Impossible Situation Quotes

Impossible situations are our specialty.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation... ...everything is a mess in which it is impossible to tell what's what, but that despite this impossibility and deception it still hurts you, and the less you can understand, the more it hurts.

Every time you meet a situation you think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it, you find that forever after you are freer than you were before.

This impossible situation also comes with a time limit. No pressure.

It was an impossible situation, a trick of society as a whole: force women to live at the mercy of whichever man wants them but shame them for anything they might do to get a man to want them.

One is not born a genius, one becomes a genius; and the feminine situation has up to the present rendered this becoming practically impossible.

nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself and it will be easy enough to fail so very easily but don’t, don’t, don’t. just watch them. listen to them. do you want to be like that? a faceless, mindless, heartless being? do you want to experience death before death? nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it. think about it. think about saving your self.

Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different. And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in. If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real. As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Who loses hope first? And who never gives up? Because it’s not the supernatural abilities that set mythical characters apart. It’s the decisions the human characters make, in impossible situations, that have us still talking about them centuries later. Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with.

It's remarkable how quickly a person can get used to an impossible situation. How terror and panic can start to feel familiar, even ordinary.

I hate to point out the obvious, but here's this tiny bird that's been trying to get through a huge bulletproof glass wall. A totally impossible situation. You tell me it's been here every day pecking away persistently for ten minutes. Well, today the glass wall came down.

The idea that God works in mysterious ways is rubbish. There’s nothing mysterious about his ways. They’re premeditated and slightly conniving, and they place you in an impossible situation.

Eventually, you will come to understand that love heals everything, and love is all there is. The journey may take many lifetimes, but you will complete it. It is impossible not to complete it. It is not a question of if but of when. Every situation you create serves this purpose. Every experience you encounter serves this purpose.

The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.

In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great.

He would never give up trying. He would take an impossible situation and make everything possible.

Thought of the day. If you are in an impossible situation. Then find an impossible solution. And do it!

It's impossible to be involved in all situations, but there's no excuse not to be involved in something, somewhere, somehow, with someone. Make an ounce of difference.

nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself

When it seems humanly impossible to do more in a difficult situation, surrender yourself to the inner silence and thereafter wait for a sign of obvious guidance or for a renewal of inner strength.

Nobody can save you but yourself. You will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. They will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise, and force to make you submit, quit and/or die quietly inside. But don't, don't, don't. It's a war not easily won, but if anything is worth winning then this is it. Nobody can save you but yourself, and you're worth saving.

Impossible situations TEST you and PROVE Him

There is in each of us an ancient force that takes and an ancient force that gives. A man finds little difficulty facing that place within himself where the taking force dwells, but it’s almost impossible for him to see into the giving force without changing into something other than man. For a woman, the situation is reversed…These things are so ancient within us…that they’re ground into each separate cell of our bodies…It’s as easy to be overwhelmed by giving as by taking.

. . . One of the most human things about anxiety is that we try to cure chaos with chaos. Someone who has got themselves into a catastrophic situation rarely retreats from it, we're far more inclined to carry on even faster. We've created lives where we can watch other people crash into the wall but still hope that somehow we're going to pass straight through it. The closer we get, the more confidently we believe that some unlikely solution is miraculously going to save us, while everyone watching us is just waiting for the crash." . . . So Zara asked, without any sarcasm, "Have you learned any theories about why people behave like that, then?" "Hundreds," The psychologist smiled. "Which one do you believe?" "I believe the one that says that if you do it for long enough, it can become impossible to tell the difference between flying and falling.

IT’S THE LESSON YOUNG GIRLS EVERYWHERE were taught their entire lives—don’t be seduced by the men you meet, protect your virtue—until, of course, their entire lives depended on seduction by the right man. It was an impossible situation, a trick of society as a whole: force women to live at the mercy of whichever man wants them but shame them for anything they might do to get a man to want them. Passivity was the ultimate virtue. Heaven forbid you turn into someone like Hyacinth Coldwater. Be patient, be silent, be beautiful and untouched as an orchid, and then and only then will your reward come: a bell jar to keep you safe.

I had let want in, opened the door ever so slightly. But want without the belief you can get what you want is pointless. You have to hope, so I let that in too. You have to. To want things and go for them and believe, even in impossible situations...Hope was what you had when you had nothing else. Hope was the perfect shiny top on the Christmas tree, the glowing halo of every wish, the endless beacon of a lighthouse bringing tormented ships home at last.

I am not proud of that today, but I did what I had always done... tried to survive an impossible situation.

I intend all my characters must escape from impossible situations; if they are not in trouble, then as a writer, I am.

My greatest fault is trying to stuff the baggage of an impossible situation into the trunk of an elegant solution

In any case, just because you feel out of control doesn’t mean you should have been able to prevent it. Instead of searching for mistakes or weaknesses, judge yourself realistically, in terms of what a good person can actually do in a bad situation.

No matter how intense the situation, or how powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you’d just get tired and want it to end.

We cannot win in team situations or in relationships by ourselves. It is like trying to pick up a pencil with only one finger...Even if that one finger is extremely strong, it will prove almost impossible to pick up that pencil unless you use your other fingers or some other part of your hand. Teamwork is a bit like using all of your fingers. Each one is unique and contributes something different, but they unite in pursuit of a common goal.

They begin to inject as much drama into the relationship as they possibly can, throwing you into impossible situations and then judging you for reacting to them.

Zombies will try to scale any surface no matter how unfeasable or even impossible. In all but the easiest situations, these attempts have met with failure. Even in the case of ladders, when simple hand-over-hand coordination is required, only one in four zombies will succeed.

Perhaps history this century, thought Eigenvalue, is rippled with gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it's impossible to determine warp, woof, or pattern anywhere else. By virtue, however, of existing in one gather it is assumed there are others, compartmented off into sinuous cycles each of which had come to assume greater importance than the weave itself and destroy any continuity. Thus it is that we are charmed by the funny-looking automobiles of the '30's, the curious fashions of the '20's, the particular moral habits of our grandparents. We produce and attend musical comedies about them and are conned into a false memory, a phony nostalgia about what they were. We are accordingly lost to any sense of continuous tradition. Perhaps if we lived on a crest, things would be different. We could at least see.

But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love...Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others.

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. . . . You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.

You’re being overdramatic.” “I’m not!” “You are. Why can’t you just summon a speck of patience and come up with a different solution, rather than throw us into another impossible situation?” “Because of this, you idiot!” I shouted, and then I took his face in my hands and kissed him.

I said, "I don't think I can give you that kind of emotion." And he [Hitchcock] sat there and said, "Ingrid, fake it!" Well, that was the best advice I've had in my whole life, because in all the years to come there were many directors who gave me what I thought were quite impossible instructions and many difficult things to do, and just when I was on the verge of starting to argue with them, I heard his voice coming to me through the air saying, "Ingrid, fake it!" It saved a lot of unpleasant situations and waste of time.

Because of Jesus, we can view life as a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

An improbable set of circumstances. An impossible situation. How long could she hold on to the truth? Should she hold on?...Was she obligated to protect the deceptions of the dead when the truth might somehow help the living?

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life--daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simple to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

He will put you in situations where you absolutely must have a miracle. The reason He does that is because He wants you to know with all certainty that it is Him working in your life. So don’t be alarmed if the Spirit leads you into situations that are impossible without a miracle from God.

Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d seen it coming or not. Adrian was totally unsuitable for me, and it had nothing to do with his many vices or potential descent into insanity. Adrian was a vampire. True, he was a Moroi—one of the good, living vampires—but it made no difference. Humans and vampires couldn’t be together. This was one point the Moroi and Alchemists stood firmly together on. It was still amazing to me that Adrian had voiced those feelings to me. It was amazing that he could even have them or that he’d had the nerve to kiss me, even if it was a kiss that had left me dizzy and breathless. I’d had to reject him, of course. My training would allow nothing less. Our situation here in Palm Springs forced the two us to constantly be together in social situations, and it had been rough since his declaration. For me, it wasn’t just the awkwardness of our new relationship. I…well, I missed him. Before this debacle, he and I had been friends and spent a lot of time together. I’d gotten used to his smirky smile and the quick banter that always flowed between us. Until those things were gone, I hadn’t realized how much I relied on them. How much I needed them. I felt empty inside...which was ridiculous, of course. Why should I care so much about one vampire? Sometimes it made me angry. Why had he ruined such a good thing between us? Why had he made me miss him so much? And what had he expected me to do? He had to have known it was impossible for us to be together. I couldn’t have feelings for him. I couldn’t. If we’d lived among the Keepers—a group of uncivilized vampires, humans, and dhampirs—maybe he and I could have…no. Even if I had feelings for him—and I firmly told myself I didn’t—it was wrong for us to even consider such a relationship. Now, Adrian spoke to me as little as possible. And always, always, he watched me with a haunted look in his green eyes, one that made my heart ache and—

When you are in a combat situation, you mustn’t let your mind be polluted by emotions like fear and anger. Simply accept the situation and react, even if you are facing impossible odds. Keep your head clear and you will be one step ahead of your attackers.

Mostly I remember the way I was before I became a Contender. Competing in this race is like becoming a drug addict. One small slip leads to another and before you know it, you find yourself in an impossible situation and can't fathom how your life has spiraled so far from what it was.

An inn, of course, was a place you came to at night (not at three o'clock in the afternoon), preferably a rainy night—wind, too, if it could be managed; and it should be situated on a moor (“bleak,” Kate knew, was the adjective here). And there should be scullions; mine host should be gravy-stained and broad in the beam with a tousled apron pulled across his stomach; and there should be a tall, dark stranger—the one who speaks to nobody—warming thin hands before the fire. And the fire should be a fire—crackling and blazing, laid with an impossible size log and roaring its great heart out up the chimney. And there should be some sort of cauldron, Kate felt, somewhere about—and, perhaps, a couple of mastiffs thrown in for good measure.

The most successful people in the most impossible situations are the ones that are sure they're gonna get out of it, and they go on thinking that, even if they die trying.

Harry Dresden—I take responsibility for more impossible situations in the first twenty-four hours of being dead than most people do all day.

Okay, so what would the blue jay do?” Nick asked. “He would never give up trying. He would take an impossible situation and make everything possible.

He was content to wait, his bare limbs on the sheets heavy, the gold slave cuffs and collar his only adornments. He felt the warm, wonderful, impossible fact of his situation. Bed slave.

If you can stay positive in bad situations, you are strong; if you can stay optimistic in hopeless situations, you are mighty; if you can stay hopeful in impossible situations, you are great.

Only by abolishing the situation of oppression is it possible to restore the love which that situation made impossible. If I do not live the world - if I do not love life - if I do not love people - I cannot enter into dialogue.

He's a pathetic fool, indeed. He was just some contracted worker for a no-name game developer, and his hobby was reading novels. His specialty is to run his cocky mouth off, and he has this habit of throwing his life away so that we can overcome any and all impossible situations hindering us. Someone like that managed to lead his companions this far. Regardless of what the incoming conclusion is, this world wouldn't have come this far without him around.

The unconscious always tries to produce an impossible situation in order to force the individual to bring out his very best. Otherwise one stops short of one's best, one is not complete, one does not realize oneself. What is needed is an impossible situation where one has to renounce one's own will and one's own wit and do nothing but wait and trust to the impersonal power of growth and development.

It wasn't always like this. There was a time when I imagined my life could happen in another way. It's true that early on I became used to the long hours I spent alone. I discovered that I did not need people as others did. After writing all day it took an effort to make conversation, like wading through cement, and often I simply chose not to make it, eating at a restaurant with a book or going for long walks alone instead, unwinding the solitude of the day through the city. But loneliness, true loneliness, is impossible to accustom oneself to, and while I was still young I thought of my situation as somehow temporary, and did not stop hoping and imagining that I would meet someone and fall in love... Yes, there was a time before I closed myself off to others.

In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a “quick return to power,” forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible “dialogue” with the dominant elites. It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls in an elitist game, which it calls “realism.” Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think. For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in revolution…One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders.

The statement was meant for effect, and effect it got. Declan gave Matthew his most Declan of faces. He generally used one of two expressions. The first was Bland Businessman Nodding at What You’re Saying While Waiting for His Turn to Talk and the other was Reticent Father with Irritable Bowel Syndrome Realizes He Must Let His Child Use the Public Restroom First. They suited nearly every situation Declan found himself in. This, however, was a third expression: Exasperated Twentysomething Longs to Yell at His Brothers Because Oh My God. He rarely used it, but the lack of practice didn’t make it any less accomplished or any less pure Declan.

When there is no way out, there is still always a way through. So don’t turn away from the pain. Face it. Feel it fully. Feel it — don’t think about it! Express it if necessary, but don’t create a script in your mind around it. Give all your attention to the feeling, not to the person, event, or situation that seems to have caused it. Don’t let the mind use the pain to create a victim identity for yourself out of it. Feeling sorry for yourself and telling others your story will keep you stuck in suffering. Since it is impossible to get away from the feeling, the only possibility of change is to move into it; otherwise, nothing will shift. So give your complete attention to what you feel, and refrain from mentally labeling it. As you go into the feeling, be intensely alert. At first, it may seem like a dark and terrifying place, and when the urge to turn away from it comes, observe it but don’t act on it. Keep putting your attention on the pain, keep feeling the grief, the fear, the dread, the loneliness, whatever it is. Stay alert, stay present — present with your whole Being, with every cell of your body. As you do so, you are bringing a light into this darkness. This is the flame of your consciousness.

Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished.

Never underestimate the power of prayer! There is nothing that is impossible to God. Our Lord can heal the sick and work situations out in our life that seem overwhelming to us. In fact, He already knows what you are going to pray for even before you pray. He‟s just waiting to hear from you.

The link between man and the world is broken. Henceforth, this link must become an object of belief: it is the impossible which can only be restored within a faith. Belief is no longer addressed to a different or transformed world. Man is in the world as if in a pure optical and sound situation. The reaction of which man has been dispossessed can be replaced only by belief. Only belief in the world can reconnect man to what he sees and hears. The cinema must film, not the world, but belief in this world, our only link.

What would she have done if she'd been in that situation? Mrs. Richardson would ask herself this question over and over, before Michael's call and for weeks - and months - after. Each time, faced with this impossible choice, she came to the same conclusion. I would never have let myself get into that situation, she told herself. I would have made better choices along the way.

The new situation must be created, in which it is possible to believe on Jesus as God incarnate; that is the impossible situation in which everything is staked solely on the word of Jesus. Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea, in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord. If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learnt the meaning of faith. Before he can believe, the utterly impossible and ethically irresponsible situation on the waves of the sea must be displayed. The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics.

Life however is teeming with vitality and is likewise terribly tenacious; holding on against impossible odds in impossible situations over impossible lengths of time.

Because I knew, firsthand, that having someone to love could help someone survive impossible situations.

But Will couldn’t help but feel like this was his responsibility. He had gotten them into this impossible situation. He would have to get them out.

A bunch of different people appear, and they’ve got their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own brand of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously. I mean, it’s basically impossible for everybody’s justice to prevail or everybody’s happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over. And then what do you think happens? Simple – a god appears in the end and starts directing traffic. “You go over there, and you come here, and you get together with her, and you just sit still for a while.” Like that. He’s kind of a fixer, and in the end everything works out perfectly. They call this ‘deus ex machina.

I rubbed my face with my hands. “Oh, God, what are You getting us into?” Olivia chuckled. “That’s an interesting way to put it. But I think sometimes the Lord puts us into impossible situations—or lets us get into them ourselves—just so He can show His might and power as He pulls us out.

Freud to his fiancée: " The only thing that makes me suffer is being in a situation where it is impossible for me to prove my love to you" Gide: " Everything in her behaviour seemed to say: Since he no longer loves me, nothing matters to me. Now, I still loved her, and in fact I had never loved her so much; but it was no longer possible for me to prove it to her. That was much the worst thing of all

The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged. You are thrown off-center, and when you feel off-center, it’s time to go. This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. You are to cross the threshold into new life. It’s a dangerous adventure, because you are moving out of the sphere of the knowledge of you and your community.

Being on the fringes of the world is not the best place for someone who intends to re-create it: here again, to go beyond the given, one must be deeply rooted in it. Personal accomplishments are almost impossible in human categories collectively kept in an inferior situation.

The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance: When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.' Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters. Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings? In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear.

When the situations seem impossible, the best thing you can do is to think the opposite!

I can't see how I'll make it a year this way," he said. "It seems impossible, I know. But when we're old and doddering, this year will seem like a blink.

Please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space. I realized that for every relationship, not only do I have to be accountable for the energy I bring, but I also have to take responsibility for the energy that I allow from others. I understand that strengthening the bond in any situation is impossible if you’re not surrounded by energy that lifts you up.

You say it's too late. In my opinion, only a thimbleful of situations in life are that dire. Death begins and ends that list. Everything else is simply an obstacle that must be dealt with.

Inexorable self, carried like the superfluous and tiresome piece of luggage which it is impossible to lose; franked with the customs’ stamp of every frontier, retrieved exasperatingly from the disaster where everything else is lost, companion of the dislocation of cancelled sailings and missed connections, witness of every catastrophe, survivor of all voyages and situations…I

I'd like you to ask yourself, Who loses hope first? And who never gives up? Because it's not the supernatural abilities that set mythical characters apart." She leaned forward. "It's the decisions the human characters make,in impossible situations, that have us still talking about them centuries later.Heroes are made by te paths they choose,not the powers they are graced with.

In his book titled The Book of Survival, Anthony Greenbank wrote: To live through an impossible situation, you don’t need to have the reflexes of a Grand Prix driver, the muscles of a Hercules, the mind of an Einstein. You simply need to know what to do.

And the miracle is that when you are no longer placing an impossible demand on it, every situation, person, place, or event becomes not only satisfying but also more harmonious, more peaceful.

See the system. When you find yourself stuck in an oversimplified polarized conflict, a useful first step is to try to become more aware of the system as a whole: to provide more context to your understanding of the terrain in which the stakeholders are embedded, whether they are disputants, mediators, negotiators, lawyers, or other third parties. This can help you to see the forest and the trees; it is a critical step toward regaining some sense of accuracy, agency, possibility, and control in the situation.

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all. Welcome to the power of perception. Applicable in each and every situation, impossible to obstruct. It can only be relinquished. And that is your decision.

Do you want to be in your own story or on the outside writing about it? Everyone battles fear and uncertainty every day. However, the only failure in life is believing that your value relies on other people's approval or resources. The reality is this: When you are living your authentic self and not how people want you to act, then you are free to use the full spectrum of your creativity and gifts. People don't need resources to get out of any life situation. They need creativity to create resources. When you realize that, becoming stuck is impossible.

A person who tries to treat life as if it were an extension of school often becomes what the Danish novelist Matias Dalsgaard calls an “insecure overachiever”: “Such a person must have no stable or solid foundation to build upon, and yet nonetheless tries to build his way out of his problem. It’s an impossible situation. You can’t compensate for having a foundation made of quicksand by building a new story on top. But this person takes no notice and hopes that the problem down in the foundation won’t be found out if only the construction work on the top keeps going.

What does Mom have to do with this?” I say. “Everything.” Before I can argue, Libby continues, “I’m not saying I blame her—she was in an impossible situation and she did a fairly amazing job with us. But that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes, she forgot whose job it was to take care of us.

The ultimate singularity is the Big Bang, which physicists believe was responsible for the birth of the universe. We are asked by science to believe that the entire universe sprang from nothingness, at a single point and for no discernible reason. This notion is the limit case for credulity. In other words, if you can believe this, you can believe anything. It is a notion that is, in fact, utterly absurd, yet terribly important. Those so-called rational assumptions flow from this initial impossible situation. Western religion has its own singularity in the form of the apocalypse, an event placed not at the beginning of the universe but at its end. This seems a more logical position than that of science. If singularities exist at all it seems easier to suppose that they might arise out of an ancient and highly complexified cosmos, such as our own, than out of a featureless and dimensionless mega-void.

Stress is not because of work—this is important to remember. Everybody thinks their job is stressful. No job is stressful. There are many jobs that could present challenging situations. There could be nasty bosses, insecure colleagues, emergency rooms, impossible deadlines—or you might even find yourself in the middle of a war zone! But these are not inherently stressful. It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. So, it is your inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out. On some level, you do not know how to handle your body, mind, and emotions; that is the problem. How

One of the greatest ironies of the twentieth century is that when communication has reached its zenith, when the human voice can encircle the globe in a matter of seconds, when man can project the image of his face thousands of miles, it is almost impossible to know with any degree of accuracy the truth of a political situation only a hundred miles distant! Propaganda jams the media of communication.

There were times when she had an inkling of a situation not being fair, but she was accustomed to rationalizing things by telling herself that she was being a generous older sibling and that she shared with her sister because they were both girls. Jiyoung’s mother would praise the girls for taking good care of their brother and not competing for her love. Jiyoung thought it must be the big age gap. The more their mother praised, the more impossible it became for Jiyoung to complain.

Oh, noble child, everything is severing the mind. As for the mind, it is severing pride. There is nothing whatsoever that is not included in pride. If one simply understands that it is merely the production of pride, then, for example, one is like a thief in an empty house: by simply recognizing [the situation], grasping is impossible. Having correctly understood, there is no practice with an intentional objective. Because it crushes any hesitations (mi phod), it is explained as Chöd.

Hope was an emotion that could give the smallest man the strength to move mountains. But if a man was given too much hope in a dire situation, that four letter word would suddenly crush him, weighing him down by the impossible belief that things would somehow get better when there was no chance in hell they ever possibly could.

When the laws regulating human society are so formed as to come into collision with the nature of things, and in particular with the fundamental realities of human nature, they will end by producing an impossible situation which, unless the laws are altered, will issue in such catastrophes as war, pestilence and famine. Catastrophes thus caused are the execution of universal law upon arbitrary enactments which contravene the facts; they are thus properly called by theologians, judgments of God.

Despite how lost I feel, this situation is familiar. That someone is asking my consent as if I have a choice. Pay to see a doctor or suffer. Register with the ODR or go to debtors' prison. Go down on Dutch or be humiliated - punished. Impossible choices I've made, if you can call it that. I know when I say, "Yes," it's the same, here.

In everything, almost in everything, I wrote I was guided by the need of collecting ideas which, linked together, would be the expression of myself, though each individual idea, expressed separately in words, loses its meaning, is horribly debased when only one of the links, of which it forms a part, is taken by itself. But the interlinking of these ideas is not, I think, an intellectual process, but something else, and it is impossible to express the source of this interlinking directly in words; it can only be done indirectly by describing images, actions, and situations in words.

This is how to start telling the difference between thoughts that are informed by your intuition and thoughts that are informed by fear: Intuitive thoughts are calm. Intruding thoughts are hectic and fear-inducing. Intuitive thoughts are rational; they make a degree of sense. Intruding thoughts are irrational and often stem from aggrandizing a situation or jumping to the worst conclusion possible. Intuitive thoughts help you in the present. They give you information that you need to make a better-informed decision. Intruding thoughts are often random and have nothing to do with what’s going on in the moment. Intuitive thoughts are “quiet”; intruding thoughts are “loud,” which makes one harder to hear than the other. Intuitive thoughts usually come to you once, maybe twice, and they induce a feeling of understanding. Intruding thoughts tend to be persistent and induce a feeling of panic. Intuitive thoughts often sound loving, while invasive thoughts sound scared. Intuitive thoughts usually come out of nowhere; invasive thoughts are usually triggered by external stimuli. Intuitive thoughts don’t need to be grappled with—you have them and then you let them go. Invasive thoughts begin a whole spiral of ideas and fears, making it feel impossible to stop thinking about them. Even when an intuitive thought doesn’t tell you something you like, it never makes you feel panicked. Even if you experience sadness or disappointment, you don’t feel overwhelmingly anxious. Panic is the emotion you experience when you don’t know what to do with a feeling. It is what happens when you have an invasive thought. Intuitive thoughts open your mind to other possibilities; invasive thoughts close your heart and make you feel stuck or condemned. Intuitive thoughts come from the perspective of your best self; invasive thoughts come from the perspective of your most fearful, small self. Intuitive thoughts solve problems; invasive thoughts create them. Intuitive thoughts help you help others; invasive thoughts tend to create a “me vs. them” mentality. Intuitive thoughts help you understand what you’re thinking and feeling; invasive thoughts assume what other people are thinking and feeling. Intuitive thoughts are rational; invasive thoughts are irrational. Intuitive thoughts come from a deeper place within you and give you a resounding feeling deep in your gut; invasive thoughts keep you stuck in your head and give you a panicked feeling. Intuitive thoughts show you how to respond; invasive thoughts demand that you react.

Abraham’s actions are explained not only by what is happening to him at the moment, nor yet only by his character (as Achilles’ actions by his courage and his pride, and Odysseus’ by his versatility and foresightedness), but by his previous history; he remembers, he is constantly conscious of, what God has promised him and what God has already accomplished for him—his soul is torn between desperate rebellion and hopeful expectation; his silent obedience is multilayered, has background. Such a problematic psychological situation as this is impossible for any of the Homeric heroes, whose destiny is clearly defined and who wake every morning as if it were the first day of their lives: their emotions, though strong, are simple and find expression instantly.

I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely. Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems. In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death. For me, the illusion of control is much easier to maintain in England or America. In this temperate world, I feel more secure, as if change will only happen incrementally, in manageable, finely calibrated, bite-sized portions. There is a sense of continuity threaded through it all: the anchor of history, the tangible presence of antiquity, of buildings, of institutions. You live in the expectation of reaching old age. At least you used to. But on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, those two states of mind converge. Suddenly it feels like I am back in Africa, where things can be taken away from you at random, in a single violent stroke, as quick as the whip of a snake’s head. Where tumult is raised with an abruptness that is as breathtaking as the violence itself.

stupidity: a process, not a state. A human being takes in far more information than he or she can put out. “Stupidity” is a process or strategy by which a human, in response to social denigration of the information she or he puts out, commits him or herself to taking in no more information than she or he can put out. (Not to be confused with ignorance, or lack of data.) Since such a situation is impossible to achieve because of the nature of mind/perception itself in its relation to the functioning body, a continuing downward spiral of functionality and/or informative dissemination results,’ and he understood why! ‘The process, however, can be reversed,’ the voice continued, ‘at any time.

Continuously, you are put in situations that force you to shave off your humanity to fit in places impossibly small, and your bones are so thin, They fall apart.

Seizing God's vision means deciding that you will not spend another day surviving your work environment, family dynamic, or dysfunctional situation.

There are no impossible and hopeless situations for the children of God!

Hard pressed on my right; center is yielding; impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent, I shall attack.

Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.

The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that, you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.

It was a lesson he’d never forgotten. That humans only have so much emotional energy. No matter how intense the situation, or how powerful the feelings, it was impossible to maintain a heightened emotional state forever. Eventually you’d just get tired and want it to end.

nobody but you nobody can save you but yourself. you will be put again and again into nearly impossible situations. they will attempt again and again through subterfuge, guise and force to make you submit, quit and /or die quietly inside. nobody can save you but yourself and it will be easy enough to fail so very easily but don’t, don’t, don’t. just watch them. listen to them. do you want to be like that? a faceless, mindless, heartless being? do you want to experience death before death? nobody can save you but yourself and you’re worth saving. it’s a war not easily won but if anything is worth winning then this is it. think about it. think about saving your self. your spiritual self. your gut self. your singing magical self and your beautiful self. save it. don’t join the dead-in-spirit. maintain your self with humor and grace and finally if necessary wager your self as you struggle, damn the odds, damn the price. only you can save your self. do it! do it! then you’ll know exactly what I am talking about.

She had once shown him the impossibility of such a hope, and his subsequent behaviour seemed to prove that he had accepted the situation with a reasonableness somewhat mortifying to her vanity.

Some of us may be without a special person to love. That can be difficult, but it is not an impossible situation. We may want and need someone to love, but I think it helps if we love ourselves enough. It’s okay to be in a relationship, but it’s also okay to not be in a relationship. Find friends to love, be loved by, and who think we are worthwhile. Love ourselves and know we are worthwhile. Use our time alone as a breather. Let go. Learn the lessons we are to be learning. Grow. Develop. Work on ourselves, so when love comes along, it enhances a full and interesting life. Love shouldn’t be the concern of our whole life or an escape from an unpleasant life. Strive toward goals. Have fun. Trust God and His timing. He cares and knows all about our needs and wants. Whatever

I was not forced to join the Red Guards. I was keen to do so. In spite of what was happening around me, my aversion and fear had no clear object, and it never occurred to me to question the Cultural Revolution or the Red Guards explicitly. They were Mao’s creations, and Mao was beyond contemplation. Like many Chinese, I was incapable of rational thinking in those days. We were so cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination that to deviate from the path laid down by Mao would have been inconceivable. Besides, we had been overwhelmed by deceptive rhetoric, disinformation, and hypocrisy, which made it virtually impossible to see through the situation and to form an intelligent judgment.

There is no point in waiting for the right moment when a smooth change might be possible; this moment will never arrive, history will never provide us with such an opportunity. One has to take the risk and intervene, even if reaching the goal appears (and is, in some sense) impossible - only by doing this can one change the situation so that the impossible becomes possible, in a way that can never be predicted.

But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line — maybe she’s not usually like this; maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who’s dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept. who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it’s also not impossible — it just depends on what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important — if you want to operate on your default-setting — then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren’t pointless and annoying. But if you’ve really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars — compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff’s necessarily true: The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship…

IT SEEMED THE ONLY NEWS STORIES WE READ WERE ABOUT atrocities or how impossible it was going to be to pacify Ramadi. Guess what? We killed all those bad guys, and what happened? The Iraqi tribal leaders finally realized we meant business, and they finally banded together not just to govern themselves, but to kick the insurgents out. It took force, it took violence of action, to create a situation where there could be peace.

True, blaming myself like that is irrational, but kids - and adults who are still processing childhood trauma - don't blame themselves simply out of a secret desire for self-hatred. They blame themselves so they can feel in control of a what seems like an impossible situation, because the only way to feel like they can process it is to reclaim their agency, even by blaming themselves for something they have no control over.

The new is preceded by the destruction of the old, that which has become guilty, and not out of the possebilities which we possess, but in the impossible situation which confronts us, that the new shows itself as God's creative act. God's new reality is always like a novum ex nihilo. When all hopes have died, there comes the wave of the future like a spirit of resurrection into the dead bones (Ezek. 37), creating hope against hope.

Love hurts. Think back over romance novels you’ve loved or the genre-defining books that drive our industry. The most unforgettable stories and characters spring from crushing opposition. What we remember about romance novels is the darkness that drives them. Three hundred pages of folks being happy together makes for a hefty sleeping pill, but three hundred pages of a couple finding a way to be happy in the face of impossible odds makes our hearts soar. In darkness, we are all alone. So don’t just make love, make anguish for your characters. As you structure a story, don’t satisfy your hero’s desires, thwart them. Make sure your solutions create new problems. Nurture your characters doubts and despair. Make them earn the happy ending they want, even better…make them deserve it. Delay and disappointment charge situations and validate character growth. Misery accompanies love. It’s no accident that many of the stories we think of as timeless romances in Western Literature are fiercely tragic: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Cupid and Psyche… the pain in them drags us back again and again, hoping that this time we’ll find a way out of the dark. Only if you let your characters get lost will we get lost in them. And that, more than anything else, is what romance can and should do for its protagonists and its readers: lead us through the labyrinth, skirt the monstrous despair roaming its halls, and find our way into daylight.

Lots of different people appear, and they all have their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own idea of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously. I mean, it's basically impossible for everybody's justice to prevail or everybody's happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over.

Enjoy life, even in the most chaotic, hectic moments. Take time to breathe. Take time to consider what is important versus what is rubbish. Those are the times where slowing down is healthiest. Those are the times where it really counts. And, if you come across an impossible situation, crying will not help. Open your mouth, but instead of sobs and wails, give out a little chuckle. It’ll make all the difference in your attitude and therefore, in your situation.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she's not usually like this. Maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a horrific, infuriating, red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible. It just depends what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.

Professions can create forms of ethical conversation that are impossible between a lonely individual and a distant government. If members of professions think of themselves as groups with common interests, with norms and rules that oblige them at all times, then they can gain confidence and indeed a certain kind of power. Professional ethics must guide us precisely when we are told that the situation is exceptional. Then there is no such thing as “just following orders.

In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a “quick return to power,” forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible “dialogue” with the dominant elites. It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls into an elitist game, which it calls “realism.

But we don't read about you because we're bored, or just to amuse ourselves. We read about you to be with you, to walk in someone else's shoes, to experience another life. Some of those lives are hard, and others are easy, but we're with you every step of the way. We read about people in impossible situations because we're dealing with horrible things ourselves, in our lives. And you going through your story helps us with ours, no matter how yours ends. Though I do think we both like a happy ending, don't we?

Once the primary bonds which gave security to the individual are severed, once the individual faces the world outside of himself as a completely separate entity, two courses re-open to him since he has to overcome the unbearable state of powerlessness and aloneness. By one course he can progress to “positive freedom”; he can relate himself spontaneously to the world in love and work, in the genuine expression of his emotional, sensuous and intellectual capacities; he can thus become one again with man, nature, and himself, without giving up the independence and integrity of his individual self. The other course open to him is to fall back, to give up his freedom, and to try to overcome his aloneness by eliminating the gap that has arisen between his individual self and the world. This second course never reunites him with the world in the way he was related to it before he merged as an “individual,” for the fact of his separateness cannot be reversed; it is an escape from an unbearable situation which would make life impossible if it were prolonged. This course of escape, therefore, is characterized by its compulsive character, like every escape from threatening panic; it is also characterized by the more or less complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. Thus it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes life possible by avoiding panic; yet it does not solve the underlying problem and is paid for by a kind of life that often consists only of automatic or compulsive activities.

These moments—when we are caught in a situation that has no clear answer, no heuristic to employ that will spit out a theoretical but practically impossible “correct” decision—are when we see the true value in failure. We’re deciding to do something that will, someday, backfire. The more we chew on it and work it through, the more meaning we can derive from that backfire when it happens.

Like many Chinese, I was incapable of rational thinking in those days. We were so cowed and contorted by fear and indoctrination that to deviate from the path laid down by Mao would have been inconceivable. Besides, we had been overwhelmed by deceptive rhetoric, disinformation, and hypocrisy, which made it virtually impossible to see through the situation and to form an intelligent judgment.

Often we are led to a wall, it is too high, we cannot get over it and we stand there and stare at it. Rationalism says, “There is no getting over it, just go away.” Yet natural development has led the patient up to an almost impossible situation to show him that this is the end of his rational solutions. It is meant that he should get there, and perhaps stay there, make roots and grow like a tree; in time overcome the obstacle, grow over the wall. There are things in our psychology that cannot be answered today. You may be up against a stone wall but you should stay there and grow, and in six weeks or a year you have grown over it. The I Ching expresses that beautifully. A similar situation which looks quite hopeless is depicted thus: “a goat butts against a hedge and gets its horns entangled.” But in the next line: “The hedge opens; there is no entanglement/ Power depends upon the axle of a big cart.” So if you could stop butting against the fence you would not get your horns entangles, and presently you would have the power of a cart with four wheels. There is another way in nature, the way of a tree…The tree stands still and grows and makes roots and eventually overcomes the obstacle. [The Seminars. Volume One, Dream Analysis: Notes of the seminar given in 1928-30. p.249]

Game-free intimacy is or should be the most perfect form of human living. Because there is so little opportunity for intimacy in daily life, and because some forms of intimacy (especially if intense) are psychologically impossible for most people, the bulk of time in serious social life is taken up with playing games. Hence games are both necessary and desirable, and the only problem at issue is whether the games played by an individual offer the best yield for him. In this connexion it should be remembered that the essential feature of a game is its culmination, or payoff. The principal function of the preliminary moves is to set up the situation for this payoff, but they are always designed to harvest the maximum permissible satisfaction at each step as a secondary product. Games are passed on from generation to generation. The favoured game of any individual can be traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to his children. Raising children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures and different social classes favour different types of games. Many games are played most intensely by disturbed people, generally speaking, the more disturbed they are, the harder they play. The attainment of autonomy is manifested by the release or recovery of three capacities: awareness, spontaneity and intimacy. Parents, deliberately or unaware, teach their children from birth how to behave, think and perceive. Liberation from these influences is no easy matter, since they are deeply ingrained. First, the weight of a whole tribal or family historical tradition has to be lifted. The same must be done with the demands of contemporary society at large, and finally advantages derived from one's immediate social circle have to be partly or wholly sacrificed. Following this, the individual must attain personal and social control, so that all the classes of behaviour become free choices subject only to his will. He is then ready for game-free relationships.

Hypercritical, Shaming Parents Hypercritical and shaming parents send the same message to their children as perfectionistic parents do - that they are never good enough. Parents often deliberately shame their children into minding them without realizing the disruptive impact shame can have on a child's sense of self. Statements such as "You should be ashamed of yourself" or "Shame on you" are obvious examples. Yet these types of overtly shaming statements are actually easier for the child to defend against than are more subtle forms of shaming, such as contempt, humiliation, and public shaming. There are many ways that parents shame their children. These include belittling, blaming, contempt, humiliation, and disabling expectations. -BELITTLING. Comments such as "You're too old to want to be held" or "You're just a cry-baby" are horribly humiliating to a child. When a parent makes a negative comparison between his or her child and another, such as "Why can't you act like Jenny? See how she sits quietly while her mother is talking," it is not only humiliating but teaches a child to always compare himself or herself with peers and find himself or herself deficient by comparison. -BLAMING. When a child makes a mistake, such as breaking a vase while rough-housing, he or she needs to take responsibility. But many parents go way beyond teaching a lesson by blaming and berating the child: "You stupid idiot! Do you think money grows on trees? I don't have money to buy new vases!" The only thing this accomplishes is shaming the child to such an extent that he or she cannot find a way to walk away from the situation with his or her head held high. -CONTEMPT. Expressions of disgust or contempt communicate absolute rejection. The look of contempt (often a sneer or a raised upper lip), especially from someone who is significant to a child, can make him or her feel disgusting or offensive. When I was a child, my mother had an extremely negative attitude toward me. Much of the time she either looked at me with the kind of expectant expression that said, "What are you up to now?" or with a look of disapproval or disgust over what I had already done. These looks were extremely shaming to me, causing me to feel that there was something terribly wrong with me. -HUMILIATION. There are many ways a parent can humiliate a child, such as making him or her wear clothes that have become dirty. But as Gershen Kaufman stated in his book Shame: The Power of Caring, "There is no more humiliating experience than to have another person who is clearly the stronger and more powerful take advantage of that power and give us a beating." I can personally attest to this. In addition to shaming me with her contemptuous looks, my mother often punished me by hitting me with the branch of a tree, and she often did this outside, in front of the neighbors. The humiliation I felt was like a deep wound to my soul. -DISABLING EXPECTATIONS. Parents who have an inordinate need to have their child excel at a particular activity or skill are likely to behave in ways that pressure the child to do more and more. According to Kaufman, when a child becomes aware of the real possibility of failing to meet parental expectations, he or she often experiences a binding self-consciousness. This self-consciousness - the painful watching of oneself - is very disabling. When something is expected of us in this way, attaining the goal is made harder, if not impossible. Yet another way that parents induce shame in their children is by communicating to them that they are a disappointment to them. Such messages as "I can't believe you could do such a thing" or "I am deeply disappointed in you" accompanied by a disapproving tone of voice and facial expression can crush a child's spirit.

If I am to believe everything that I see in the media, happiness is to be six foot tall or more and to have bleached teeth and a firm abdomen, all the latest clothes, accessories, and electronics, a picture-perfect partner of the opposite sex who is both a great lover and a terrific friend, an assortment of healthy and happy children, a pet that is neither a stray nor a mongrel, a large house in the right sort of postcode, a second property in an idyllic holiday location, a top-of-the-range car to shuttle back and forth from the one to the other, a clique of ‘friends’ with whom to have fabulous dinner parties, three or four foreign holidays a year, and a high-impact job that does not distract from any of the above. There are at least three major problems that I can see with this ideal of happiness. (1) It represents a state of affairs that is impossible to attain to and that is in itself an important source of unhappiness. (2) It is situated in an idealised and hypothetical future rather than in an imperfect but actual present in which true happiness is much more likely to be found, albeit with great difficulty. (3) It has largely been defined by commercial interests that have absolutely nothing to do with true happiness, which has far more to do with the practice of reason and the peace of mind that this eventually brings. In short, it is not only that the bar for happiness is set too high, but also that it is set in the wrong place, and that it is, in fact, the wrong bar. Jump and you’ll only break your back.

The words "everyone get along" were the main culprit in and of itself. It was an accursed phrase. Those words emphasized the problem. They were Geass. It was an evil law imposed by teachers in a narrow­-minded world. For the sake of complying with that law, they forcefully established the tactic known as “turning a blind eye” to the friction that inevitably ensued. It showed in how they handled personality types that didn’t adhere to the mainstream. There were cases when you have to deal with those you hated, too. In those situations, if you spelled out “I hate you” or “I don’t want to put up with you” to them, things could possibly change. There was also a chance things could improve or open up to negotiation. But that became impossible when you stifled your problems and only smoothed over the surface issues. It was tacit approval of the lazy deceit known as ‘tone policing’. That’s why I shot down Hayama’s words.

Stress is not because of work—this is important to remember. Everybody thinks their job is stressful. No job is stressful. There are many jobs that could present challenging situations. There could be nasty bosses, insecure colleagues, emergency rooms, impossible deadlines—or you might even find yourself in the middle of a war zone! But these are not inherently stressful. It is our compulsive reaction to the situations in which we are placed that causes stress. Stress is a certain level of internal friction. One can easily lubricate the inner mechanism with some amount of inner work and awareness. So, it is your inability to handle your own system that is stressing you out. On some level, you do not know how to handle your body, mind, and emotions; that is the problem.

Mrs. Dashwood remained at Norland several months; not from any disinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy remembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible. But she could hear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and ease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose steadier judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which her mother would have approved.

When someone never takes responsibility for anything—words, actions, feelings—it is a challenging if not impossible way to maintain a relationship. They make up complex excuses and can rationalize anything. Be mindful as he shares the story of his life. Does he take ownership of past mistakes or missteps? Or does he share his history as though it were blameless and free of any errors on his part? Does he always seem to blame others for any negative situations in his life?

Slumped to the floor. The pit of blackness welcomed her to let go and fall into the murky depths where conscience and pain ceased to exist. Hands to her head, face to the stone, screaming without sound, she pushed back hard. For nine months she’d tasted happiness, a chance at the closest thing she’d known to peace and a real life. For nine months the rage and violence that had defined so many of her years had finally ebbed, and now those who had no right had come with impunity to rip her out of this newfound calm, throwing her into an impossible situation where no matter what she did or what she chose, the end result would be a return to madness.

On the proper role of coincidence in fiction —more exactly in storymaking, ... Aristotle declares in effect that since real life now and then includes unlikely coincidences both idle and consequential ... a storymaker may legitimately deploy such a possible-though-improbable happenstance to begin the tale or to give its plot-screws an early turn. Thereafter, however, the Plausible (even when strictly impossible) is ever to be preferred to the Possible-but-Unlikely; and in the resolution of a plot, most particularly, coincidence ought to be eschewed. Fate in fiction, decrees the great A, ought to flow from character and situation, not from chance; let no god on wires drop down at climax-time to rescue the storymaker from whatever dramaturgical corner his want of experience, talent, or judgment has painted him into.

Ulrich replied by asking him whether he really believed that anything would come of this campaign. "No doubt about it," Arnheim said, "great events are always the expression of a general situation." The mere fact that a meeting such as this had been possible anywhere was proof of its profound necessity. And yet discrimination in such matters seems difficult, Ulrich said. Suppose, for instance, that the composer of the latest worldwide musical hit happened to be a political schemer and managed to become president of the world--which was certainly conceivable, given his enormous popularity--would this be a leap forward in history or an expression of the cultural situation? "That's quite impossible!" Arnheim said seriously. "Such a composer couldn't possibly be either a schemer or a politician--otherwise, his genius for musical comedy would be inexplicable, and nothing absurd happens in world history." "But so much that's absurd happens in the world, surely?" "In world history, never!

if you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, you will insist on holding onto judgment. You will also use the term with considerable fear, believing that judgment will someday be used against you. To whatever extent it is used against you, it is due only to your belief in its efficacy as a weapon of defense for your own authority. The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an “authority problem,” it is always because he believes he is the author of himself, projects his delusion onto others, and then perceives the situation as one in which people are literally fighting him for his authorship.

A bunch of different people appear, and they’ve all got their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own brand of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously. I mean, it’s basically impossible for everybody’s justice to prevail or everybody’s happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over.

The anti-psychiatrists held various, sometimes conflicting views but one particular line of reasoning is attributable to all of them—they all pitched their arguments against the power of the psychiatric establishment. They argued that the psychiatric diagnosis is scientifically meaningless. It is a way of labeling undesirable behaviour, under the guise of medical intervention. Those who are diagnosed ill are subjected to treatment which is a violation of human rights and dignity. The situation amounts to psychiatry having a mandate to declare some citizens unfit to live in an ‘ordinary’ community. It claims to cure but the supposed beneficiaries of that cure are often held in hospitals against their will. Within a structure like this it is impossible to understand the real nature of mental suffering and it is just as impossible to develop a coherent system of help.

The first is the result of a decision to act—to do something. This type of mistake is made with incomplete information, as it’s impossible to have all the facts beforehand. This is to be encouraged. Fortune favors the bold. The second is the result of a decision of sloth—to not do something—wherein we refuse to change a bad situation out of fear despite having all the facts. This is how learning experiences become terminal punishments, bad relationships become bad marriages, and poor job choices become lifelong prison sentences.

I found that even when a situation seems dreadful or impossible to comprehend, it is an experience, and being present in the experiences, rather than removing myself and running away, is part of living a fulfilled life. Complaining keeps us from connecting to our true self and keeps us in the shadows of life. Feeling life is the connection to being happy.

It occurs to me that the situation of the church in our society, perhaps the church everywhere always, is entrusted with a truth that is inimical to present power arrangements. The theological crisis in the church—that shows up in preaching and in worship as elsewhere—is that the church has largely colluded with the totalism of the National Security State. Or more broadly, has uncritically colluded with Enlightenment reason that stands behind the National Security State that makes preaching Easter an epistemological impossibility.

such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. you can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we’ll break or whether we’ll resist. We decide whether we’ll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we’re in complete control of.

Some of us may be without a special person to love. That can be difficult, but it is not an impossible situation. We may want and need someone to love, but I think it helps if we love ourselves enough. It’s okay to be in a relationship, but it’s also okay to not be in a relationship. Find friends to love, be loved by, and who think we are worthwhile. Love ourselves and know we are worthwhile. Use our time alone as a breather. Let go. Learn the lessons we are to be learning. Grow. Develop. Work on ourselves, so when love comes along, it enhances a full and interesting life. Love shouldn’t be the concern of our whole life or an escape from an unpleasant life. Strive toward goals. Have fun. Trust God and His timing. He cares and knows all about our needs and wants.

Of course, our natural impulse in these [intractable conflict] situations is to fight or flee. To lash out, blame, attack, or challenge someone, or otherwise try to get out and avoid the situation altogether. These responses make perfect sense in the short term, but likely will have little effect on the 5 percent [of conflicts that are intractable]. In fact, they may make matters worse in the long term. So if escaping or resolving this conflict is your goal (and we do not assume this is always the case), we suggest a different approach. And it begins with complicating your life.

My mother delayed my enrollment in the Fascist scouts, the Balilla, as long as possible, firstly because she did not want me to learn how to handle weapons, but also because the meetings that were then held on Sunday mornings (before the Fascist Saturday was instituted) consisted mostly of a Mass in the scouts' chapel. When I had to be enrolled as part of my school duties, she asked that I be excused from the Mass; this was impossible for disciplinary reasons, but my mother saw to it that the chaplain and the commander were aware that I was not a Catholic and that I should not be asked to perform any external acts of devotion in church. In short, I often found myself in situations different from others, looked on as if I were some strange animal. I do not think this harmed me: one gets used to persisting in one's habits, to finding oneself isolated for good reasons, to putting up with the discomfort that this causes, to finding the right way to hold on to positions which are not shared by the majority. But above all I grew up tolerant of others' opinions, particularly in the field of religion, remembering how irksome it was to hear myself mocked because I did not follow the majority's beliefs. And at the same time I have remained totally devoid of that taste for anticlericalism which is so common in those who are educated surrounded by religion. I have insisted on setting down these memories because I see that many non-believing friends let their children have a religious education 'so as not to give them complexes', 'so that they don't feel different from the others.' I believe that this behavior displays a lack of courage which is totally damaging pedagogically. Why should a young child not begin to understand that you can face a small amount of discomfort in order to stay faithful to an idea? And in any case, who said that young people should not have complexes? Complexes arise through a natural attrition with the reality that surrounds us, and when you have complexes you try to overcome them. Life is in fact nothing but this triumphing over one's own complexes, without which the formation of a character and personality does not happen.

Economists who simply advised leaving the economy alone, governments whose first instincts, apart from protecting the gold standard by deflationary policies, was to stick to financial orthodoxy, balance budgets and cut costs, were visibly not making the situation better. Indeed, as the depression continued, it was argued with considerable force not least by J.M. Keynes who consequently became the most influential economist of the next forty years - that they were making the depression worse. Those of us who lived through the years of the Great Slump still find it almost impossible to understand how the orthodoxies of the pure free market, then so obviously discredited, once again came to preside over a global period of depression in the late 1980s and 1990s, which, once again, they were equally unable to understand or to deal with. Still, this strange phenomenon should remind us of the major characteristic of history which it exemplifies: the incredible shortness of memory of both the theorists and practitioners of economics. It also provides a vivid illustration of society's need for historians, who are the professional remembrancers of what their fellow-citizens wish to forget.

He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming and, of course, beauty contests.

There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent. Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man.

We must give up believing that we can 'improve' the world, that at least we can make man better, even if we cannot make him happy. At the same time, if we take this situation of the Christian seriously, we must refuse to further the disintegrating tendency in the world. We must not say to ourselves, 'We can't do anything about it!' To talk like this is to play into the hands of the Prince of this world. Thus we seem caught between two necessities, which nothing can alter: on the one hand it is impossible for us to make this world less sinful; on the other hand it is impossible for us to accept it as it is.

There is nothing God loves more than keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles, and fulfilling dreams. That is who He is. That is what He does. And the bigger the circle we draw, the better, because God gets more glory. The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect – and they intersect when we draw a circle around the impossible situations in our lives and invite God to intervene. I promise you this: God is ready and waiting. So while I have no idea what circumstances you find yourself in, I’m confident that you are only a prayer away from a dream fulfilled, a promise kept, or a miracle performed. It is absolutely imperative at the outset that you come to terms with this simple yet life-changing truth: God is for you. If you don’t believe that, then you’ll pray small timid prayers; if you do believe it, then you’ll pray big audacious prayers. And one way or another, your small timid prayers or bid audacious prayers will change the trajectory of your life and turn you into two totally different people. Prayers are prophecies. They are best predictors of your spiritual future. Who you become is determined by how you pray. Ultimately, the transcript of your prayers becomes the script of your life.

In discussions about the sexual abuse of children, the question constantly comes up: Why does the girl’s mother ignore the signals, or why, through her attitude, does she make it impossible for her daughter to confide in her? The mother’s behavior is particularly hard to understand when it turns out that she herself was abused as a child. Yet the key to understanding lies in this information. It is those very mothers who suffered similar abuse in their childhood, and have kept it repressed ever since, who are blind and deaf to the situation of their daughters. They cannot bear to be reminded of their own history, and so they fail the child.

Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a partner than strength. The converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in these difficulties.

I have a tiny little secret hope that, after a decent period of silence and prose, I will find myself in some almost impossible life situation and will respond to this with outcries of rage, rage and love, such as the world has never heard before. Like Yeats's great outburst at the end of his life. This comes out of a feeling that endowment is a very small part of achievement. I would rate it about fifteen or twenty percent, Then you have historical luck, personal luck, health, things like that, then you have hard work, sweat. And you have ambition. The incredible difference between the achievement of A and the achievement of B is that B wanted it, so he made all kinds of sacrifices. A could have had it, but he didn’t give a damn.[...] But what I was going on to say is that I do strongly feel that among the greatest pieces of luck for high achievement is ordeal. Certain great artists can make out without it, Titian and others, but mostly you need ordeal. My idea is this: the artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he's in business. Beethoven's deafness, Goya's deafness, Milton's blindness, that kind of thing. And I think that what happens in my poetic work in the future will probably largely depend not on my sitting calmly on my ass as I think, "Hmm, hmm, a long poem again? Hmm," but on being knocked in the face, and thrown flat, and given cancer, and all kinds of other things short of senile dementia. At that point, I'm out, but short of that, I don't know. I hope to be nearly crucified,

Reaching the little bridge, they stop and stand looking down at the black water. I don’t think I’ve been very honest with you, Peter, she says. Or even with myself. You know, I don’t think I really wanted you to go on with your life, without me. I always said that I wanted you to, but I didn’t. And deep down I think you knew I didn’t. It was impossible, the situation I put you in. Telling you to do one thing but wanting you to do something else. And now you feel you owe me all these apologies. For what? For meeting someone else, falling in love with someone else, which is exactly what I told you to do. I’m the one who should be sorry. I’ve been cruel. You said it yourself, I’m jealous. And it’s true, I am.

Deprive the taboo rules of their original context, and they at once are apt to appear as a set of arbitrary prohibitions, as indeed they characteristically do appear when the initial context is lost, when those background beliefs in the light of which the taboo rules had originally been understood have not only been abandoned but forgotten. In such a situation the rules have been deprived of any status that can secure their authority, and, if they do not acquire some new status quickly, both their interpretation and their justification become debatable. When the resources of a culture are too meagre to carry through the task of reinterpretation, the task of justification becomes impossible. Hence perhaps the relatively easy, although to some contemporary observers astonishing, victory of Kamehameha II over the taboos (and the creation thereby of a vacuum in which the banalities of the New England Protestant missionaries were received all too quickly).

The temptation to pretend we know God's plan is a strong one. All of us have succumbed to it in one way or another. The point is not whether or not we are rightl we may be. The point to remember is that it is God's job, not ours, to speak inner truth to our friends. In our companionship of those who are suffering we can say we love, "We don't understand why you are experiencing this difficult situation, but we are here for you. God is faithful. We will support you as you try to believe, even when that seems impossible.

But suspense presupposes uncertainty. No matter how nightmarish the situation, real suspense is impossible when we know in advance that the protagonist will prevail (as we would if Woolrich had used series characters) or will be destroyed. This is why, despite his congenital pessimism, Woolrich manages any number of times to squeeze out an upbeat resolution. Precisely because we can never know whether a particular novel or story will be light or dark, allegre or noir, his work remains hauntingly suspenseful. ("Introduction")

I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.  And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.  As for you,—you’d forget me.” “That I never should, sir: you know—”  Impossible to proceed.

I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but agreeable to be haunted by a suspicion that one's intellect is dwindling away; or exhaling, without your consciousness, like ether out of a phial; so that, at every glance, you find a smaller and less volatile residuum. Of the fact, there could be no doubt; and, examining myself and others, I was led to conclusions in reference to the effect of public office on the character, not very favorable to the mode of life in question. In some other form, perhaps, I may hereafter develop these effects. Suffice it here to say, that a Custom-House officer, of long continuance, can hardly be a very praiseworthy or respectable personage, for many reasons; one of them, the tenure by which he holds his situation, and another, the very nature of his business, which—though, I trust, an honest one—is of such a sort that he does not share in the united effort of mankind. An effect—which I believe to be observable, more or less, in every individual who has occupied the position—is, that, while he leans on the mighty arm of the Republic, his own proper strength departs from him. He loses, in an extent proportioned to the weakness or force of his original nature, the capability of self-support. If he possess an unusual share of native energy, or the enervating magic of place do not operate too long upon him, his forfeited powers may be redeemable. The ejected officer—fortunate in the unkindly shove that sends him forth betimes, to struggle amid a struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he for ever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His pervading and continual hope—a hallucination, which, in the face of all discouragement, and making light of impossibilities, haunts him while he lives, and, I fancy, like the convulsive throes of the cholera, torments him for a brief space after death—is, that, finally, and in no long time, by some happy coincidence of circumstances, he shall be restored to office. This faith, more than any thing else, steals the pith and availability out of whatever enterprise he may dream of undertaking. Why should he toil and moil, and be at so much trouble to pick himself up out of the mud, when, in a little while hence, the strong arm of his Uncle will raise and support him? Why should he work for his living here, or go to dig gold in California, when he is so soon to be made happy, at monthly intervals, with a little pile of glittering coin out of his Uncle's pocket? It is sadly curious to observe how slight a taste of office suffices to infect a poor fellow with this singular disease. Uncle Sam's gold—meaning no disrespect to the worthy old gentleman—has, in this respect, a quality of enchantment like that of the Devil's wages. Whoever touches it should look well to himself, or he may find the bargain to go hard against him, involving, if not his soul, yet many of its better attributes; its sturdy force, its courage and constancy, its truth, its self-reliance, and all that gives the emphasis to manly character.

Whatever happiness and peace that one knows in one's life is generally so fragile that it is always subservient to the external situation. So most of your lives go in trying to manage a perfect external situation which is just impossible to do. No human being is ever capable of creating a perfect external situation because the outside situation will never be hundred percent in your control, no matter how powerful a human being you are. So yoga focuses on the inner situation. If you can create a perfect inward situation, no matter what the external situation, you can be in perfect bliss and peace.

Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?” I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still. “Because,” he said, “I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you—especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.  And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I’ve a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly.  As for you,—you’d forget me.” “That I never should, sir: you know—”  Impossible to proceed.

What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.

If we want to solve problems effectively...we must keep in mind not only many features but also the influences among them. Complexity is the label we will give to the existence of many interdependent variables in a given system. The more variables and the greater their interdependence, the greater the system's complexity. Great complexity places high demands on a planner's capacity to gather information, integrate findings, and design effective actions. The links between the variables oblige us to attend to a great many features simultaneously, and that, concomitantly, makes it impossible for us to undertake only one action in a complex system. A system of variables is "interrelated" if an action that affects or meant to affect one part of the system will also affect other parts of it. Interrelatedness guarantees that an action aimed at one variable will have side effects and long-term repercussions. A large number of variables will make it easy to overlook them. We might think of complexity could be regarded as an objective attribute of systems. We might even think we could assign a numerical value to it, making it, for instance, the product of the number of features times the number of interrelationships. If a system had ten variables and five links between them, then its "complexity quotient", measured in this way would be fifty. If there are no links, its complexity quotient would be zero. Such attempts to measure the complexity of a system have in fact been made. Complexity is not an objective factor but a subjective one. Supersignals reduce complexity, collapsing a number of features into one. Consequently, complexity must be understood in terms of a specific individual and his or her supply of supersignals. We learn supersignals from experience, and our supply can differ greatly from another individual's. Therefore there can be no objective measure of complexity.

In the twentieth century the women who wanted to be on their own were some of the best, the honest ones, those who instinctively rejected the trash. But here came a tragical dilemma. If they accepted Business and served it, they served the very thing from which they fled, and at best became imitation men. If they rejected Business and lived on allowances or incomes, they were in the anomalous position of hunting with the industrial hounds and running with the agricultural hare. An instinctive sense of this made many of them turn "artist." And so Europe was cluttered up with incompetent women "artists" -- not that a woman is incapable of being an artist, but because the assumed role provided an escape. Either situation was impossible, and the solution is not yet found.

Of all the calamities to which the condition of mortality exposes mankind, the loss of reason appears, to those who have the least spark of humanity, by far the most dreadful, and they behold that last stage of human wretchedness with deeper commiseration than any other. But the poor wretch, who is in it, laughs and sings perhaps, and is altogether insensible of his own misery. The anguish which humanity feels, therefore, at the sight of such an object, cannot be the reflection of any sentiment of the sufferer. The compassion of the spectator must arise altogether from the consideration of what he himself would feel if he was reduced to the same unhappy situation, and, what perhaps is impossible, was at the same time able to regard it with his present reason and judgment.

It is easy to see all that separates this mode of being in the world from the existence of a nonreligious man. First of all, the nonreligious man refuses transcendence, accepts the relativity of ' 'reality," and may even come to doubt the meaning of existence. The great cultures of the past too have not been entirely without nonreligious men, and it is not impossible that such men existed even on the archaic levels of culture, although as yet no testimony to their existence there has come to light. But it is only in the modern societies of the West that nonreligious man has developed fully. Modern nonreligious man assumes a new existential situation; he regards himself solely as the subject and agent of history, and he refuses all appeal to transcendence. In other words, he accepts no model for humanity outside the human condition as it can be seen in the various historical situations. Man makes himself, and he only makes himself completely in proportion as he desacralizes himself and the world. The sacred is the prime obstacle to his freedom. He will become himself only when he is totally demysticized. He will not be truly free until he has killed the last god.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration, centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god. But this is impossible. Is there any more cogent indication of my creaturehood than the insufficiency of my own will? For I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me. When I give it pleasure, it deceives my expectation and makes me suffer pain. When I give myself what I conceive to be freedom, I deceive myself and find that I am the prisoner of my own blindness and selfishness and insufficiency.

In 1970, Alix Kates Shulman, a wife, mother, and writer who had joined the Women's Liberation Movement in New York, wrote a poignant account of how the initial equality and companionship of her marriage had deteriorated once she had children. "[N]ow I was restricted to the company of two demanding preschoolers and to the four walls of an apartment. It seemed unfair that while my husband's life had changed little when the children were born, domestic life had become the only life I had." His job became even more demanding, requiring late nights and travel out of town. Meanwhile it was virtually impossible for her to work at home. "I had no time for myself; the children were always there." Neither she nor her husband was happy with the situation, so they did something radical, which received considerable media coverage: they wrote up a marriage agreement... In it they asserted that "each member of the family has an equal right to his/her own time, work, values and choices... The ability to earn more money is already a privilege which must not be compounded by enabling the larger earner to buy out of his/her duties and put the burden on the one who earns less, or on someone hired from outside." The agreement insisted that domestic jobs be shared fifty-fifty and, get this girls, "If one party works overtime in any domestic job, she/he must be compensated by equal work by the other." The agreement then listed a complete job breakdown... in other worde, the agreement acknowledged the physical and the emotional/mental work involved in parenting and valued both. At the end of the article, Shulman noted how much happier she and her husband were as a result of the agreement. In the two years after its inception, Shulman wrote three children's books, a biography and a novel. But listen, too, to what it meant to her husband, who was now actually seeing his children every day. After the agreement had been in effect for four months, "our daughter said one day to my husband, 'You know, Daddy, I used to love Mommy more than you, but now I love you both the same.

Miss Selina, you have over the past minutes—as in the past months, and indeed, in all the years of your association with him—demonstrated an understanding of Master Bruce, his aspirations, his desires and his demons, that would be the envy of his closest colleagues, who believe they know him better than anybody. It is quite impossible to credit your fear that you ‘will not be good at this,’ for there is clearly no one in his life better suited to comfort him in tragedy, rejoice with him in triumph, and keep him from being alone in the days and nights in between. If he should ‘give up hope,’ I have no doubt you would manage the situation with the same sublime felinity you have used to such advantage in the past. Now drink your tea, young woman, and the next time you enjoy, or even sniff, this particular brew, I dare say you will understand how it helps.

Before we move on to the stuffer who collects retaliation rocks, I want to address the issue of impossible people. We know that all things are possible with God. But all things are not possible with people who refuse to be led by the Holy Spirit. I’ve had to get really honest about certain people in my life. It isn’t productive or possible to confront them and expect anything good to come from it. If someone has told me over and over through their actions and reactions that they will make my life miserable if I confront them, at some point I have to back away. But I don’t want to stuff and allow bitterness toward them to poison me. So, how do I back away and not stuff? I acknowledge that I can control only myself. I can’t control how another person acts or reacts. Therefore, I shift my focus from trying to fix the other person and the situation to allowing God to reveal some tender truths to me. I typically pray something like this: God, I’m so tired of being hurt. I’m so tired of feeling distracted and discouraged by this situation. Pour Your lavish mercy on my heart and into this hard relationship. Help me to see the obvious hurt they must have in their life that makes them act this way. Help me to have compassion for their pain. Help me to see anything I’m doing or have done that has negatively affected this situation. And please help me to know how to separate myself graciously from this constant source of hurt in my life. It all feels impossible. Oh God, speak to me. Reveal clearly how I can best honor You, even in this. My job isn’t to fix the difficult people in my life or enable them to continue disrespectful or abusive behaviors. My job is to be obedient to God in the way I act and respond to those people.

In previous centuries national identities were forged because humans faced problems and opportunities that were far beyond the scope of local tribes and which only countrywide cooperation could hope to handle. In the twenty-first century, nations find themselves in the same situation as the old tribes: they are no longer the right framework to manage the most important challenges of the age. We need a new global identity because national institutions are incapable of handling a set of unprecedented global predicaments. We now have a global ecology, a global economy, and a global science—but we are still stuck with only national politics. This mismatch prevents the political system from effectively countering our main problems. To have effective politics, either we must deglobalize the ecology, the economy, and the march of science or we must globalize our politics. Since it is impossible to deglobalize the ecology and the march of science, and since the cost of deglobalizing the economy would probably be prohibitive, the only real solution is to globalize politics. This does not mean establishing a “global government”—a doubtful and unrealistic vision. Rather, to globalize politics means that political dynamics within countries and even cities should give far more weight to global problems and interests.

Living cells must have food in the form of sugar, they must breathe, and they must grow, at least a little. But without leaves-and therefore without photosynthesis-that's impossible. No being on the planet can maintain a centuries-long fast, not even the remains of a tree, and certainly not a stump that has had to survive on its own. It was clear that something else was happening with this stump. It must be getting assistance from neighboring trees, specifically from their roots. Scientists investigating similar situations have discovered that assistance may either be delivered remotely by fungal networks around the root tips-which facilitate nutrient exchange between trees-or the roots themselves may be interconnected. In the case of the stump I had stumbled upon, I couldn't find out what was going on, because I didn't want to injure the old stump by digging around it, but one thing was clear: the surrounding beeches were pumping sugar to the stump to keep it alive.

As a fantasist, I well understand the power of escapism, particularly as relates to romance. But when so many stories aimed at the same audience all trumpet the same message – And Lo! There shall be Two Hot Boys, one of them your Heart’s Intended, the other a vain Pretender who is also hot and with whom you shall have guilty makeouts before settling down with your One True Love – I am inclined to stop viewing the situation as benign and start wondering why, for instance, the heroines in these stories are only ever given a powerful, magical destiny of great importance to the entire world so long as fulfilling it requires male protection, guidance and companionship, and which comes to an end just as soon as they settle their inevitable differences with said swain and start kissing. I mean to invoke is something of the danger of mob rule, only applied to narrative and culture. Viz: that the comparative harmlessness of individuals does not prevent them from causing harm en masse. Take any one story with the structure mentioned above, and by itself, there’s no problem. But past a certain point, the numbers begin to tell – and that poses a tricky question. In the case of actual mobs, you’ll frequently find a ringleader, or at least a core set of agitators: belligerent louts who stir up feeling well beyond their ability to contain it. In the case of novels, however, things aren’t so clear cut. Authors tell the stories they want to tell, and even if a number of them choose to write a certain kind of narrative either in isolation or inspired by their fellows, holding any one of them accountable for the total outcome would be like trying to blame an avalanche on a single snowflake. Certainly, we may point at those with the greatest (arguable) influence or expostulate about creative domino effects, but as with the drop that breaks the levee, it is impossible to try and isolate the point at which a cluster of stories became a culture of stories – or, for that matter, to hold one particular narrative accountable for the whole.

Maud sighed. “Because some people have rigid minds. They like everything to be clearly labeled. They have a box for everyone they meet. A box for vampires, a box for lees, a box for humans. When someone doesn’t fit into their boxes, they panic.” “But why?” “I don’t exactly know, my flower. I think it’s because they lack confidence. They think they figured out the rules of their world and when something falls outside those rules, it scares them.” “So, I’m scary?” “To those people? Yes. If the rules they made up don’t apply anymore, they don’t know how to act, and it makes them feel like their survival is in doubt. Instead of adapting to a new situation and coming up with a new set of rules, some of them will fight to the death trying to keep the world the way it was. Do you remember when we lived in Fort Kur? What was written above the door?” “Adapt or die,” Helen said. “It’s impossible to stop change,” Maud said. “It’s the nature of life. Those who refuse to adapt will eventually die out. But before they do, they will get nasty. They might even hate you.

The problem of the American evangelical church being led primarily by those who are committed to a reactive form of Christianity is widespread. It’s why so few of our best known pastors look anything like contemplative mystics. Yet contemplative mystics are precisely the kind of women and men that need to be leading our churches. More so now than ever. We’re in a situation where it is often very difficult, if not impossible, for a pastor to make spiritual progress while being a pastor. I know, because I talk to these pastors all the time. Being familiar with my story, they seek me out. Many of them feel they have to make a choice between their own spiritual growth and their pastoral vocation. Something needs to change. As long as our churches are led by those who view being a Christian primarily as a kind of conferred status instead of a lifelong journey, and view faith as a form of static certitude instead of an ongoing orientation of the soul toward God, I see little hope that we can build the kind of churches that can produce mature believers in any significant numbers. The

It is vain philosophy that supposes more causes than are exactly adequate to explain the phenomena of things. . . . You assert that the construction of the animal machine, the fitness of certain animals to certain situations, the connexion between the organs of perception and that which is perceived; the relation between every thing which exists, and that which tends to preserve it in its existence, imply design. It is manifest that if the eye could not see, nor the stomach digest, the human frame could not preserve its present mode of existence. It is equally certain, however, that the elements of its composition, if they did not exist in one form, must exist in another; and that the combinations which they would form, must so long as they endured, derive support for their peculiar mode of being from their fitness to the circumstances of their situation. It by no means follows, that because a being exists, performing certain functions, he was fitted by another being to the performance of these functions. So rash a conclusion would conduct, as I have before shewn, to an absurdity; and it becomes infinitely more unwarrantable from the consideration that the known laws of matter and motion, suffice to unravel, even in the present imperfect state of moral and physical science, the majority of those difficulties which the hypothesis of a Deity was invented to explain. Doubtless no disposition of inert matter, or matter deprived of qualities, could ever have composed an animal, a tree, or even a stone. But matter deprived of qualities, is an abstraction, concerning which it is impossible to form an idea. Matter, such as we behold it, is not inert. It is infinitely active and subtile.

Three miles from my adopted city lies a village where I came to peace. The world there was a calm place, even the great Danube no more than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness I had been ordered to recover. The hills were gold with late summer; my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen, situated upstairs in the back of a cottage at the end of the Herrengasse. From my window I could see onto the courtyard where a linden tree twined skyward — leafy umbilicus canted toward light, warped in the very act of yearning — and I would feed on the sun as if that alone would dismantle the silence around me. At first I raged. Then music raged in me, rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough to ease the roiling. I would stop to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed — larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I would rage again. I am by nature a conflagration; I would rather leap than sit and be looked at. So when my proud city spread her gypsy skirts, I reentered, burning towards her greater, constant light. Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you, every tenderness I have ever known has been nothing but thwarted violence, an ache so permanent and deep, the lightest touch awakens it. . . . It is impossible to care enough. I have returned with a second Symphony and 15 Piano Variations which I’ve named Prometheus, after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god who knew the worst sin is to take what cannot be given back. I smile and bow, and the world is loud. And though I dare not lean in to shout Can’t you see that I’m deaf? — I also cannot stop listening.

I must confess that I am not at all partial to the fabrication of Weltanschauungen. Such activities may be left to philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to make their journey through life without a Baedeker of that kind to give them information on every subject. Let us humbly accept the contempt with which they look down on us from the vatnage-ground of their superior needs. But since we cannot forgot our narcissistic pride either, we will draw comfort from the reflection that such 'Handbooks to Life' soon grow out of date and that it is precisely our short-sighted, narrow, and finicky work which obliges them to appear in new editions, and that even the most up-to-date of them are nothing but attempts to find a substitute for the ancient, useful and all-sufficient Church Catechism. We know well enough how little light science has so far been able to throw on the problems that surround us. But however much ado the philosophers may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient, persevering research, in which everything is subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can gradually bring about a change. The benighted traveller may sing aloud in the dark to deny his own fears; but, for all that, he will not see an inch further beyond his nose.

Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected all encouraging arguments was, “I have nothing to expect from life any more.” What sort of answer can one give to that? What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to define the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete, just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s destiny, which is different and unique for each individual. No man and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a different response. Sometimes the situation in which a man finds himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.

The first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl, boldness. This is surprising, yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming, each the other’s qualities. That day, Cosette’s glance drove Marius beside himself, and Marius’ glance set Cosette to trembling. Marius went away confident, and Cosette uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other. The first thing that Cosette felt was a confused and profound melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young girls, which is composed of coldness and gayety, resembles snow. It melts in love, which is its sun. Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. She did not know what name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill because one does not know the name of one’s malady? She loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved. She would have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: ‘You do not sleep? But that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very bad! You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not be! You blush and turn pale, when a certain being clad in black appears at the end of a certain green walk? But that is abominable!’ She would not have understood, and she would have replied: ‘What fault is there of mine in a matter in which I have no power and of which I know nothing?’ It turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited to the state of her soul. It was admiration at a distance, the deification of a stranger. It was the apparition of youth to youth, the dream of nights become a reality yet remaining a dream, the longed-for phantom realized and made flesh at last, but having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor exigence, nor defect; in a word, the distant lover who lingered in the ideal, a chimaera with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting would have alarmed Cosette at this first stage, when she was still half immersed in the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the convent, with which she had been permeated for the space of five years, was still in the process of slow evaporation from her person, and made everything tremble around her. In this situation he was not a lover, he was not even an admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring Marius as something charming, luminous, and impossible. As extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she smiled at him with all frankness. Every day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk with impatience, she found Marius there, she felt herself unspeakably happy, and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought when she said to Jean Valjean:— ‘What a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!’ Marius and Cosette were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other. It was thus that Cosette gradually became a woman and developed, beautiful and loving, with a consciousness of beauty and in ignorance of love.

I've read every letter that you've sent me these past two years. In return, I've sent you many form letters, with the hope of one day being able to give you the proper response you deserve. But the more letters you wrote to me, and the more of yourself you gave, the more daunting my task became. I'm sitting beneath a pear tree as I dictate this to you, overlooking the orchards of a friend's estate. I've spent the past few days here, recovering from some medical treatment that has left me physically and emotionally depleted. As I moped about this morning, feeling sorry for myself, it occurred to me, like a simple solution to an impossible problem: today is the day I've been waiting for. You asked me in your first letter if you could be my protege. I don't know about that, but I would be happy to have you join me in Cambridge for a few days. I could introduce you to my colleagues, treat you to the best curry outside India, and show you just how boring the life of an astrophysicist can be. You can have a bright future in the sciences, Oskar. I would be happy to do anything possible to facilitate such a path. It's wonderful to think what would happen if you put your imagination toward scientific ends. But Oskar, intelligent people write to me all the time. In your fifth letter you asked, "What if I never stop inventing?" That question has stuck with me. I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers.But I wish I were a poet. Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, "Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open." I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on? I wish I had made things for life to depend on. What if you never stop inventing? Maybe you're not inventing at all. I'm being called in for breakfast, so I'll have to end this letter here. There's more I want to tell you, and more I want to hear from you. It's a shame we live on different continents. One shame of many. It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning. Your friend, Stephen Hawking

Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one you walked in with untenable. Perhaps–I’m just suggesting an offhand possibility–you could change to thinking of me as The Sagacious Old Mentor, a kind of Machiavellian Nestor, say, and yourself as The Ingenuous But Promising Young Protégé, a young Alexander, who someday will put all these teachings into practice and far outshine the master. Do you get the idea? Or–this is repugnant, but it could be used as a last resort–The Silently Indignant Young Man, who tolerates the ravings of a Senile Crank but who will leave this house unsullied by them. I call this repugnant because if you ever used it you’d cut yourself off from much that you haven’t learned yet. “It’s extremely important that you learn to assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don’t think there’s anything behind them: ego means I, and I means ego, and the ego by definition is a mask. Where there’s no ego–this is you on the bench–there’s no I. If you sometimes have the feeling that your mask is insincere–impossible word!–it’s only because one of your masks is incompatible with another. You mustn’t put on two at a time. There’s a source of conflict, and conflict between masks, like absence of masks, is a source of immobility. The more sharply you can dramatize your situation, and define your own role and everybody else’s role, the safer you’ll be. It doesn’t matter in Mythotherapy for paralytics whether your role is major or minor, as long as it’s clearly conceived, but in the nature of things it’ll normally be major. Now say something.

A trauma is a place where it becomes impossible to remain connected in and to the present moment. Trauma is a part of the human condition! Healing is also a part of the human condition, and we have the capacity to transform difficult experiences into a wellspring of personal and spiritual power. Trauma occurs when there is a rupture in our boundary system and our capacity to metabolize an experience is compromised. Every single human being on earth has trauma. It's an interruption of our ability to stay in the present moment, anything that lags or is not harmonized on the layers of body/mind/spirit/soul/psyche. Rachael Maddox has called it an" embodied interpersonal violation hangover." Ale Duarte called it "an open loop." Lately, many people have been telling me their stories and then telling me how they are "lucky," that "it's not that bad" compared to other people's situations. All of those statements happen in the mind, and they are largely attempts to keep ourselves from feeling the depth of our pain or sorrow. We may have white privilege, we may have class privilege, we may have had homebirth privilege—the animals of our bodies don't actually understand mental and philosophical constructs like privilege. What those constructs contribute to on an individual healing level is a lot of confusion, shame and guilt, that in spite of everything we "have," we may have still experienced helplessness, hurt, anger, or outrage or collapse, or whatever it is that our system felt. We actually cannot control those responses.

Because,' he said, 'I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you, especially when you are near me, as now; it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situation in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land, come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapped; and the nI've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, you'd forget me.' 'That I never would, sir; you know -,' impossible to proceed. [...] The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway and asserting a right to predominate - to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes, and to speak. 'I grieve to leave Thornfield; I love Thornfield; I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life, momentarily at least. I have not been trampled on. I have not been petrified. I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright, and energetic, and high. I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence; with what I delight in, with an origin, a vigorous, and expanded mind. I have known you, Mr. Rochester; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you forever. I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.' 'Where do you see the necessity?' he asked, suddenly. 'Where? You, sir, have placed it before me.' 'In what shape?' 'In the shape of Miss Ingram; a noble and beautiful woman, your bride.' 'My bride! What bride? I have no bride!' 'But you will have.' 'Yes; I will! I will!' He set his teeth. 'Then I must go; you have said it yourself.' 'No; you must stay! I swear it, and the oath shall be kept.' 'I tell you I must go!' I retorted, roused to something like passion. 'Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automation? a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! I have as much soul as you, and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty, and much wealth, I should have made it hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; it is my spirit that addresses your spirits; just as if both had passed through the grace, and we stood at God's feel, equal - as we are!' 'As we are!' repeated Mr. Rochester - 'so,' he added, including me in his arms, gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips; 'so, Jane!' 'Yes, so, sir,' I rejoined; 'and yet not so; for you are a married man, or as good as a married man, and we'd to one inferior to you - to one with whom you have no sympathy - whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her. I would scorn such a union; therefore I am better than you - let me go!' 'Where, Jane? to Ireland?' 'Yes - to Ireland. I have spoke my mind, and can go anywhere now.' 'Jane, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild, frantic bird that is tending its own plumage in its desperation.' 'I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.' Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him. 'And your will shall decide your destiny,' he said; 'I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.' 'You play a farce, which I merely taught at.' 'I ask you to pass through life at my side - to be my second self, and best earthly companion.' [...] 'Do you doubt me, Jane?' 'Entirely.' 'You have no faith in me?' 'Not a whit.

The first step in retracing our way to health is to abandon our attachment to what is called positive thinking. Too many times in the course of palliative care work I sat with dejected people who expressed their bewilderment at having developed cancer. “I have always been a positive thinker,” one man in his late forties told me. “I have never given in to pessimistic thoughts. Why should I get cancer?” As an antidote to terminal optimism, I have recommended the power of negative thinking. “Tongue in cheek, of course,” I quickly add. “What I really believe in is the power of thinking.” As soon as we qualify the word thinking with the adjective positive, we exclude those parts of reality that strike us as “negative.” That is how most people who espouse positive thinking seem to operate. Genuine positive thinking begins by including all our reality. It is guided by the confidence that we can trust ourselves to face the full truth, whatever that full truth may turn out to be. As Dr. Michael Kerr points out, compulsive optimism is one of the ways we bind our anxiety to avoid confronting it. That form of positive thinking is the coping mechanism of the hurt child. The adult who remains hurt without being aware of it makes this residual defence of the child into a life principle. The onset of symptoms or the diagnosis of a disease should prompt a two-pronged inquiry: what is this illness saying about the past and present, and what will help in the future? Many approaches focus only on the second half of that healing dyad without considering fully what led to the manifestation of illness in the first place. Such “positive” methods fill the bookshelves and the airwaves. In order to heal, it is essential to gather the strength to think negatively. Negative thinking is not a doleful, pessimistic view that masquerades as “realism.” Rather, it is a willingness to consider what is not working. What is not in balance? What have I ignored? What is my body saying no to? Without these questions, the stresses responsible for our lack of balance will remain hidden. Even more fundamentally, not posing those questions is itself a source of stress. First, “positive thinking” is based on an unconscious belief that we are not strong enough to handle reality. Allowing this fear to dominate engenders a state of childhood apprehension. Whether or not the apprehension is conscious, it is a state of stress. Second, lack of essential information about ourselves and our situation is one of the major sources of stress and one of the potent activators of the hypothalamicpituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress response. Third, stress wanes as independent, autonomous control increases. One cannot be autonomous as long as one is driven by relationship dynamics, by guilt or attachment needs, by hunger for success, by the fear of the boss or by the fear of boredom. The reason is simple: autonomy is impossible as long as one is driven by anything. Like a leaf blown by the wind, the driven person is controlled by forces more powerful than he is. His autonomous will is not engaged, even if he believes that he has “chosen” his stressed lifestyle and even if he enjoys his activities. The choices he makes are attached to invisible strings. He is still unable to say no, even if it is only to his own drivenness. When he finally wakes up, he shakes his head, Pinocchio-like, and says, “How foolish I was when I was a puppet.

A Safety Travel with Sinclair James International Traveling to somewhere completely foreign to you may be challenging but that is what travelers always look for. It can be a good opportunity to find something new and discover new places, meet new people and try a different culture. However, it can involve a lot of risk as well. You may be surprised to find yourself naked and penniless on the side of the road trying to figure out what you did wrong. These kinds of situations come rarely when you are careful and cautious enough but it is not impossible. Sinclair James International Travel and Tours, your Australian based traveling guide can help you travel safely through the following tips: 1. Pack all Security Items In case of emergencies, you should have all the safety tools and security items with you. Carry a card with your name and number with you and don’t forget to scribble down the numbers of local police station, fire department, list of hospitals and other necessary numbers that you may need. Place them in each compartment and on your pockets. If ever you find yourself being a victim of pick pocketing in Manila, Philippines or being driven around in circles in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand, you will definitely find these numbers very helpful. It is also advisable to put your name and an emergency number in case you are in trouble and may need someone else to call. 2. Protect your Passport Passports nowadays have RFID which can be scanned from a distance. We have heard some complaints from fellow travelers of being victims of scams which involves stealing of information through passports. An RFID blocking case in a wallet may come in handy to prevent hackers from stealing your information. 3. Beware of Taxis When you exit the airport, taxis may all look the same but some of them can be hiding a defective scam to rob tourists during their drive. It is better to ask an official before taking a taxi as many unmarked ones claim that they are legitimate. Also, if the fare isn’t flat rate, be sure you know the possible routes. Some drivers will know better and will take good care of you, but others will take longer routes to increase the fare. If you know your options, you can suggest a different route to avoid paying too much. 4. Be aware of your Rights Laws change from state to state, and certainly from country to country, but ignorance to them will get you nowhere. In fact, in many cases you can get yourself out of trouble by knowing the laws that will affect you. When traveling to other countries, make sure to review the laws and policies that can affect your activities. There are a lot of misconceptions and knowing these could save you a headache. Sinclair James International

Many people take this as evidence of duplicity or cynicism. But they don’t know what it’s like to be expected to make comments, almost every working day, on things of which they have little or no reliable knowledge or about which they just don’t care. They don’t appreciate the sheer number of things on which a politician is expected to have a position. Issues on which the governor had no strong opinions, events over which he had no control, situations on which it served no useful purpose for him to comment—all required some kind of remark from our office. On a typical day Aaron might be asked to comment on the indictment of a local school board chairman, the ongoing drought in the Upstate, a dispute between a power company and the state’s environmental regulatory agency, and a study concluding that some supposedly crucial state agency had been underfunded for a decade. Then there were the things the governor actually cared about: a senate committee’s passage of a bill on land use, a decision by the state supreme court on legislation applying to only one county, a public university’s decision to raise tuition by 12 percent. Commenting on that many things is unnatural, and sometimes it was impossible to sound sincere. There was no way around it, though. Journalists would ask our office about anything having remotely to do with the governor’s sphere of authority, and you could give only so many minimalist responses before you began to sound disengaged or ignorant or dishonest. And the necessity of having to manufacture so many views on so many subjects, day after day, fosters a sense that you don’t have to believe your own words. You get comfortable with insincerity. It affected all of us, not just the boss. Sometimes I felt no more attachment to the words I was writing than a dog has to its vomit.

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible. Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children. We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause. The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.

Frodo indeed 'failed' as a hero, as conceived by simple minds: he did not endure to the end; he gave in, ratted. I do not say 'simple minds' with contempt: they often see with clarity the simple truth and the absolute ideal to which effort must be directed, even if it is unattainable. Their weakness, however, is twofold. They do not perceive the complexity of any given situation in Time, in which an absolute ideal is enmeshed. They tend to forget that strange element in the World that we call Pity or Mercy, which is also an absolute requirement in moral judgement (since it is present in the Divine nature). In its highest exercise it belongs to God. For finite judges of imperfect knowledge it must lead to the use of two different scales of 'morality'. To ourselves we must present the absolute ideal without compromise, for we do not know our own limits of natural strength (+grace), and if we do not aim at the highest we shall certainly fall short of the utmost that we could achieve. To others, in any case of which we know enough to make a judgement, we must apply a scale tempered by 'mercy': that is, since we can with good will do this without the bias inevitable in judgements of ourselves, we must estimate the limits of another's strength and weigh this against the force of particular circumstances. I do not think that Frodo's was a moral failure. At the last moment the pressure of the Ring would reach its maximum – impossible, I should have said, for any one to resist, certainly after long possession, months of increasing torment, and when starved and exhausted. Frodo had done what he could and spent himself completely (as an instrument of Providence) and had produced a situation in which the object of his quest could be achieved. His humility (with which he began) and his sufferings were justly rewarded by the highest honour; and his exercise of patience and mercy towards Gollum gained him Mercy: his failure was redressed. We are finite creatures with absolute limitations upon the powers of our soul-body structure in either action or endurance. Moral failure can only be asserted, I think, when a man's effort or endurance falls short of his limits, and the blame decreases as that limit is closer approached. Nonetheless, I think it can be observed in history and experience that some individuals seem to be placed in 'sacrificial' positions: situations or tasks that for perfection of solution demand powers beyond their utmost limits, even beyond all possible limits for an incarnate creature in a physical world – in which a body may be destroyed, or so maimed that it affects the mind and will. Judgement upon any such case should then depend on the motives and disposition with which he started out, and should weigh his actions against the utmost possibility of his powers, all along the road to whatever proved the breaking-point.

In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology: ‘Orwell belonged to the category of writers who write.’ And could afford to write, they might have added. In contrast they speak of George Garrett, whom Orwell met in Liverpool, a gifted writer, seaman, dockworker, Communist militant, ‘the plain facts of [whose] situation—on the dole, married and with kids, the family crowded into two rooms—made it impossible for him to attempt any extended piece of writing.’ Orwell’s writing life then was from the start an affirmation of unexamined bourgeois values. This is rather extraordinary. Orwell did indeed meet Garrett in Liverpool in 1936, and was highly impressed to find that he knew him already through his pseudonymous writing—under the name Matt Lowe—for John Middleton Murry’s Adelphi. As he told his diary: I urged him to write his autobiography, but as usual, living in about two rooms on the dole with a wife (who I gather objects to his writing) and a number of kids, he finds it impossible to settle to any long work and can only do short stories. Apart from the enormous unemployment in Liverpool, it is almost impossible for him to get work because he is blacklisted everywhere as a Communist. Thus the evidence that supposedly shames Orwell by contrast is in fact supplied by—none other than Orwell himself! This is only slightly better than the other habit of his foes, which is to attack him for things he quotes other people as saying, as if he had instead said them himself. (The idea that a writer must be able to ‘afford’ to write is somewhat different and, as an idea, is somewhat—to use a vogue term of the New Left—‘problematic’. If it were only the bourgeois who were able to write, much work would never have been penned and, incidentally, Orwell would never have met Garrett in the first place.)

All the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonic visions, reverie and mysticism being cast aside, can be reduced to two principal problems. First problem: To produce wealth. Second problem: To share it. The first problem contains the question of work. The second contains the question of salary. In the first problem the employment of forces is in question. In the second, the distribution of enjoyment. From the proper employment of forces results public power. From a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness. By a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood. From these two things combined, the public power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity. Social prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation great. England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably, she divides it badly. This solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence, monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, which sates public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the State in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements and into which no moral element enters. Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it. The two problems require to be solved together, to be well solved. The two problems must be combined and made but one.

A Woman’s Only Flaw Author Unknown “When God created Woman, he was working late on the sixth day. An Angel came by and asked, ‘Why spend so much time on her?’ The Lord answered, ‘Have you seen all the specifications I have to meet to shape her?’”  “‘She must function in all kinds of situations.  She must be able to embrace several kids at the same time, have a hug that can heal anything from a bruised knee to a broken heart.  She must do all this with only two hands. She cures herself when sick and can work 18 hours a day.’”   “The Angel was impressed. ‘Just two hands? Impossible!  And this is the standard model?’  The Angel came closer and touched the woman.  ‘But you have made her so soft, Lord.’ ‘She is soft,’ said the Lord, ‘but I have made her strong.  You can’t imagine what she can endure and overcome.’” “‘Can she think?’ the Angel asked. The Lord answered, ‘Not only can she think, she can reason and negotiate.’  The Angel touched her cheeks.  ‘Lord, it seems this creation is leaking!  You have put too many burdens on her.’  ‘She is not leaking.  It is a tear,’ the Lord corrected the Angel.  ‘What’s it for?’ asked the Angel. The Lord said, ‘Tears are her way of expressing her grief, her doubts, her love, her loneliness, her suffering, and her pride.’” “This made a big impression on the Angel.  ‘Lord, you are a genius.  You thought of everything.  A woman is indeed marvelous.’  The Lord said, ‘Indeed she is.  She has strength that amazes a man.  She can handle trouble and carry heavy burdens.  She holds happiness, love, and opinions.  ‘She smiles when she feels like screaming.  She sings when she feels like crying, cries when happy and laughs when afraid.  She fights for what she believes in. ‘Her love is unconditional.  Her heart is broken when a next-of-kin or a friend dies, but she finds strength to get on with life.  “The Angel asked, ‘So she is a perfect being?’ The Lord replied, ‘No. She has just one drawback.’ ‘She often forgets what she is worth.

No one called him Fai except his grandmother. What sort of name is Frank? she would scold. That is not a Chinese name. I’m not Chinese, Frank thought, but he didn’t dare say that. His mother had told him years ago: There is no arguing with Grandmother. It’ll only make you suffer worse. She’d been right. And now Frank had no one except his grandmother. Thud. A fourth arrow hit the fence post and stuck there, quivering. “Fai,” said his grandmother. Frank turned. She was clutching a shoebox-sized mahogany chest that Frank had never seen before. With her high-collared black dress and severe bun of gray hair, she looked like a school teacher from the 1800s. She surveyed the carnage: her porcelain in the wagon, the shards of her favorite tea sets scattered over the lawn, Frank’s arrows sticking out of the ground, the trees, the fence posts, and one in the head of a smiling garden gnome. Frank thought she would yell, or hit him with the box. He’d never done anything this bad before. He’d never felt so angry. Grandmother’s face was full of bitterness and disapproval. She looked nothing like Frank’s mom. He wondered how his mother had turned out to be so nice—always laughing, always gentle. Frank couldn’t imagine his mom growing up with Grandmother any more than he could imagine her on the battlefield—though the two situations probably weren’t that different. He waited for Grandmother to explode. Maybe he’d be grounded and wouldn’t have to go to the funeral. He wanted to hurt her for being so mean all the time, for letting his mother go off to war, for scolding him to get over it. All she cared about was her stupid collection. “Stop this ridiculous behavior,” Grandmother said. She didn’t sound very irritated. “It is beneath you.” To Frank’s astonishment, she kicked aside one of her favorite teacups. “The car will be here soon,” she said. “We must talk.” Frank was dumbfounded. He looked more closely at the mahogany box. For a horrible moment, he wondered if it contained his mother’s ashes, but that was impossible. Grandmother had told him there would be a military burial. Then why did Grandmother hold the box

Knowledge of revelation cannot interfere with ordinary knowledge. Likewise, ordinary knowledge cannot interfere with knowledge of revelation. There is no scientific theory which is more favorable to the truth of revelation than any other theory. It is disastrous for theology if theologians prefer one scientific view to others on theological grounds. And it was humiliating for theology when theologians were afraid of new theories for religious reasons, trying to resist them as long as possible, and finally giving in when resistance had become impossible. This ill-conceived resistance of theologians from the time of Galileo to the time of Darwin was one of the causes of the split between religion and secular culture in the past centuries. The same situation prevails with regard to historical research. Theologians need not be afraid of any historical conjecture, for revealed truth lies in a dimension where it can neither be confirmed nor negated by historiography. Therefore, theologians should not prefer some results of historical research to others on theological grounds, and they should not resist results which finally have to be accepted if scientific honesty is not to be destroyed, even if they seem to undermine the knowledge of revelation. Historical investigations should neither comfort nor worry theologians. Knowledge of revelation, although it is mediated primarily through historical events, does not imply factual assertions, and it is therefore not exposed to critical analysis by historical research. Its truth is to be judged by criteria which lie within the dimension of revelatory knowledge. Psychology, including depth psychology, psychosomatics, and social psychology, is equally unable to interfere with knowledge of revelation. There are many insights into the nature of man in revelation. But all of them refer to the relation of man to what concerns him ultimately, to the ground and meaning of his being. There is no revealed psychology just as there is no revealed historiography or revealed physics. It is not the task of theology to protect the truth of revelation by attacking Freudian doctrines of libido, repression, and sublimation on religious grounds or by defending a Jungian doctrine of man in the name of revelatory knowledge.

My intention, this time, was to transfer a play to the screen while keeping its theatrical character. It was in some senses a matter of walking, invisibly, around the stage and catching the different aspects and nuances in the play, the urgency and the facial expressions that escape a spectator who cannot follow them in detail from a seat in the stalls. Apart from that, I had noticed how effective a play becomes when you have a bird's-eye view from it, for example from the flies, that is to say from the viewpoint of a voyeur. The Audience is enclosed with the characters in a room lacking its fourth wall and listens to them on equal terms, without the element of my story conferred on scenes of intimacy by the whimsical shape of a keyhole.” “L'aigle à deux têtes is not History. It is a story, an invented story lived out by imaginary heroes, and I should never have dared venture into the realistic world of cinema without being able to rely on the help of Christian Bérard. He has a genius for situating whatever he touches, for giving it a depth in time and space and an appearance of truth that are literally inimitable.” (...) “A drama of this kind would be unacceptable, and almost impossible to tell, unless it was interpreted by superb actors who could instill grandeur and life into it. Edwige Feuillère and Jean Marais, applauded evening after evening in their parts in the play, surpass themselves on the screen and give of themselves, as I suggested above, everything that they cannot give us on the stage.” “George Auric's music and the Strauss waltzes at the krantz ball make up the liquid in this drama of love and death is immersed.” (...) “In L'aigle à deux têtes, I wanted to make a theatrical film.” (...) “I know the faults of the film, but unfortunately the expense of the medium and the constraints of time that it imposes on us, prevent us from correcting our faults, Cinematography costs too much.” (...) “In Les parents terribles (1948), what I determined to do was the opposite of what I did in L'aigle à deux têtes; to de-theatricalize a play, to film it in chronological order and to catch the characters by surprise from the indiscreet angle of the camera. In short, I wanted to watch a family through the keyhole instead of observing its life from a seat in the stalls.

I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes. How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord. Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of