Obstacle Run Quotes

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know …nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. but what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. it just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

We will not conquer our obstacles by running away from them. Speed does not matter, just that we do not stop.

If you can’t believe in miracles, then believe in yourself. When you want something bad enough, let that drive push you to make it happen. Sometimes you’ll run into brick walls that are put there to test you. Find a way around them and stay focused on your dream. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

When flowing water...meets with obstacles on its path, a blockage in its journey, it pauses. It increases in volume and strength, filling up in front of the obstacle and eventually spilling past it... Do not turn and run, for there is nowhere worthwhile for you to go. Do not attempt to push ahead into the danger... emulate the example of the water: Pause and build up your strength until the obstacle no longer represents a blockage.

Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

Don’t run from your weakness, you will only give it strength.

This is going to hurt, but you will have to watch other couples be happier, richer and louder than you. Wait. No obstacle can withstand patience. Wait. You may not think so now, but there will come a time when you will be tempted to run away. Would that be right? Would that be fair? As every matriarch discovers, entire seasons will pass without reward. As your mate's peculiarities add up, what do you do? Wait!

I honestly feel as though I’ve run an obstacle course to get here. In fact, I think, they should list shopping as a cardiovascular activity. My heart never beats as fast as it does when I see a “reduced by 50 percent” sign.

A child sees an obstacle, and his first thought is to run around it or knock it down. A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what swords cannot.

What is it, Val? What are you watch . . .” His word trailed off as his eyes landed on the TV screen. The headline looming at the bottom of the screen said it all— “Planet Killer Aimed at Earth” Wordlessly, Jeremy moved around the couch and plopped down beside Valerie, whose eyes were glued to the screen. After moments of watching, he turned to look at her, and her mouth was sagging open. It was only then he realized his was too. He closed it with an audible click, returning his attention to the screen. The narrator continued on about the details of the new discovery until he got to the scientific name for the asteroid and the new media moniker; Rabbit’s Revenge. Something clicked in the back of his mind. Some little sensation of recognition sparked at the name, but for the life of him Jeremy couldn’t place why.

Perseverance is everything. We all stumbled when we took our first steps yet we were running sooner than we realized, and then we couldn’t stay still. Why stay still now?

It is very foolish of a man to be frightened of a skeleton, for Nature has put an insurmountable obstacle against running away from it.

Valerie watched him pull away before turning to go inside. Her feelings were a painful contradiction. On the one hand, she was deathly afraid of a man whom she was so attracted to as to barely be able to maintain control when she was around him, on the other hand, that very attraction and loss of control signaled what she had longed for her whole life, someone she could fall irretrievably in love with. She was delicately balanced on the tightrope of some of her most basic personality traits and her deepest desires. It was a precarious trap for her, and one she wasn’t going to be able to easily resolve. Unfortunately, the result for Jeremy was a seesaw of her reactions to him. What the hell am I thinking, she asked herself as she slowly closed her apartment door. For now, her fears were winning the battle against her heart.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.

The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My

Running through an unfamiliar forest filled with thorns is half an exercise in masochism, and half an obstacle course from the deepest reaches of Hell.

Voter suppression works its might by first tripping and causing to stumble the unwanted voter, then by convincing those who see the obstacle course to forfeit the race without even starting to run.

Even now, I sometimes run over in my mind all the men who catcall me the moment I step out my door, the men who corner me on subway platforms, the man who reached under my dress at a parade once and slipped his finger beneath my underwear. I think of my father complaining to my mother that the dishes weren't washed, or of the time they fought over something stupid and he called her a camel to shut her up. I grew up with dozens of boys who would one day become the same kind of man. Sometimes the world is one long chain of men from whose anger there is no protection, an obstacle course I run to stay safe.

Thing is," he says, his chin resting on my head, "there's no single way to be a badass. Your mother and aunts coming here and making new lives for themselves? Badass. My mother running her own firm even after she and my father divorced? Badass. You facing the obstacles in your path and reinventing yourself in the process? Badass. There's room for different kinds of greatness. Even if you cry doing it. Hell, especially if you cry doing it.

Without a goal or an obstacle you're just running through a green cricket pitch for the rest of your life.

When the flames of life are gnawing away at your butt, run faster, quicker, and harder than you've ever run before, because I guarantee it that life will condition you, harder than any trainer ever will. When you state to yourself with the utter most believe, “I will achieve this,” than you are on the path, and this is when life throws obstacles left, right, straight on and which other way, but keep going. Because you will make it

The Scrum Master, the person in charge of running the process, asks each team member three questions: 1. What did you do yesterday to help the team finish the Sprint? 2. What will you do today to help the team finish the Sprint? 3. What obstacles are getting in the team’s way? That’s it. That’s the whole meeting.

Only when people got back to when the timequake hit did they stop being robots of their pasts. Only when free will kicked in could they stop running obstacle courses of their own construction.

I needed to go help because it was the right thing to do and because I needed to be a role model for the boys. And running from obstacles wasn’t something they needed to learn from anyone.

Maybe my steps were slow. Maybe it was because I was relishing each one, like each represented an obstacle we'd had to climb, the trials we'd had to overcome. Maybe each one was a triumph, each a celebration. Even though each step was measured, in reality, I was running toward him. Running toward my forever. Because I realized I didn't have one without Christian. He was my all.

If you don’t own the goal and it doesn’t come from your dream, then you won’t have the toughness to persevere when the going gets tough. And I will promise you that the going will get tough. There is never an exception—everyone who wins must push through obstacles, lots of them. You simply will not get up at dawn for your three-mile run because your wife wants you thinner. Big goals require big backbone—wimps need not apply.

Life is a series of obstacles and setbacks; living is overcoming them.

Do not run away from your challenges. You must endure and overcome each challenge.

Intending to run ahead of everyone is not an obstacle to fall behind. Streets are full of liars.

I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this despair? Was it psychological? (Was it Mom and Dad's fault?( Was it just temporal, a 'bad time' in my life? (When the divorce ends will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcoholism.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful alienting urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned Cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that comes after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Was I tapping into a universal yearning for God? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

It seems all humans ever do is muddle through and hope to have a rest period before the next obstacle comes along. It’s the love that keeps us going, whether it’s a partner, or your family, or your friends who are also your family. If we didn’t have that love, anything else keeping you running will eventually burn out.

Just try to keep your mind in the present. Whatever arises in the mind, just watch it and let go of it. Don't even wish to be rid of thoughts. Then the mind will return to its natural state. No discriminating between good and bad, hot and cold, fast and slow. No me and no you, no self at all—just what there is. When you walk there is no need to do anything special. Simply walk and see what is there. No need to cling to isolation or seclusion. Wherever you are, know yourself by being natural and watching. If doubts arise, watch them come and go. It's very simple. Hold on to nothing. It's as though you are walking down a road. Periodically you will run into obstacles. When you meet defilements, just see them and overcome them by letting them go. Don't think about the obstacles you've already passed; don't worry about those you have not yet seen. Stick to the present. Don't be concerned about the length of the road or the destination. Everything is changing. Whatever you pass, don't cling to it. Eventually the mind will reach its natural balance where practice is automatic. All things will come and go of themselves.

Racing is an escape from society. From symbols of status, and self-perception. A chance to just be. For everyone to just be, with each other.

Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. Nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

Souls, like rays of light, exist in perfect, parallel equality, always. But for when infinitely short a time they pass through the rough and delaying mechanism of life, they separate and disentangle, encountering different obstacles, traveling at different rates, like light refracted by the friction of things in its path. Emerging on the other side, they run together once more, in perfection. For the short and difficult span when confounded by matter and time they are made unequal, they try to bind together as they always were and eventually will be. The impulse to do so is called love. The extend to which they exceed is called justice. And the energy lost in the effort is called sacriface. On the infinite scale of things, this life is to a spark what a spark is to all the time man can imagine, but still, like a sudden rapids or bend in the river, it is that to which the eye of God may be drawn from time to time out of interest in happenstance.

Most people believe the journey they begin with Christ goes forward, but that is not how he works. A spiritual life is not cutting ties with people, in order to walk clean in the future. The journey home isn't running away from obstacles. It is learning to stand where you are now and handle people, assert yourself, set boundaries and never feel your happiness is dependent on another person's approval of your choices, beliefs or spiritual needs.

An artist in this nuthouse century is like a man running an obstacle race fitted out with all the gadgets of our riotous technology. He gets blown a mile into the air on a jet of liquid helium, shuttles about on little rocket tubes, plunges into the deeps of the ocean, shoots out again a hundred miles into the space while lurid sights and sounds shred his senses. Every year, every month, and ‘panoptic’ work appears and warps his consciousness into a new shape. Knowledge itself is in a molten, a plasmatic state and what titanic electromagnetic grip of intellect would be required to lock it solid long enough to reach artistic fusion point? The damned language becomes obsolete as it clatters from the typewriter.

Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving. Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances. Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles

Your relationships will either empower you to overcome obstacles, or put fears in you so you can run away from them.

Run the race of life with all perseverance and endurance.

One would think it would be most unwise in a man to be afraid of a skeleton, since Nature has set curious and quite insuperable obstacles to his running away from it.

You can't attack the giants in your life, if you are not aiming to strike and hit the target. You can't run a race in vain, if you have no plans to win or finish it. Start, strive and aim high...never give up. Your best is yet to come!

until our faith is tested through challenges, obstacles, trials, and storms, it cannot be stretched to new lengths, deepened to new depths, nor grown to new heights. Faith must be tried to its limits before it can grow beyond those limits.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better, I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire. I am not always alone, however, in these struggles.

Earth life is giant field day where we willingly choose the limitation of racing with both feet in a potato sack, or sometimes we join up with another and agree to the limitation of racing as a team where each person has one leg tied to the leg of the other....Agreeing to run a race with limitations or live a life with limitations doesn't mean you're slow, clumsy, or unenlightened. It just means you're showing up on field day, participating, and if you're really good, you try your best despite the obstacles.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

Keep going, one foot in front of the other, millions of times. Face forward and take the next step. Don’t flinch when the road or gets rough, you fall down, you miss a turn, or the bridge you planned to cross has collapsed. Do what you say you’ll do, and don’t let anything or anyone stop you. Deal with the obstacles as they come. Move on. Keep going, no matter what, one foot in front of the other, millions of times.

Designer Kisses" I’m glum about your sportive flesh in the empire of blab, and the latest guy running his trendy tongue like a tantalizing surge over your molars, how droll. Love by a graveyard is redundant, but the skin is an obstacle course like Miami where we are inescapably consigned: tourists keeping the views new. What as yet we desire, our own fonts of adoration. By morning, we’re laid out like liquid timepieces, each other’s exercise in perpetual enchantment, for there is that beach in us that is untranslatable; footprints abound. I understand: you’re at a clothes rack at Saks lifting a white linen blouse at tear’s edge wondering.

When the Path Is Blocked When the path is blocked, back up and see more of the way. We are each a mountain for the other to climb, and often our path to love is interrupted by a mishap or a problem or something unexpected that needs attending. We tend to call these unexpected things in life “obstacles.” Often the thing in the way comes from another person: a stubbornness falls like a tree blocking where we want to go, or a sadness comes like a flash flood to muddy the road between us, or just as we go to rest in the clearing we have prepared, we are bitten by something hiding in the undergrowth. Thus, in daily ways, we have this constant choice: to see each other as the stubborn, muddy, biting thing that blocks our way, or to back up and take in the whole person as we would a mountain in its entirety, dizzy when looking up into its majesty. When we are blocked in our closeness with another, we have this constant opportunity: to raise our eyes and behold each other completely, then to kneel and lift the fallen tree, or cross the flooded path, or pluck and toss the biting thing. We have the chance to keep climbing, so we might cup the water that runs from each other, so we might quench our thirst as from a mountain stream, knowing that love like water comes softly through the hardest places.

Making these choices [to attend school instead of skipping], as it turned out, wasn't about willpower. I always admired people who “willed” themselves to do something, because I have never felt I was one of them. If sheer will were enough by itself, it would have been enough a long time ago, back on University Avenue, I figured. It wasn't, not for me anyway. Instead, I needed something to motivate me. I needed a few things that I could think about in my moments of weakness that would cause me to throw off the blanket and walk through the front door. More than will, I needed something to inspire me. One thing that helped was a picture I kept in mind, this image that I used over and over whenever I was faced with these daily choices. I pictured a runner running on a racetrack. The image was set in the summertime and the racetrack was a reddish orange, divided in white racing stripes to flag the runners’ columns. Only, the runner in my mental image did not run alongside others; she ran solo, with no one watching her. And she did not run a free and clear track, she ran one that required her to jump numerous hurdles, which made her break into a heavy sweat under the sun. I used this image every time I thought of things that frustrated me: the heavy books, my crazy sleep schedule, the question of where I would sleep and what I would eat. To overcome these issues I pictured my runner bolting down the track, jumping hurdles toward the finish line. Hunger, hurdle. Finding sleep, hurdle, schoolwork, hurdle. If I closed my eyes I could see the runner’s back, the movement of her sinewy muscles, glistening with sweat, bounding over the hurdles, one by one. On mornings when I did not want to get out of bed, I saw another hurdle to leap over. This way, obstacles became a natural part of the course, an indication that I was right where I needed to be, running the track, which was entirely different from letting obstacles make me believe I was off it. On a racing track, why wouldn't there be hurdles? With this picture in mind—using the hurdles to leap forward toward my diploma—I shrugged the blanket off, went through the door, and got myself to school.

Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

You don’t always need to run around and struggle finding your purpose. Sometime your life’s purpose is just under your nose.

Responsibilities aren’t obstacles you can run around or handle later; they are the key to reaching your long-term goals.

The leaderly response to personal irritation is to relax and open up not push, run, or close down.

Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it or work around it.

I took on my depression like it was the fight of my life, wich of course, it was. I became a student of my own depressed experience, trying to unthread its causes. What was the root of all this dispair? Was it psychological? (Mom and Dad's fault?) Was it just temporal, a "bad time" in my life? (When the divorce ends, will the depression end with it?) Was it genetic? (Melancholy, called by many names, has run through my family for generations, along with its sad bride, Alcholisme.) Was it cultural? (Is this just the fallout of a postfeminist American career girl trying to find balance in an increasingly stressful and alienating urban world?) Was it astrological? (Am I so sad because I'm a thin-skinned cancer whose major signs are all ruled by unstable Gemini?) Was it artistic? (Don't creative people always suffer from depression because we're so supersensitive and special?) Was it evolutionary? (Do I carry in me the residual panic that come after millennia of my species' attempting to survive a brutal world?) Was it Karmic? (Are all these spasms of grief just the consequences of bad behavior in previous lifetimes, the last obstacles before liberation?) Was it hormonal? Dietary? Philosophical? Seasonal? Environmental? Did I have a chemical imbalance? Or did I just need to get laid?

When winds of storms come — and we know they will — we will ride the storms on his wings. When the challenges, trials, and obstacles come, he will catapult us to the next level of faith.

He finds an open boulevard of water that leads inward to the Core. It has a sort of pedestrian catwalk running along one side of it, pieced together haphazardly, a seemingly endless procession of gangplanks, pontoons, logs, abandoned skiffs, aluminum canoes, oil drums. Anywhere else in the world, it would be an obstacle course; here in the Fifth World, it's a superhighway.

The highest goodness is like water. Water is beneficial to all things but not contend. It stays in places which others despise. Therefore it is near Tao. The weakest things in the world can overmatch the strongest things in the world. Nothing in the world can be compared to water for its weak and yielding nature; yet in attacking the hard and strong nothing proves better than water. For there is no alternative to it. The weak can overcome and the yielding can overcame the hard. This all the world knows but does not practice. This again is the practice of ‘wu-wel’ and nonviolence. Water may be weak, pliable, fluid, but its action is not one of running away from an obstacle. On the contrary, it gives at the point of resistance, envelopes the object and passes beyond it. Ultimately it will wear down the hardest rock. Water is a more telling symbol than land… crossing the river to get to the other side is, again, attaining the state of enlightenment.

In the beginning of running and of meditation, one of the biggest obstacles is laziness. One kind of laziness is basic slothfulness, in which we are unable to extract ourselves from the television or couch. In this case, just a little bit of exercise can send a message to the body that it is time to move forward. Even putting on workout clothes and beginning to stretch helps bring us out of our sloth. By the same token, sitting down to follow the breath for even five minutes has the power to move us out of laziness. Another form of laziness is that we don’t make time in our busy, speedy life to go for a run or to sit down and practice.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better. I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon.

Have you let obstacles get in the way of you running the race God has destined for you? If you want to run the race God has put you in with greater success, then it's time to rid yourself of any distractions. Such distractions will only prevent you from achieving everything God wants you to achieve in the Kingdom of God. Remember, the Olympians run for a gold medal. But you are running for a crown of life, which awaits you when you finish the race set before you.

I have to race because racing is a part of me. But I had to learn to race from a place of joy. Not pain. Not sorrow. Not anger. Not to fix things I can’t control. But for a connection with other people. With the wilderness. With myself.

I know not how thou singest, my master! I ever listen in silent amazement. The light of thy music illumines the world. The life breath of thy music runs from sky to sky. The holy stream of thy music breaks through all stony obstacles and rushes on. My heart longs to join in thy song, but vainly struggles for a voice. I would speak, but speech breaks not into song, and I cry out baffled. Ah, thou hast made my heart captive in the endless meshes of thy music, my master!

Life kept going no matter what. And I tried to keep up. I really did. I ran and I ran and I ran. Hurdling every obstacle in my way. But I was tired. I was so damn tired of trying to keep up. Of hurdling one obstacle after another, only to find more in my path. And in the end, where did all of that running and jumping get me? Nowhere. My life was a freaking treadmill and it felt like someone kept upping the speed until I was running full sprint just trying not to fall on my face.

And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, "Darling, let me dip into it," to a young servant-maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: "Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.

For, after all, every one who wishes to gain true knowledge must climb the Hill Difficulty alone, and since there is no royal road to the summit, I must zigzag it in my own way. I slip back many times, I fall, I stand still, I run against the edge of hidden obstacles, I lose my temper and find it again and keep it better. I trudge on, I gain a little, I feel encouraged, I get more eager and climb higher and begin to see the widening horizon. Every struggle is a victory. One more effort and I reach the luminous cloud, the blue depths of the sky, the uplands of my desire.

These young-marrying, contemporaries or juniors of the Beat Generation, have often expressed themselves as follows: "My highest aim in life is to achieve a normal healthy marriage and raise healthy [non-neurotic] children." On the face of it, this remark is preposterous. What was always taken as a usual and advantageous life-condition for work in the world and the service of God, is now regarded as an heroic goal to be striven for. Yet we see that it is a hard goal to achieve against the modern obstacles. Also it is a real goal, with objective problems that a man can work at personally, and take responsibility for, and make decisions about—unlike the interpersonal relations of the corporation, or the routine of the factory job for which the worker couldn't care less. But now, suppose the young man is achieving this goal: he has the wife, the small kids, the suburban home, and the labor-saving domestic devices. How is it that it is the same man who uniformly asserts that he is in a Rat Race? Either the goal does not justify itself, or indeed he is not really achieving it. Perhaps the truth is, if marriage and children are the goal, a man cannot really achieve it. It is not easy to conceive of a strong husband and father who does not justified in his work and independent in the world. Correspondingly, his wife feels justified in the small children, but does she have a man, do the children have a father, if he is running a Rat Race? Into what world do the small children grow up in such a home?

There were a few reasons I pushed you away all those years ago. Grief. The stress of running a struggling company. My fear that we would never survive long distance and all the other obstacles standing in our way. But the biggest mistake I made was believing you were better off without me because I wasn't good enough. I let my low self-esteem and insecurities stand in the way of what I wanted with you, and I'll be damned if I let you make that same mistake. In fact, I forbid it, because I refuse to spend another ten years waiting for you to come to your senses. I will always fight for what's in our best interest, even if it means fighting you in the process.

The sheepdog trial is a contest of farm and ranch dogs doing the same work they do every day at home. It's a simple test: dog runs out, gathers sheep, and fetches them to his shepherd. Dog drives the sheep through obstacles. Then dog and man sort the sheep and pen them. Any halfway decent sheepdog can do it but some are better than others

Our brains resist change, they rail against it, our amygdala will always want the safe bet. But are the obstacles truly insurmountable? Is it a brick wall? Or is it a sliding door, which, once you decide to approach it, begins to swish open? Because even though our brains prefer safety in the short run, in the long run they crave meaning, challenge, and novelty.

I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

Peter’s Laws™ The Creed of the Persistent and Passionate Mind 1. If anything can go wrong, fix it! (To hell with Murphy!) 2. When given a choice—take both! 3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes. 4. Start at the top, then work your way up. 5. Do it by the book . . . but be the author! 6. When forced to compromise, ask for more. 7. If you can’t win, change the rules. 8. If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them. 9. Perfection is not optional. 10. When faced without a challenge—make one. 11. No simply means begin one level higher. 12. Don’t walk when you can run. 13. When in doubt: THINK! 14. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing. 15. The squeaky wheel gets replaced. 16. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live. 17. The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself! 18. The ratio of something to nothing is infinite. 19. You get what you incentivize. 20. If you think it is impossible, then it is for you. 21. An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how something can’t be done. 22. The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea. 23. If it was easy, it would have been done already. 24. Without a target you’ll miss it every time. 25. Fail early, fail often, fail forward! 26. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. 27. The world’s most precious resource is the persistent and passionate human mind. 28. Bureaucracy is an obstacle to be conquered with persistence, confidence, and a bulldozer when necessary.

Everything, it said, was against the travellers, every obstacle imposed alike by man and by nature. A miraculous agreement of the times of departure and arrival, which was impossible, was absolutely necessary to his success. He might, perhaps, reckon on the arrival of trains at the designated hours, in Europe, where the distances were relatively moderate; but when he calculated upon crossing India in three days, and the United States in seven, could he rely beyond misgiving upon accomplishing his task? There were accidents to machinery, the liability of trains to run off the line, collisions, bad weather, the blocking up by snow—were not all these against Phileas Fogg? Would he not find himself, when travelling by steamer in winter, at the mercy of the winds and fogs?

Even if projects and new ventures do not work out, even if you undergo more disappointment or more suffering, at least you had the fulfilling experience of putting yourself into your life 100 percent. And you learned that no matter what kind of pain was thrown your way, you were able to endure it. Rather than running from pain, rather than spending your time asking why pain had to happen or figuring out who to blame for your pain, rather than fearing pain, you gritted your teeth and let the pain hurt--and you eventually outlasted it. Instead of adversity being the obstacle on the road to your happiness and fulfillment, instead of it causing you to detour away from your hopes, dreams, and most righteous aspirations, it was actually the thing that headed you right toward them.

Big eyes, big smile, Everything looks fine. But if you look closer you'd see The blocks she's building just to be Above those obstacles, you see But in reality she needs To stay above, above and learn To analize and watch them all The steps, the ways she need to make Everything looks very straight And at the very end she wants To go down, escape and run To fight it all and just believe That everything ok will be...

He pulled back his blankets to make a spot for Zeke. He had to yank hard to undo his sheets, which were tucked in extra tight. Jeremy had taught him how to make his bed that way. He had just finished SEAL training in California, the most brutal military training in the world. It was six months of pure misery, Jeremy said, endless days of grueling runs, freezing ocean swims, and impossible obstacle courses. The worst night for Jeremy was when they had to swim for hours in the freezing Pacific Ocean. The surf was so rough he got thrown against some rocks and cut his leg. “They finally pulled me out of the water,” Jeremy had said. “They were afraid my blood would attract the great white sharks that feed in that area.” Dex had repeated that story to Dylan and the guys, and they had almost fallen off of their chairs with happiness. Dex

Researchers have found we all have a tendency to emphasize obstacles and downplay our own luck and privilege. “I run on the beach,” Paul Piff told me by way of illustration. “Some days I feel like I’m going particularly fast, and on those very same days, when I’m coming back, I feel like, ‘Whoa, that is a heavy wind, and it’s making me go slower. I didn’t realize when I was going fast that there was wind pushing me.’ 

If one looks at it with his bare eyes then one can only see a stream of running water coming down the mountain. But, if one can verily perceive it through the eyes of wisdom then this tiny stream of water has the might of taking on any obstacles; big boulders, trees, anything that comes within its course. And why does it have the might? Because it adjusts its course when faced with any obstacles. Water just flows, naturally. It doesn’t see a challenge in the obstacles. It doesn’t say to the obstacle “You are in my way. Please move aside so that I can proceed further.” No! When faced with an obstacle, it changes its course slightly, but, never stops flowing. Its primary aim is to flow to its destination and not to get embroiled with obstacles. And all this is possible because it has been endowed with this wonderful ability to change course.

For two years I've read the scrolls and learned the language, and I know more about magick than anyone here...You ask what the greatest power is, and I know that niether the dwarf magick of Terus, nor the dragon power of Victus is superior, even though I should say that Terus is because my father's a Mender and his spells come from the Green book. Even the elf magick that is so rare that none in Darton is a master or matron of it, is still just one of the three colours and no better than any other. That's the whole point of the system, and it's stupid...None of the scrolls explain anything, and niether do you. Instead we have to run around an obstacle course, trade jewels between rings and sit here and write rubbish answers to a trick question. And to end it all we have to listen to a Wizard from Celenia and hope to hear some more spells. Well I know as many spells as anyone here, but they're as useless as whistling to me.

I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as school-boys do to bullies,—Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

But it is my belief that it is always the individual, in the long run, who will set the tone, provide the real development in a society. It is not always easy to go on valuing the individual, when everywhere individuals are so put down, denigrated, swamped by mass thinking, mass movements and, on a smaller scale, by the group. It is particularly hard for young people, faced with what seems like impervious walls of obstacles, to have belief in their ability to change things, to keep their personal and individual viewpoints intact.

Remember that there’s no jewel in the world as valuable as a chaste and honourable woman, and that women’s honour lies exclusively in their good reputations; and since your wife’s reputation couldn’t be better, as you know, why do you insist on calling this truth into question? Remember, too, my friend, that woman is an imperfect animal, and that obstacles shouldn’t be placed before her to make her stumble and fall, but rather removed to free her way of pitfalls so that she can run on unhindered to achieve the perfection she needs, that of being virtuous.

Jobs learned to reject the first judgments and the objections that spring out of them because those objections are almost always rooted in fear. When he ordered a special kind of glass for the first iPhone, the manufacturer was aghast at the aggressive deadline. “We don’t have capacity,” they said. “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. “You can do it. Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Nearly overnight, manufacturers transformed their facilities into glass-making behemoths, and within six months they’d made enough for the whole first run of the phone. This

Now,” Samite continued, “after Essel has just spent time warning you about generalities and how they often don’t apply, I’m going to use some. Because some generalities are true often enough that we have to worry about them. So here’s one: men will physically fight for status. Women, generally, are more clever. The why of it doesn’t matter: learned, innate, cultural, who cares? You see the chest-bumping, the name-calling, performing for their fellows, what they’re really doing is getting the juices flowing. That interval isn’t always long, but it’s long enough for men to trigger the battle juice. That’s the terror or excitation that leads people to fight or run. It can be useful in small doses or debilitating in large ones. Any of you have brothers, or boys you’ve fought with?” Six of the ten raised their hands. “Have you ever had a fight with them—verbal or physical—and then they leave and come back a little later, and they’re completely done fighting and you’re just fully getting into it? They look like they’ve been ambushed, because they’ve come completely off the mountain already, and you’ve just gotten to the top?” “Think of it like lovemaking,” Essel said. She was a bawdy one. “Breathe in a man’s ear and tell him to take his trousers off, and he’s ready to go before you draw your next breath. A woman’s body takes longer.” Some of the girls giggled nervously. “Men can switch on very, very fast. They also switch off from that battle readiness very, very fast. Sure, they’ll be left trembling, sometimes puking from it, but it’s on and then it’s off. Women don’t do that. We peak slower. Now, maybe there are exceptions, maybe. But as fighters, we tend to think that everyone reacts the way we do, because our own experience is all we have. In this case, it’s not true for us. Men will be ready to fight, then finished, within heartbeats. This is good and bad. “A man, deeply surprised, will have only his first instinctive response be as controlled and crisp as it is when he trains. Then that torrent of emotion is on him. We spend thousands of hours training that first instinctive response, and further, we train to control the torrent of emotion so that it raises us to a heightened level of awareness without making us stupid.” “So the positive, for us Archers: surprise me, and my first reaction will be the same as my male counterpart’s. I can still, of course, get terrified, or locked into a loop of indecision. But if I’m not, my second, third, and tenth moves will also be controlled. My hands will not shake. I will be able to make precision movements that a man cannot. But I won’t have the heightened strength or sensations until perhaps a minute later—often too late. “Where a man needs to train to control that rush, we need to train to make it closer. If we have to climb a mountain more slowly to get to the same height to get all the positives, we need to start climbing sooner. That is, when I go into a situation that I know may be hazardous, I need to prepare myself. I need to start climbing. The men may joke to break the tension. Let them. I don’t join in. Maybe they think I’m humorless because I don’t. Fine. That’s a trade I’m willing to make.” Teia and the rest of the girls walked away from training that day somewhat dazed, definitely overwhelmed. What Teia realized was that the women were deeply appealing because they were honest and powerful. And those two things were wed inextricably together. They said, I am the best in the world at what I do, and I cannot do everything. Those two statements, held together, gave them the security to face any challenge. If her own strengths couldn’t surmount an obstacle, her team’s strengths could—and she was unembarrassed about asking for help where she needed it because she knew that what she brought to the team would be equally valuable in some other situation.

What do you see?” my professor asked as he projected a picture of a small black dot in the middle of a very big white screen. I was sitting in Psychology 101 during my years at Sydney University. We all responded immediately: “A black dot.” I was excited, thinking, If all of the questions are as easy as this one, this course is going to be easy! The prof looked out over the class and paused for several seconds before he asked again, “What do you see?” Thinking he must not have heard us properly the first time, we repeated even more loudly: “A black dot!” Again he paused . . . and then asked the same question a third time. Now he had my attention. And when still, on the third try, none of us provided the correct answer, he explained — and gave me a lesson I will never forget. “You were all so focused on the little black dot in the center of the screen that none of you noticed the dominant image on the screen: the large white space covering the screen top to bottom, left to right.” I couldn’t believe I had missed it. Suddenly it was obvious. There was far more white space than black dot. Whatever I chose to focus on had my attention. There is always much more white space than there is space covered by little black dots — we simply need to recognize and focus on it. In class, that idea seemed like an easy notion — easier than it has proven to be in life. Because the harsh reality is that the black dots of our lives — the trials, challenges, disappointments, obstacles, and hurdles we face as we run — will naturally draw and consume our attention. Our enemy would love to get us to focus on those black dots and convince us they define and shape our lives and determine our destiny. But in the divine relay, we are to fix our eyes on Jesus. He is the “white space” of God’s power at work in the universe, and the trials we face are but a tiny speck, a black dot, in comparison. As we learn to focus on the vastness of God’s eternal, amazing work on this planet, those black dots will cease to blemish our lives.

The teachings tell us that obstacles occur at the outer level and at the inner level. In this context, the outer level is the sense that something or somebody has harmed us, interfering with the harmony and peace we thought was ours. Some rascal has ruined it all. This particular sense of obstacle occurs in relationships and in many other situations; we feel disappointed, harmed, confused, and attacked in a variety of ways. People have felt this way from the beginning of time. As for the inner level of obstacle, perhaps nothing ever really attacks us except our own confusion. Perhaps there is no solid obstacle except our own need to protect ourselves from being touched. Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive. It just keeps returning with new names, forms, and manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression—Taoism—drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight.

the challenges of our day-to-day existence are sustained reminders that our life of faith simply must have its center somewhere other than in our ability to hold it together in our minds. Life is a pounding surf that wears away our rock-solid certainty. The surf always wins. Slowly but surely. Eventually. It may be best to ride the waves rather than resist them. What are your one or two biggest obstacles to staying Christian? What are those roadblocks you keep running into? What are those issues that won’t go away and make you wonder why you keep on believing at all? These are questions I asked on a survey I gave on my blog in the summer of 2013. Nothing fancy. I just asked some questions and waited to see what would happen. In the days to come, I was overwhelmed with comments and e-mails from readers, many anonymous, with bracingly honest answers often expressed through the tears of relentless and unnerving personal suffering. I didn’t do a statistical analysis (who has the time, plus I don’t know how), but the responses fell into five categories.         1.        The Bible portrays God as violent, reactive, vengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral, mean, and petty.         2.        The Bible and science collide on too many things to think that the Bible has anything to say to us today about the big questions of life.         3.        In the face of injustice and heinous suffering in the world, God seems disinterested or perhaps unable to do anything about it.         4.        In our ever-shrinking world, it is very difficult to hold on to any notion that Christianity is the only path to God.         5.        Christians treat each other so badly and in such harmful ways that it calls into question the validity of Christianity—or even whether God exists. These five categories struck me as exactly right—at least, they match up with my experience. And I’d bet good money they resonate with a lot of us. All five categories have one big thing in common: “Faith in God no longer makes sense to me.” Understanding, correct thinking, knowing what you believe—these were once true of their faith, but no longer are. Because life happened. A faith that promises to provide firm answers and relieve our doubt is a faith that will not hold up to the challenges and tragedies of life. Only deep trust can hold up.

Hey, Noah, I see you’re getting back into shape. There is a race north of Atlanta that I just heard about. Look it up. I don’t know if you can do it, but if you can, I’d love to do it with you,” he said. I told him I would check it out and call him back. I looked it up online and found out it was a Warrior Dash 5K. People dress up to run the course full of easy obstacles and a lot of mud. It looked really fun. It was even a Scottish event, and the Galloways are Scottish. I called Jerry back immediately. I was all in on this! “This is awesome. Let’s do it! And if we do it, let’s grow full beards and wear kilts. I’ll find the kilts.” To date, this was the only time Jerry’s wife let him grow a beard. We spent three months growing our beards and then showed up at this race in our kilts along with twenty thousand other people.

Jesus said in Revelation 2, “I have one thing against you, you have left your first love.” The scripture doesn’t say you’ve lost love, the passage says you’ve left your first love. That means you can go get it. You haven’t lost your passion. You just left it. Go get it. You haven’t lost the love for your family; you’ve just left it--now go get it. You haven’t lost that dream; it’s still there in you. You just left it. You have to go get it. Stir up what God put on the inside. Fan the flame. Don’t be just barely alive. God wants you to be really alive. You may have had some setbacks, but this is a new day. Dreams are coming back to life. Your vision is being renewed. Your passion is being restored. Hearts are beating again. Get ready for God’s goodness. Get ready for God’s favor. You can live a life of victory. You can overcome every obstacle. You can accomplish your dreams. You can set new levels for your family. Not only are you able, but I also declare you will become all God created you to be. You will rise to new levels. You will live a blessed, successful, rewarding life. My encouragement is: Don’t settle where you are. You have seeds of greatness on the inside. Put these principles into action each day. Get up in the morning expecting good things, go through the day positive, focused on your vision, running your race, knowing that you are well able. Winning is in your DNA. The most high God breathed His life into you. You’ve got what it takes. This is your time. This is your moment. Shake off doubts, shake off fear and insecurity, and get ready for favor, get ready for increase, get ready for the fullness of your destiny. You can, you will!

The cabin; by the stern windows; Ahab sitting alone, and gazing out. I leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where'er I sail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass. Yonder, by the ever-brimming goblet's rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun— slow dived from noon—goes down; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but darkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. 'Tis iron—that I know—not gold. 'Tis split, too—that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight! Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred me, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not me; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne'er enjoy. Gifted with the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most subtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good night—good night! (waving his hand, he moves from the window.) 'Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least; but my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the match itself must needs be wasting! What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do! They think me mad— Starbuck does; but I'm demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered; and—Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my dismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That's more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye cricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I will not say as schoolboys do to bullies—Take some one of your own size; don't pommel me! No, ye've knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab's compliments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye swerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way! CHAPTER

overcome. Seth Godin calls these inevitable obstacles The Dip. In his brilliant little book of the same name, he describes the intricacies of knowing when to quit and when to stick—and why it’s so important to learn how to do this effectively. Seth gives a pertinent example of the entrepreneur-wannabe: Do you know an entrepreneur-wannabe who is on his sixth or twelfth new project? He jumps from one to another, and every time he hits an obstacle, he switches to a new, easier, better opportunity. And while he’s a seeker, he’s never going to get anywhere. He never gets anywhere because he’s always switching lines, never able to really run for it. While starting up is thrilling, it’s not until you get through the Dip that your efforts pay off. Countless entrepreneurs have perfected the starting part, but give up long before they finish paying their dues. The sad news is that when you start over, you get very little credit for how long you stood in line with your last great venture.[31] Quitting isn’t always bad, but it needs to be done for the right reasons, and never for the wrong ones. It’s never black and white, but it always comes back to passion. Read The Dip. It will help.

Standing, balanced precariously on the narrow top of a drainpipe, you had to give a good leap up to grab hold of the narrow ledge, and then swing your whole body up and over. It took some guts, and a cool head for heights. Get it wrong and the fall was a long one, onto concrete. In an attempt to make it harder, the school security officers had put barbed wire all around the lip of the roof to ensure such climbs were “impossible.” (This was probably installed after Ran Fiennes’s escapades onto the dome all those years earlier.) But in actual fact the barbed wire served to help me as a climber. It gave me something else to hold on to. Once on the roof, then came the crux of the climb. Locating the base of the lightning conductor was the easy bit, the tough bit was then committing to it. It held my weight; and it was a great sense of achievement clambering into the lead-lined small bell tower, silhouetted under the moonlight, and carving the initials BG alongside the RF of Ran Fiennes. Small moments like that gave me an identity. I wasn’t just yet another schoolboy, I was fully alive, fully me, using my skills to the max. And in those moments I realized I simply loved adventure. I guess I was discovering that what I was good at was a little off-the-wall, but at the same time recognizing a feeling in the pit of my stomach that said: Way to go, Bear, way to go. My accomplice never made it past the barbed wire, but waited patiently for me at the bottom. He said it had been a thoroughly sickening experience to watch, which in my mind made it even more fun. On the return journey, we safely crossed one college house garden and had silently traversed half of the next one. We were squatting behind a bush in the middle of this housemaster’s lawn, waiting to do the final leg across. The tutor’s light was on, with him burning the midnight oil marking papers probably, when he decided it was time to let his dog out for a pee. The dog smelled us instantly, went bananas, and the tutor started running toward the commotion. Decision time. “Run,” I whispered, and we broke cover together and legged it toward the far side of the garden. Unfortunately, the tutor in question also happened to be the school cross-country instructor, so he was no slouch. He gave chase at once, sprinting after us across the fifty-meter dash. A ten-foot wall was the final obstacle and both of us, powered by adrenaline, leapt up it in one bound. The tutor was a runner but not a climber, and we narrowly avoided his grip and sprinted off into the night. Up a final drainpipe, back into my open bedroom window, and it was mission accomplished. I couldn’t stop smiling all through the next day.

The President of the United States had just been murdered -- and he, Virgil Edward Hoffman, had seen the men who did it.  There was always a chance that someone else could have seen them, too, but even in the distress of the moment, Ed somehow doubted it.               All he knew for certain was that he had to make sure the two men didn't get away with their unspeakable deed.  They had to be caught and made to pay, he thought, as the image of the mortally wounded President flashed before his mind's eye and made him shudder.  It was all Ed could do to keep from running across the busy freeway toward where he had last seen the two men.  But logic told him that it was too far, and there were too many obstacles in the way.  He knew he would never make it.               As the limousine roared on past with its tragic cargo, Ed's eyes darted back to the area behind the wooden fence -- just in time to witness the final act unfolding in the deadly tableau 150 yards away.               "The train man was still standing there.  I could see him very plainly.  I watched him take the gun apart.  I don't know how he did it because I don't know anything about guns, but he dismantled it and put it inside the brown suitcase.  Then he started running, too.  He ran off to the north, into the railroad yards.  I managed to keep him in sight until he ran behind a train.  He ran right around the caboose and disappeared, and after that I couldn't see him anymore.

Responsibility;...the importance of habits,...- a willingness to fail, a willingness to begin again - that are essential to resilience...the single most important habit to build if you want to e resilient: the habit of taking responsibility for your life...The more responsibility people take, the more resilient they are likely to be. The less responsibility people take - for their actions, for their lives, for their happiness - the more likely it is that life will crush them. At the root of resilience is the willingness to take responsibility for results...Life is unfair. You are not responsible for everything that happens to you. You are responsible for how you react to everything that happens to you...The first word out of the mouth of the complainer is always "they"...as soon as we say "I am responsible for...", we take control of something...acceptance of responsibility is a powerful cure for pain. Even when seemingly powerless, the resilient person finds a way to grab hold of something - no matter how small at first - to be responsible for...If you take responsibility for anything in your life, know that you'll feel fear. That fear will manifest itself in many ways: fear of embarrassment, fear of failure, fear of hurt...Every worthy challenge will inspire some fear...Fear is a cor emotion. A life without fear is an unhealthy life...Proper fear is part of the package of responsible, adult living...Focus not on wiping out your anxiety, but on directing your anxiety to worthy ends. Focus not on reducing your fear, but on building your courage - because, as you take more and more responsibility for your life, you'll need more and more courage...Fear is a motivator. It can propel you...Fear works. Fear can make human beings do amazing things. Fear can help you to see your world clearly in a way that you never have before. Fear become destructive when it drives us to do things that are unwise or unhelpful. Fear becomes destructive when it begins to cloud our vision. But like most emotions, fear is destructive only when it runs wild. Embrace the fear that comes from accepting responsibility, and use it to propel yourself to become the person you choose to be...Excellence is difficult. An excuse is seductive. It promises to end hardship, failure, and embarrassment. Excellence requires pain. An excuse promises that you'll be pain-free...Excuses protect you, but they exact a heavy cost. You can't live a full life while you wear them...People who think you weak will offer you an excuse. People who respect you will offer you a challenge...All of these injuries have a hard truth in common. In the long term, the obstacle that stands between us and healing is often not the injury we have received, but ourselves: our decision to keep the injury alive and open long after it should have become a hard-won scar. It is not things which trouble us, but the judgments we bring to bear upon things...In truth, it's not the trauma that's most harmful. The harm comes when we make trauma an excuse to avoid the activities, the relationships, and the purpose that are its only lasting cure.

With the introduction of radio, we now had a superfast. convenient, and wireless way of communicating over long distances. Historically, the lack of a fast and reliable communication system was one of the great obstacles to the march of history. (In 490 BCE, after the Battle of Marathon between the Greeks and the Persians, a poor runner was ordered to spread the news of the Greek victory as fast as he could. Bravely, he ran 26 miles to Athens after previously running 147 miles to Sparta, and then, according to legend, dropped dead of sheer exhaustion. His heroism, in the age before telecommunication, is now celebrated in the modern marathon.) Today, we take for granted that we can send messages and information effortlessly across the globe, utilizing the fact that energy can be transformed in many ways. For example, when speaking on a cell phone, the energy of the sound of your voice converts to mechanical energy in a vibrating diaphragm. The diaphragm is attached to a magnet that relies on the interchangeability of electricity and magnetism to create an electrical impulse, the kind that can be transported and read by a computer. This electrical impulse is then translated into electromagnetic waves that are picked up by a nearby microwave tower. There, the message is amplified and sent across the globe. But Maxwell's equations not only gave us nearly instantaneous communication via radio, cell phone, and fiber-optic cables, they also opened up the entire electromagnetic spectrum, of which visible light and radio were just two members. In the 166os, Newton had shown that white light, when sent through a prism, can be broken up into the colors of the rainbow. In 1800, William Herschel had asked himself a simple question: What lies beyond the colors of the rainbow, which extend from red to violet? He took a prism, which created a rainbow in his lab, and placed a thermometer below the color red, where there was no color at all. Much to his surprise, the temperature of this blank area began to rise. In other words, there was a "color" below red that was invisible to the naked eye but contained energy. It was called infrared light. Today, we realize that there is an entire spectrum of electromagnetic radiation, most of which is invisible, and each has a distinct wavelength. The wavelength of radio and TV, for example, is longer than that of visible light. The wavelength of the colors of the rainbow, in turn, is longer than that of ultraviolet and X-rays. This also meant that the reality we see all around us is only the tiniest sliver of the complete EM spectrum, the smallest approximation of a much larger universe