Optional Friend Quotes

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.

After losing my job, I felt the only options available to me were razors, cyanide, or a shot to the face, until Renaldo, being the good friend that he is, reminded me how to tie a noose.


...in real life I always seem to have a hard time winding up a conversation or asking somebody to leave, and sometimes the moment becomes so delicate and fraught with social complexity that I'll get overwhelmed trying to sort out all the different possible ways of saying it and all the different implications of each option and will just sort of blank out and do it totally straight -- 'I want to terminate the conversation and not have you be in my apartment anymore' -- which evidently makes me look either as if I'm very rude and abrupt or as if I'm semi-autistic and have no sense of how to wind up a conversation gracefully...I've actually lost friends this way.

Are we friends, or just a couple of people without better options?

The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you. Consider this: Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone has a right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere. With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights. "A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses." The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate - for the good and the bad. Note: Be not mistaken. This is applicable to family as well as friends. Yes...do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they will always be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human first and though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else and will fit somewhere in the criteria above. "In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us. In Adversity We Know Our friends." "Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them." "If you are going to achieve excellence in big things,you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.."..

I, Gavin MacKenzie, sexy cowboy man of Baker City, Oregon … being of sound mind and hot body … do hereby declare that I love you, Andie Marks, lawyer extraordinaire, and want to be married to you until I’m so old, I either die or my pecker falls off.I will have sex with you whenever you want, and I will always give you the option to be on top if that’s what will make you happy. Blowjobs will always be optional but appreciated.I will change diapers when called for, both for our children and for you when you’re old and decrepit. I will never spit in public or burp too loudly or say mean things about your friends.I promise never to raise my hand against you in anger or tell you that you’re useless or threaten to hurt people who you love. Ten-four, over and out, happily ever after. Those are my vows.

Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all.

We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood.” “That’s romantic?” I had to smile. “Romantic with a capital ‘R.’ You know, like Byron and Coleridge.” He gave a mock shudder. “Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit.” I snorted. “I didn’t have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover.” “Get out.” “Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous.” “That girl is . . .” “My best friend,” I filled in sternly. “I was only going to say she’s unique.

Only a fool or 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.

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

Letting go is the one last option I have and I am too stubborn to take it

There comes some special times that you got to keep "impossibility thinkers" behind you and walk with those are prepared to go forward with you because that is the only option to keep you going!

Where's your car? Miles asks, glancing at him as he slams his door shut and slings his backpack over his shoulder. "And whats up with your hand?" "I got rid of it," Damen says, gaze fixed on mine. Then glancing at Miles and seeing his expression he adds, "The car, not the hand." "Did you trade it in?" I ask, but only because Miles is listening. [...] He shakes his head and walks me to the gate, smiling as he says, "No, I just dropped off on the side of the road, key in the ignition, engine running." "Excuse me?!" Miles yelps. "You mean to tell me that you left your shiny, black, BMW M6 Coupe—by the side of the road?" Damen nods. But thats a hundred-thousand-dollar car!" Miles gasps as his face turns bright red. "A hundreds and ten." Damen laughs. "Don't forget, it was fully customized and loaded with options." Miles stares at him, eyes practically bugging out of his head, unable to comprehend how anyone could do such a thing—why anyone would do such a thing. "Um, okay, so let me get this straight—you just woke up and decided—Hey, what the hell? I think I'll just dump my ridiculously expensive luxury car by the side of the road—WHERE JUST ANYONE CAN TAKE IT?" Damen shrugs. "Pretty much." "Because in case you haven't noticed," Miles says, practically hyperventilating now. "Some of us are a little car deprived. Some of us were born with parents so cruel and unusual they're forced to rely on the kindness of friends for the rest of their lives!" "Sorry." Damen shrugs. "Guess I hadn't thought about that. Though if it makes you feel any better, it was all for a very good cause.

It is a bit of a cliché to characterize life as a rambling journey on which we can alter our course at any given time--by the slightest turn of the wheel, the wisdom goes, we influence the chain of events and thus recast our destiny with new cohorts, circumstances, and discoveries. But for the most of us, life is nothing like that. Instead, we have a few brief periods when we are offered a handful of discrete options. Do I take this job or that job? In Chicago or New York? Do I join this circle of friends or that one, and with whom do I go home at the end of the night? And does one make time for children now? Or later? Or later still? In that sense, life is less like a journey than it is a game of honeymoon bridge. In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions--we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second. And before we know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made shape our lives for decades to come.

Falling apart wasn't an option.

Never feel bad about cutting someone out of your life—sometimes that's the only option. When you hang out with people who are true friends, you come away feeling lighter, more inspired to work hard, give love, and take care of yourself.

Okay. Well, firstly, Marcel is not my mortal enemy—he is my friend, albeit one who is unaware that I'm trying to sabotage his hold over the supernatural community of the French Quarter, but a friend nonetheless. And secondly, I daggered Elijah in order to gain Marcel's trust. If I had known he would place my brother in the hands of a particularly nasty teenaged witch, I certainly would have weighed my options a bit differently. And thirdly, sister, please.

Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbor into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment. It is not an educated intimidation with good books, good stories, and good works, but the liberation of fearful hearts so that words can find roots and bear ample fruit….The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free….not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

I couldn’t understand when friends didn’t ask me how I was. I felt invisible, as if I were standing in front of them but they couldn’t see me. When someone shows up with a cast, we immediately inquire, “What happened?” If your ankle gets shattered, people ask to hear the story. If your life gets shattered, they don’t. People

Always choose to be smart There are two types of people in the world, the seekers of riches and the wise thinkers, those who believe that the important thing is money, and those who know that knowledge is the true treasure. I, for my part, choose the second option, Though I could have everything I want I prefer to be an intelligent person, and never live in a game of vain appearances. Knowledge can take you far far beyond what you imagine, It can open doors and opportunities for you. and make you see the world with different eyes. But in this eagerness to be "wise", There is a task that is a great challenge. It is facing the fear of the unknown, and see the horrors around every corner. It's easy to be brave when you're sure, away from dangers and imminent risks, but when death threatens you close, "wisdom" is not enough to protect you. Because, even if you are smart and cunning, death sometimes comes without mercy, lurking in the darkest shadows, and there is no way to escape. That is why the Greek philosophers, They told us about the moment I died, an idea we should still take, to understand that death is a reality. Wealth can't save you of the inevitable arrival of the end, and just as a hoarder loses his treasures, we also lose what we have gained. So, if we have to choose between two things, that is between being cunning or rich, Always choose the second option because while the money disappears, wisdom helps us face dangers. Do not fear death, my friend, but embrace your intelligence, learn all you can in this life, and maybe you can beat time and death for that simple reason always choose to be smart. Maybe death is inevitable But that doesn't mean you should be afraid because intelligence and knowledge They will help you face any situation and know what to do. No matter what fate has in store, wisdom will always be your best ally, to live a life full of satisfaction, and bravely face any situation. So don't settle for what you have and always look for ways to learn more, because in the end, true wealth It is not in material goods, but in knowledge. Always choose to be smart, Well, that will be the best investment. that will lead you on the right path, and it will make you a better version of yourself.

Building resilience depends on the opportunities children have and the relationships they form with parents, caregivers, teachers, and friends. We can start by helping children develop four core beliefs: (1) they have some control over their lives; (2) they can learn from failure; (3) they matter as human beings; and (4) they have real strengths to rely on and share. These

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.

It’s traumatizing to think that a best friend could become just a friend. That’s because there is virtually no difference between an acquaintance and a friend. But the gulf between a friend and a best friend is enormous and profound. And if I look at it that way, I think I can see the value of a wedding. If you’re my best friend and the only way I get to have dinner with you is by traveling thousands of miles, selecting a chicken or fish option, and wearing a dress in the same shade of lavender as six other girls, I will do that.

Children make lousy clients. The lawyer becomes much more than a lawyer. With adults, you simply lay the pros and cons of each option on the table. You advise this way and that. You predict a little, but not much. Then you tell the adult it’s time for a decision and you leave the room for a bit. When you return, you are handed a decision and you run with it. Not so with kids. They don’t understand lawyerly advice. They want a hug and someone to make decisions. They’re scared and looking for friends.

My old school, St Stella’s, only goes to Year Ten and most of my friends now go to Pius Senior College, but my mother wouldn’t allow it because she says the girls there leave with limited options and she didn’t bring me up to have limitations placed upon me. If you know my mother, you’ll sense there’s an irony there, based on the fact that she is the Queen of the Limitation Placers in my life.

Don’t kill yourself on the fence, Clara,” the woman urged her. “If you do that, you’ll never know what happened to you.” It has always been the most powerful of answers to give to the intending suicide. Kill yourself and you’ll never find out how the plot ends. Clara did not have any vivid interest in the plot. But somehow the answer was adequate. She turned around. When she got back to her barracks, she felt more troubled than when she’d set out to look for the fence. But her Cracow friend had—by her reply—somehow cut her off from suicide as an option.

I hear myself saying these words: What this movement is about is options. I say it to friends who are frustrated, or housebound, or guilty, or child-laden, and what I'm really thinking is, If you really got it together, the option you would choose is mine.

Take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened, "writes Leovy in Ghettoside. "Signal that no one cares, and fail to solve murders. Limit their options for escape. Then see what happens.

I had wanted Melissa to take an interest in me and I was't even sure I liked her. I didn't have the option not to take her seriously, because she had published a book, which proved that lots of other people took her seriously even if I didn't. At twenty-one, I had no achievements or possessions that proved I was a serious person.

It was no way to think about her best friend’s boyfriend. But every time she saw Andy, her body reacted. My gaydar is defective, she thought grimly.

Why go with wrong, when right is an option?

If by ‘foe’ you mean a brutal killer, then I suppose I’d fall into the ‘friend’ category,” I replied cynically. “Although in your case, we may have to find a secret option number three.

Witches married outside their species all the time, especially before the Turn. There were perfectly acceptable options: adoption, artificial insemination, borrowing your best friend’s boyfriend for a night. Issues of what was morally right and wrong tended not to matter when you found yourself in love with a man you couldn’t tell you weren’t human. It sort of went with the whole hiding-among-humans-for-the-last-five-thousand-years thing.

These were the moments when I was most tested, when comfort was an option. Not when I was sleeping in the hallway, not when I had to exit my friends’ apartments forcibly at odd hours, and not even when I had to ride the subway all night long and sleep there. Instead, lying around in my friends’ apartments when I had the option to sleep was the most difficult of all these situations for me. This was because, without being forced outdoors, I somehow had to find a reason to choose school, a reason from inside myself.

Tall women are attracted to my littleness. I have a lot of tall female friends. They like how I am always looking up to them and I like having the option to jump into their pocket if I want to hide.

I think the waiters and hostess are beginning to recognize me. They must either think I'm the most popular girl in Chicago or a lesbian seriously looking for The One. Either option is far less embarrassing than the truth: 'I'm here auditioning best friends forever!

Would I like to run free through life, have friends, fall in love, feel the sun on my face? Yes. But that is no longer an option for me; there is no point in dwelling on and torturing myself over it.

Without pushing an agenda (okay, maybe I've pushed a bit), I've spread a little veganism wherever I've gone. I've become friends with chefs at the meatiest restaurants you can imagine, and shown them a few things that opened their minds (and their menus) to vegan options. It's easy to be convincing when the food is delicious. It doesn't feel like a sacrifice--it feels like a step up.

When a friend is suffering, it seems you have three options: You can sit silently with her, you can make suggestions, or you can share heartache from your own life. None of the three is as simple as it sounds. I knew someone in college who was so full of advice it was exhausting to share problems with her. You left with a small treatise of self-improvement ideas and the urge to lie down.

Dear Daniel, How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"? Lily Charlotte, NC Dear Lily, The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this. And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." You think about them all the time. Close the book but forget to turn off the light, just sit staring in bed until you blink and you're out of it, some noise on the other side of the wall reminding you you're still here. That's it, that's everything. There's no statue in the town square with an inscription with words to live by. The actor got slapped this morning by someone she loved, slapped right across the face, but there's no trace of it on any channel no matter how late you watch. How many people--really, count them up--know where you are? How many will look after you when you don't show up? The churches and train stations are creaky and the street signs, the menus, the writing on the wall, it all feels like the wrong language. Nobody, nobody knows what you're thinking of when you lean your head against the wall. Put a sweater on when you get cold. Remind yourself, this is the night, because it is. You're free to sing what you want as you walk there, the trees rustling spookily and certainly and quietly and inimitably. Whatever shoes you want, fuck it, you're comfortable. Don't trust anyone's directions. Write what you might forget on the back of your hand, and slam down the cheap stuff and never mind the bad music from the window three floors up or what the boys shouted from the car nine years ago that keeps rattling around in your head, because you're here, you are, for the warmth of someone's wrists where the sleeve stops and the glove doesn't quite begin, and the slant of the voice on the punch line of the joke and the reflection of the moon in the water on the street as you stand still for a moment and gather your courage and take a breath before stealing away through the door. Look at it there. Take a good look. It looks like rain. Love, Daniel Handler

Somewhere off to my left, a little voice chirped: The redhead is smart. We can help. In a nearby tree sat a murder of crows. (That's what you call a group of them. You learn useless facts like that in Valhalla.) "Uh, guys," I told my friends, "those crows claim they can help." Claim? squawked another crow. You don't trust us? Send your two friends back to the ship with the mead. We'll give you a hand here. All we ask for in return is something shiny. Anything will do. I related this to my friends. I looked at the crows. "Okay, guys, what's the plan?" Plan? cawed the nearest crow. We just said we'd help. We don't have a plan, per se. Stupid misleading crows. Also, what kind of bird uses the term per se? Since I didn't have time to murder the entire murder, I contemplated my limited options.

I’m not in the mood to go to a kegger tonight, but Garrett informs me that if he has to go, then I have to go, because, and I quote, “best friends suffer together or not at all.” I politely pointed out that we could always pick the “not at all” option, which earned me a dark scowl and a menacing you’re going finger-point.

I’m glad you and Chloe have become friends,” in an alarmingly hopeful way that was very clearly only one unfortunate literature assignment away from turning into come live with me and be my love, optionally etched onto metal with little hearts around it.

We're slammed at work and busy at home. Throw in an occasional outing with friends or significant others, and we're ready for bed at 10:00 PM every night. Really ready for bed. There's barely enough time in a day to cover all our mandatory obligations, so optional activities like novel writing, journaling, painting or playing music--things that feel great but no one will ever take us to task for shirking--are invariably left for another day. Which is how most of us become 'one day' novelists. As in, 'One day, I'd really like to write a novel.' The problem is that that day never seems to come, and so we're stuck.

Self-compassion isn't talked about as much as it should be, maybe because it's often confused with its troublesome cousins, self-pity and self-indulgence. Psychologist Kristin Neff describes self-compassion as offering the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to a friend. It allows us t respond to our own errors with conern and understanding rather than criticism and shame.

When you feel solitude is your only option, never be afraid to accept a gentle smile from a friend, and the warmth of another's hand in yours. Walking together is a better option, than walking alone....

The man who never listens, who doesn’t prepare, who insists on getting his way—this is a man that most of us would not (when given friendlier options) like to work with, live with, or be friends with. And yet we have, as a society, somehow convinced ourselves that we should be led by incompetent assholes.

What you want in warfare is room to maneuver. Tight corners spell death. Having enemies gives you options. You can play them off against each other, make one a friend as a way of attacking the other, on and on.

I was unmovable. I didn’t like change. I didn’t like to adapt. It was easier to decide to hate something or someone and stick with it, because the other option would be to expose myself to the unknown or open myself up to be hurt.

What you want in warfare is room to maneuver. Tight corners spell death. Having enemies gives you options. You can play them off against each other, make one a friend as a way of attacking the other, on and on. Without enemies you will not know how or where to maneuver, and you will lose a sense of your limits, of how far you can go. Early on, Julius Caesar identified Pompey as his enemy. Measuring his actions and calculating carefully, he did only those things that left him in a solid position in relation to Pompey. When war finally broke out between the two men, Caesar was at his best. But once he defeated Pompey and had no more such rivals, he lost all sense of proportion—in fact, he fancied himself a god. His defeat of Pompey was his own undoing. Your enemies force on you a sense of realism and humility.

I face death, rather than avoid it. I climb anyway. Somehow I manage to handle the comings and goings of partners and loved ones. I pay homage, but I also move on. I don't know about whatever might come with death. Little by little I understand what it is that comes before: the life we are all living through right now. I see how easy it is to die in those beautiful places. I have lost many friends to the loveliness and horror of ice and stone walls. I still cry for them, for myself. The beauty of the high places is tempered by threat and danger. I remember the struggles won and lost up there. Every situation in life has its black side. Every human being on this planet would love to make that side go away. Wishing it away, ignoring the danger and the consequences, they can make believe it no longer exists. I refuse this option.

GRANDMA RAE’S KEY INGREDIENTS for a good day: 1 cup of gratitude   1 spoonful of hope 1 ounce of laughter A dash of resilience A sprinkle of service to others 1 cup of integrity 1 cup of self-respect I good trusted friend (2 is optional) A whole lot of love for yourself 1 cupcake with a tasty whipped cream frosting with a cup of kind words to sweeten your day

Art is the conscious making of numinous phenomena. Many objects are just objects - inert, merely utilitarian. Many events are inconsequential, too banal to add anything to our experience of life. This is unfortunate, as one cannot grow except by having one’s spirit greatly stirred; and the spirit cannot be greatly stirred by spiritless things. Much of our very life is dead. For primitive man, this was not so. He made his own possessions, and shaped and decorated them with the aim of making them not merely useful, but powerful. He tried to infuse his weapons with the nature of the tiger, his cooking pots with the life of growing things; and he succeeded. Appearance, material, history, context, rarity - perhaps rarity most of all - combine to create, magically, the quality of soul. But we modern demiurges are prolific copyists; we give few things souls of their own. Locomotives, with their close resemblance to beasts, may be the great exception; but in nearly all else with which today’s poor humans are filling the world, I see a quelling of the numinous, an ashening of the fire of life. We are making an inert world; we are building a cemetery. And on the tombs, to remind us of life, we lay wreaths of poetry and bouquets of painting. You expressed this very condition, when you said that art beautifies life. No longer integral, the numinous has become optional, a luxury - one of which you, my dear friend, are fond, however unconsciously. You adorn yourself with the same instincts as the primitive who puts a frightening mask of clay and feathers on his head, and you comport yourself in an uncommonly calculated way - as do I. We thus make numinous phenomena of ourselves. No mean trick - to make oneself a rarity, in this overpopulated age.

I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn't budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he's waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he's got all day. I hear people passing on the boardwalk and imagine them staring. Best-case scenario, they think I know this guy, that we're hugging. Worst-case scenario, they saw me totter like an intoxicated walrus into this complete stranger because I was looking down for a place to park our beach stuff. Either way, he knows what happened. He knows why my cheek is plastered to his bare chest. And there is definite humiliation waiting when I get around to looking up at him. Options skim through my head like a flip book. Option One: Run away as fast as my dollar-store flip flops can take me. Thing is, tripping over them is partly responsible for my current dilemma. In fact, one of them is missing, probably caught in a crack of the boardwalk. I'm getting Cinderella didn't feel this foolish, but then again, Cinderella wasn't as clumsy as an intoxicated walrus. Option two: Pretend I've fainted. Go limp and everything. Drool, even. But I know this won't work because my eyes flutter too much to fake it, and besides, people don't blush while unconscious. Option Three: Pray for a lightning bolt. A deadly one that you feel in advance because the air gets all atingle and your skin crawls-or so the science books say. It might kill us both, but really, he should have been paying more attention to me when he saw that I wasn't paying attention at all. For a shaved second, I think my prayers are answered because I go get tingly all over; goose bumps sprout everywhere, and my pulse feels like electricity. Then I realize, it's coming from my shoulders. From his hands. Option Last: For the love of God, peel my cheek off his chest and apologize for the casual assault. Then hobble away on my one flip-flop before I faint. With my luck, the lightning would only maim me, and he would feel obligated to carry me somewhere anyway. Also, do it now. I ease away from him and peer up. The fire on my cheeks has nothing to do with the fact that it's sweaty-eight degrees in the Florida sun and everything to do with the fact that I just tripped into the most attractive guy on the planet. Fan-flipping-tastic. "Are-are you all right?" he says, incredulous. I think I can see the shape of my cheek indented on his chest. I nod. "I'm fine. I'm used to it. Sorry." I shrug off his hands when he doesn't let go. The tingling stays behind, as if he left some of himself on me. "Jeez, Emma, are you okay?" Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend's sandals suggests she's not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she's grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand. "I'm fine. Everybody's fine," I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. "You're fine, right? No broken bones or anything?" He blinks, gives a slight nod. Chloe setts her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. "I'm Chloe and this is Emma," she says. "We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.

And..it was Jack. Jack. Of the many things I'd considered doing to him, most involved violence.None of them involved lip-on-lip action. I jerked my head back,but it wasn't hard to get away,since he pulled back at the same moment. He wrinkled his nose. "Well, that was...interesting. Always wanted to try it,but now that I have,I'm pretty sure I never want to again." Furious,I smacked him in the shoulder with my free hand, hating that we still had to have one clasped so I wouldn't be lost forever. "You"-smack-"little"-smack-"freak!"-smack. "What was that?!" SMACK. He dodged another volley. "And I had been under the impression that afterward was a little less"-he winced as I connected hard-"painful." "Listen,creep,if I wanted you to kiss me,I would have asked! And I didn't. And I wouldn't! And if you ever try that again,so help me,I will find that fossegrim and throw you to a watery death!" And then-as if his awkward,terrible kiss weren't bad enough-he started laughing. "SHUT UP!" He shook his head,grinning smugly. "See? Two goals accomplished. One:try out kissing. Miserable failure, no doubt your fault,but a noble effort nonetheless.I should find your friend Carlee. She's probably better at it than you are." Why couldn't my glamour-piercing eyes have a laser function? I wouldn't kill him. I'd just burn the word "freak" into his forehead. "Aren't you going to ask me what my second goal was?" He batted his eyelashed at me. "No,I'm not." He nudged me in the ribs with his elbow. "You aren't crying anymore, are you?" I'd have to let go of his hand to throttle him. So that option was out. "Being so mad I'd like to kill you is better?

Your enemy is presenting you with new options and challenges every day. If you respond in a wholly expected way each time, you will become predictable, and a predictable enemy is much easier to defeat than one who treats his adversaries to a surprise on a regular basis.

But of course I know I am merely an aphrodisiac in their game of Domestic Bliss – I know when I leave they’ll rip each other’s clothes off, having got all revved up on an extended joint discourse about their holiday in the Philippines, particularly when they both said the same island when I asked them what their favourite bit was. I am just a reluctant audience member. But I sit and watch all these shows anyway because the alternative – losing my friends – is not an option. And when Farly and Scott weren’t doing Their Bit on me, I discovered, to my utter shock, that Scott and I got on rather well. In fact, I resented that I hadn’t realized this sooner as I would have enjoyed his company when he was round when Farly and I lived together, instead of just grunting at him. He was funny and smart. He read

Because I tried all those voice options, of course. Haven’t you?” She looked at him expectantly, as if scrolling through all the language and voice options in the GPS was a total must. “Frankly? It didn’t occur to me. I stuck with the first one.” She rolled her eyes. “There’s one in Klingon. I used to have it on when I drove my geekier friends to the yearly Star Trek conventions in Vegas. They’d translate for me.” He wasn’t sure which part of her statement was more disturbing to him: the friends that spoke Klingon, or the yearly visits to Star Trek conventions. Or that she had geekier friends. Finally he opted for one. “You have friends that speak Klingon?” She shook her head. “No. Not fluently, no. It helped a lot that from LA to Vegas is for the most part a straight line. You really don’t want to get lost in the Mojave Desert with a handful of bickering Klingons and Vulcans who can achieve global domination with a laptop but can’t figure out how to change a tire on the car.

Imagine yourself taking a stroll through Manhattan, somewhere north of 68th street, deep inside Central Park, late at night. It would be nice to meet someone friendly, but you know that the park is dangerous at night. That's when the monsters come out. There's always a strong undercurrent of drug dealings, muggings, and occasional homicides. It is not easy to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. They dress alike, and the weapons are concealed. The only difference is intent, and you can't read minds. Stay in the dark long enough and you may hear an occasional distance shriek or blunder across a body. How do you survive the night? The last thing you want to do is shout, "I'm here!" The next to last thing you want to do is reply to someone who shouts, "I'm a friend!" What you would like to do is find a policeman, or get out of the park. But you don't want to make noise or move towards a light where you might be spotted, and it is difficult to find either a policeman or your way out without making yourself known. Your safest option is to hunker down and wait for daylight, then safely walk out. There are, of course, a few obvious differences between Central Park and the universe. There is no policeman. There is no way out. And the night never ends.

There is another option—one people rarely cling to—embrace the madness. Interestingly enough, the people I know who do this best are the ones whose lives are the most chaotic of all. They’re my friends whose husbands are serving overseas. They’re the women I know who are raising special-needs children. They’re the single mamas working three jobs. I believe it’s because they learned a long time ago that there is beauty in the chaos, as well as freedom in not trying to fight against the tide.

Despite its revolutionary promises, Facebook can turn our everyday lives into that wedding we have all heard about: the one where the bride chooses her prettiest friends, not her best friends, to be bridesmaids. It can feel like a popularity contest where being Liked is what matters, being the best is the only respectable option, how our partners look is more important than how they act, the race to get married is on, and we have to be clever all the time. It can be just another place, not to be, but to seem.

If friends didn’t ask how I was doing, did that mean they didn’t care?

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[...] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem.

Time is the friend of someone who is properly positioned and the enemy of someone poorly positioned. When you are well positioned, there are many paths to victory. If you are poorly positioned, there may be only one. You can think of this a bit like playing Tetris. When you play well, you have many options for where to put the next piece. When you play poorly, you need just the right piece.

I need an audience with his furry Highness.” I can’t believe I’m saying this. “I can’t believe you’re saying this, after all the bitc—yelling you did when I called you for the Spring Meet. I distinctly remember ‘never see that arrogant asshole again’ and ‘over my dead body.’” “Spring Meet was optional.” After working with the Pack to dispatch the Red Point Stalker, I was granted the Friend of the Pack status, which apparently came with such benefits as being invited to ceremonies. Hell, if I transgressed in their territory, the shapeshifters might hesitate a couple of seconds before they shredded me into Kate sushi.

But for me, the best things happened out of unpredictability. My mind used to make my options limited that I was left with little room for new ideas or endings. I would call the unknown and I best friends now. Because the unfamiliar is my path to my next great task. I wake up with an excited feeling within my stomach about all the possibilities ahead. Here's to living without the fear of not knowing what's around the bend.

Being my friend meant not just comforting me in my grief but dealing with a level of anger that I’d never felt before and struggled to control. My anger scared me—and made me need the comfort of my friends even more.

Sometimes it's hard because I don't like to hurt people's feelings. So there have been times when a friend will get a haircut and I will see it and my initial reaction is "Oh my God, you look like a streetwalker who got caught in a wind tunnel." But I obviously can't say that because that would be an insult to streetwalkers. So I have to say, "I love it! It looks great!" But when I say it my voice goes up about three octaves. "It looks greee-aaattt!" So I'm certain they know I'm lying. How come when we lie our voices go up so many octaves? It's a dead giveaway. It happens when we dole out compliments we don't mean and it happens when we say things like "You didn't have to get my anything!" or "What do you mean you weren't invited to my party? You're always invited!" Everyone knows what those mean. "You definitely had to get me something" and "You haven't been invited back to the house since the urn incident of '04." And it's a mathematical fact: the higher the octave, the bigger the lie. "I didn't even hear my phone ring!" is usually like a four on the scale. "You think I'm sleeping with someone else?" is off the charts. I can tell when people are lying to me when they start their sentence with "I have to be honest with you." They may as well say, "Listen, I'm about to lie straight to your face." Why do people need to clarify when they're being honest? Does that mean everything else they've ever said has been a lie? Yesterday they said they liked my sweater but they didn't say they were being honest. Does that mean they hated it? It's so strange to me. It almost feels like they're giving me the option to not hear the truth. As if when they say, "I have to be honest with you," I might say, "No, no. Please. Only lies right now.

There was, of course, a whole complex range of people in the ghettoside world. Some men liked hurting people. Some didn't. Some men started out not liking it but became brutalized and sadistic. Maybe the mix would differ in other groups of Americans. Maybe some other racial or ethnic cohort would contain a higher ratio of regular guys, or a lower ratio of men susceptible to becoming violent. Maybe the gnawing fear of getting murdered-- estimated as high as one in thirty-five by a Justice Department report in the 1990s-- would influence another group of men differently. But this was hairsplitting. Take a bunch of teenage boys from the whitest, safest suburb in America and plunk them down in a place where their friends are murdered and they are constantly attacked and threatened. Signal that no one cares, and fail to solve murders. Limit their options for escape. Then see what happens.

...don’t limit your options to only people who share your interests. You might take a painting class and find that you actually love painting, and plus, you might show an artiste type that they actually love science, too. Interests overlap, and sometimes you’ll find people who you like in the unlikeliest of places. It’s never a bad idea to broaden your horizons. In the end, you may find that your best friends are people you met on a knitting website.

How else could we identify another weirdo or outlier? These symbols intimated a belief system, a way of thinking not just about music but about school and friends and politics and society. It was also a way to separate yourself, to feel bold or try on boldness without yet possessing it. A little inkling of the nonconformist person you could be—you wanted to be—but weren’t quite ready to commit to. I papered my walls with band posters and what little I could find in mainstream magazines about alternative and punk, maybe a picture of Babes in Toyland from Spin or Fugazi from Option. The iconoclast images and iconography covered my room, a jarring contrast to the preppy blue-and-white-striped wallpaper I’d insisted on in elementary school. I resented the parts of myself that were late to adopt coolness, late to learn—I wanted to have always possessed a savviness and sophistication, even though I clearly had neither.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE life lessons that I learned as a result of walking on the Moon and the preparation that took us there—the guiding principles that have helped keep me going since returning to Earth. • The sky is not the limit … there are footprints on the Moon! • Keep your mind open to possibilities. • Show me your friends, and I will show you your future. • Second comes right after first. • Write your own epitaph. • Maintain your spirit of adventure. • Failure is always an option. • Practice respect for all people. • Do what you believe is right even when others choose otherwise. • Trust your gut … and your instruments. • Laugh … a lot! • Keep a young mind-set at every age. • Help others go beyond where you have gone. I hope these lessons will be as helpful to you as they have been to me. Take it from a man who has walked on the Moon: Be careful what you dream—it just might come to pass, so be prepared. Apollo is the story of people at their best, working together for a common goal. We started with a dream, and we can do these kinds of things again. With a united effort and a great team, you too can achieve great things. I know, because I am living proof that no dream is too high!

The thought of abandoning his friend to save himself was never an option. He collapsed, pushing even closer to Raimie. Pressing his lips against his friend’s ear, he whispered, “As good a day to die as any.” He would defend them until his end.

Food isn’t just food, though. It’s comfort and memory. It’s family recipes and meals shared with friends. Food is a fulcrum of socializing and relationships, and now you don’t get to just show up to that. You have to think ahead and tell people your dietary needs and explain them again when they’re lunkheads about it or, worse, well-meaning, but very poor at understanding it. You’ll probably end up accidentally eating something that hurts you every once in a while, and going to a restaurant will sort of suck until you find places that have nice gluten-free options. It’s a big deal. It’s a disease that’s interrupted and fundamentally altered your lifestyle, impacted your relationships. It’s very valid to be upset about that.

It’s normally agreed that the question “How are you?” doesn’t put you on your oath to give a full or honest answer. So when asked these days, I tend to say something cryptic like, “A bit early to say.” (If it’s the wonderful staff at my oncology clinic who inquire, I sometimes go so far as to respond, “I seem to have cancer today.”) Nobody wants to be told about the countless minor horrors and humiliations that become facts of “life” when your body turns from being a friend to being a foe: the boring switch from chronic constipation to its sudden dramatic opposite; the equally nasty double cross of feeling acute hunger while fearing even the scent of food; the absolute misery of gut–wringing nausea on an utterly empty stomach; or the pathetic discovery that hair loss extends to the disappearance of the follicles in your nostrils, and thus to the childish and irritating phenomenon of a permanently runny nose. Sorry, but you did ask... It’s no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don’t have a body, I am a body. But it’s not really possible to adopt a stance of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” either. Like its original, this is a prescription for hypocrisy and double standards. Friends and relatives, obviously, don’t really have the option of not making kind inquiries. One way of trying to put them at their ease is to be as candid as possible and not to adopt any sort of euphemism or denial. The swiftest way of doing this is to note that the thing about Stage Four is that there is no such thing as Stage Five. Quite rightly, some take me up on it. I recently had to accept that I wasn’t going to be able to attend my niece’s wedding, in my old hometown and former university in Oxford. This depressed me for more than one reason, and an especially close friend inquired, “Is it that you’re afraid you’ll never see England again?” As it happens he was exactly right to ask, and it had been precisely that which had been bothering me, but I was unreasonably shocked by his bluntness. I’ll do the facing of hard facts, thanks. Don’t you be doing it too. And yet I had absolutely invited the question. Telling someone else, with deliberate realism, that once I’d had a few more scans and treatments I might be told by the doctors that things from now on could be mainly a matter of “management,” I again had the wind knocked out of me when she said, “Yes, I suppose a time comes when you have to consider letting go.” How true, and how crisp a summary of what I had just said myself. But again there was the unreasonable urge to have a kind of monopoly on, or a sort of veto over, what was actually sayable. Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self–centered and even solipsistic.

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.

I also hope to be your friend. I am going to need you to hold my hand through some memories, and there may be times that I’ll end up holding yours as we confront similar things that scare us. I’ve come to recognize fear when I see it. It may show itself in different ways, but it’s a familiar face, isn’t it? I have a different relationship to fear now. I’ve learned that we grow from walking through it, and a lot of people don’t even know they have that option. You either conquer it, or you let it destroy you. So, let’s do this together.

Eating was still a sore point with Smriti.She failed to understand,when interesting options like mango juice or chocolates were available,why was she forced by her stupid mother to eat boring regular meals? After much contemplation,Nikhil came up with a suggestion'Don't give her food till she herself asks for it'. His idea'starve-to know-the-worth-of -food'made sense to Abhilasha,though it took her a great deal of resolve before she could actually try it out. So on a sunday,the'lady with an iron will'took over from'the soft and kind hearted mother'.she did not give her anything to eat and waited for the golden moment,expecting a hungry Smriti to beg for food. But the much awaited moment never came.Smriti was not at all bothered about her meal and kept playing happily. The day turned into evening and still there was no trace of hunger in her. "Aren't you feeling hungry?' now a worried mother had no option but to eat the humble pie and ask the daughter. "No Maa. My friend Pinky had brought wafers and chocolates. Those were so yummy that I ate them all......" And that was the end of her'starve-to -know-the-worth-of-food-mission.

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck.

It’s not that I don’t want to, Keel. Because I do. I really do. It’s just, I can’t do it like this. You have too much already going on. You just told me you can’t choose between Nick and the Demon. I don’t want to be another option for you to choose from. And I can’t just be a distraction. I could say screw it and enjoy this moment, but we would both regret it. Nick’s my friend, and the way I want to be with you, it’s sort of in a long term way. I’m smart enough to know that if I kissed you now, it would end up being a bitter memory for both of us. I can’t share you. And I can’t lose you.

I still can’t wrap my mind around crossing that line of human behavior – civilized people punching and fighting, making violence their communication of choice. Is it because I’m a woman, I’ve never considered hitting someone who acted inappropriately? Even one of my best male friends, a gentle man, a believer in spirit and mankind, has thrown a few punches in his time. As a writer, my weapons are words. The thought of hurting someone physically to prove my point has never and will never be an option for me. Well, let me amend that: if someone hurt my child in front of me, tiger-mother’s claws would come out.

Cultivating a willingness to succeed despite any and all circumstances is the most important variable of the reengagement equation. Your willingness to succeed builds self-esteem. It broadens your concept of your own capability, yet it is the first thing we lose touch with when things go bad. After that, giving up often feels like the sanest option, and maybe it is, but know that quitting chips away at your self-worth and always requires some level of mental rehab. Even if what forces you to quit is an injury or something else beyond your control, you will still have to bounce back from the experience mentally. A successful mission seldom requires any emotional maintenance. In order to execute on your willingness to succeed, you will need to be able to perform without purpose. You’ve heard of purpose, that magical missing ingredient crucial to landing a fulfilling career and building a happy life. What if I told you the importance of finding your purpose was overblown? What if there never was any such thing as your good friend purpose? What if it doesn’t matter what the fuck you do with your time here? What if it’s all arbitrary and life doesn’t give a flying fuck if you want to be happy? What then? All I know is this: I am David Fucking Goggins. I exist; therefore, I complete what I start. I take pride in my effort and in my performance in all phases of life. Just because I am here! If I’m lost, I will find myself. As long as I’m on planet Earth, I will not half-ass it. Anywhere I lack, I will improve because I exist and I am willing.

No, let’s be fair,” I said. “Being a villain’s an option.” “You did not say that,” Fox-mask said, incredulous, “It’s not an option at all.” The girl in blue looked at Mrs. Yamada, “Ex-villain’s corrupting the kids, and you’re not stopping her?” Mrs. Yamada was frowning at me. “I’m going somewhere with this, honest,” I said. “If you’re sure,” she said. “I can stop you at any time.” “You can.” I looked at the gathered kids. A few of the less successful butterfly catchers had drifted away and approached. “I always hated the speeches when I was in school, the preaching in auditoriums, the one-note message. Stuff like saying drugs are bad. It’s wrong. Drugs are fantastic.” “Um,” Fox-mask said. Mrs. Yamada was glaring at me, but she hadn’t interrupted. “People wouldn’t do them if they weren’t. They make you feel good, make your day brighter, give you energy-” “Weaver,” Mrs. Yamada cut in. “-until they don’t,” I said. “People hear the message that drugs are bad, that they’ll ruin your life if you do them once. And then you find out that isn’t exactly true because your friends did it and turned out okay, or you wind up trying something and you’re fine. So you try them, try them again. It isn’t a mind-shattering moment of horrible when you try that first drug. Or so I hear. It’s subtle, it creeps up on you, and you never really get a good, convincing reason to stop before it ruins your life beyond comprehension. I never went down that road, but I knew a fair number of people who did. People who worked for me, when I was a supervillain.

Once, during my Catholic days, I was complaining with a Catholic friend about how terrible the teaching was in parish life. A priest listening to us said that everything we griped about was true, but we didn't have to resign ourselves and our children to this fate. 'You could go online to Amazon.com tonight and have sent to you within a week a theological library that Aquinas would have envied,' he said. 'My parents raised me in the seventies, which was the beginning of the catechesis nightmare. They knew that if they were going to raise Catholic kids, they would have to do a lot of it themselves, and they did. So do you.

My belief that addiction was an issue of social injustice stemmed from my most basic understanding of things like the lack of treatment options for those suffering from addiction, or the way we are dehumanized. Listening to a mother talk about her “junkie daughter,” or my own relative talk about her friend’s “addict grandson”—in that way we are conditioned to talk about the sickest, most vulnerable people in our orbit as problems to be fixed or liabilities to be handled or criminals to be locked up—ripped something in me. I started out with a complete and heartbreaking rage over how we treat (and don’t treat) people suffering with addiction, and only because I was one of them.

Our God is a God who has a bias for the weak, and we who worship this God, who have to reflect the character of this God, have no option but to have a like special concern for those who are pushed to the edges of society, for those who because they are different seem to be without a voice. We must speak up on their behalf, on behalf of the drug addicts and the down-and-outs, on behalf of the poor, the hungry, the marginalized ones, on behalf of those who because they are different dress differently, on behalf of those who because they have different sexual orientations from our own tend to be pushed away to the periphery. We must be where Jesus would be, this one who was vilified for being the friend of sinners.

After deliberating my options for a split second, I rolled my chair over to watch him tattoo the guy he had hunched over, working on an old pirate ship right smack on the middle of the man’s brawny shoulder. I didn’t say a word as I watched him, not wanting to distract him from the man who had been all too excited to request Slim’s work an hour before. But my friend Slim had other thoughts. His green eyes flashed up at me. “What was that about?” "Huh?" I played stupid. Slim pulled the gun off the customer’s skin, dabbing at the beaded blood before continuing with a shake of his head. "Since when are you guys BFFs?" I’d learned over the last month how chatty all the guys were, well, specifically Slim and Blake. If I answered his question just remotely weird, I’d bet my first born Slim would jump to some kind of crazy conclusion that I wanted no part of. So I went with the truth. “I heard him fart last night. It kind of broke the ice.” The little whistle he let out told me that was good enough. He snorted and raised an eyebrow before getting back to work. “That’ll do it.

Today, reading his reactions to events in the war and the immediate years after the war, my first thought is: '0 how I wish Orwell were still alive, so that I could read his comments on contemporary events.' For example, last year, our mutual friend, Geoffrey Gorer, sent out a questionnaire, asking people to identify their social class—I think he gave them about five options. Almost all his respondents, he tells me, identified themselves correctly. What would he say to that? What would he say about hippie communes, student demonstrations, drugs, trades unions? Would he still be as hopeful about the social benefits of nationalised industries? Would he still call for a higher birth-rate? What he would say, I have no idea : I am only certain that he would be worth listening to.

Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of us, whilst those placed before the rest of the company consisted simply of cheap dishes and scraps. There were, in small bottles, three different kinds of wine; not that the guest might take their choice, but that they might not have any option in their power; one kind being for himself, and for us; another sort for his lesser friends (for it seems he has degrees of friends), and the third for his own freedmen and ours. My neighbour . . . asked me if I approved the arrangement. Not at all, I told him. "Pray, then," he asked, "what is your method upon such occasions?" "Mine," I returned, "is to give all my visitors the same reception; for when I give an invitation, it is to entertain, not distinguish, my company: I place every man upon my own level whom I admit to my table." . . . He replied, "This must cost you a great deal." "Not in the least." "How can that be?" "Simply because, although my freedmen don't drink the same wine as myself, yet I drink the same as they do." And, no doubt about it, if a man is wise enough to moderate his appetite, he will not find it such a very expensive thing to share with all his visitors what he takes himself. Restrain it, keep it in, if you wish to be true economist. You will find temperance a far better way of saving than treating other people rudely can be. . . . Remember, then, nothing is more to be avoided than this modern alliance of luxury with meanness; odious enough when existing separate and distinct, but still more hateful where you meet with them together.

How are things going with young what’s-his-face?” Angela asked, in what for Angela was conciliatory fashion, which of course meant not very conciliatory at all. “You know the one. Blond. Scowly. Bad attitude, which I have some sympathy for. Sloppy dresser, which I have no sympathy for at all.” “Also a terrible driver,” Kami said. “Wild about the eyes. Daddy issues so numerous the issues may be compiled into a book called Who’s the Daddy? Both Options Are Evil.” She sighed and touched another gravestone, which was for someone cursed with the name of Edgar Featherstonehaugh. “Well, I’m pressuring him into having a relationship with me, and I don’t know how into it he is, and there are even worse problems than that, but apart from that, it’s okay.” “Anyone would be lucky to be emotionally blackmailed or physically forced into romance with you, friend,” said Angela. “What a jerk.

Swear you’ll sound the alarm if I go too far, that you’ll keep it safe, even if it’s from me.” “What—” I start, but the gym door opens, and I look over my shoulder to see Garrick waving a rolled parchment. “The Earl of Lewellen said you’d be in here. Orders aren’t optional, Riorson, even for nobility. We need to go.” “Promise me,” Xaden says, stroking his thumb under my ear and completely ignoring his best friend. “You’re leaving?” I swing my gaze back to Xaden’s, realizing that’s why the messenger had tracked him down. “Now?” He leans in, blocking out the rest of the world. “Promise me, Violet. Please.” He’ll never go too far, never lose his soul, so I nod. “I promise.” Xaden’s eyes slide shut for a heartbeat, and blatant relief shines from their depths when he opens them. “Thank you.” “I know you can hear me.” Garrick raises his voice. “Let’s go.” “I love you.” Xaden kisses me hard and fast, and it’s over before I can even process it’s actually happened. “I love you, too.” I grab his hand as he withdraws. “Tell me what the king gave you.” He takes a deep breath. “He gave me back my title and the seat in the Senarium.” Holy shit. My lips part. “Not just Aretia, either…he gave me Tyrrendor,” Xaden says slowly, like he can’t believe it, either. And he doesn’t want it. My chest clenches. “Xaden—” “Don’t wait up.” He presses a kiss to the inside of my wrist, then strides toward Garrick. “I’ll be back by eight a.m. to sign that accord,” he calls back over his shoulder. “Try to stay out of trouble while I’m gone.” “Be careful.” He’s the Duke of Tyrrendor.

Reflect: A call to pause before you start the journey and then at various steps along the way, understanding that change and choice occur from the inside out. Connect: A step where you request feedback and counsel from trusted friends and guides, recognizing that isolation is fatal—no one should make this journey alone. Explore: A beginning of the journey of discovery, a step of testing different possibilities, both inside and out, in the knowledge that curiosity and courage are essential to finding the way forward. Choose: A narrowing of options in which you focus on your priorities and do both a deeper dive and a reality check, exploring a smaller number of choices to see which fit your emerging sense of what’s right for you. Repack: A step of deciding what’s essential for the road ahead—what to let go of and what to keep, how to lighten your load, both tangible and intangible, for the new way that is opening up. Act: A first step toward making the possibilities real in the recognition that taking action doesn’t drain energy, it releases energy through the optimism that comes with choice, curiosity, and courage.

Where do you go to make friends when you’re an adult? No, honestly, I’m asking, where do you do this? There are no more late-night study sessions or university social events. And while meeting friends at work is the obvious answer, your options are very limited if you don’t click with your colleagues or if you’re self-employed. (Also, if you’re only friends with people at work, who do you complain about your colleagues too?) I don’t volunteer. I don’t participate in organised religion. I don’t play team sports. Where do selfish, godless, lazy people go to make friends? That’s where I need to be. Nearly all of my closest friends have been assigned to me: either via seating chats at school, university room-mates, or desk buddies at work. After taking stock, I realise that most of my friends were forced to sit one metre away from me for several hours at a time. I’ve never actively reached out to make a new friend who wasn’t within touching distance. With no helpful administrators, just how do we go about making friends as adults? Is it possible to cultivate that intense closeness without the heady combination of naivety, endless hours of free time on hand and lack of youthful inhibitions? Or is that lost for ever after we hit thirty?

Do I go in the bathroom, or do you?” He frowned at me. “Why?” “I’m not comfortable with you dressing in front of me.” He gave a half-laugh. I think I’d surprised him. “You live with shapeshifters, and they go around nude all the time.” “Seeing my friends and lovers nude is fine, but seeing you nude, no.” He studied my face. “It really would bother you.” “Yes.” He frowned again. “Why?” “If I’m having sex with someone it’s okay to see them nude, but if sex isn’t an option, then no nudity.” He laughed, abrupt and surprised. “You’re still a prude, and you always will be.” “It wouldn’t bother you to strip in front of me?” “No, why should it?” I sighed. “Fine, I’m a prude. I’ll go into the bathroom while you dress.” “No, I’ll dress in the bathroom.” He was still smiling, his face shining with the remains of his laughter, as he gathered up his clothes.

One of the things that I’ve always felt missing from funerals and services is the voice of the man or woman who was the deceased’s partner in life. I’ve always wanted to hear from the person who’d loved them more than anyone. Biblically, the two become one flesh--the spouse is their other half. It has always seemed to me that his or her voice was critical to truly understanding who the deceased was in life. I also felt that American Sniper had told only part of Chris’s story--an angry part in much of it. There was so much more to him that I wanted the world to know. People said Chris was blessed that I hung in there during his service to our country; in fact, I was the one who was blessed. I wanted everyone to hear me say that. Beforehand, a friend suggested I have a backup in case I couldn’t finish reading my speech--a “highway option,” as Chris used to call it: the way out if things didn’t go as planned. I refused. I didn’t want a way out. It wasn’t supposed to be easy. Knowing that I had to go through with it, that I had to finish--that was my motivator. That was my guarantee that I would finish, that I would keep moving into the future, as painful as it surely would be. When you think you cannot do something, think again. Chris always said, “The body will do whatever the mind tells it to.” I am counting on that now. I stand before you a broken woman, but I am now and always will be the wife of a man who is a warrior both on the battlefield and off. Some people along the way told Chris that through it all, he was lucky I stayed with him. I am standing before you now to set the record straight. Remember this: I am the one who is literally, in every sense of the word, blessed that Chris stayed with me. I feel compelled to tell you that I am not a fan of people romanticizing their loved ones in death. I don’t need to romanticize Chris, because our reality is messy, passionate, full of every extreme emotion known to man, including fear, compassion, anger, pain, laughing so hard we doubled over and hugged it out, laughing when we were irritated with each other and laughing when we were so in love it felt like someone hung the moon for only us… I looked at the kids as I neared the end, talking to them and only them. Tears ran from their faces. Bubba’s head hung down. It broke my heart. I kept reading. Then I was done.

OPTIONS FOR REDUCING While thrift stores such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army can be a convenient way to initially let go, many other outlets exist and are often more appropriate for usable items. Here are some examples: • Amazon.com • Antiques shops • Auction houses • Churches • Consignment shops (quality items) • Craigslist.org (large items, moving boxes, free items) • Crossroads Trading Co. (trendy clothes) • Diggerslist.com (home improvement) • Dress for Success (workplace attire) • Ebay.com (small items of value) • Flea markets • Food banks (food) • Freecycle.org (free items) • Friends • Garage and yard sales • Habitat for Humanity (building materials, furniture, and/or appliances) • Homeless and women’s shelters • Laundromats (magazines and laundry supplies) • Library (books, CDs and DVDs) • Local SPCA (towels and sheets) • Nurseries and preschools (blankets, toys) • Operation Christmas Child (new items in a shoe box) • Optometrists (eyeglasses) • Regifting • Rummage sales for a cause • Salvage yards (building materials) • Schools (art supplies, magazines, dishes to eliminate class party disposables) • Tool co-ops (tools) • Waiting rooms (magazines) • Your curb with a “Free” sign

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,

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We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

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