Option Sad Quotes

SADNESS OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds, Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness...

When you're an addict, you can go without feeling anything except drunk or stoned or hungry. Still, when you compare this to other feelings, to sadness, anger, fear, worry, despair, and depression, well, an addiction no longer looks so bad. It looks like a very viable option.

The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you … your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option – a choice that didn’t hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon – but he couldn’t see one.

There are things we never tell anyone. We want to but we can’t. So we write them down. Or we paint them. Or we sing about them. It’s our only option. To remember. To attempt to discover the truth. Sometimes we do it to stay alive. These things, they live inside of us. They are the secrets we stash in our pockets and the weapons we carry like guns across our backs. And in the end we have to decide for ourselves when these things are worth fighting for, and when it’s time to throw in the towel. Sometimes a person has to die in order to live. Deep down, I know you know this. You just can’t seem to do anything about it. I guess it’s a sad fact of life that some of us move on and some of us inevitably stay behind. Only in this case I’m not sure which one of us is doing which. You were right about one thing though. It’s not fate. It’s a choice. And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again someday, somewhere up above all the noise. Until then, when you think of me, try and remember the good stuff. Try and remember the love.

It’s what she does, Ms. Morgan.’ Mr. Solomon’s eyes found mine, but there was a change in him somehow. ‘Running,’ he added. ‘Of course, technically, her pattern is to do something to get kicked out, but that’s not an option now, so she’s taken matters into her own hands. Do you know what I’m saying, Ms. Morgan?’ But sadly, I didn’t. ‘Sometimes people run...to see if you’ll come after them.

But it's better to have bad options than no options. And people won't save you either, ya know.

December 27, 11:00 p.m. My Dear America, I’ve never written a love letter, so forgive me if I fail now. . . . The simple thing would be to say that I love you. But, in truth, it’s so much more than that. I want you, America. I need you. I’ve held back so much from you out of fear. I’m afraid that if I show you everything at once, it will overwhelm you, and you’ll run away. I’m afraid that somewhere in the back of your heart is a love for someone else that will never die. I’m afraid that I will make a mistake again, something so huge that you retreat into that silent world of yours. No scolding from a tutor, no lashing from my father, no isolation in my youth has ever hurt me so much as you separating yourself from me. I keep thinking that it’s there, waiting to come back and strike me. So I’ve held on to all my options, fearing that the moment I wipe them away, you will be standing there with your arms closed, happy to be my friend but unable to be my equal, my queen, my wife. And for you to be my wife is all I want in the world. I love you. I was afraid to admit it for a long time, but I know it now. I would never rejoice in the loss of your father, the sadness you’ve felt since he passed, or the emptiness I’ve experienced since you left. But I’m so grateful that you had to go. I’m not sure how long it would have taken for me to figure this out if I hadn’t had to start trying to imagine a life without you. I know now, with absolute certainty, that is nothing I want. I wish I was as true an artist as you so that I could find a way to tell you what you’ve become to me. America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-warm day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion. You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that’s all it would manage to do. You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I’ve discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side. I love you, America. Yours forever, Maxon

A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, "I must be insane." What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he has to have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder - all this dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state created out of death and destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things and paints them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been to eliminate the evils of the world - no! Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers, and they haven't given us any other options outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. "You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?" I feel that the time has come to project my own inadequacies and dissatisfactions into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, let my own lack of a voice be heard.

Look, I owe you a kind of explanation. I know you probably think I’m a horrid bitch from the plant Schizophrenia, but I’m honestly not trying to mess with your head. I’m just messing with my own head and I seem to have dragged you along the ride. I think you’re nice to me and that scares the fuck out of me. Because when a guy’s a jerk or an asshole, it’s easier because you know exactly where you stand. Since trust isn’t an option, you don’t have to get all freaked out about maybe having to trust him. Right now I am thinking about ten things at the same time, and at least four of those things have to do with you. If you want to leave right now and drive home and forget my name and forget what I look like, I wouldn’t blame you in the least. But what I’m trying to say is that if you did that I would be sorry. And not just sorry in an I-apologize-I’m-so-sorry way, but sorry in a sad-that-something-that-could’ve-happened-didn’t way. That’s it. You can go now. Or we could stay for Where’s Fluffy when Toni’s set is over. I think they’re playing a surprise show here tonight.

Garion,' she said very calmly, 'the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time.' I didn't want them to, Aunt Pol.' There are those of us who aren't given that option, Garion. There are things that gave to be done and certain people who have to do them. It's as simple as that.' He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked the question that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. 'Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me?' Can you possibly think of anyone else you'd trust to deal with these matters, Garion?' He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. 'No,' he sighed, 'I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn't even consulted.' Neither was I, Garion,' she answered. 'But we didn't have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born into us.

I found posts about how to slit your wrists the "right way", so you will actually die, and that depressed me, because people actually post stuff like that, and even though I wanted to know the answer, so I could weigh my options, that info maybe shouldn't be on the internet... But really - why do some people post the correct ways to commit suicide on the internet? Do they want weird, sad people like me to go away permanently? Do they think it's a good idea for some people to off themselves? How can you tell when you are one of those people who should slash his wrists the right way with a razor blade? Is there an answer for that too? I Googled but nothing concrete came up. Just ways to complete the mission. Not justification.

He either had a great deal of faith in my ability to escape (fair enough, I do rock), or he’s full of shit – sadly, that’s the more likely option.

But, if you've decided to go out on a limb and kill one, for goodness' sake, be prepared. We all read, with dismay, the sad story of a good woman wronged in south Mississippi who took that option and made a complete mess of the entire thing. See, first she shot him. Well, she saw right off the bat that that was a mistake because then she had this enormous dead body to deal with. He was every bit as much trouble to her dead as he ever had been alive, and was getting more so all the time. So then, she made another snap decision to cut him up in pieces and dispose of him a hunk at a time. More poor planning. First, she didn't have the proper carving utensils on hand and hacking him up proved to be just a major chore, plus it made just this colossal mess on her off-white shag living room carpet. It's getting to be like the Cat in the Hat now, only Thing Two ain't showing up to help with the clean-up. She finally gets him into portable-size portions, and wouldn't you know it? Cheap trash bags. Can anything else possible go wrong for this poor woman? So, the lesson here is obvious--for want of a small chain saw, a roll of Visqueen and some genuine Hefty bags, she is in Parchman Penitentiary today instead of New Orleans, where she'd planned to go with her new boyfriend. Preparation is everything.

Your personal thoughts carry so much power. It’s important to be mindful of what you spend your time thinking about. Make sure that your thoughts aren’t defeating you or your purpose in life. Fear, doubt, and a negative attitude will continually hold you back. Your journey may be a bumpy one, but I encourage you to never give up! Giving up only does one thing: It keeps you from ever knowing what could have been. Don’t allow your uncertain attitude to be the reason why you don’t succeed. It’s a very sad thing to live your life with regrets. So therefore, giving up is NOT an option for you. Don’t even entertain those thoughts. KEEP MOVING FORWARD, no matter what!

In your emotions: exercise Joy over sadness.

In a nutshell, mindfulness is the ability to recognize what is happening in your mind right now—anger, jealousy, sadness, the pain of a stubbed toe, whatever—without getting carried away by it. According to the Buddha, we have three habitual responses to everything we experience. We want it, reject it, or we zone out. Cookies: I want. Mosquitoes: I reject. The safety instructions the flight attendants read aloud on an airplane: I zone out. Mindfulness is a fourth option, a way to view the contents of our mind with nonjudgmental remove.

We've got this idea that there are only two options in grief: you're either going to be stuck in your pain, doomed to spend the rest of your life rocking in a corner in your basement wearing sackcloth, or you're going to triumph over grief, be transformed, and come back even better than you were before. Just two options. On, off. Eternally broken or completely healed. It doesn't seem to matter that nothing else in life is like that. Somehow when it comes to grief, the entire breadth of human experience goes out the window.

When you think of your options—getting things done versus quitting jobs, rarely finishing projects, always feeling guilty and sad, and in general not believing in your own abilities—the choice is clear. You want to get things done.

During one of my biggest struggles, the ripple effect was at its worst. I felt as though the ripple was going to turn into a whirlpool – to the point where I thought I was going to drown. My head was under the water and my hands were reaching for something to hold on to. Sadly, there wasn’t anyone or anything I could take hold of. However, when I trusted the waves, they carried me to a peaceful place in my mind, to the hidden aspects of my true self where I could explore my options. I had to find comfort in what was given and make the best of it.

Better be a desperate single with many options than a sad married with no option.

When leaving becomes an option staying becomes a choice

It's sad knowing that after something happens, every option to change the past is gone.

Kusha, settling into the driver’s seat of the truck, gazes vacantly in the air. Is it safe to go now? (a) Yes (b) No: she wonders and soon finds the answer with her intuition-like alarm. It’s easy to pick the right one when the options are only two. “Yes. It’s safe.” “I love your intuition!” Taha says. “It’s unfair you don’t tell me the war hero action-figure winning numbers.” She makes a sad face. She saw how Kusha correctly guessed the High Auction’s ticket number one digit at a time. If you have a lottery-guessing sister, it’s hard not to feel excited.

I once was the guest of the week on a British radio show called Desert Island Discs. You have to choose the eight records you would take with you if marooned on a desert island. Among my choices was Mache dich mein Herze rein from Bach’s St Matthew Passion. The interviewer was unable to understand how I could choose religious music without being religious. You might as well say, how can you enjoy Wuthering Heights when you know perfectly well that Cathy and Heathcliff never really existed? But there is an additional point that I might have made, and which needs to be made whenever religion is given credit for, say, the Sistine Chapel or Raphael’s Annunciation. Even great artists have to earn a living, and they will take commissions where they are to be had. I have no reason to doubt that Raphael and Michelangelo were Christians—it was pretty much the only option in their time—but the fact is almost incidental. Its enormous wealth had made the Church the dominant patron of the arts. If history had worked out differently, and Michelangelo had been commissioned to paint a ceiling for a giant Museum of Science, mightn’t he have produced something at least as inspirational as the Sistine Chapel? How sad that we shall never hear Beethoven’s Mesozoic Symphony, or Mozart’s opera The Expanding Universe. And what a shame that we are deprived of Haydn’s Evolution Oratorio—but that does not stop us from enjoying his Creation.

They've started to say "life-limiting" instead now. "Children and young people with life-limiting conditions..." The nurse says it gently as she explains that the hospital has started to offer a counseling service for young patients whose conditions are "terminal." She falters, flushing red. "Sorry, I meant life-limiting." Would I like to sign up? I could have the counselor come to my bed, or I could go to the special counseling room for teenagers. They have a TV in there now. The options seem endless, but the term is not new to me. I have spent many days at the airport. Years. And still, I have not flown away.

My lyrics are a big pile of contradictions. They split down the middle between very sincere opinions and feelings that I have and sarcastic and hopefully humorous rebuttals towards cliché' bohemian ideals that have been exhausted for years. I mean it seems like there are only two options for songwriters - either they are sad, tragic visionaries like Morrisey or Michael Stipe or Robert Smith or there's the goofy, nutty white boy - hey let's party and forget about everything people like Van Halen or all that other heavy metal crap. I mean I like to be passionate and sincere, but I also like to have fun and act like a dork.

I decided that a movie marathon was clearly in order. I tried to narrow down the options. Anything romantic was definitely out, as was anything involving space travel, kings, or handsome princes. Preferably there should be no good-looking men whatsoever, lest they remind me of Aeron. Sadly, that eliminated practically everything.

Imagine All the Possibilities Think of all the possibilities for your life—for love, for work, for growth. Think of all the possibilities for adventure, for fun, and for service. This day, this week, this month, this year abounds with possibilities. Each task you have to do, each problem you encounter and need to solve abounds with possibilities. Your life abounds with possibilities. For a long time, we only saw some of the possibilities life held. We’d look at a situation and see the possibilities for guilt, victimization, sadness, and despair. We’d tell ourselves there was only one choice, or no choice, or that something had to be done in a particular way—the hardest and dreariest way possible. We’d neglect to envision the other options—the choices for joy, for making any event more fun, more pleasant, more enjoyable.

Finding the beetle is your life’s work and mine is having a baby. It’s our vocation, Marge. If we don’t do it, we’ll die of sadness. Giving up isn’t an option.

I’m starting to sweat. I can’t be here. I can’t do this. I’m not good at confronting things like my feelings. It’s why I choose to not have any. I’ll be happy, sad, or mad for anyone else but myself. Giving into my feelings hasn’t been an option for me since I had to raise Glitch by myself and prove how responsible and mature I was, so the state would never take him from me.

I have long believed that people need to feel supported and understood at work. I now know that this is even more important after tragedy. And sadly, it’s far less common than it should be.

I’m glad you aren’t sad about the baby because I’m not either. But I want to be clear that you have options. All the options in the world. And I’ll be here with you, no matter what. I want to come home to the sound of you and Luke laughing. I want to listen to you play the guitar while I cook dinner. I want to leave you Post-it notes for a long time. I don’t want you to feel stuck with me.

The unexamined life is surely worth living, but is the unloved life worth examining? It seems a strange question until one realizes how much of our so-called mental life is about the lives we are not living, the lives we are missing out on, the lives we could be leading but for some reason are not. What we fantasize about, what we long for, are the experiences, the things and the people that are absent. It is the absence of what we need that makes us think, that makes us cross and sad. We have to be aware of what is missing in our lives - even if this often obscures both what we already have and what is actually available - because we can survive only if our appetites more or less work for us. Indeed, we have to survive our appetites by making people cooperate with our wanting. We pressurize the world to be there for our benefit. And yet we quickly notice as children - it is, perhaps, the first thing we do notice - that our needs, like our wishes, are always potentially unmet. Because we are always shadowed by the possibility of not getting what we want, we lean, at best, to ironize our wishes - that is, to call our wants wishes: a wish is only a wish until, as we say, it comes true - and, at worst, to hate our needs. But we also learn to live somewhere between the lives we have and the lives we would like.(…) There is always what will turn out to be the life we led, and the life that accompanied it, the parallel life (or lives) that never actually happened, that we lived in our minds, the wished-for life (or lives): the risks untaken and the opportunities avoided or unprovided. We refer to them as our unloved lives because somewhere we believe that they were open to us; but for some reason - and we might spend a great deal of our lived lives trying to find and give the reason - they were not possible. And what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives. Indeed, our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live. But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are. As we know more now than ever before about the kinds of lives it is possible to live - and affluence has allowed more people than ever before to think of their lives in terms of choices and options - we are always haunted by the myth of our potential, of what we might have it in ourselves to be or do. So when we are not thinking, like the character in Randall Jarrell's poem, that "The ways we miss our lives is life", we are grieving or regretting or resenting our failure to be ourselves as we imagine we could be. We share our lives with the people we have failed to be. We discover these unloved lives most obviously in our envy of other people, and in the conscious 9and unconscious) demands we make on our children to become something that was beyond us. And, of course, in our daily frustrations. Our lives become an elegy to needs unmet and desires sacrificed, to possibilities refused, to roads not taken. The myth of our potential can make of our lives a perpetual falling-short, a continual and continuing loss, a sustained and sometimes sustaining rage; though at its best it lures us into the future, but without letting us wonder why such lures are required (we become promising through the promises made to us). The myth of potential makes mourning and complaining feel like the realest things we eve do; and makes of our frustration a secret life of grudges. Even if we set aside the inevitable questions - How would we know if we had realized our potential? If we don't have potential what do we have? - we can't imagine our lives without the unloved lives they contain. We have an abiding sense, however obscure and obscured, that the lives we do lead are informed by the lives that escape us. That our lives are defined by loss, but loss of what might have been; loss, that is, of things never experienced.

In the old days, you either had to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to tell your story. Sadly, many organizations don’t realize that they have a much better option—they can tell their story directly to an interested market.

Pope Pius X said. “If we were to lose Mary,” the pope explained, “the world would wholly decay. Virtue would disappear, especially holy purity and virginity, connubial love and fidelity. The mystical river through which God’s graces flow to us would dry up. The brightest star would disappear from heaven, and darkness would take its place.”23 Sadly, we need not look too far to see what a culture that has lost Mary looks like and why it is so essential that we bring her back into our hearts and homes.

I believe the reason why people are so sad, is because we live in a world constantly telling us that we have a million options: a millions options of shoes, soda, burgers, television shows, friends, lovers... we are all filled with empty air! Why? Because options are things that float around in the air but we don't really have them. They're not ours, and we don't really want them, anyway! A million options of lovers and most people don't even have one person to hold at night! That is how empty we all are.

It doesn't really matter what a person decides to do, or how radically a person plays with gender. What matters, I think, is how aware a person is of the options. How sad for a person to be missing out on some expression of identity, just for now knowing there are options.

Uncle Nick was very sick—so sick—and he was very sad. So he chose to end his life with a gun.” Once the trauma of the event passed, I made sure my son understood our family history and what options were available for those struggling with depression. Silence and mental illness are not a very effective combination.

The problem: If you've an antique for sale, then, sad to relate, the world isn't your oyster. It's not that easy. Even if somebody gives you the National Gallery, your options are still very, very limited. Okay, you can sell the Old Masters, set up a trust, buy your favorite brewery. But that's strictly it. You're limited by honesty on one hand and law - that hobble of sanity - on the other.

You’re unhappy and you feel like a failure. PERFECT! Use that sad/angry/disappointed energy. Channel it into what you know, deep down in your heart, you love. Spend the next six months in a state of total obsession. Get up two hours earlier than usual and write before you go to work. Come home and exercise (not optional, sorry), then write for another hour. Read or watch the kind of comedy you love before bed. Don’t waste all your time socializing. Do a little socializing on weekends, but focus. Focus! Save your money. Research part-time work you could do for your company; use your slackness as a way to sell a new position where your boss would get your best from you every hour that you’re there. Pitch it as a win-win. Or pitch working from home half the time to cure your blahs and jack up your productivity. Then overproduce at work, but fit all of your work into a part-time schedule, and fill your prime working hours with writing/comedy. Almost any capable human with a not-that-taxing job can pull this off if they put their mind to it. If you’re a manager, investigate other roles or sell your boss on the fact that you’re managing via e-mail most of the time anyway.

Finally, a villager named Moonpie moved to town and wants to start a new restaurant. Unfortunately, the mayor felt that we had a lot of options for food already, so he did not assign builders to the new restaurant right away. This made the new villager sad, but Moonpie was determined to hang in there. It was only a matter of time until the builders were free and can build the new restaurant. 

Still, as everyone I know who has been through tragedy acknowledges with sadness, there are friends who don't come through as you might hope. A common experience is having friends who decide it's their job o inform grieving pals what they should be doing - and worse, what they should be feeling. A woman I met chose to go to work the day after her husband died because she could not bear to be at home. To this day, she still feels the disapproval of colleagues who said to her, "I'd think yo'd be too upset to be here today." You would think, but you just don't know.

Sadly, it seems as though society encourages this type of behavior in which men pursue women, then back off when commitment appears imminent. It’s the classic playboy model and sowing-wild-oats excuse and such behavior leaves the emotional wreckage of confused and hurt women in its wake. It is perceived as a male prerogative—love them and leave them and don’t suffer any consequences. You may try to rationalize his behavior—perhaps he was engulfed by his mother, his father was emotionally unavailable, he was never breast-fed. The bottom line, however, is that he can’t commit and you’ve got a problem.

SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne[ss of be]ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[tic]ated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety sadness . . .    INTERPERSONAL SADNESSES: Sadness of being sad in front of one’s parent; Sa[dn]ess of false love; Sadness of love [sic]; Friendship sadness; Sadness of a bad conversation; Sadness of the could-have-been; Secret sadness . . . 

There is no other way to put it: Our country is now faced with the problem of a lawless White House which addresses itself to every new dilemma or check on its power with the belief that following the rules is optional, and that breaking them comes at minimal, if not zero, cost. Sadly, though wrong-headed, this belief has been continually reinforced by the many institutions that have opted not to prove to the president, through their legitimate powers of oversight, that he is, in fact, not above the law; and specifically by an Attorney General and White House counsel who think of themselves as defense attorneys representing the personal interest of the president, rather than as public officials who represent the interest of the presidency and serve the public.

Jane, I don’t care what capacity you let me have in your life. I just want to be there. And if that means I have to keep my distance, I’ll do that.” I sighed. If ever there was a time for me to lay all my cards on the table, this was it. Naked, wounded, and vulnerable. “So, here’s my basic problem with us, the reason I can’t seem to relax into a relationship with you, the reason I find problems where none exist and I push you away. I—I can’t figure out why you’re with me!” I exclaimed, clapping my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant for that part to come out. I had meant to say, “You lie and hide things from me.” Gabriel pried my fingers away from my lips. My hands trembled as stuff I’d been feeling for months tumbled from my tongue. “I know that makes me neurotic and sad, but I can’t figure out why you want to be with me. Every other woman in your life is exotic and beautiful and has all this history. And I’m just some drunk girl you followed home from a bar, some pathetic human you felt your usual need to protect, and you got stuck with a lifetime tie to her because she was dumb enough to get shot. I can’t stand the idea that you feel obligated to me. I know I’m insecure and pushy and spastic, desperately inappropriate at times and just plain odd at others. And I can’t help but wonder why you would want that when there are obviously so many other options. I can’t help but feel that I’m keeping you from someone better.” I let out a loud, long breath. It felt as if some tremendous weight on my chest had wiggled loose and then dropped away. No more running. No more floating along and waiting. My cards were on the table. If Gabriel and I couldn’t have a future after this, it wasn’t because I held back from him. Now I could only hope it didn’t blow up in my face in some horrible way. I wasn’t sure my face could handle much more. Gabriel sighed and cupped my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. “I didn’t follow you that night because I wanted to protect you. I followed you that night because you were one of the most interesting people I’d met in decades. You had this light about you, this sweetness, this biting humor. After I’d only known you for an hour, you made me laugh harder than I had since before I was turned. You made me feel normal, at peace, for the first time in years. And I didn’t want to lose that yet. Even if it was just watching over you from a mile away, I didn’t want to leave your presence. I followed you because I didn’t want to let you go. Even then, I saw you were one of the most extraordinary, fascinating, maddening people I would ever know. Even then, I think I knew that I would love you. If you don’t love me, that’s one thing. But if you do, just stop arguing with me about it. It’s annoying. ” “Fair enough,” I conceded. “Why the hell couldn’t you have told me this a year ago?” “I’ve wanted to. You weren’t ready to hear it.

Why are you doing this? I don’t want you. Is that the problem? Is your ego so big you can’t handle a woman rejecting you?” “Oh, you want me alright, my sexy little witch. Want me so bad it scares you. Well, I’ve got news for you. It scares the fuck out of me, too. But I don’t care. When the options are settling down with you for life and popping out little demonlings or watching you walk away, I know what I choose.” For a moment, she couldn’t answer, could only gape at him as his words penetrated. Surely, she misunderstood. “What did you say?” “I want you as my mate.” No misunderstanding that time. She tamped down her elation by slapping it with the cold, hard truth. “You’ll hurt me.” “Trust me.” He asked too much. “I’m not the right woman.” “You’re all I want.” She shook her head lest his words weave a spell around her and make her believe. Yet despite all the warnings in her head, hope blossomed and love warmed her. How nice it would be to allow herself to love him. To trust him. Sadness entered his expression at her rejection. “I know it’s hard for you, little witch, but I promise you’ve nothing to fear. Unless the thought of too many orgasms in a row freaks you out.” And that quickly, he changed from pensive male to the one she’d grown to love with the mischievous smile. He lunged. She squealed like a little girl and ran. Not far though. With his ridiculously long stride, he quickly caught her and tossed her over his shoulder. He laughed as she beat at his broad back with her fists. “Save some of that energy for the bedroom because you are not leaving until you admit you care for me.” “I’ll kill you first.” “I like a girl who’s kinky.” “You’re impossible.” “No, but I am horny.” “How are we supposed to catch those souls if we’re fooling around here?” “Some things are more important.” “How can having sex with me be more important than ensuring you don’t burst into flame tomorrow?” “I would let someone beat me with a cat-o-nine too, if you’d just admit you like me.” “I hate you.” “Close. I see we’ll need to work on that.” -Ysabel & Remy

The secret—to being you, to being Happy?” “Just keep on smiling. Even when you’re sad. Keep on smiling.” Not the most profound advice, admittedly. But Happy is wise, for only a fool or a philosopher would make sweeping generalizations about the nature of happiness. I am no philosopher, so here goes: Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way that we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude. To venture any further, though, is to enter treacherous waters. A slippery seal, happiness is. On the road, I encountered bushels of inconsistencies. The Swiss are uptight and happy. The Thais are laid-back and happy. Icelanders find joy in their binge drinking, Moldovans only misery. Maybe an Indian mind can digest these contradictions, but mine can’t. Exasperated, I call one of the leading happiness researchers, John Helliwell. Perhaps he has some answers. “It’s simple,” he says. “There’s more than one path to happiness.” Of course. How could I have missed it? Tolstoy turned on his head. All miserable countries are alike; happy ones are happy in their own ways. It’s worth considering carbon. We wouldn’t be here without it. Carbon is the basis of all life, happy and otherwise. Carbon is also a chameleon atom. Assemble it one way—in tight, interlocking rows—and you have a diamond. Assemble it another way—a disorganized jumble—and you have a handful of soot. The arranging makes all the difference. Places are the same. It’s not the elements that matter so much as how they’re arranged and in which proportions. Arrange them one way, and you have Switzerland. Arrange them another way, and you have Moldova. Getting the balance right is important. Qatar has too much money and not enough culture. It has no way of absorbing all that cash. And then there is Iceland: a country that has no right to be happy yet is. Iceland gets the balance right. A small country but a cosmopolitan one. Dark and light. Efficient and laid-back. American gumption married to European social responsibility. A perfect, happy arrangement. The glue that holds the entire enterprise together is culture. It makes all the difference. I have some nagging doubts about my journey. I didn’t make it everywhere. Yet my doubts extend beyond matters of itinerary. I wonder if happiness is really the highest good, as Aristotle believed. Maybe Guru-ji, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, is right. Maybe love is more important than happiness. Certainly, there are times when happiness seems beside the point. Ask a single, working mother if she is happy, and she’s likely to reply, “You’re not asking the right question.” Yes, we want to be happy but for the right reasons, and,

Life is not the easy option; it never has been. But we were granted it, and all that we are granted, we must rejoice in. There is so much sweetness in life that we cannot taste unless we also sample the bitter, so much more joy we can contain if we are hollowed out by loss and sadness first. Life is a double-edged sword itself. Two sides to every life… and in order to nibble at the happiness of love, we must also sip from the cup of sorrow.

Manmohan Singh’s lost opportunity The anti-corruption agitations of 2011 provided a wonderful opportunity for the prime minister and his government to start the process of purging the system of corruption and retrieving black money illegally stashed away in foreign banks. The government had two options to get our money back. The first, to behave like a responsible, honourable and strong nation and demonstrate political will to fight corruption using the ample machinery available through international and bilateral legal instruments, the Tax Information Exchange Treaties (TIEAs), Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) automatic exchange route. The Swiss have volunteered cooperation; and India can follow the example of the US and UK, and get India’s stolen money back to the country. Or, the government can take the other option and behave like a banana republic and a failed state, plunder capital from their own country through a UPA-sponsored version of imperialism, perpetuate poverty and backwardness by denying the people of this country their rightful development dividend while repeatedly rewarding and incentivizing the looters with amnesty schemes. Mr Singh’s government has continuously concealed information on black money by fooling the people of our country, shielding the corrupt and guilty who have illegal bank accounts in foreign banks, and by creating obstacles for any progress in the matter instead of taking proactive measures to obtain the information from the foreign governments concerned. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could have chosen the former option and gone down in history as a great patriot and leader of our country, a pioneer against corruption. But sadly, he has lost the opportunity and chosen such, that history will remember him as having presided over the greatest frauds practised on this poor and gullible nation.

Mere rest was no longer enough, and I didn’t think I could face the couch again anyway. So I did the only thing I could, the last pitiful choice left to me in this world of pain and dwindling options. I left the lobby and stood outside beside what had once been my room, standing in a miserable bovine stupor until forensics finally finished. Then I went in and put on a shirt, grabbed my few sad belongings, and used my phone to call a cab.

The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”7 As

Dave and I had a family ritual at dinner where we’d go around the table with our daughter and son and take turns stating our best and worst moments of the day. When it became just three of us, I added a third category. Now we each share something for which we are grateful. We also added a prayer before our meal. Holding hands and thanking God for the food we are about to eat helps remind us of our daily blessings. Acknowledging blessings can be a blessing in and of itself. Psychologists asked a group of people to make a weekly list of five things for which they were grateful. Another group wrote about hassles and a third listed ordinary events. Nine weeks later, the gratitude group felt significantly happier and reported fewer health problems. People who enter the workforce during an economic recession end up being more satisfied with their jobs decades later because they are acutely aware of how hard it can be to find work. Counting blessings can actually increase happiness and health by reminding us of the good things in life. Each night, no matter how sad I felt, I would find something or someone to be grateful for. I

I’m a horrible person. But so is Elisabeth, so I think it’s okay.” I bumped my shoulder with hers as I laughed even louder. It wasn’t really funny. It was sad. Terribly and tragically depressing. But, sometimes in life, your only options were to laugh or cry.

I waited too long to put my foot down and be honest with my parents. It’s something I should have done years ago, but fear kept holding me back. It turns out, though, that facing that fear wasn’t nearly as painful as living with it for so damned long. It was always there, weighing me down, hurting me from the inside, and draining my energy. Facing my fear was a hundred times less painful than that. I mean, yes, I’m sad that things didn’t turn out differently. It feels like someone died and there’s this big hole in my heart, but I know, with time, I’ll be okay. I will heal. I will find my way through this because there is no other option. It’s my life. I refuse to waste it.

Despite the ubiquity of government-organized trans pageants in the Philippines, trans people themselves are not politically recognized. We are culturally visible but legally erased. To this day, trans Filipinas have M gender markers on their documents and cannot change their names in court. We don't have robust antidiscrimination protections. No amount of pageant glory can make up for the fact that our government still doesn't see and treat trans people as full citizens able to participate in society as we truly are. In a country of over 100 million people, only a few dozen certified endocrinologists offer gender-affirming care. Growing up, I relied on other trans people to find hormones, figuring out the right dosages through hearsay, transitioning entirely without proper medical supervision. There was no other choice back then - and for many today, DIY is still the only option. My community is littered with stories of injections gone horribly wrong. Even worse, when someone dies from an overdose or an unsupervised medical treatment, it's shrugged off as a sad fact of life. 'That's what happens,' the emergency techs will say, our lives stripped of value by the very institutions that ought to care for us. I will never forget when one of my Garcia clan sisters succumbed to death from a botched medical procedure, a victim of all the intersecting forces trans Filipinas have to navigate to get treatment.

Sadness How it affects you: When we’re sad, we see the glass as half empty. Emotional funks make us overestimate the chances of something bad happening to us. We set lower expectations for ourselves and are more likely to pick the option that gives us something now instead of tomorrow. But feeling down in the dumps can also make us more likely to take the time to carefully think through

What isn't seen at all, anywhere: contraception a female can use. I didn't even notice this until my own cousin Savannah pointed it out when she and her family were visiting, bringing the news from another foreign land (Oregon). Apparently, there, even if she's underage, and even if she's unmarried, a female can just get birth control. Here, if you're not married before you're eighteen, you need to be brave enough to tell your parents you want pills or whatever, and they have to be brave enough to tell your doctor. But, hey, the dudes can protect themselves. With options, Savannah had said, pointing to the wide choice of condoms, purple foil, gold, red cellophane, ribbed, glow-in-the-dark, even.

So what else did you find?” she asked and he smiled sadly, looking back to the book. “Well, once I gave up on examining this page, I decided to go back to the spell King has been using for their sacrifices.” He flipped through the pages then paused on one with the image of the four Elemental triangles surrounded by symbols which were impossible to read. “The answer to undoing King’s power is here.” Orion pointed to a piece of text at the bottom of the page which had always been undecipherable regardless of the spyglass. “But…” He sighed. “It requires a sacrifice to read it.” “No one’s giving blood,” I said immediately. That thing could take a piece of someone’s soul if we gave it the chance, and I was not risking that with anyone in this room. “No, it’s not blood it wants,” Orion said, but his eyes were still dark. “It’s the pain of a woman suffering under the power of the four Elements. I used a couple of dark spells to reveal that much, but I couldn’t go any further.” “That’s horrifically specific,” Leon muttered. “I’ll do it,” Elise said simply, getting to her feet. “No,” I snapped the same time as Leon and Dante did. “It’s not an option,” Elise snarled. “I’ll do anything to defeat King, and I’ve faced far worse pain in my life. This will be a small sacrifice to make.” She looked me in the eyes, willing me to back down, but how could I? I couldn’t cast my power against her. I wouldn’t.

The options appear to be especially narrow for males who carry a profound sadness—and accompanying rage—in a culture that teaches boys that “it is better to be mad than to be sad.” Sometimes this leads to horrific choices.

The drive to the airport felt eternal. Jane turned the backseat radio to a rock station and worked hard at being more angry than sad. Angry was proactive. “Schmuck,” she kept muttering. It was at herself. Yes, Martin was a schmuck, too. The sheer certainty of that felt invigorating. But really, after all those boyfriends, you’d think she’d have learned that all men are schmucks. It didn’t help her humiliation much that she’d had no illusions about Martin. She knew that he’d just been a fling, motivated by her desperation to feel like a genuine woman amid the pageantry. But then she went and let herself get played. Stupid girl. She’d even convinced herself that Mr. Nobley might have been actually fond of her. “Dream on,” the radio crooned. “It doesn’t matter how it ended,” she muttered to herself, and realized that it was true. Real or not, Martin had showed her that contented spinsterhood was not an option. And real or not, Mr. Nobley had helped her say no to Mr. Darcy. She leaned her head against the window, watched the countryside go whirling by, and forced herself to smile. Pembrook Park had done its job--it allowed her to live through her romantic purgatory. She believed now in earnest that fantasy is not practice for what is real--fantasy is the opiate of women. And she’d buried her fantasy behind her in the English countryside. Her life now would be open to real possibilities. There was no Mr. Darcy, there was no perfect man. But there might be someone. And she’d be ready.

The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies. And knowing this, knowing that the Dream persists by warring with the known world, I was sad for the host.

From inside the Contuzzi apartment I heard the phone ring. Once, twice, three times. “Bolitar?” It stopped after six rings. “We know you’re still in London. Where are you?” I hung up and looked at Mario’s door. The ringing phone—ringing like a phone used to, not like some ringtone on a cell—had sounded very much like a landline. Hmm. I put my hand on the door. Thick and sturdy. I pressed my ear against the cool surface, hit Mario’s cell phone number, watched the LCD display on my mobile. It took a moment or two before the connection went through. When I heard the faint chime of Mario’s cell phone through the door—the landline had been loud; this was not—dread flooded my chest. True, it may be nothing, but most people nowadays do not travel even the shortest of distances, including bathroom visits, without the ubiquitous cell phone clipped or carried upon their person. You can bemoan this fact, but the chances that a guy working in television news would leave his cell phone behind while heading to his office seemed remote. “Mario?” I shouted. I started pounding on the door. “Mario?” I didn’t expect him to answer, of course. I pressed my ear against the door again, listening for I’m not sure what—a groan maybe. A grunt. Calling out. Something. No sound. I wondered about my options. Not many. I reared back, lifted my heel, and kicked the door. It didn’t budge. “Steel-enforced, mate. You’ll never kick it down.” I turned toward the voice. The man wore a black leather vest without any sort of shirt underneath, and sadly, he didn’t have the build to pull it off. His physique, on too clear a display, managed to be both scrawny and soft. He had a cattle-ring piercing in his nose. He was balding but the little hair he had left was done up in what might be called a comb-over Mohawk. I placed his age at early fifties. It looked like he had gone out to a gay bar in 1979 and had just gotten home. “Do you know the Contuzzis?” I asked. The man smiled. I expected another dental nightmare, but while the rest of him might be in various stages of decay, his teeth were gleaming. “Ah,” he said. “You’re an American.” “Yes.” “Friends with Mario, are we?” No reason to go into a long answer here: “Yes.” “Well, what can I tell you, mate? Normally they’re a quiet couple, but you know what they say—when the wife’s away, the mouse will play.

I shouldn’t have been allowed to come see you at all, but that was another thing Kash arranged.” Taking my hand, he pulled me close and looked at me for a long moment before speaking again. “Rachel, he’s giving you the choice to go with me.” My brow furrowed, and I shook my head in confusion. “I don’t—like Kash and me go with you?” When Trent shook his head slowly, I grasped what he was saying . . . and my chest tore open. “Just me,” I stated. It was no longer a question. Some small part of me hated that Kash was still questioning my feelings. My mind kept screaming, He just said last night he wouldn’t let me go for anything! But, if I was being honest with myself, I knew that wasn’t what this was . . . he was making sure I knew what I wanted . . . and giving me the option to have that. I loved him. I loved how selfless he was. “Trent, I will never forget you, and I will never forget everything you did for me. I owe you everything. I know how you feel for me; to be honest, I’ve had an idea since before I got out of that house. And I’m so sorry if I ever led you to believe anything different, but I love Kash. I’ll always love Kash.” Trent cleared his throat, and looked away quickly when his dark eyes filled with pain. “I hate that after finally knowing you’re safe from those men, you’re going to be leaving me. But I’ve only ever viewed you as a friend, and protector. I’m sorry.” “I know. I knew even when I kissed you that your heart belonged to him. I’ve never loved anyone until I met you, Rachel, and I don’t think I’ll ever get over you.” “You’ll find someone, I know you will. You have so much to give to someone, and whoever she ends up being, she will be incredibly lucky to have you.” He watched me for a few seconds with a sad smile as he cupped one side of my face. “I’ll never forget you.” More tears fell down my cheeks as I admitted, “I’ll never forget you either, Trent Cruz.” With a kiss to my forehead, he released me and took a few steps back and looked over at the dark SUV. A few seconds later, it started up and pulled into the driveway, and soon Kash and Mason were joining us. Turning

Happiness is an option, while sadness is not.

Life is so difficult with all the options we’ve got. It’s normal to be sad and wonder what things would be like if you did this or did that instead. I think everyone thinks of this at some point in their lives and I think it helps steer people to a more positive future.

What makes voting so hard .It is not the task itself but is the option you are given to choose from. When comes elections In Africa we are choosing between who is a better thief, criminal , not too much corrupt, senior citizen, rather than choosing on who is a better leader. We are choosing on who is less greedy rather than who has more integrity. It is all about who lies better rather than who can provide what they promised.. To them it is what they can personally benefit if they win rather than what the country can benefit if they win. That is why their win is always our loss. Its sad that we must place our fate and future in the hands of criminals, because good man want nothing to do with politics.

Finally, a villager named Moonpie moved to town and wants to start a new restaurant. Unfortunately, the mayor felt that we had a lot of options for food already, so he did not assign builders to the new restaurant right away. This made the new villager sad, but Moonpie was determined to hang in there. It was only a matter of time until the builders were free and can build the new restaurant.

Although there is nothing wrong with feeling sad or remembering the past, if you want to move on, a better option is to avoid revisiting the past wherever possible.

Alice Heath, a student of Richard’s at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of his current teaching assistants, experienced this maxim very clearly when she started working with state child welfare agencies, whose mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect. The children and families they work with face very tough circumstances. Unfortunately, there is often no policy choice that a child welfare agency’s leadership can make that is likely to completely prevent abuse or neglect. “Completely preventing abuse or neglect would likely require draconian measures that would not be good for anyone. The best an agency can do is make the choice that has a higher probability of a better outcome relative to the other choices. Even with the best decisions there will still, sadly, be a high chance that some children suffer abuse and neglect. I have seen state legislators and commentators fail to understand this idea over and over, reading every tragic incident as a decision-making failure rather than the result of a set of choices where the best option is not a good option. As a result, state child welfare directors too often have very short terms and agencies lack stable leadership, which only makes things worse for the children and families who need help.

And if her other options are the kind of parents who don’t believe in mental illness, or the kind who would cling and monitor her every move, then Luca is glad she has the clueless-but-well-intentioned kind. It gives her a freedom, a space, where she doesn’t have to pretend to be the good, sweet girl who just gets a little sad every once in a while.

But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option-a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon-but he couldn't see one.

But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through his quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option - a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon - but he couldn't see one." Nico, Blood of Olympus

But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through his quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option - a choice that didn't hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon - but he couldn't see one. (Nico)

No matter what life sends our way, keep going. We will falter. We will make mistakes. We will feel weak, sad, on the verge of giving up etc. It’s okay to feel all that and more. We’re human. But giving up is never an option. The Almighty will never test us beyond what we can bear.

The wind god Favonius had warned him in Croatia: If you let your anger rule you...your fate will be even sadder than mine. But how could his fate be anything but sad? Even if he lived through this quest, he would have to leave both camps forever. That was the only way he would find peace. He wished there was another option—a choice that didn’t hurt like the waters of the Phlegethon—but he couldn’t see one.

Nanny always taught us it was important to have multiple ways to make money. It's a sad rabbit that only got one hole - meaning, that rabbit is easily trapped. What happens if the hole closes up or is filled in? What happens if the hunter comes and you've only got one move to make? Essentially, she meant "don't pull all your eggs in one basket." Always have options and utilize all your talents to make your money.

Years earlier, I’d noticed that when I got sad or anxious, often the second derivative of those feelings made them doubly upsetting. When I felt down, I also felt down that I was down. When I felt anxious, I felt anxious that I was anxious. “Part of every misery,” C. S. Lewis wrote, is “misery’s shadow…the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer.

time. Up in the air, above the situation, he asks if it is really the end of the world if he doesn’t get the job. The answer is ‘No, it isn’t’ and although it is very disappointing, he can deal with the disappointment and consequences because he is an adult Human and not a Chimp or child. He also knows logically that he may still be able to do something about the situation and must not allow the Chimp to think catastrophically. Step 5: He now goes into Human mode and asks himself, ‘What can I do about the situation?’ He answers: ‘I can choose the emotions I want and I can choose to act like an adult. Being emotional isn’t going to help anything, least of all me. I can’t think of anything practical to do at this point in time – this I must accept. I can choose to accept the situation rather than keep on saying “what if” or “this shouldn’t have happened” or even worse, “life should be fair”.’ Step 6: Eddie decides to put his Human in charge and decides to actively change his emotional approach to the situation. On a practical point he considers his options to either wait in the hope that another bus appears or to go home and phone the interview organiser. Step 7: Despite his disappointment he might manage a smile and be thankful that the sun will still rise tomorrow. He remains focused on the solution and not the problem. Of course, you may want to react differently or deal with the situation differently if you were in his position. It is just an example of how it might go. Clearly there are endless possibilities. The main point is that he has decided to act as a Human and not as a Chimp and to choose positive emotions despite the setback. Choice despite seriousness The scenario above was not so serious but what happens if a real crisis occurs? Imagine a young man who has had an accident on a motorbike and has been left paralysed from the waist down. Sadly this is not an uncommon event. How does he deal with this type of crisis? This time when he gets up into the helicopter and tries to gain perspective the answer is not so good. His whole life has just changed and not for the better. It would be totally unreasonable for anyone to say to him get a perspective and smile. He will need to go through a grieving process. All of us respond differently to the same situation, so there are no rights or wrongs when responding to a severe crisis. It is about understanding your response and making choices about how you want to manage it. The simple steps described are helpful for minor crises and immediate and transient stress but they need modifying

She seemed sad and wise beyond her years. All the giddy experimentation with sex, recreational drugs, and revolutionary politics that was still approaching its zenith in countercultural America was ancient, unhappy history to her. Actually, her mother was still in the midst of it—her main boyfriend at the time was a Black Panther on the run from the law—but Caryn, at sixteen, was over it. She was living in West Los Angeles with her mother and little sister, in modest circumstances, going to a public high school. She collected ceramic pigs and loved Laura Nyro, the rapturous singer-songwriter. She was deeply interested in literature and art, but couldn’t be bothered with bullshit like school exams. Unlike me, she wasn’t hedging her bets, wasn’t keeping up her grades to keep her college options open. She was the smartest person I knew—worldly, funny, unspeakably beautiful. She didn’t seem to have any plans. So I picked her up and took her with me, very much on my headstrong terms. I overheard, early on, a remark by one of her old Free School friends. They still considered themselves the hippest, most wised-up kids in L.A., and the question was what had become of their foxy, foulmouthed comrade Caryn Davidson. She had run off, it was reported, “with some surfer.” To them, this was a fate so unlikely and inane, there was nothing else to say. Caryn did have one motive that was her own for agreeing to come to Maui. Her father was reportedly there. Sam had been an aerospace engineer before LSD came into his life. He had left his job and family and, with no explanation beyond his own spiritual search, stopped calling or writing. But the word on the coconut wireless was that he was dividing his time between a Zen Buddhist monastery on the north coast of Maui and a state mental hospital nearby. I was not above mentioning the possibility that Caryn might find him if we moved to the island.

A coin has been flipped and it need not land on one side—life or death. There is another option, a world of sadness and joy, a world of loss and hope, a world that shares the good with the evil, the war with the peace, a place where hope flowers grow in the north and gods share the adoration in the south, where the sun rises and falls and the moons and stars paint pictures in the night sky. This is the world I was born into, but it doesn’t exist without us, and it doesn’t come for free. There is always a cost.

As Peyton got to his feet, he thought it was a sad commentary on your life when an interruption requiring you to justify an unjustifiable action was a step up from your other option—which happened to be a lively discussion about unrequited love with the object of your unreciprocated affections.

Nat Ezray, who led Dave’s funeral, told me to “lean in to the suck”—to expect it to be awful. Not exactly what I meant when I said “lean in,” but for me it was good advice. Years earlier, I’d noticed that when I got sad or anxious, often the second derivative of those feelings made them doubly upsetting. When I felt down, I also felt down that I was down. When I felt anxious, I felt anxious that I was anxious. “Part of every misery,” C. S. Lewis wrote, is “misery’s shadow…the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that

Delilah discretely checked her watch, wondering how long she needed to stay in order to politely tap out and call it a night. At least another half hour. No, make that twenty minutes. She wouldn’t survive another half hour. She was so focused on appearing focused on Jeff, that she felt the harsh shove at her hip before she saw anything. Jostled to the side, she looked up, startled, already having figured out that someone had slid into the booth next to her, mercilessly bumping her out of the way. She could not have been more surprised to see Brandon or the sweet smile that spread across his face at the sight of her. Blinking a few times, she rapidly took in the scene, once again regretting that she hadn’t finished that second forget spell on him. She also saw that Jeff was just mortified by the intrusion. At least it shut him up for a moment. Before she could think of anything to say, Brandon gave her a sad pitying look and odd words started tumbling from his lips. “Lilah, baby, come home.” “Huh?” What the hell was he talking about? Jeff’s spine got straighter, if that was possible. He huffed and crossed his arms. Brandon gazed deeply into her eyes and kept talking. “We miss you.” We? “Delilah,” Jeff’s tone demanded attention and both she and Brandon turned to face the other man. “Do you know this . . . gentleman?” Clearly ‘gentleman’ was not what he thought Brandon was. Delilah thought maybe ‘insane asylum inmate’ was a better option. What did Brandon mean, ‘we’? She took a sip of her drink to cover for her confusion. Brandon put his right hand out across the table as though to introduce himself, his left arm snaked possessively around Delilah’s shoulders, but she was too confused to react. “I’m Brandon Stewart. Delilah’s husband.” Immediately she choked. Husband? Her wide eyes swung to his face, only to find that he looked perfectly serious. He gave her a sad smile as Jeff voiced her concerns. “Husband?” Brandon didn’t take his eyes off hers. Even as she sat there choking on her drink. Not that he volunteered to hit her on the back or ask if she was going to survive. He just looked sad. “Baby, have you been dating again? You know the doctors think that’s a bad idea.” Then, he turned his sympathetic face to Jeff, “She isn’t well.” That was it! Her anger poured out in her voice, which she barely managed to keep from screeching above the noise level and broadcasting to the entire bar. “Brandon!” Jeff looked taken aback. “You know him? Are you married?” “No!” She shook her head violently. What was Brandon doing? He made his next play before she could form words. “She’s not only married, we have a family.” He shifted his weight, pressing intimately along her from shoulder to thigh, as he fished in his pants pocket for his wallet. He drew out the leaning and fishing a little longer than necessary. Especially considering she was boiling mad. She was married? To him? He deftly plucked a studio portrait of two small children, clearly his own. Delilah had to hand it to him, the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed cuties could easily have been hers. One boy and one girl smiled at the camera, sweet and perfect for all the world, heads pressed together. Brandon made sure she saw the photo before he handed it over to Jeff. “That’s our Tiger and Muffin there. Well,” He smiled like he was all chagrined, “Tyler and Madison.” Then he turned to her, still sweet and sad. “You can’t do this again, baby. Come home.” She simmered, but didn’t speak.

When I filed my stories on the ‘Children of the Tsunami’ I had thought there was no special eloquence needed to convey such visceral sadness and loss. Children dead in their thousands in one of the worst natural disasters the country had experienced—this was a story that told itself. But that night, after the telecast, I got a call from a friend who said, ‘Do we really have to watch this depressing stuff on television right now?’—as if life’s grim reality was an optional item on a movie menu in a hotel room and you could pick out only the cheery stuff to view. In several of my reports I actually began editorializing more than ever before, appealing directly to those vacationing in happier, sunnier spots to pause and at least think about these children. The callousness of the well-heeled was eye-opening. To be reminded that for a section of Indian society the deaths of the children of poor fisherfolk mattered not at all was both disconcerting and disturbing.

grief. I started to learn that no matter how sad I felt, another break would eventually come. It helped me regain a sense of control. I

NOT EVERYTHING JESUS TAUGHT must be regarded as a commandment. Take, for example, his encounter with a wealthy young man who wanted to know what he needed to do in order to obtain eternal life. Referring to the ten basic laws given to Moses, Jesus told him not to murder, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to give false testimony, to honor his father and mother, and to love his neighbor as himself. The young man replied that he had been following those rules throughout his life, but then asked a second question, “What do I still lack?” Jesus responded, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me” (Matthew 19:16-20). This was more than his questioner could bear. He went away sad, unable to embrace so radical an invitation. It would be interesting to know what choices the young man made later in life. Perhaps he eventually became as poor as Saint Francis of Assisi. What is clear, however, is that the invitation Jesus gave him that day was not a commandment. It was what theologians sometimes have called a “counsel of perfection”—a teaching one may embrace but which is not a precondition for salvation for every Christian. In fact there are many saints included in the calendar of the church who had possessions and at least a few who were wealthy. Similarly, celibacy has always been a respected option for Christians—Jesus was unmarried—but it has always been seen as an option suitable only for a small minority of Christ’s followers. One cannot say that about love of enemies. It’s not in the “if you would be perfect” category. It’s basic Christianity. Jesus teaches it through direct instruction, through parables, and by the example given with his own life. Love of enemies is not our default setting. It’s a hard teaching, as hard for me as it is for anyone. Our natural inclination is to hate those who have done us harm or seem prepared to do so.

The oldest and cheapest oral form is a combination of the amino acid supplement N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and vitamin C, which gives your body the ingredients to build glutathione on its own. This process is limited and inefficient, but it’s the most affordable option. The second form of glutathione supplement to hit the market is called liposomal glutathione, where the glutathione is wrapped in a layer of fat that helps escort the antioxidant into your tissues. Sadly, liposomes are normally absorbed only in the top few inches of your GI (gastrointestinal) tract, so you have to hold it in your mouth for a while, and once you swallow it, it doesn’t absorb well.

The healing message Sevens need to hear and believe is God will take care of you. I know, easier said than done. It will take courage, determination, honesty, the help of a counselor or a spiritual director, and understanding friends to help Sevens confront painful memories and to encourage them to stay with afflictive feelings as they arise in the present moment. If Sevens cooperate with the process, they’ll grow a deep heart and become a truly integrated person. Ten Paths to Transformation for Sevens Practice restraint and moderation. Get off the treadmill that tells you more is always better. You suffer from “monkey mind.” Develop a daily practice of meditation to free yourself from your tendency to jump from one idea, topic or project to the next. Develop and practice the spiritual discipline of solitude on a regular basis. Unflinchingly reflect on the past and make a list of the people who have hurt you or whom you have hurt; then forgive them and yourself. Make amends where necessary. Give yourself a pat on the back whenever you allow yourself to feel negative emotions like anxiety, sadness, frustration, envy or disappointment without letting yourself run away to escape them. It’s a sign you’re starting to grow up! Bring yourself back to the present moment whenever you begin fantasizing about the future or making too many plans for it. Exercise daily to burn off excess energy. You don’t like being told you have potential because it means you’ll feel pressure to buckle down and commit to cultivating a specific talent, which will inevitably limit your options. But you do have potential, so what career or life path would you like to commit yourself to for the long haul? Take concrete steps to make good on the gifts God has given you. Get a journal and record your answers to questions like “What does my life mean? What memories or feelings am I running from? Where’s the depth I yearn to have that will complement my intelligence?” Don’t abandon this exercise until it’s finished. Make a commitment that when a friend or partner is hurting, you will try to simply be present for them while they are in pain without trying to artificially cheer them up.

What are the options then? Immerse yourself in a regular job of work which will give you the illusion of solidity and safety through activity, so that you are prevented from ever having to address the real issues of your life...In this sense activity is the soul's worst enemy and should be avoided.

Rule number one was “Respect our feelings.” We discussed how the sadness might come over them at awkward times, like during school, and that when it did, they could take a break from whatever they were doing. Their cry breaks were frequent and their teachers kindly arranged for them to go outside with a friend or to the guidance counselor so they could let their feelings out. I gave this advice to my kids but also had to take it myself. Leaning in to the suck meant admitting that I could not control when the sadness would come over me. I needed cry breaks too. I took them on the side of the road in my car…at work…at board meetings. Sometimes I went to the women’s room to sob and sometimes I just cried at my desk. When I stopped fighting those moments, they passed more quickly.

When we arrived in the United States, the Jewish community in Boston assigned us to a well-meaning suburban family to help us in the acculturation process. Our relationship with them played out in accordance with a scenario followed by tens of thousands of pairings of Jewish families around the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. They were nice. They wanted to celebrate Shabbat with us and help us find our way to a synagogue. They wanted to facilitate my belated bat mitzvah and my brother's bar mitzvah, this one in a timely manner, God willing. All my parents wanted was the option, finally, of not being Jewish. I wanted something marginally more complicated: unlimited access to Yiddish musical schlock.

They Are Always Busy At the end of the day, it is all about priorities, and as their spouse, you should be their first, no exceptions! If they have started treating you like a second option or taking you for granted, it is a sign they have lost interest in you. They Don’t Talk Much If communication has become non-existent between the two of you, it means they couldn’t care less about your feelings, emotions, or thoughts. If they cared, they would have always figured out something to talk about. They Keep Blaming You Constantly blaming you or torturing you with name-calling is a sign that they are deliberating trying to distance you from themselves. A classic sign of disinterest! They Keep Pointing Out Your Flaws If they were always praising you for little things a while ago and have now become downright nasty and determined at pointing out your flaws to you, it means they no longer find you or your personality interesting. They Have Changed You But sadly, for the worst. You no longer smile like you used to, feel agitated most of the time, are confused, and lost in your thoughts. They Don’t Include You in Anything They make decisions without you, are not bothered about sharing their plans, will disregard any of the plans you make and so on. They are trying to subtly tell you that they no longer want to have anything to do with you. They Don’t Apologize Anymore They would always leave a text about being late and try to make it up to you when they returned home but no such thing happens now. They Have Excuses for Everything Apart from empty apologies, they also make excuses for everything. They won’t come with you to the party or at a family gathering, they won’t complete their part of the chores, and they will say they are tired when you try to initiate sex… another one of their excuses! They No Longer Care About Your Welfare They are less empathetic or rarely show any concern over your mood, your state of mind or your physical exhaustion. They Forget Things Be it birthdays, a plan made a week ago, or an invitation to a wedding you have stopped bragging about all week. They tend to forget or overlook the things that matter the most to you which also shows that their ability to listen attentively has also decreased. They Treat Others Better They will have the humblest of smiles for their friends and even show interest in what a stranger has to say to them, say a man at the grocery store, but act groggy and frustrated with you all the time. They Have or Are Cheating On You Cheating is a sure-tell sign that confirms their disinterest. They have fallen in love with someone else or are having an affair, which is why you no longer appeal to them as a prospective candidate for a partner.

Men, in their libidinal depths, are seeking a divinity to serve and adore. What do I mean by LIBIDINAL DEPTHS? A man’s libidinal depths is his brain and biology. But most importantly it’s his sensual imagination. Don’t bypass that, ladies, because it’s key to the ultimate purpose of your divine feminine in his life. Men don’t have a cheating problem. The problem is most women can’t reach deep enough into their libidinal depths because they themselves are not fully tapped into their own divine feminine or their sensuality. This is my most honest advice to any woman who wants to reach a man deep enough for him to consider her a ‘divinity’ he wants to serve and adore: start by shifting your mindset from ‘conscious’ dating to ‘sensual’ dating. (No, I didn’t say ‘sexual’ dating. Read that again, please). Conscious dating is when you’re in your head space a lot more than you’re in your heart space and body. You can’t genuinely tap into his libidinal depths if you’re more in your head space. Conscious dating is usually for hypergamous women. It’s a ‘conscious’ hunt for bigger and better options. Sadly, this kind of dating is deficient of substance and generally soul depleting. It’s like dating someone who just wants to eat, have a good time, and then expect a marriage proposal. Kind’a superficial, don’t you think? I think there’s a huge need for sapiosexual women in the dating world today. I actually have an even better term for it. I’ve coined it ‘sapioSENSUAL’. The prefix sapio- comes from the Latin verb sapere, meaning “to be wise” or “to have sense.” Dating a sapioSENSUAL woman is a huge turn ON. That’s what men (like me), in their libidinal depths, want and are more than willing to commit to long-term. And ladies, this far transcends a man’s sexual urges. As I often say, you can’t just bring your body, you have to bring your mind and spirit too. This trips a lot of women who are used to ‘conscious’ dating. Dating a sapioSENSUAL is the future. It requires you to be constantly working on cultivating your sensual depth. Newsflash... DEPTH IS THE NEW WORTH. #DeepCallsUntoDeep So ladies, you have to come into the deep if you’re really serious about catching a BIG fish.

Under the pink wash of dawn, an unexpected foot of snow suffocates the landscape. The sight of so much transcendent white causes me to stare for minutes on end, mesmerized. More than mesmerized. In absolute awe. I've experienced this one other time: freshman year of high school, a ten-day trip to Italy with my school.... It was the first and only time I've seen Michelangelo's -La Pietà-. It took a moment to realize what it was, but then it clicked. This was Mary holding the body of her son. I had seen a thousand images of Jesus on the trip, but this sculpture grabbed my heart and squeezed so hard I stopped breathing. At that age, I cared little for art and had no connection with Jesus, but in that moment, I was so transfixed by this sculpture -- -how could it be so smooth?- --that I began to weep. Right there. Tears fell, and I thought I was having some kind of religious experience. But it wasn't that. It was the combination of profound beauty and sadness at such an exquisite level that it left me no option other than to cry. I hadn't experienced anything like that again. Until now. This snowfall. The beauty enveloping the sadness. With the tears welling in my eyes, I think once again about death. The rainbow in the cornfield. It's all so gorgeous, and it's all so tragic. The extremes of human emotion and how ironic that thoughts of dying fill me with such life. I'm still staring transfixed at the world outside when my father's voice resonates behind me. 'What a fuckhole of a mess out there.' And the beauty is gone. The sadness, however, remains. [Rose Yates]

Another issue I often see with Bees (and Crickets for that matter) is the fear of disposing of items incorrectly. Again, this comes from perfectionism. I have had more clients than I can count obsess over the best place to recycle old electronics or torn and soiled used clothing. Everything from empty boxes to fabric scraps can be a huge stumbling block when they focus on the “right” and “perfect” way to dispose of something. Sometimes, the garbage really is the best option. It’s sad and wasteful, but holding onto garbage because you are afraid to put it in a landfill isn’t a long-term option.

It follows from this that it is those who fail to promote religious freedom for all people with the same vigor with which they promote freedom of expression, democratic elections, and the rights of women, and those who invent reasons to demote religion to a lower and optional category of rights and freedoms, who are guilty of special pleading. Such persons often defend human rights of every other kind, but find special, ad hoc reasons for removing religion from normal democratic protections, or depriving religious persons and communities of rights and freedoms to which they have every claim. This kind of special pleading, sadly, is an equal-opportunity myopia, afflicting conservatives and liberals, Muslims and Christians, Hindus and Buddhists, atheists and the indifferent alike.

Light or dark, happy or sad, black or white, right or wrong there are only two strong options, the opposites and others are weak.

Sadly, as he was currently doing fifty along the M8, the air guitar wasn’t an option.

There was on existence where Nora had kept up the fiction writing she had occasionally toyed with at university and was now a published author. Her novel The Shape of Regret received rave reviews and was shortlisted for a major literary award. In that life she had lunch in a disappointingly banal Soho members' club with two affable, easy-going producers from Magic Lantern Productions, who wanted to option it for film. She ended up choking on a piece of flatbread and knocking her red wine over one of the producer's trousers and messing up the whole meeting. In one life she had a teenage son called Henry, who she never met properly because he kept slamming doors in her face. In one life she was a concert pianist, currently on tour in Scandinavia, playing night after night to besotted crowds (and fading into the Midnight Library during one disastrous rendition of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 2 at the Finlandia Hall in Helsinki). In one life she only ate toast. In one life she went to Oxford and became a lecturer in Philosophy at St. Catherine's College and lived by herself in a fine Georgian townhouse in a genteel row, amid an environment of respectable calm. In another life Nora was a sea of emotion. She felt everything deeply and directly. Every joy and every sorrow. A single moment could contain both intense pleasure and intense pain, as if both were dependent on each other, like a pendulum in motion. A simple walk outside and she could feel a heavy sadness simply because the sun had slipped behind a cloud. Yet, conversely, meeting a dog who was clearly grateful for her attention caused her to feel so exultant that she felt she could melt into the pavement with sheer bliss. In that life she had a book of Emily Dickinson poems beside her bed and she had a playlist called 'Extreme States of Euphoria' and another one called 'The Glue to Fix Me When I Am Broken.