Levels Of Friendship Quotes

Two a.m.' He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's like, the highest level of friendship.

There is a primal reassurance in being touched, in knowing that someone else, someone close to you, wants to be touching you. There is a bone-deep security that goes with the brush of a human hand, a silent, reflex-level affirmation that someone is near, that someone cares.

Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.

He thought about this for a second. "True. But if you never really make friends, you probably don't have anyone to be your 2 a.m. Which would kind of suck. I just looked at him as he stirred his soup, carrots spinning in the liquid. "Your what?" "Two a.m." He swallowed, then said, "You know. The person you can call at two a.m. and, no matter what, you can count on them. Even if they're asleep or it's cold or you need to be bailed out of jail...they'll come for you. It's, like, the highest level of friendship.

Loneliness is a hard thing to handle. I feel it, sometimes. When I do, I want it to end. Sometimes, when you're near someone, when you touch them on some level that is deeper than the uselessly structured formality of casual civilized interaction, there's a sense of satisfaction in it. Or at least, there is for me. It doesn't have to be someone particularly nice. You don't have to like them. You don't even have to want to work with them. You might even want to punch them in the nose. Sometimes just making that connection is its own experience, its own reward.

Then, in an unusual moment, she grew emotional, which left little doubt about the level of profound respect and admiration Merkel had for her American colleague: ‘So eight years are coming to a close.  This is the last visit of (President) Barack Obama to our country…I am very glad that he chose Germany as one of the stopovers on this trip…Thank you for the reliable friendship and partnership you demonstrated in very difficult hours of our relationship. So let me again pay tribute to what we’ve been able to achieve, to what we discussed, to what we were able to bring about in difficult hours.

Make New Year's goals. Dig within, and discover what you would like to have happen in your life this year. This helps you do your part. It is an affirmation that you're interested in fully living life in the year to come. Goals give us direction. They put a powerful force into play on a universal, conscious, and subconscious level. Goals give our life direction. What would you like to have happen in your life this year? What would you like to do, to accomplish? What good would you like to attract into your life? What particular areas of growth would you like to have happen to you? What blocks, or character defects, would you like to have removed? What would you like to attain? Little things and big things? Where would you like to go? What would you like to have happen in friendship and love? What would you like to have happen in your family life? What problems would you like to see solved? What decisions would you like to make? What would you like to happen in your career? Write it down. Take a piece of paper, a few hours of your time, and write it all down - as an affirmation of you, your life, and your ability to choose. Then let it go. The new year stands before us, like a chapter in a book, waiting to be written. We can help write that story by setting goals.

You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do? Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.

May you reach that level within, where you no longer allow your past or people with toxic intentions to negatively affect or condition you.

Da. This is going very well already." Thomas barked out a laugh. "There are seven of us against the Red King and his thirteen most powerful nobles, and it's going well?" Mouse sneezed. "Eight," Thomas corrected himself. He rolled his eyes and said, "And the psycho death faerie makes it nine." "It is like movie," Sanya said, nodding. "Dibs on Legolas." "Are you kidding?" Thomas said. "I'm obviously Legolas. You're . . ." He squinted thoughtfully at Sanya and then at Martin. "Well. He's Boromir and you're clearly Aragorn." "Martin is so dour, he is more like Gimli." Sanya pointed at Susan. "Her sword is much more like Aragorn's." "Aragorn wishes he looked that good," countered Thomas. "What about Karrin?" Sanya asked. "What--for Gimli?" Thomas mused. "She is fairly--" "Finish that sentence, Raith, and we throw down," said Murphy in a calm, level voice. "Tough," Thomas said, his expression aggrieved. "I was going to say 'tough.' " As the discussion went on--with Molly's sponsorship, Mouse was lobbying to claim Gimli on the basis of being the shortest, the stoutest, and the hairiest-- "Sanya," I said. "Who did I get cast as?" "Sam," Sanya said. I blinked at him. "Not . . . Oh, for crying out loud, it was perfectly obvious who I should have been." Sanya shrugged. "It was no contest. They gave Gandalf to your godmother. You got Sam.

Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something.

We might not know we are seeking people who best enrich our lives, but somehow on a deep subconscious level we absolutely are. Whether the bond is temporary or permanent, whether it succeeds or fails, fate is simply a configuration of choices that combine with others to shape the relationships that surround us. We cannot choose our family, but we can choose our friends, and we sometimes, before we even meet them.

I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

With so many people in the world i am confident in saying, if you connect with someone on a soul level you dont take them for granted.

What some now call 'emerging Christianity' or 'the emerging church' is not something you join, establish, or invent. You just name it and then you see it everywhere- already in place! Such nongroup groups, the 'two or three' gathered in deep truth, create a whole new level of affiliation, dialogue, and friendship...

Tell me, Satoru. What's out there beyond this field? A lot of wonderful things, I'm thinking. I wonder if I'll be able to go on a trip with you again. Satoru grins, and picks me up, so I can see the far-off-horizon from his eye level. Ah - we saw so many things, didn't we?

Over the last few days, I have been able to see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts. This does not mean I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight.

And my mom told me that part of growing up is just … learning that people come in and out of your life, and that there are all kinds of levels of friendship, all different types. And maybe you’ll make a friend, and you won’t see them again, but it doesn’t devalue what you had with them or the time you spent together. That’s still valid, even if it wasn’t built to last. It’s not any less … significant, you know?

He not only rocked my body in ways I’d never experienced before, but we connected on a level that surpassed friendship. We fucked with a single-minded need to extinguish and reconstruct.

What I want to say is that we all judge each other, but even though we all do it, that's not an excuse. Judging is still one of the most hurtful, spiteful impulses we own, and our judgments keep us from building a stronger tribe...or having a tribe in the first place. Our judgment prohibits us from beautiful, life-affirming friendships. Our judgment keeps us from connecting in deeper, richer ways because we're too stuck on the surface-level assumptions we've made. Our judging has to stop.

Falling in love for the first time is a completely transcendent experience. It’s like eating pizza-flavored ice cream. Your brain can’t even process that level of joy. Love makes people do crazy things like kill other people or shop at Crate & Barrel. I think on some level it makes us all delusional. Deep down, our whole lives, no matter how low our self-esteem gets, we think, I have a special skill that no one knows about and if they knew they’d be amazed. And then eventually we meet someone who says, “You have a secret special skill.” And you’re like, “I know! So do you!” And they’re like, “I know!” And then you’re like, “We should eat pizza ice cream together.” And that’s what love is. It’s this giant mound of pizza-flavored ice cream and delusion

Despite all that education and experience can do, I retain a certain level of unsophistication that I cannot eradicate and that my friends find amusing. In fact, I think I sometimes detect conspiratorial plottings among my friends to protect me against my own lack of sophistication. I don't mind. I suspect that I am never quite as unsophisticated as they think I am, but I don't mind.

I mean, I WANT to be in love. That’s something I’ve always wanted to feel. What’s it like, to be in love and have that other person love you, too? Is it another level of friendship? Another level of trust, vulnerability, always telling that person your thoughts and feelings, sharing every little thing with them so that you’re so in sync that it’s like you’re one person? Is it like every time you see them, your heart goes wild, and you can’t think because you’re so effing happy? Is it like whenever they’re away, you feel like you’re missing a piece of yourself? Does knowing someone loves you fill you with confidence, because you know you’re the type of person who deserves love? And what’s it like to break up with someone you love? What’s it like to decide to try again, and let yourself fall in love with someone else? To decide to take that chance you might get hurt, but still want to try? I don’t know. But I want to.

I swiftly realised how grief sorts out and realigns those around the griefstruck; how friends are tested; how some pass, some fail. Old friendships may deepen through shared sorrow; or suddenly appear lightweight.

My idea of socialism is no state monopoly. There should be stress on the subjectivity of the human being. You need good material conditions, a high level of culture, much freedom and friendship. And it won't come today or tomorrow. It's a long and winding road

This is only one of the reasons why a strong friendship is critical. A surface-level relationship might snap under the tension of disagreement, but by living our lives together, we were forced to reconcile.

The key to love is to love back. Enthusiastically embrace people who love you. Reciprocate the same level of energy, affection, respect, and attention.

Friendship knows no color, nationality, race and social level,
 friendship knows no age and gender,
 friendship knows no distance.


He was biting his lower lip and clenching his hands. He looked like he was about to cry. I threw my arms around him instinctively, wrapping them around his waist and pressing my face against his chest. He was so big, I flet like I was a child hugging a grown-up. "Oh, Jake, it'll be okay!" I promised. "If it gets worse you can come live with me and Charlie. Don't be scared, we'll think of something!" He was frozen for a second, and then his long arms wrapped hesitantly around me. "Thanks, Bella." His voice was huskier than usual. We stood like that for a moment, and it didn't upset me; in fact, I felt comforted by the contact. This didn't feel anything like the last time someone had embraced me this way. This was friendship. And Jacob was very warm. It was strange for me, being this close--emotionally rather physically, though the physical was strange for me, too--to another human being. It wasn't my usual style. I didn't normally relate to people so easily, on such a basic level. Not human beings. "If this is how you're going to react, I'll freak out more often." Jacob's voice was light, normal again, and his laughter rumbled against my ear. His fingers touched my hair, soft and tentative. Well, it was friendship for me.

For as much as Hillary Clinton might hate admitting this about Monica Lewinisky, Eleanor Roosevelt about Missy Le Hand, Queen Alexandra about Lillie Langtry, Lady Nelson about Emma Hamilton, or Jackie about Marilyn, the reality is that despite their intrinsic animosity toward each other, on a a deep level, the wife and the mistress generally have far more in common than they might care to admit and could, had fate dealt them different cards, even been true friends.

This isn't 'I do something for you, you do something for me'. This is hard-core friendship. Varsity level. This is me asking you to do something for me without getting anything in return. This is friendship, Howie.

She's come to realize that life is a bit like doing laundry--you have to separate the darks from the lights. One's not necessarily better than the other--they're just different. They have different needs, require different levels of care. She knows plenty of customers who don't give it much thought and throw all their laundry in together, and maybe that's the chaotic part of life that just happens, that no matter how hard you try, you can't always keep things separate. A red sock gets mixed in with a load of whites, or a delicate black top gets washed in hot water by accident. These things happen. All you can do is learn from it and move on. Tell your husband to enjoy his pink underwear, give your shrunken top to your little sister or niece. But it doesn't mean that you stop sorting your laundry. You keep sorting--lights from darks, darks from lights--and hope for the best.

You can't even communicate in English. Real life is not a series of levels.

When we become acquainted with any person on a human level, even a great enemy, we begin to see that no person is really so different from ourselves.

When you decide to meet—in person—someone that you met online, would you then be taking your relationship to the 'previous' level?

At a cultural level, there is a lot of lip service about friendship being wonderful and important, but not a lot of social support for protecting what’s precious about it. Even deep, lasting friendships like ours need protection—and, sometimes, repair.

What’s it like, to be in love and have that other person love you, too? Is it another level of friendship? Another level of trust, vulnerability, always telling that person your thoughts and feelings, sharing every little thing with them so that you’re so in sync that it’s like you’re one person? Is it like every time you see them, your heart goes wild, and you can’t think because you’re so effing happy? Is it like whenever they’re away, you feel like you’re missing a piece of yourself? Does knowing someone loves you fill you with confidence, because you know you’re the type of person who deserves love?

Prioritizing friendship is sometimes tricky; society often indicates to women that it’s not on the same level as the other relationships in our lives, such as the ones with our romantic partners, our children, or even our jobs. Devoting ourselves to finding spouses, caring for children, or snagging a promotion is acceptable, productive behavior. Spending time strengthening our friendships, on the other hand, is seen more like a diversion.

Although previous studies had suggested that friendship--male and female--could be a powerful antidote to stress, more recent research indicates that broken promises, dashed expectations, and other side effects of friendship gone wrong can actually raise the level of stress in our lives, often to disastrous effect.

What, then, is marriage for? It is for helping each other to become our future glory-selves, the new creations that God will eventually make us. The common horizon husband and wife look toward is the Throne, and the holy, spotless, and blameless nature we will have. I can think of no more powerful common horizon than that, and that is why putting a Christian friendship at the heart of a marriage relationship can lift it to a level that no other vision for marriage approaches.

True friendship is a sacred, important thing, and it happens when we drop down into that deeper level of who we are, when we cross over into the broken, fragile parts of ourselves. We have to give something up in order to get friendship like that. We have to give up our need to be perceived as perfect. We have to give up our ability to control what people think of us. We have to overcome the fear that when they see the depths of who we are, they’ll leave. But what we give up is nothing in comparison to what this kind of friendship gives to us. Friendship is about risk. Love is about risk. If we can control it and manage it and manufacture it, then it’s something else, but if it’s really love, really friendship, it’s a little scary around the edges.

Neighborhood friends were like that. You grew up with them, running over hot sidewalks and yelling to each other across fresh-cut lawns, but once you got older, you became acquaintances born of proximity with nothing but a surface level of basic knowledge.

I'm here for the good and the bad and everything in between". True friends see through any level of performance or denial or avoidance.

Problems rarely exist at the level at which they are expressed. If you are arguing for more than ten minutes then you are probably not discussing the real conflict.

Earlier fundamental work of Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Whorf, etc., as well as my own attempt to use this earlier thinking as an epistemological base for psychiatric theory, led to a series of generalizations: That human verbal communication can operate and always does operate at many contrasting levels of abstraction. These range in two directions from the seemingly simple denotative level (“The cat is on the mat”). One range or set of these more abstract levels includes those explicit or implicit messages where the subject of discourse is the language. We will call these metalinguistic (for example, “The verbal sound ‘cat’ stands for any member of such and such class of objects”, or “The word, ‘cat’ has no fur and cannot scratch”). The other set of levels of abstraction we will call metacommunicative (e.g., “My telling you where to find the cat was friendly”, or “This is play”). In these, the subject of discourse is the relationship between the speakers. It will be noted that the vast majority of both metalinguistic and metacommunicative messages remain implicit; and also that, especially in the psychiatric interview, there occurs a further class of implicit messages about how metacommunicative messages of friendship and hostility are to be interpreted.

He must have known that he was buying into a scenario that was, on some level, a lie, and he had been willing to sacrifice the reality of friendship, however mundane, in favor of that lie.

Three things: 1- Stop letting pride win. Don't let it destroy and unravel friendships and loves. We blinked, and it's the holidays again. How many more laps around the sun are left? Life is slippery and fleeting, and distance so cold. Stay humble and warm. Remember what counts. 2- Be unapologetically in love with everything. People and the cosmos. Poetry and oceans. The growth everywhere from roses to your heart to the messes that brought you to this level. The ground beneath you. The feeling. Any feeling. The fact that you can feel at all- forever a privilege. 3- Stay tender. Always tender.

I know you're scared. And maybe you really meant all those things you said about our friendship, just wanting to be friends, and if you did, I'll accept that. But I feel maybe it's possible you said those things, at least in some way, because you wanted me to make the other case. As if I would come out and say, please, Eileen, don't do this to me, I've been in love with you all along, I don't know how to live without you. Or whatever, whatever you wanted me to say. Not that it's not true, of course it's true. And maybe even when you're getting angry at Alice, saying that she doesn't care about you — I don't know, maybe it's the same idea. At some level you want her to say, oh but Eileen, I love you very much, you're my best friend. But the problem is that you seem to be drawn to people who aren't very good at giving you those responses. I mean, anyone could have told you — certainly Felix and myself both knew — that Alice was never going to react that way just now. And maybe it's the same with me, in a way. If you tell me you don't want to be with me, I might feel very hurt and humiliated, but I'm not going to start begging and pleading with you. At some level, I actually think you know I won't. But then you get left with the impression that I don't love you, or I don't want you, because you're not getting this response from me — this response that you basically know you won't get, because I'm not the type of person who can give it to you.

The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless, it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. . . . We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

For me, there are distinct levels of friendship: BEST FRIEND: An extremely close individual you can do anything with, talk about everything with, confide in, and be comfortable with sitting in silence on car journeys; those people you consider to be part of your family GOOD FRIEND: A person you are comfortable hanging out with one-on-one for an extended period of time and see semiregularly; someone who shares experiences with you but not your deepest troubles and secrets FRIEND: Someone you hang out with in a group setting occasionally Acquaintance: Someone you know on a first-name basis and say "hi" to but that's pretty much the extent of it STRANGERS: The rest of the world (and all your potential best friends in the future)

If you do not allow yourself to rush into falling for someone that you have not become friends with first, you will be more sure when you let yourself go to the next step. Certainly you might find yourself having all sorts of feelings. Enjoy them. But do not believe them. Only believe your experience of getting to know a person and seeing if you can share at a deep level. See if you find that he or she is a person of the kind of character you would trust as a friend. And as important as all of that, see if that person is a person that you would like spending time with if there were no romance at all. That is the one true measure of a friend, a person with whom you like to spend time, having no regard to how you are spending it. “Hanging out” is fulfilling in and of itself. And that, long-term, requires character, and in the deepest of friendships, shared values as well. You would want your best friends to be honest, faithful, deep, spiritual, responsible, connecting, growing, loving, and the like. Make sure that those qualities are also present in the person you are falling in love with.

Ash: The thing is, it wasn’t over Lily. It was all about you. Lix: I think you should stop talking now. Ash: You’re so attractive. I want to kiss you. Lix: WTF Ash: I mean it. Let’s take our friendship to the next level. This can’t just be one sided.

One of my favorite prayers is God, how can I love on you today? As I sit in silence of those words, sometimes I'll feel compelled to sing or read a passage of Scripture, or I'll be reminded of someone with a need I can meet; but on some of the most meaningful days, God simply says, just be with me. I sit in the silence and enjoy stillness with God. No agenda. No words. No words. No challenge. No correction or instruction. Just being together. In those moments, I'm reminded that the heart of faith is simply being with God. I sense God's love. Some of my best friendships reach a level at which we can sit together without having to say anything and still enjoy each other's presence. The same is true for God, and I love to experience that depth of love in my relationship with Christ." -Hungry for God

Principles of Liberty 1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law. 2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. 3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally strong people is to elect virtuous leaders. 4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained. 5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible. 6. All men are created equal. 7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things. 8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. 9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law. 10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people. 11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical. 12. The United States of America shall be a republic. 13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers. 14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the Igor of property is secure. 15. The highest level of securitiy occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations. 16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. 17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. 18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution. 19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people. 20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. 21. Strong human government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. 22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men. 23. A free society cannot survive a republic without a broad program of general education. 24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong. 25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." 26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity. 27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest. 28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

Relationships never operate at the level of your greatest strengths. They operate at the level of your greatest weakness. Whoever is unfaithful, whoever is more needy, whoever is late, controls the nature of the friendship. You can swing with it or not, but you can’t count on changing it.

Everyone loves CNs on a surface level. They tend to not have long-lasting friendships with people who know them deeply. They may have friends who have known them for years, but don’t really know them. They are rarely without a partner. After they discard you, they usually move on quickly to another source—another target who will think they are so lucky to have found such a “nice guy” or “nice gal,” just like you did in the beginning.

Yes, I have a lot of male friends. See it how you want I like to get mind fucked on a platonic level.

That was next-level friendship—locking someone in through marriage.

God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him; on that level they are all equal

The unrelenting grip of Soldier’s Syndrome slips finger by slow finger. The marrow’s been affected—emotional leukemia at the deepest level. Transplants of love and friendship aid healing, yet time is still key, and the clock never ticks fast enough. Eternity gains perspective when seconds feel like years. How long have I been gone? Six eternities and counting.

And the raw feeling that it ignited within me made me fucking whimper into her mouth as I tugged her hair. It was something so fucking new and alien and more intense than anything I had ever felt before. I didn’t know what name to give it. I couldn’t discern anything from the raw need to be closer to her. I had no way of knowing how close it was to the love I had been desperately seeking, but I knew it was on a completely new level for me. A level above simple caring and friendship and adoration, and even lust. And I fucking basked in it.

The last time I’d been alone with Cal, he’d kissed me. It had definitely been a kiss of the “We Might Die So This Is Just Us Saying Good-Bye (Maybe)” variety, but still. He was, technically, my fiancé (you know, as if Prodigium aren’t weird enough, they also have arranged marriages). Being engaged brought a whole new level of weirdness to my and Cal’s friendship. Cal gave one quick glance back at me, and even though I couldn’t be sure, I thought his gaze fell on my mouth for just a second. I tried hard not to gulp, and when he left the room, I followed him.

Pregnancy loss...is an open wound with the most vulnerable scab, forced to constantly replenish its surface-level protection as it's picked at daily, not by you, but inadvertently by other people's joy.

Maybe what you need in your life is not the next level of accomplishment or the next level of accumulation but the next level of appreciation for what you have; that will set the stage to make a space for what you will accumulate in the future. ( a bit deep) Simply put thank God for now before setting the goal for tomorrow because if you grow in gifts and didn't grow in gratitude, you have gained nothing.

Like with Rob, that’s my friend who died,” he says. “I wouldn’t say we clicked on this very deep level or anything but we were friends. We didn’t have a lot in common like in terms of interests or whatever, and on the political side of things we probably wouldn’t have had the same views. But in school, stuff like that didn’t really matter as much. We were just in the same group so we were friends, ya know?

A woman will always be my best friend. I’ll never have a best friend who is a man. It just doesn’t work that way. So many times young girls will be like, ‘I’m a guy’s girl.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you’re not. There’s no way a man can understand you like a woman, and you’re a guy’s girl because you’re threatened by other women.’ I was like that. I was only men. But that’s because I felt special around men, and with a woman I can really be put in my place, and I’m on the same level as them. That’s the way it’s changed, is that I love women now, and I didn’t before. Because I was scared of them, because they understood me.

Don't let your focus be so much on how many times you go on a date but how you can build into one another, share and carry each other's vision, complement each other, develop a deeper level of friendship; grow spiritually together and make the little things meaningful. It's beyond the 100% but more about how committed and dedicated you are daily. Love can only truly exist, when you become selfless and focus less on what is in it for you.

Hanging out consists of people getting together in groups and doing stuff together. The atmosphere is relaxed and relations in the group rarely rise above the level of friendship (or friendship with benefits). Dating consists of pairing off with someone in a temporary commitment so you can get to know the person better and perhaps start a long-term relationship with them. There is nothing wrong with hanging out, but it’s not a replacement for dating.

Warren threatened my life if I left you alone,” he said. “Really?” I asked surprised. He laughed and nodded his head. “Yea. First, I threatened to kill him. Now he’s threatened to kill me. I think we’ve reached the first level of friendship.

If, to cut carbon emissions, we need to limit economic growth severely in the rich countries, then it is important to know that this does not mean sacrificing improvements in the real quality of life – in the quality of life as measured by health, happiness, friendship and community life, which really matters. However, rather than simply having fewer of all the luxuries which substitute for and prevent us recognizing our more fundamental needs, inequality has to be reduced simultaneously.

It’s tough to change friends, and it’s even tougher to admit when a friendship has run its course, but it can be an important part of growth, too. Friends come and go and, when you change, oftentimes the things you have in common are no longer in alignment, especially if those things are of a time-wasting or unhealthy nature. We have a finite amount of time—the most valuable resource on this planet—and you have 100 percent control over how that time gets spent. Surround yourself with people who want you to be better, and you will see yourself start to level up faster than ever before.

If you made a piece of art—a picture—I’d look at your choice of medium, the colors you chose, your personal style, your skill level. I’d see a landscape, or a person, an event, or whatever you wanted to create, but I’d feel something else. People paint people they’re in love with and I feel the lust, the longing, the joy, the sadness. It’s a physical manifestation of someone going, Look! Look at how in love I am. But I don’t believe people can look at a painting and see love. I can see friendship, though. It’s hard to explain.” “Remind me not to paint you anything. I have a feeling you’re a harsh critic.

Today is a new day! Let today be the day you free your mind from the prison of self doubt. Your thoughts can either hinder you or propel you to the next level. Precautions are necessary to maintain your safety and well-being. But fear and precautions are two different things. When you are afraid your doubt is increased. Do what makes you happy in order to satisfy the core of your existence. Fear: to be afraid of something or someone whether the threat is real or imagined Precaution: a measure taken in advance to prevent something from happening, prudent foresight Doubt:a feeling of uncertainty or lack of conviction

The writer Wesley Morris calls this experience the trapdoor of racism. “For people of color, some aspect of friendship with white people involves an awareness that you could be dropped through a trapdoor of racism at any moment, by a slip of the tongue, or at a campus party, or in a legislative campaign,” he wrote in 2015. “But it’s not always anticipated.” The trapdoor describes the limited level of comfort that Black people can feel around white people who are part of their lives in a meaningful way. Even if these white people decide they will confront racism every day, it’s guaranteed they will sometimes screw up and disappoint the Black people they know.

Affection and Eros were too obviously connected with our nerves, too obviously shared with the brutes. You could feel these tugging at your guts and fluttering in your diaphragm. But in Friendship—in that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen—you got away from all that. This alone, of all the loves, seemed to raise you to the level of gods or angels. But then came Romanticism and "tearful comedy" and the "return to nature" and the exaltation of Sentiment; and in their train all that great wallow of emotion which, though often criticised, has lasted ever since. Finally, the exaltation of instinct, the dark gods in the blood; whose hierophants may be incapable of male friendship. Under this new dispensation all that had once commended this love now began to work against it. It had not tearful smiles and keepsakes and baby-talk enough to please the sentimentalists. There was not blood and guts enough about it to attract the primitivists. It looked thin and etiolated; a sort of vegetarian substitute for the more organic loves.

My superpower is that I think everyone is my friend, and that’s the way I treated them. I brought them right down to my level and acted like we already had a bond, and we established one. It works every time, even with people who might not normally accept someone like me. I think being gay is a fun fact about me. It’s like any other bit of biographical trivia: I’m from Pennsylvania, I have five siblings, I get Brazilian blowouts, and I’m gay. They’re all fun facts. (The fun fact of being gay might influence the fun fact of getting the blowouts, but who’s to say?) When I treat being gay like that, it doesn’t keep me from talking to someone at a party, having a good time with them, or even establishing a friendship. And it doesn’t keep them from associating with me. Fun facts have a way of doing that.

But the truth was, I didn’t feel accepted. I didn’t feel acknowledged for my service in raising the next generation, for my active role in the community, or even for being human sometimes. I felt utterly ignored. I felt invisible or, worse, frowned upon. Most of the time, when I looked in the mirror, I saw only my flaws. I saw all the things that advertisements and social media said was wrong with me. I wanted to focus on what was right about this version of myself, like the way I’d learned to take life a little slower and enjoy each moment. Like my appreciation for people’s differences, and for beauty found in unlikely places. For my friendships, new and old. I wanted it to be okay that I wasn’t worried about beauty anymore, or worried about looking young. I just wanted to look like me, however me looked in any given year.

Shall I stop in to check on Bella before I go?” “Not dressed like that. You would give her palpitations if she knew you were going into danger for her benefit.” “Luckily, I am mostly immune to Bella’s powers and could cure such palpitations with a thought,” Gideon mused. Jacob raised a brow, taking the medic’s measure. He could not recall the last time he had heard the Ancient crack wise about anything. It was not a wholly unpleasant experience, and it amused the Enforcer. “I . . . am aware of what is occurring between you and Legna, as you know,” Jacob mentioned with casual quiet. “I am only recently Imprinted myself, but should you require—” He broke off, suddenly uncomfortable. “Of course, you probably know far more about Imprinting than I ever will.” He is reaching out to you. Legna’s soft encouragement made Gideon suddenly aware of that fact. It was one of those nuances he would have missed completely, rusty as he was with matters of friendship and how to relate better to others. “I am glad for the offer of any help you can provide,” Gideon said quickly. “In fact, I had wanted to ask you . . . something . . .” What did I want to ask him? he asked Legna urgently. I do not know! I did not tell you to engage him, just to graciously accept his offer. Oh. My apologies. Still, you are clever enough to think of something, are you not? Legna knew he was baiting her, so she laughed. Ask him why it is you seem to constantly irritate me. I will ask him no such thing, Magdelegna. Well then, you had better come up with an alternative, because that is the only suggestion I have. “Yes?” Jacob was encouraging neutrally, trying to be patient as the medic seemed to gather his thoughts. “Do you find that your mate tends to lecture you incessantly?” he asked finally. Jacob laughed out loud. “You know something, I can actually advise you about that, Gideon.” “Can you?” The medic actually sounded hopeful. “Give up. Now. While you still have your sanity. Arguing with her will get you nowhere. And, also, never ever ask questions that refer to the whys and wherefores of women, females, or any other feminine-based criticism. Otherwise you will only earn an argument at a higher decibel level. Oh, and one other thing.” Gideon cocked a brow in question. “All the rules I just gave you, as well as all the ones she lays down during the course of your relationship, can and will change at whim. So, as I see it, you can consider yourself just as lost as every other man on the planet. Good luck with it.” “That is not a very heartening thought,” Gideon said wryly, ignoring Legna’s giggle in his background thoughts.

The whole point here is you have to do what’s right for you. Just as they are doing what is right for them. Everyone’s allowed to change and grow, absolutely. In the same vein, you’re allowed to say, or simply feel, “What you can give me is less than what I need from you right now, so let’s change how we interact, and here’s how I need to do that in a way that feels right to me.” Being a good friend doesn’t mean simply going along for the ride while the other person guides the friendship wherever they want to take it. You are allowed to say that you’d like this person to be X type of friend, and if they see it differently, they are allowed to say so as well. And then it is absolutely within your rights, and theirs, to either be OK with that difference or to part ways, no harm, no foul. The most important thing to remember is that you were not made to endure your friendships. You were made to enjoy them. Adjust the levels as necessary.

Something about you ignites my mind, drives me mentally, emotionally and physically in a way I’ve never experienced. At first I thought this was just a little crush, but over time I’ve come to realize that I like you for far more than what meets the eye. You’ve awakened the dead within me simply by your presence and a blooming friendship. And while it’s true, I want more, I would never jeopardize what you’ve given me at this level for a delusional dream I have for something beyond that.

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness. Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples. When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of dead-looking snow. It had taken him some time to get back to his usual equanimity. He slid down in the warm, foamy water until just his face and his knobby white knees were exposed. Once he had read Wuthering Heights over a weekend and gone to school susceptible to any heroine, only to have the girl who sat in front of him, whom he had admired for some months, emit a loud fart which had murdered him in a small way and kept him from speaking a word to anyone the whole week following. He had laughed at a very funny joke about a Negro when Irwin told it at a party, and then the following day had seen some white men lightly kicking a Negro man in the pants, and temporarily he had questioned laughter altogether. He had gone to several universities with the vague exaltation of Old Man Axelrod and had found only curves and credits. He had become drunk on the idea of God and found only theology. He had risen several times on the subtle and powerful wings of lust, expectant of magnificence, achieving only discharge. A few times he had extended friendship with palpitating hope, only to find that no one quite knew what he had in mind. His solitude now was the result of his metabolism, that constant breathing in of joy and exhalation of sadness. He had come to take shallower breaths, and the two had become mercifully mixed into melancholy contentment. He wondered how pain would breach that low-level strength. "I'm a small man of definite limitations," he declared to himself, and relaxed in the admission.

Ball busting [a friendly form of humor]...contains a fundamental flaw, one that has done immeasurable harm to the male psyche, and basically eliminated dance and music as potential outlets for bonding. That is the use of the term 'gaaay.' It's a form of self-policing, some fucked-up safe word that got called out if any behavior approached a level where it felt intimate or affectionate. Really anything that felt 'feminine,' and that list was long. It was not used to describe romantic attraction to another many--though it certainly insulted that entire idea in an inexcusable way--but instead was used to reinforce what Niobe Way, a psychology professor at NYU, calls the 'crisis of connection' among men. We so fear being called -gaaay- for making connections that are 'feminine' that we sacrifice intimacy for casual banter. It's a huge disconnect, perhaps the central one at the heart of the problems of with modern male bonding. And unlike many 'male' things, it cannot be blamed on genetics. It's cultural. It's learned.

The world of business is becoming one of the great cathedrals of spirit. Businesses are becoming places in which meaning can be created, in which mutuality begins to happen. Business is the force in the world that is fulfilling every major value of the great spiritual traditions: intimacy, trust, a shared vision, cooperation, collaboration, friendship, and ultimately love. After all, what is love at its core? It is the movement of evolution to higher and higher levels of mutuality, recognition, union and embrace.

Many people close themselves off from the world when they are under pressure. That is understandable. I have gone through periods when I didn’t want to meet people because I didn’t feel good about my situation in life and that made my life even more stressful. Remind yourself often about how much of an impact compassion and friendship can have on your life. You need to get out there, be compassionate and share your time and your life with your friends and other people that need your support. It’s worth it on every level.

The New Man means to develop all the three dimensions of being, all the three doors to God: the head, the dimension of thinking, logic and reason, the heart - the dimension of joy, trust, intuition, relationships, beauty, creativity and a sense of unity in love and the being, the dimension of meditation, silence, emptiness and oneness with life. The first level of the head is the dimension of ideas, intellect, hypothesis, theories, logic, analysis, rationality and dualistic thinking. The first level is the level of the mind, which means a continuous oscillation like a pendulum between the mind's memories of the past and the ideas, dreams and expectations of the future. The second level of the heart is the dimension of joy, acceptance, trust, understanding, trust, friendship, intuition, empathy, creativity, compassion, humor, playfulness and a sense of unity in love. The third level of being is the dimension of presence, awareness, meditation, silence, emptiness and wholeness. The third level is our connection with our inner life source.

What, then, is marriage for? It is for helping each other to become our future glory-selves, the new creations that God will eventually make us. The common horizon husband and wife look toward is the Throne, and the holy, spotless and blameless nature we will have. I can think of no more powerful common horizon than that, and that is why putting a Christian friendship at the heart of a marriage relationship can lift it to a level that no other vision of marriage approaches … We think of a prospective spouse as primarily a lover (or a provider), and if he or she can be a friend on top of that, well isn’t that nice! We should be going at it the other way around. Screen first for friendship. Look for someone who understands you better than you do yourself, who makes you a better person just by being around them. And then explore whether that friendship could become a romance and a marriage. So many people go about their dating starting from the wrong end, and they end up in marriages that aren’t really about anything and aren’t going anywhere.4

In certain young people today…I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well mexecuted in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship. I find it obscene. People who ask you to ‘educate’ yourself while not having actually read any books themselves, while not being able to intelligently defend their own ideological positions, because by ‘educate,’ they actually mean ‘parrot what I say, flatten all nuance, wish away complexity.’ People who wield the words ‘violence’ and ‘weaponize’ like tarnished pitchforks. People who depend on obfuscation, who have no compassion for anybody genuinely curious or confused. Ask them a question and you are told that the answer is to repeat a mantra. Ask again for clarity and be accused of violence. And so we have a generation of young people on social media so terrified of having the wrong opinions that they have robbed themselves of the opportunity to think and to learn and to grow.

The current had not given me a curse. And I had become strong under its teaching. But there was no denying another thing Dr. Fadlan had said--that on some level, I felt like I, and everyone else, deserved pain. One thing I knew, deep in my bones, was that Akos Kereseth did not deserve it. Holding on to that thought, I reached for him, and touched my hand to his chest, feeling fabric. I opened my eyes. The shadows were still traveling over my body, since I wasn’t touching his skin, but my entire left arm, from shoulder to the fingertips that touched him, was bare. Even if he had been able to feel my currentgift, I still would not have been hurting him. Akos’s eyes, usually so wary, were wide with wonder. “When I kill people with a touch, it’s because I decide to give them all the pain and keep none of it for myself. It’s because I get so tired of bearing it that all I want to do is set it down for a while,” I said. “But during the interrogation, it occurred to me that maybe I was strong enough to bear it all myself. That maybe no one else but me could. And I never would have thought of that without you.” I blinked tears from my eyes. “You saw me as someone better than I was,” I said. “You told me that I could choose to be different than I had been, that my condition was not permanent. And I began to believe you. Taking in all the pain nearly killed me, but when I woke up again, the gift was different. It doesn’t hurt as much. Sometimes I can control it.” I took my hand away. “I don’t know what you want to call it, what we are to each other now,” I said. “But I wanted you to know that your friendship has...quite literally altered me.

Without being aware of it, Carlos was making a distinction in relationships that Aristotle had made more than two thousand years earlier in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle wrote that there is a kind of a friendship ladder, from lowest to highest. At the bottom—where emotional bonds are weakest and the benefits are lowest—are friendships based on utility: deal friends, to use Carlos’s coinage. You are friends in an instrumental way, one that helps each of you achieve something else you want, such as professional success. Higher up are friends based on pleasure. You are friends because of something you like and admire about the other person. They are entertaining, or funny, or beautiful, or smart, for example. In other words, you like an inherent quality, which makes it more elevated than a friendship of utility, but it is still basically instrumental. At the highest level is Aristotle’s “perfect friendship,” which is based on willing each other’s well-being and a shared love for something good and virtuous that is outside either of you. This might be a friendship forged around religious beliefs or passion for a social cause. What it isn’t is utilitarian. The other person shares in your passion, which is intrinsic, not instrumental. Of

Living in the past is always a bad idea; yet, on some level I believe the ones we love, even though not part of our present, are the very definition of who we are, the driving force of what we aspire to be, and at the end of the day, the past we must look to in order to improve who we will become. After all, we do not learn from what has not happened, but what has been, and what we will choose to keep or leave behind. Friendship, true friendship is never blind, but it holds the value of forgiveness - separating what we may or may have not done within the realm of mistakes....seeking the outcome of making us into better people.

Weak and trembling from passion, Major Flint found that after a few tottering steps in the direction of Tilling he would be totally unable to get there unless fortified by some strong stimulant, and turned back to the club-house to obtain it. He always went dead-lame when beaten at golf, while Captain Puffin was lame in any circumstances, and the two, no longer on speaking terms, hobbled into the club-house, one after the other, each unconscious of the other's presence. Summoning his last remaining strength Major Flint roared for whisky, and was told that, according to regulation, he could not be served until six. There was lemonade and stone ginger-beer. You might as well have offered a man-eating tiger bread and milk. Even the threat that he would instantly resign his membership unless provided with drink produced no effect on a polite steward, and he sat down to recover as best he might with an old volume of Punch. This seemed to do him little good. His forced abstemiousness was rendered the more intolerable by the fact that Captain Puffin, hobbling in immediately afterwards, fetched from his locker a large flask of the required elixir, and proceeded to mix himself a long, strong tumblerful. After the Major's rudeness in the matter of the half-crown, it was impossible for any sailor of spirit to take the first step towards reconciliation. Thirst is a great leveller. By the time the refreshed Puffin had penetrated half-way down his glass, the Major found it impossible to be proud and proper any longer. He hated saying he was sorry (no man more) and he wouldn't have been sorry if he had been able to get a drink. He twirled his moustache a great many times and cleared his throat--it wanted more than that to clear it--and capitulated. "Upon my word, Puffin, I'm ashamed of myself for--ha!--for not taking my defeat better," he said. "A man's no business to let a game ruffle him." Puffin gave his alto cackling laugh. "Oh, that's all right, Major," he said. "I know it's awfully hard to lose like a gentleman." He let this sink in, then added: "Have a drink, old chap?" Major Flint flew to his feet. "Well, thank ye, thank ye," he said. "Now where's that soda water you offered me just now?" he shouted to the steward. The speed and completeness of the reconciliation was in no way remarkable, for when two men quarrel whenever they meet, it follows that they make it up again with corresponding frequency, else there could be no fresh quarrels at all. This one had been a shade more acute than most, and the drop into amity again was a shade more precipitous.

we should not be content with “a level of fruitfulness” when, in fact, we can experience the supernatural life as our normal Christian life, not the occasional exception. 3.As exciting as miracles are, they fail to satisfy our hungry hearts unless we embrace them for what they are—invitations to see the personality and nature of Jesus in action. a)Miracles are invitational in nature. They invite us to visibly see who God is and what He is like. The miracle points to a greater reality—the Person of Jesus! b)Miracles bring God near. They remind us that God is not distant and detached, but He is present, near, and ever ready to invade impossible situations in our lives. c)Miracles reveal the compassionate heart of God. Jesus revealed the Father’s nature, time after time, as He was moved by compassion and healed. 4.The overflow of our friendship with Jesus is a life marked by signs, wonders, and miracles.

Without help or a supportive husband, Lenore was as alone as she had been after her first husband died, as she had been before marrying Salem. It was too late to curry friendship with neighboring women, who she had made sure knew their level and hers. Pleading with Jackie’s mother was humiliating as well as fruitless since the answer was “Sorry.” Now she had to be content with the company of the person she prized most of all—herself. Perhaps it was that partnership between Lenore and Lenore that caused the minor stroke she suffered on a sweltering night in July. Salem found her kneeling beside the bed and ran to Mr. Haywood’s house. He drove her to the hospital in Mount Haven. There, after a long, perilous wait in the corridor, she finally received treatment that curtailed further damage. Her speech was slurred but she was ambulatory—if carefully so. Salem saw to her basic needs, but was relieved to learn he could not understand a word she spoke. Or so he said.

As the Harvard Gazette summarized in 2017: Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. . . . Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.[7] Men who’d had warm childhood relationships with their parents earned more as adults than men whose parent-child bonds were more strained. They were also happier and less likely to suffer dementia in old age. People with strong marriages suffered less physical pain and emotional distress over the course of their lives. Individuals’ close friendships were more accurate predictors of healthy aging than their cholesterol levels. Social support and connections to a community helped insulate people against disease and depression. Meanwhile, loneliness and disconnection, in some cases, were fatal.

He brushed past us, and did not interrupt what he was saying to her, but gave us, out of the corner of his blue eye, a little sign, which began and ended, so to speak, inside his eyelids, and as it did not involve the least movement of his facial muscles, managed to pass quite unperceived by the lady; but, striving to compensate by the intensity of his feelings for the somewhat restricted field in which they had to find expression, he made that blue chink, which was set apart for us, sparkle with all the animation of cordiality, which went far beyond mere playfulness, and almost touched the border-line of roguery; he subtilised the refinements of good-fellowship into a wink of connivance, a hint, a hidden meaning, a secret understanding, all the mysteries of complicity in a plot, and finally exalted his assurances of friendship to the level of protestations of affection, even of a declaration of love, lighting up for us, and for us alone, with a secret and languid flame invisible by the great lady upon his other side, an enamoured pupil in a countenance of ice.

The undiscerning observer may think that this mixture of ideal and reality, of the human and spiritual, is most likely to be present where there are a number of levels in the structure of a community, as in marriage, the family, friendship, where the human element as such already assumes a central importance in the community’s coming into being at all, and where the spiritual is only something added to the physical and intellectual. According to this view, it is only in these relationships that there is a danger of confusing and mixing the two spheres, whereas there can be no such danger in a purely spiritual fellowship. This idea, however, is a great delusion. According to all experience the truth is just the opposite. A marriage, a family, a friendship is quite conscious of the limitations of its community-building power; such relationships know very well, if they are sound, where the human element stops and the spiritual begins. They know the difference between physical-intellectual and spiritual community. On the contrary, when a community of a purely spiritual kind is established, it always encounters the danger that everything human will be carried into and intermixed with this fellowship. A purely spiritual relationship is not only dangerous but also an altogether abnormal thing. When physical and family relationships or ordinary associations, that is, those arising from everyday life with all its claims upon people who are working together, are not projected into the spiritual community, then we must be especially careful. That is why, as experience has shown, it is precisely in retreats of short duration that the human element develops most easily. Nothing is easier than to stimulate the glow of fellowship in a few days of life together, but nothing is more fatal to the sound, sober, brotherly fellowship of everyday life. There is probably no Christian to whom God has not given the uplifting experience of genuine Christian community at least once in his life. But in this world such experiences can be no more than a gracious extra beyond the daily bread of Christian community life. We have no claim upon such experiences, and we do not live with other Christians for the sake of acquiring them. It is not the experience of Christian brotherhood, but solid and certain faith in brotherhood that holds us together. That God has acted and wants to act upon us all, this we see in faith as God’s greatest gift, this makes us glad and happy, but it also makes us ready to forego all such experiences when God at times does not grant them. We are bound together by faith, not by experience. ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity’—this is the Scripture’s praise of life together under the Word. But now we can rightly interpret the words ‘in unity’ and say, ‘for brethren to dwell together through Christ’. For Jesus Christ alone is our unity. ‘He is our peace’. Through him alone do we have access to one another, joy in one another, and fellowship with one another.

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

Having lost his mother, father, brother, an grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher Bernard Kornblum, his city, his history—his home—the usual charge leveled against comic books, that they offered merely an escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf. He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags and crates, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death. The escape from reality was, he felt—especially right after the war—a worthy challenge. He would remember for the rest of his life a peaceful half hour spent reading a copy of 'Betty and Veronica' that he had found in a service-station rest room: lying down with it under a fir tree, in a sun-slanting forest outside of Medford, Oregon, wholly absorbed into that primary-colored world of bad gags, heavy ink lines, Shakespearean farce, and the deep, almost Oriental mistery of the two big-toothed wasp-waisted goddess-girls, light and dark, entangled forever in the enmity of their friendship. The pain of his loss—though he would never have spoken of it in those terms—was always with him in those days, a cold smooth ball lodged in his chest, just behind his sternum. For that half hour spent in the dappled shade of the Douglas firs, reading Betty and Veronica, the icy ball had melted away without him even noticing. That was magic—not the apparent magic of a silk-hatted card-palmer, or the bold, brute trickery of the escape artist, but the genuine magic of art. It was a mark of how fucked-up and broken was the world—the reality—that had swallowed his home and his family that such a feat of escape, by no means easy to pull off, should remain so universally despised.

Then one night he brought home a beautiful red-haired woman and took her into our bed with me. She was a high-class call girl employed by the well-known Madame Claude. It never occurred to me to object. I took my cues from him and threw myself into the threesome with the skill and enthusiasm of the actress that I am. If this was what he wanted, this was what I would give him—in spades. As feminist poet Robin Morgan wrote in Saturday’s Child on the subject of threesomes, “If I was facing the avant-garde version of keeping up with the Joneses, by god I’d show ’em.” Sometimes there were three of us, sometimes more. Sometimes it was even I who did the soliciting. So adept was I at burying my real feelings and compartmentalizing myself that I eventually had myself convinced I enjoyed it. I’ll tell you what I did enjoy: the mornings after, when Vadim was gone and the woman and I would linger over our coffee and talk. For me it was a way to bring some humanity to the relationship, an antidote to objectification. I would ask her about herself, trying to understand her history and why she had agreed to share our bed (questions I never asked myself!) and, in the case of the call girls, what had brought her to make those choices. I was shocked by the cruelty and abuse many had suffered, saw how abuse had made them feel that sex was the only commodity they had to offer. But many were smart and could have succeeded in other careers. The hours spent with those women informed my later Oscar-winning performance of the call girl Bree Daniel in Klute. Many of those women have since died from drug overdose or suicide. A few went on to marry high-level corporate leaders; some married into nobility. One, who remains a friend, recently told me that Vadim was jealous of her friendship with me, that he had said to her once, “You think Jane’s smart, but she’s not, she’s dumb.” Vadim often felt a need to denigrate my intelligence, as if it would take up his space. I would think that a man would want people to know he was married to a smart woman—unless he was insecure about his own intelligence. Or unless he didn’t really love her.

The New Man is the most important things that is happening in the world today. The new man will have to find new forms of communication, working together and sharing, because the old man and the old society will not disappear immediately. The old man will also put up a fight. The new man is a new humanity. Up to now, man has lived a pathological life, a neurotic life, a destructive life. During modern times, during the last 3000 years, there have been 6000 wars. You can not call this humanity healthy. Once in a while a Buddha, a Jesus, a Socrates, appeared, but each person is born to be a Buddha. How can I become the new man? The new man means a new consciousness, a new being. Humanity can not be saved if the new man does not arrive. Before it was not a necessity, but now it is absolutely necessary because now the war technology can destroy the whole earth. if not the new man arrives, if not people become more aware, awake and conscious, then this earth will not survive. The New Man means to develop all the three dimensions of being, all the three doors to God: the head, the dimension of thinking, logic and reason, the heart, the dimension of joy, trust, intuition, relationships, beauty, creativity and a sense of unity in love and the being, the dimension of meditation, silence, emptiness and oneness with life. The first level of the head is the dimension of ideas, intellect, hypothesis, theories, logic, analysis, rationality and dualistic thinking. The first level is the level of the mind, which means a continuous oscillation like a pendulum between the mind's memories of the past and the ideas, dreams and expectations of the future. The second level of the heart is the dimension of joy, acceptance, trust, understanding, trust, friendship, relationships, intuition, empathy, creativity, compassion, humor, playfulness and a sense of unity in love. The third level of being is the dimension of presence, awareness, meditation, silence, emptiness and wholeness. The third level is our connection with our inner life source. The new man means awareness, consciousness, love and creativity. The new man means meditation, to be in contact with our own inner source of silence. And if more people become meditative, the earth becomes filled with the fragrance of the new man.