down the days’ and who died of the same disease aged forty-eight. Charles Conder (1868–1909), water-colourist and rococo fan-painter, died in an asylum aged forty-one.

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TOO BUSY Careful planning puts you ahead in the long run; hurry and scurry puts you further behind. Proverbs 21:5 MSG Are you one of those women who is simply too busy for your own good? Has the hectic pace of life robbed you of the peace that might otherwise be yours through Jesus Christ? If so, you’re doing a disservice to yourself and your family. Through His Son Jesus, God offers you a peace that passes human understanding, but He won’t force His peace upon you; in order to experience it, you must slow down long enough to sense His presence and His love. Today, as a gift to yourself, to your family, and to the world, be still and claim the inner peace that is your spiritual birthright—the peace of Jesus Christ. It is offered freely; it has been paid for in full; it is yours for the asking. So ask. And then share. How much of our lives are, well, so daily. How often our hours are filled with the mundane, seemingly unimportant things that have to be done, whether at home or work. These very “daily” tasks could become a celebration of praise. “It is through consecration,” someone has said, “that drudgery is made divine.” Gigi Graham Tchividjian A TIMELY TIP Do first things first, and keep your focus on high-priority tasks. And remember this: your highest priority should be your relationship with God and His Son.

The Need for Silence Be silent before the Lord and wait expectantly for Him. Psalm 37:7 HCSB The world seems to grow louder day by day, and our senses seem to be invaded at every turn. If we allow the distractions of a clamorous society to separate us from God’s peace, we do ourselves a profound disservice. Our task, as believers, is to carve out moments of silence in a world filled with noise. If we are to maintain righteous minds and compassionate hearts, we must take time each day for prayer and for meditation. We must make ourselves still in the presence of our Creator. We must quiet our minds and our hearts so that we might sense God’s will and His love. Has the hectic pace of life robbed you of God’s peace? If so, it’s time to reorder your priorities and your life. Nothing is more important than the time you spend with your Heavenly Father. So be still and claim the genuine peace that is found in the silent moments you spend with God. If you, too, will learn to wait upon God, to get alone with Him, and remain silent so that you can hear His voice when He is ready to speak to you, what a difference it will make in your life! Kay Arthur I always begin my prayers in silence, for it is in the silence of the heart that God speaks. Mother Teresa Deepest communion with God is beyond words, on the other side of silence. Madeleine L’Engle The world is full of noise. Might we not set ourselves to learn silence, stillness, solitude? Elisabeth Elliot Be still, and in the quiet moments, listen to the voice of your Heavenly Father. His words can renew your spirit. No one knows you and your needs like He does. Janet L. Weaver Jesus taught us by example to get out of the rat race and recharge our batteries. Barbara Johnson My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectation is from Him. Psalm 62:5 NKJV

One of the Least Transparent Administrations in History President Barack Obama promised the most transparent administration in history, but our experience over the eight years of his administration was that the executive branch and its federal agencies were black holes in terms of disclosure. President Obama and his minions made remarkable assertions of secrecy over everything from White House visitor logs to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to Operation Fast and Furious and even the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden and the details of the Islamic burial ceremony used for one of the worst terrorist organizers of the modern age. Judicial Watch filed well over three thousand FOIA requests with the Obama administration, many of which went unanswered. Our staff attorneys never had a day that wasn’t hectic—they were forced to file and litigate more than 250 FOIA lawsuits in federal court. Getting the administration to comply with our requests for information and documents under FOIA was like pulling teeth. Many of these lawsuits were filed just to get a “yes or no” answer from the administration on whether they had any responsive records. Administratively, federal agencies put up additional hurdles and stonewalled even the most basic FOIA requests. In many cases, we faced tough litigation fights, with Justice Department and administration attorneys and officials fighting hard to resist turning over records they were obligated under the law to disclose. And in many cases, like our fight to get former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, the administration seems to have misled Judicial Watch and federal judges, claiming that records did not exist that actually did exist or not conducting the legally required searches for the information and documents we were requesting.

He found a location in the north of the island from where to view the transit, but it was too late to build a proper observatory. Instead he placed some big boulders in a circle and constructed a small hut to house the instruments. It was so crudely built that it gave little protection from wind, dust and animals. The instruments had already suffered from the long sea voyage with some ‘eaten by rust’, Pingré moaned, hectically polishing and greasing them with turtle oil, the only lubricant available. Over the next days, the French astronomer prepared his instruments and observed the movements of Jupiter’s satellites at night in order to set the clock – an enterprise that was sabotaged by the rats that chewed through one of the pendulums. At

You Start Your Day Matters Mornings can be hectic to say the least. Most of us battle the morning rush, which includes getting the kids off to school and getting ready for the day ourselves. If you desire to work for yourself, how you start your day matters more than anything else.

It seems wrong to call it “business.” It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner: business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher.

That night in our tent, Justin told me how, ten thousand years ago, human beings were migrant—we were like the birds. The average human would see only about a hundred people in her lifetime and would know each one profoundly, deeply bonded. Today, humans in cities will see a hundred beings in just minutes, naming them strangers, a dehumanizing designation. The next morning, I woke to wet rocks glittering in the slanted light, the day’s warmth shining in bars through the sparse canopy of maples. Happy here, I began to fear our next destination, hectic Manhattan—a surreal flip to witnessing ten thousand people a day. In these deep thickets, we walked a path that was streamlined, simple and clear.

Excuse me,” someone said as they sat down next to him. Jacob groaned. This is great. Some idiot’s gonna sit by me. What the heck did I do to deserve this? I don’t want to talk to people while I’m naked. “It’s been a hectic day, huh?” the other man said. Someone please kill me.

Here is a seven-step process you can use to develop the practice of deep breathing on a daily basis: Determine a time of day to practice deep breathing, preferably after a daily habit you perform consistently, like brushing your teeth. Morning is always a good time to practice, as it sets the tone for your day. However, you may find you want to take a break in the middle of the day, as things get more hectic during your workday. Before bed is another good time, as it promotes a restful state before sleep. Select a setting for your breathing practice in a quiet space where you won’t be distracted or interrupted. Turn off your phone, computer, and any other device that might disturb you. Set a timer for 10 minutes. Sit on the floor with a pillow in a meditative position, like the lotus position, or in a chair with your spine straight and feet planted on the floor. Let your hands rest gently in your lap. Inhale slowly through your nose until your lungs are filled to capacity, allowing your stomach to push out on the inhalation. At the end of the inhalation, pause for a count of two.

My days are so hectic and stimulating and interactive, so relentless, that if I didn’t have this private evening peace, I suspect I’d become a kind of automaton, a figurehead, to the exclusion of being a person. The time alone gives me the tranquility to recollect not just my emotions but also my experiences. I know better, of course, than to try to convince the public that policy as well as poetry can arise from Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” I know that something being true can’t make people believe it.

As Isaac Newton observed, objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When writing your first draft, being busy is key. It may feel frustrating at first, but having daily writing periods curtailed by chores, family, and other distractions actually helps you get the thing done. This is partly because the hectic pace forces you to type with a fleet-fingered desperation. But it’s mostly because noveling in the midst of a chaotic life makes “book time” a treat rather than an obligation. It’s a small psychological shift, but it makes all the difference in the world.

Garden’s hush opens up an abyss at my center, still point. Someone touches me, mystery, otherness. No words are spoken, silence the language of God. Silence, calm, hushed garden usher me into a presence, presence of my beloved. Let me rest in this quiet visit, gift that puts a beautiful end to a hectic day. Someone is with me—that is all that matters! -Evening Hush

Inner quiet can be cultivated. Meditation is a healing balm to a frazzled brain existing in a hectic world.

The world is a busy, hectic place and the need to slow down and focus on one thing and one thing only has never been greater. In a typical day, our phones don’t stop ringing, our texts don’t stop coming, and our meetings don’t stop running into each other. Even when we go home at the end of the day, the multiple hats don’t usually come off. The truth is we’ve lost the art of disconnecting from everything to be able to reconnect to one thing. Sometimes we need God to interrupt our incessantly busy lives to get us to focus on just one thing. Maybe that one thing is Him. Maybe that one thing is you. Maybe that one thing is your family. Maybe that one thing is the future. Whatever that one thing is, let it bring you back to a place where you can appreciate the process more than the product.

Gratitude is a mindfulness habit that awakens us to the large and small blessings we experience every day—those we tend to overlook in the busyness of our hectic lives. When we begin the day with gratitude, we train our minds to look for the positive rather than focusing on the challenges, frustrations, and slights we have encountered throughout the week.

Europe was surrounded by borders of silence, and the space where the Grand March was occurring was now no more than a small platform in the middle of the planet. The crowds that had once pressed eagerly up to the platform had long since departed, and the Grand March went on in solitude, without spectators. Yes, said Franz to himself, the Grand March goes on, the world's indifference notwithstanding, but it is growing nervous and hectic: yesterday against the American occupation of Vietnam, today against the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia; yesterday for Israel, today for the Palestinians; yesterday for Cuba, tomorrow against Cuba—and always against America; at times against massacres and at times in support of other massacres; Europe marches on, and to keep up with events, to leave none of them out, its pace grows faster and faster, until finally the Grand March is a procession of rushing, galloping people and the platform is shrinking and shrinking until one day it will be reduced to a mere dimension-less dot.

Educators and psychologists have a mantra these days: No matter how hectic the schedules of your family members may be, make time to have dinner together. Research shows that family dinners help kids feel they matter to the parent, and as a result they have a positive impact on kids’ mental health and lead to greater self-esteem and greater academic achievement.

One of my favorite prayers in Gates of Prayer, the New Union Prayer Book, is called “Welcoming Sabbath” and it goes like this: Our noisy day has now descended with the sun beyond our sight. In the silence of our praying place we close the door upon the hectic joys and fears, the accomplishments and anguish of the week we have left behind. What was but moments ago the substance of our life has become memory; what we did must now be woven into what we are. On this day we shall not do, but be. We are to walk the path of our humanity, no longer ride un-seeing through a world we do not touch and only vaguely sense. No longer can we tear the world apart to make our fire. On this day heat and warmth and light must come from deep within ourselves.6

A common tendency among us today is to remain disengaged, uncommitted to other people. Life is already too busy, too hectic, so it is easier to rely on and support a pastoral staff and stay in the bleachers. To correct this is the leadership challenge of the day. If our leaders cater to this weakness, we will continue to turn inward, serving ourselves and increasing our isolation from the unbelievers around us. But if they lead, equip, and empower us, we can fulfill God’s purpose for our presence in the world.

and my clean, snugger-fitting clothes. All but two times, my mom pulled through and did an emergency weekday wash. But those two times she didn’t, things got really bad. The first time it happened, I got through the 8-day cycle. On the ninth day, I had to reuse an old uniform. You might not think that is a big deal since there are many people who wear things more than once before washing. That wouldn’t be a problem if I prepared for it. My problem was that I put the clothes in my disgusting, locker-room-scented, toe-cheese filled hamper. Day 9 is really really bad. The first time I had a Day 9, I managed to get out of the house without being analyzed by either parent (morning time can be hectic). I first noticed how bad the odor was when I boarded the bus.

Josh leaned next to me against the examining table where I sat with my bare legs dangling. He held my hand so I couldn’t fidget. “Does it always take this long?” he asked, checking his watch. His wedding ring was on his watch hand and I smiled at it, despite being cold and nervous. The inscription inside his ring said “okay.” I’d had my ring sized, and Josh had it inscribed with “my universe.” We were adorable. We were also hungry. It had been almost a half an hour since the ultrasound tech finished taking images. Nobody had been back since, and I’d had to fast for a glucose test. Josh hadn’t eaten in solidarity, so we were both starving. I sighed. “I don’t know how long this takes. I’ve never had a pre-op for a hysterectomy before.” We’d been married four weeks. It had been a hectic month. Josh had moved in with me, but we realized almost on day one that we needed a place closer to Sloan. Both of us were there more than we were at home. We asked her to move in with us and she’d flatly refused. We asked to move in with her and she refused that too. So we’d been house hunting in addition to merging our lives, launching our new line of doghouses, and taking care of my best friend. Josh had taken on all the home repairs that Brandon hadn’t gotten to. He cooked most of our meals, and I spent almost every day still getting her out of bed, cleaning her house, trying to cheer her up. She wasn’t getting any better.

It seems wrong to call it "business." It seems wrong to throw all those hectic days and sleepless nights, all those magnificent triumphs and desperate struggles, under that bland, generic banner. business. What we were doing felt like so much more. Each new day brought fifty new problems, fifty tough decisions that needed to be made, right now, and we were always acutely aware that one rash move, one wrong decision could be the end. The margin for error was forever getting narrower, while the stakes were forever creeping higher — and none of us wavered in the belief that "stakes'' didn't mean "money." For some, I realize, business is the all-out pursuit of profits, period, full stop, but for us business was no more about making money than being human is about making blood. Yes, the human body needs blood. It needs to manufacture red and white cells and platelets and redistribute them evenly, smoothly, to all the right places, on time, or else. But that day-to-day business of the human body isn't our mission as human beings. It’s a basic process that enables our higher aims, and life always strives to transcend the basic processes of living- and at some point in the late 1970s, I did, too. I redefined winning, expanded it beyond my original definition of not losing, of merely staying alive. That was no longer enough to sustain me, or my company. We wanted, as all great businesses do, to create, to contribute, and we dared to say so aloud. When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is — you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama. More than simply alive, you're helping others to live more fully, and if that’s business, all right, call me a businessman. Maybe it will grow on me.

We need parents to care deeply for babies and young children throughout the day, not just for a hectic hour or two in the morning or at night, as those children are our future leaders and caretakers.

But from the standpoint of cold-eyed realpolitik, perhaps the greatest downside of the Guatemalan coup for the American government was that it produced more and hardier enemies. One of these was a twenty-six-year-old Argentine doctor who had been living in Guatemala City at the time of the coup, and who joined Árbenz in seeking asylum in Mexico. A few months later, the doctor would pen a vivid account of those hectic last days in Guatemala entitled “I Witnessed the Coup Against Arbenz,” in which he proclaimed that the United States had now become the enemy; as he wrote in his prophetic closing: “the struggle begins.” The doctor’s name was Ernesto Rafael Guevara, but he was soon to become better known to the world by his nom de guerre: Che.

My job didn't involve working directly with patients, but I thought about them a lot. I saw them as victims of our fucked-up, materialistic, impersonal, hectic, over-mechanized, dehumanizing society. There wasn't much mystery about why these people were so screwed up. The mystery was why everyone else wasn't nuts too. But somehow I never figured it could ever happen to me, that I could some day be shuffling around in slippers and pajamas, bumming cigarettes and mumbling to myself. There were too many people who loved me, who would never commit me to an institution, whose love would keep me from getting that spaced out.

Why, yes, to-day, like all to-days in the removed and placid light of all to-morrows, would be shown needlessly hectic. Ten to one something would have happened in the night to make to-day look foolish. If nothing had happened, if it still was war, it could only be a swiftly over business, a rapid and general recognition of the impossibility of war in modern conditions.

The amount of pleasure a person gets when gentle moist breeze sweeps on their face after a long hectic day is inexplicable. And it’s completely analogous to the bliss we get from a kid’s smile. Both are full of rejoice and gives us pure satisfaction. However, as kids are of paramount puerility, we don’t want to hurt them even when tired by their restive behavior. Since, the dawn of civilization deluge of ways have been discovered to make them happier. And the name of gifts overrides all other

Influential educational school in Abu Dhabi: Reach British School Selecting schools that speak about the type of education you want to impart to your kid is an important decision. Like all other difficult decisions that parenthood brings with it, this one too cannot be decided based on one impulsive thought. School is an important part of any child's growth. They learn, they giggle, and grow into beautiful individuals. Thus, schools build them into responsible beings. However, finding the right school can be research-heavy and hectic. International education in the United Arab Emirates is not cheap, and this adds to an extra load of pressure on deciding parents. Yet, Abu Dhabi is known to host an excellent range of international schools that are somewhat budget-friendly. The British International School is one such example, they surely secure a place in the list of best schools in Abu Dhabi. Why choose Reach British School? Reading through different curriculums, and googling into millions of school websites is a part of this decision-making. You look for that spark, one that you look for in any relationship. Yes, choosing a school is the beginning of a life-long relationship, an important part of your child’s life. This article will push you towards decision making, as it lists the points on why you should choose Reach British School. The following reasons will convince you that it fits into the best schools in Abu Dhabi. English proficiency The staff is filled with native English-speaking teachers. Thus, they bring with them, years of experience in the language field and absolute English proficiency. Being native English speakers, they can showcase experience in the UK or other international schools. Excellent facilities Schooling is a part of a child's overall growth, and there is more to it than just academics. Being one of the best schools in Abu Dhabi, they support an exciting curriculum. It includes sports, arts, academic subjects, and a bunch of other extra-curricular activities. High Academic standards and behavioral expectations A child grows into a successful human being, who is also a responsible citizen. Thus, the school sets a strong focus on the academic depth and the behavioral patterns of the child. They ensure that your child reaches their fullest potential in a safe and secure environment. Student progress tracking You will get a chance to be deeply involved in your child's progress. The school will provide regular reports on your child's growth that will give you a fair idea about their needs, likes, and dislikes. Thus, you can take an active part in their academic progress, social and emotional well-being. Secondary scholarships The school funds a scholarship program to motivate students to achieve their dreams. The program attracts bright minds and pushes them to reach their potential in the fields they are passionate about. Amazing learning Not just the staff, but also the environment of the school will enable your child to go through an amazing learning experience. Your child will be motivated and encouraged to perform better as that is the base for amazing learning. Endnotes Reach British School wants to let your child shine, in the truest sense possible. Keeping the tag of being one of the best schools in Abu Dhabi, is difficult. Thus, they aspire to be better every day and sculpt new souls into responsible adults, while protecting their innocence and childhood.

If you have the opportunity to get formal training, take it. This might mean signing up for a company seminar, attending an industry conference, participating in a roundtable discussion, hearing experts on a panel, or engaging in a hands-on workshop. It might seem obvious that formal training is helpful, but it also rarely feels urgent or necessary. Besides costing time, it also tends to cost money, which means we engage in a classic back-and-forth with ourselves: Is it worth it? Especially in the middle of a hectic week, is it really a good idea to step away for a two-day workshop or to give up a relaxing evening at home for a lecture? The answer is usually yes. If spending ten hours being trained helps you be even 1 percent more efficient at your job, then it’s a good return on investment (1 percent of time saved per year is about twenty hours).

think of Halley—the first time we met, on the first day of Basic, bunkmates by the luck of the alphabet—and I feel a profound gratitude for the interrupted, hectic, and strange relationship we’ve had, intense and exciting despite all the obstacles thrown into our path by an uncaring military. I think of Mom, and about the sadness she will feel at the loss of her only child, but I’m glad that we got to spend some time together just before I shipped out on this particular goat rope.

Lord, when the alarm clock, stove clock, and time clock demand my presence, When the pace of life is hectic, When I wish there were six more hours in a day, When the traffic light is stuck on red And my family’s schedule demands I be in three places at one time, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, when people expect too much of me, When the boss has forgotten about the eight-hour day, When I am constantly at others’ beck and call, When the cell phone, Twitter, fax, and email all go off at once And I begin to hate the human race, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, when work occupies all my waking hours, When television commercials say I must have more, When my neighbors flaunt their newest toys, When alcoholic does not apply but workaholic does And I decide to go to the office on Sunday to catch up, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, when money means more than people, When I read The Wall Street Journal more than my Bible, When overtime becomes my primetime, When promotions and pay hikes are my ultimate goals And looking out for number one has become my slogan in life, May I take time to rest, Lord. Lord, may I refocus my life on you. May I restore my thoughts in your Word. May I refresh my schedule by meditating on all your blessings. May I relax my activity every week to enjoy the life you gave me. May I take time to rest, Lord.

For the first few weeks in Santa Fe, Oppenheimer and his key staff worked out of the office at 109 East Palace Avenue in the early mornings and made daily trips up to Los Alamos to inspect the progress of the construction. "The laboratories at the site were in a sketchy state, but that did not deter the workers," Dorothy wrote of those hectic early days. "In the morning buses, consisting of station wagons, sedans, or trucks, would leave 109 and pick up the men at the ranches and take them up the Hill. Occasionally, a driver would forget to stop at one or another of the ranches and the stranded and frustrated scientists would call in a white heat.

Balloons have taught me to reflect more. On earth, my life is fast and hectic, each moment full. It can be too busy. We all need our own space and it’s good to pause and do nothing. It gives us time to think. It recharges our bodies as well as our minds. I often think of the fishermen I watched that Christmas in Japan. It’s in our nature to strive – so I wondered what they looked for in life? They seemed content fishing and feeding their families. They didn’t seem driven to set up fish-canning empires. As far as I knew, they didn’t want to cross the Pacific in a balloon or climb Mount Everest. They took each day as it came. They lived in the moment, and perhaps this is what gave them peace of mind. My grandmother lived life to the full. At the age of

and retreat from the busy and hectic day to day daily life or the desire for fresh veggies, gardening can fill that void. In addition to providing some peace for an individual it can also provide a brilliant source of nutrition and cost savings at the dinner table. The drawback that gardeners have had to face is change of seasons, insect and rodent pests as well as fertilizing problems. Gardening methods over the years has taken a pleasant turn for the better as people are trying to re-connect to the natural way of things and are taking an organic approach to raising vegetables and fruits. It is pleasing and inspiring to witness this shift from chemical saturated food going back to the natural way it was meant to be eaten. It thrills me to contribute to this global shift! I hope our children and generations after them have many blessed years of health and abundance at their dinner tables from the positive teachings

Educators and psychologists have a mantra these days: No matter how hectic the schedules of your family members may be, make time to have dinner together. Research shows that family dinners help kids feel they matter to the parent, and as a result they have a positive impact on kids’ mental health and lead to greater self-esteem and greater academic achievement. In addition to talking to our kids about their day or their lives, talking to them about current events scales the level of critical thinking up a level—to

There was a fetid atmosphere throughout the cities of Germany during the postwar years that laid its breath on all of the generation who grew up under the Republic. It was as if the stresses of recurrent catastrophe, the defeat, the shame of the peace, the inflation, the grinding poverty had crushed the steadfast and simple qualities of the people, so that they moved in an amazed and hectic round above the rotting body of their old, sure beliefs. There were social degeneracy and political unease; there were mental skepticism and moral profligacy.

And now consider the rarer cases of which I spoke, the last idealists we have today amongst philosophers and scholars: do we perhaps have, in them, the sought-for opponents of ascetic, priestly Christian ideals, the latter’s counter-idealists, who are the atheistic proponents of science? In fact, those scientists believe themselves to be, these ‘unbelievers’ (because that is what they all are); that seems to be their last remnant of faith, to be opponents of this ideal, so serious are they on this score, so passionate is their every word and gesture: – does what they believe therefore need to be true? . . . We ‘knowers’ are positively mistrustful of any kind of believers; our mistrust has gradually trained us to conclude the opposite to what was formerly concluded: namely, to presuppose, wherever the strength of a belief becomes prominent, a certain weakness, even improbability of proof. Even we do not deny that faith ‘brings salvation’:114 precisely for that reason we deny that faith proves anything, – a strong faith which brings salvation is grounds for suspicion of the object of its faith, it does not establish truth, it establishes a certain probability – of deception. What now is the position in this case? – These ‘no’-sayers and outsiders of today, those who are absolute in one thing, their demand for intellectual rigour [Sauberkeit], these hard, strict, abstinent, heroic minds who make up the glory of our time, all these pale atheists, Antichrists, immoralists, nihilists, these scep- tics, ephectics,115 hectics of the mind [des Geistes] (they are one and all the latter in a certain sense), these last idealists of knowledge in whom, alone, intellectual conscience dwells and is embodied these days, – they believe they are all as liberated as possible from the ascetic, Christian ideal, these ‘free, very free spirit atheists’: and yet, I will tell them what they themselves cannot see – because they are standing too close to themselves – this ideal is quite simply their ideal as well, they themselves represent it nowadays, and perhaps no one else, they themselves are its most intellectualized product, its most advanced front-line troops and scouts, its most insidious, delicate and elusive form of seduction: – if I am at all able to solve riddles, I wish to claim to do so with this pronouncement! . . . These are very far from being free spirits: because atheistic proponents of science still believe in truth . . . When the Christian Crusaders in the East fell upon that invincible order of Assassins, the order of free spirits par excellence, the lowest rank of whom lived a life of obedience the like of which no monastic order has ever achieved, somehow or other they received an inkling of that symbol and watchword that was reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secretum: ‘nothing is true, everything is permitted’ . . . Certainly that was freedom of the mind [des Geistes], with that the termination of the belief in truth was announced. . . . Has a European or a Christian free-thinker [Freigeist] ever strayed into this proposition and the labyrinth of its consequences?

In the wider world, we keep hectically busy and fill every free moment of our day with some form of diversion—work, computers, television, movies, radio, magazines, newspapers, sports, alcohol, drugs, parties. Perhaps we distract ourselves because looking at our lives confronts us with our lack of meaning, our unhappiness, and our loneliness—and with the difficulty, the fragility, and the unbelievable brevity of life.

Patty had met Galina on the day of Ray’s memorial service but had barely spoken to her. She was one of those overwhelmed mothers engulfed in baby, her hair disordered, her cheeks hectic, her clothes disarranged, her flesh escaping haphazardly, but she clearly could still have been pretty if she’d had a few minutes to spare for it.

Friendship is a gift we give ourselves. Friendship has a deep, healing power that I didn’t fully appreciate in my twenties, when my friends and I were more focused on just having fun together. Research has found that time with our friends may make us the happiest, happier than time with anyone else, including our children, relatives, parents, and even spouses. And yet friends are the first ones to take a back seat when life gets hectic. We take them for granted, thinking they’ll always be there, until one day, maybe they’re not. Without intentional focus and attention, even close friendships can fade away over the years.