Patients Come Second Quotes

But ... but what if I hit you?” A snort. “You’re not going to hit me.” “How do you know?” I bristled at his amused tone. “I could hit you. Even master swordsmen make mistakes. I could get a lucky shot, or you might not see me coming. I don’t want to hurt you.” He favored me with another patient look. “And how much experience do you have with swords and weapons in general?” “Um.” I glanced down at the saber in my hand. “Thirty seconds?” He smiled, that calm, irritatingly confident smirk. “You’re not going to hit me.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words.

The dark is generous. Its first gift is concealment: our true faces lie in the dark beneath our skins, our true hearts remain shadowed deeper still. But the greatest concealment lies not in protecting our secret truths, but in hiding from the truths of others. The dark protects us from what we dare not know. Its second gift is comforting illusion: the ease of gentle dreams in night’s embrace, the beauty that imagination brings to what would repel in the day’s harsh light. But the greatest of its comforts is the illusion that dark is temporary: that every night brings a new day. Because it’s the day that is temporary. Day is the illusion. Its third gift is the light itself: as days are defined by the nights that divide them, as stars are defined by the infinite black through which they wheel, the dark embraces the light, and brings it forth from the center of its own self. With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins. The dark is generous, and it is patient. It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt. The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout. The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light. The dark’s patience is infinite. Eventually, even stars burn out. The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins. It always wins because it is everywhere. It is in the wood that burns in your hearth, and in the kettle on the fire; it is under your chair and under your table and under the sheets on your bed. Walk in the midday sun, and the dark is with you, attached to the soles of your feet. The brightest light casts the darkest shadow. The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back. Love is more than a candle. Love can ignite the stars.

Who's this?" he said, coming across a name he didn't recognize. "Lady Georgina of Sandalhurst? Why are we inviting her? I don't know her. Why are we asking people we don't know?" I know her," Pauline replied. There was a certain steeliness in her voice that Halt would have done well to recognize. "She's my aunt, Bit of an old stick, really, but I have to invite her." You've never mentioned her before," Halt challenged. True. I don't like her very much. As I said, she's a bit of an old stick." Then why are we inviting her?" We're inviting her," Lady Pauline explained, "because Aunt Georgina has spent the last twenty years bemoaning the fact that I was unmarried. 'Poor Pauline!' she'd cry to anyone who'd listen. 'She'll be a lonley old maid! Married to her job! She'll never find a husband to look after her!' It's just too good an opportunity to miss." Halt's eyebrows came together in a frown. There might be a few things that would annoy him more than someone criticizing the woman he loved, but for a moment, he couldn't think of one. Agreed," he said. "And let's sit her with the most boring people possible at the wedding feast." Good thinking," Lady Pauline said. She made a note on another sheet of paper. "I'll make her the first person on the Bores' table." The Bores' table?" Halt said. "I'm not sure I've heard that term." Every wedding has to have a Bores' table," his fiance explained patiently. "We take all the boring, annoying, bombastic people and sit them together. That way they all bore each other and they don't bother the normal people we've asked." Wouldn't it be simpler to just ask the people you like?" Halt askede. "Except Aunt Georgina, of course--there's a good reason to ask her. But why ask others?" It's a family thing," Lady Pauline said, adding a second and third name to the Bores' table as she thought of them. "You have to ask family and every family has its share of annoying bores. It's just organizing a wedding.

A sociopath is often described as someone with little or no conscience. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to decide whether Holmes fits the clinical profile, but there’s no question that her moral compass was badly askew. I’m fairly certain she didn’t initially set out to defraud investors and put patients in harm’s way when she dropped out of Stanford fifteen years ago. By all accounts, she had a vision that she genuinely believed in and threw herself into realizing. But in her all-consuming quest to be the second coming of Steve Jobs amid the gold rush of the “unicorn” boom, there came a point when she stopped listening to sound advice and began to cut corners. Her ambition was voracious and it brooked no interference. If there was collateral damage on her way to riches and fame, so be it.

A nurse has five seconds to make a patient like you and trust you. It’s in the whole way you present yourself. I do not come in saying, ‘I’m so sorry.’ Instead, it’s: ‘I’m the hospice nurse, and here’s what I have to offer you to make your life better. And I know we don’t have a lot of time to waste.

This is an ode to all of those that have never asked for one. A thank you in words to all of those that do not do what they do so well for the thanking. This is to the mothers. This is to the ones who match our first scream with their loudest scream; who harmonize in our shared pain and joy and terrified wonder when life begins. This is to the mothers. To the ones who stay up late and wake up early and always know the distance between their soft humming song and our tired ears. To the lips that find their way to our foreheads and know, somehow always know, if too much heat is living in our skin. To the hands that spread the jam on the bread and the mesmerizing patient removal of the crust we just cannot stomach. This is to the mothers. To the ones who shout the loudest and fight the hardest and sacrifice the most to keep the smiles glued to our faces and the magic spinning through our days. To the pride they have for us that cannot fit inside after all they have endured. To the leaking of it out their eyes and onto the backs of their hands, to the trails of makeup left behind as they smile through those tears and somehow always manage a laugh. This is to the patience and perseverance and unyielding promise that at any moment they would give up their lives to protect ours. This is to the mothers. To the single mom’s working four jobs to put the cheese in the mac and the apple back into the juice so their children, like birds in a nest, can find food in their mouths and pillows under their heads. To the dreams put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement of all priority. This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the happily married. To the young mothers and those that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new arrival far later than they ever anticipated. This is to the mothers. This is to the sack lunches and sleepover parties, to the soccer games and oranges slices at halftime. This is to the hot chocolate after snowy walks and the arguing with the umpire at the little league game. To the frosting ofbirthday cakes and the candles that are always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts, the slip-n-slides and the iced tea on summer days. This is to the ones that show us the way to finding our own way. To the cutting of the cord, quite literally the first time and even more painfully and metaphorically the second time around. To the mothers who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers and if time is gentle enough, live to see the children of their children have children of their own. To the love. My goodness to the love that never stops and comes from somewhere only mothers have seen and know the secret location of. To the love that grows stronger as their hands grow weaker and the spread of jam becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier to find and sack lunches no longer need making. This is to the way the tears look falling from the smile lines around their eyes and the mascara that just might always be smeared with the remains of their pride for all they have created. This is to the mothers.

What if the problem with schizophrenia patients wasn’t that they lacked the ability to respond to so much stimuli, but that they lacked the ability not to? What if their brains weren’t overloaded, but lacked inhibition—forced to reckon with everything that was coming their way, every second of every day?

I don't think of love in terms of relationships. It happens in terms of seconds, but it goes away like that, too. I pass a nurse, I love her, it ends when I go around a corner; at a restaurant I see a forlorn man at the table next to me, and I love him, and the conversation pulls me back, and it's ended. A patient comes in, and she is sick, and I love her, and then she dies, and I never see her again. This is what I live for. Don't think that it's sad.

Humanity comes first. Always. Politics and religion, valuable as they are, are always of second importance. If we do not work together to preserve life, to treasure it and keep it safe, then nothing we fight for is worth having.

Ruby and Aaron are both crazy patient; they’re good parents.” “I could be a good dad,” Ivan whispered, still feeding Jess. I could have told him he’d be good at anything he wanted to be good at, but nah. “Do you want to have kids?” he asked me out of the blue. I handed Benny another block. “A long time from now, maybe.” “A long time… like how long?” That had me glancing at Ivan over my shoulder. He had his entire attention on Jessie, and I was pretty sure he was smiling down at her. Huh. “My early thirties, maybe? I don’t know. I might be okay with not having any either. I haven’t really thought about it much, except for knowing I don’t want to have them any time soon, you know what I mean?” “Because of figure skating?” “Why else? I barely have enough time now. I couldn’t imagine trying to train and have kids. My baby daddy would have to be a rich, stay-at-home dad for that to work.” Ivan wrinkled his nose at my niece. “There are at least ten skaters I know with kids.” I rolled my eyes and poked Benny in the side when he held out his little hand for another block. That got me a toothy grin. “I’m not saying it’s impossible. I just wouldn’t want to do it any time soon. I don’t want to half-ass or regret it. If they ever exist, I’d want them to be my priority. I wouldn’t want them to think they were second best.” Because I knew what that felt like. And I’d already screwed up enough with making grown adults I loved think they weren’t important. If I was going to do something, I wanted to do my best and give it everything. All he said was, “Hmm.” A thought came into my head and made my stomach churn. “Why? Are you planning on having kids any time soon?” “I wasn’t,” he answered immediately. “I like this baby though, and that one. Maybe I need to think about it.” I frowned, the feeling in my stomach getting more intense. He kept blabbing. “I could start training my kids really young…. I could coach them. Hmm.” It was my turn to wrinkle my nose. “Three hours with two kids and now you want them?” Ivan glanced down at me with a smirk. “With the right person. I’m not going to have them with just anybody and dilute my blood.” I rolled my eyes at this idiot, still ignoring that weird feeling in my belly that I wasn’t going to acknowledge now or ever. “God forbid, you have kids with someone that’s not perfect. Dumbass.” “Right?” He snorted, looking down at the baby before glancing back at me with a smile I wasn’t a fan of. “They might come out short, with mean, squinty, little eyes, a big mouth, heavy bones, and a bad attitude.” I blinked. “I hope you get abducted by aliens.” Ivan laughed, and the sound of it made me smile. “You would miss me.” All I said, while shrugging was, “Meh. I know I’d get to see you again someday—” He smiled. “—in hell.” That wiped the look right off his face. “I’m a good person. People like me.” “Because they don’t know you. If they did, somebody would have kicked your ass already.” “They’d try,” he countered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. There was something wrong with us. And I didn’t hate it. Not even a little bit.

Is God present or is he absent? Maybe we can say now that in the center of our sadness for his absence we can find the first signs of his presence. And that in the middle of our longings we discover the footprints of the one who has created them. It is in the faithful waiting for the loved one that we know how much he has filled our lives already. Just as the love of a mother for her son can grow while she is waiting for his return, and just as lovers can rediscover each other during long periods of absence, so also our intimate relationship with God can become deeper and more mature while we wait patiently in expectation for his return.

I know I get crazy when it comes to you, but God knows I’m tryin’, Pidge. I don’t wanna screw this up.” “Then don’t.” “This is hard for me, ya know. I feel like any second you’re going to figure out what a piece of shit I am and leave me. When you were dancing last night, I saw a dozen different guys watching you. You go to the bar, and I see you thank that guy for your drink. Then that douchebag on the dance floor grabs you.” “You don’t see me throwing punches every time a girl talks to you. I can’t stay locked up in the apartment all the time. You’re going to have to get a handle on your temper.” “I will. I’ve never wanted a girlfriend before, Pigeon. I’m not used to feeling this way about someone…about anyone. If you’ll be patient with me, I swear I’ll get it figured out.” “Let’s get something straight; you’re not a piece of shit, you’re amazing. It doesn’t matter who buys me drinks, or who asks me to dance, or who flirts with me. I’m going home with you. You’ve asked me to trust you, and you don’t seem to trust me.” He frowned. “That’s not true.” “If you think I’m going to leave you for the next guy that comes along, then you don’t have much faith in me.” He tightened his grip. “I’m not good enough for you, Pidge. That doesn’t mean I don’t trust you, I’m just bracing for the inevitable.” “Don’t say that. When we’re alone, you’re perfect. We’re perfect. But then you let everyone else ruin it. I don’t expect a one-eighty, but you have to pick your battles. You can’t come out swinging every time someone looks at me.” He nodded. “I’ll do anything you want. Just…tell me you love me.” “You know I do.” “I need to hear you say it,” he said, his brows pulling together. “I love you,” I said, touching my lips to his. “Now quit being such a baby.” He laughed, crawling into the bed with me. We spent the next hour in the same spot under the covers, giggling and kissing, barely noticing when Kara returned from the shower.

My son, you are just an infant now, but on that day when the world disrobes of its alluring cloak, it is then that I pray this letter is in your hands. Listen closely, my dear child, for I am more than that old man in the dusty portrait beside your bed. I was once a little boy in my mother’s arms and a babbling toddler on my father's lap. I played till the sun would set and climbed trees with ease and skill. Then I grew into a fine young man with shoulders broad and strong. My bones were firm and my limbs were straight; my hair was blacker than a raven's beak. I had a spring in my step and a lion's roar. I travelled the world, found love and married. Then off to war I bled in battle and danced with death. But today, vigor and grace have forsaken me and left me crippled. Listen closely, then, as I have lived not only all the years you have existed, but another forty more of my own. My son, We take this world for a permanent place; we assume our gains and triumphs will always be; that all that is dear to us will last forever. But my child, time is a patient hunter and a treacherous thief: it robs us of our loved ones and snatches up our glory. It crumbles mountains and turns stone to sand. So who are we to impede its path? No, everything and everyone we love will vanish, one day. So take time to appreciate the wee hours and seconds you have in this world. Your life is nothing but a sum of days so why take any day for granted? Don't despise evil people, they are here for a reason, too, for just as the gift salt offers to food, so do the worst of men allow us to savor the sweet, hidden flavor of true friendship. Dear boy, treat your elders with respect and shower them with gratitude; they are the keepers of hidden treasures and bridges to our past. Give meaning to your every goodbye and hold on to that parting embrace just a moment longer--you never know if it will be your last. Beware the temptation of riches and fame for both will abandon you faster than our own shadow deserts us at the approach of the setting sun. Cultivate seeds of knowledge in your soul and reap the harvest of good character. Above all, know why you have been placed on this floating blue sphere, swimming through space, for there is nothing more worthy of regret than a life lived void of this knowing. My son, dark days are upon you. This world will not leave you with tears unshed. It will squeeze you in its talons and lift you high, then drop you to plummet and shatter to bits . But when you lay there in pieces scattered and broken, gather yourself together and be whole once more. That is the secret of those who know. So let not my graying hairs and wrinkled skin deceive you that I do not understand this modern world. My life was filled with a thousand sacrifices that only I will ever know and a hundred gulps of poison I drank to be the father I wanted you to have. But, alas, such is the nature of this life that we will never truly know the struggles of our parents--not until that time arrives when a little hand--resembling our own--gently clutches our finger from its crib. My dear child, I fear that day when you will call hopelessly upon my lifeless corpse and no response shall come from me. I will be of no use to you then but I hope these words I leave behind will echo in your ears that day when I am no more. This life is but a blink in the eye of time, so cherish each moment dearly, my son.

Sandra O'Toole walked back to the nurses' station, remembering what she alone had seen. Kelly's face turning so white that her first reaction to it was that he must be in shock, then the tumult behind her as she reached for her patient -- but then what? It wasn't like the first time at all. Kelly's face has transformed itself. Only an instant, like opening a door into some other place, and she'd seen something she had never imagined. Something very old and feral and ugly. The eyes not wide, but focused on something she could not see. The pallor of his face not that of shock, but of rage. His hands balled briefly into fists of quivering stone. And then his face had changed again. There had been comprehension to replace the blind, killing rage, and what she'd seen next was the most dangerous sight she had ever beheld, though she knew not why. Then the door closed, Kelly's eyes shut, and when he opened them, his face was unnaturally serene. The complete sequence had not taken four seconds, she realized, all of it while Rosen and Douglas had been scuffling against the wall. He'd passed from horror to rage to understanding -- then to concealment, but what had come in between comprehension and disguise was the most frightening thing of all. What had she seen in the face of this man? It took her a moment to answer the question. Death was what she'd seen. Controlled. Planned. Disciplined. But it was still Death, living in the mind of a man.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.

I’m tired of only being able to talk to you on the phone, Alyssa...”Silence. “I need to see you...” His voice was strained.  “I need to fuck you...”“Thoreau...” “No, listen to me.” His tone was a warning. “I need to be buried deep inside of you, feeling your pussy throb around my cock as you scream my name—my real name.”A hand trailed down past my stomach and between my thighs, and my fingers began to strum my clit. Slow at first, then faster, faster with every sound of his heavy breaths in my ear. “I’ve been very patient with you...” His voice trailed off. “Don’t you think?”“No...”“I have,” he said. “I’m tired of imagining how wet your pussy can get, how loudly you’ll scream when I suck your tits as you ride me...How hard I’ll pull your hair when I bend you over my desk and fuck you until you can’t breathe...Tired.”I shut my eyes, letting my other hand squeeze my breast, letting my thumb pinch my nipple.“I’m giving you two weeks to come to your fucking senses...”“What?”“Two weeks,” he whispered. “That’s when you and I are going to meet face to face, and I’m going to claim every inch of you.”“I can’t...I can’t agree to...that.”“You will.” His breathing was now in sync with mine. “And the second you do, you’re going to invite me over and I’m going to remind you of everything you’ve teased me with over the past six months.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words.

The most wonderful emotion in the world, I think, is the relief following the realization that a horrifying nightmare was just that, all a dream. It thus follows that the pit of the depth of despair must be this: the thwarted expectation of that feeling. The seconds pass patiently and slow like minutes, but no mercy ever comes. The impossible nightmare is actually happening, happening to you.

After a moment or two a man in brown crimplene looked in at us, did not at all like the look of us and asked us if we were transit passengers. We said we were. He shook his head with infinite weariness and told us that if we were transit passengers then we were supposed to be in the other of the two rooms. We were obviously very crazy and stupid not to have realized this. He stayed there slumped against the door jamb, raising his eyebrows pointedly at us until we eventually gathered our gear together and dragged it off down the corridor to the other room. He watched us go past him shaking his head in wonder and sorrow at the stupid futility of the human condition in general and ours in particular, and then closed the door behind us. The second room was identical to the first. Identical in all respects other than one, which was that it had a hatchway let into one wall. A large vacant-looking girl was leaning through it with her elbows on the counter and her fists jammed up into her cheekbones. She was watching some flies crawling up the wall, not with any great interest because they were not doing anything unexpected, but at least they were doing something. Behind her was a table stacked with biscuits, chocolate bars, cola, and a pot of coffee, and we headed straight towards this like a pack of stoats. Just before we reached it, however, we were suddenly headed off by a man in blue crimplene, who asked us what we thought we were doing in there. We explained that we were transit passengers on our way to Zaire, and he looked at us as if we had completely taken leave of our senses. 'Transit passengers? he said. 'It is not allowed for transit passengers to be in here.' He waved us magnificently away from the snack counter, made us pick up all our gear again, and herded us back through the door and away into the first room where, a minute later, the man in the brown crimplene found us again. He looked at us. Slow incomprehension engulfed him, followed by sadness, anger, deep frustration and a sense that the world had been created specifically to cause him vexation. He leaned back against the wall, frowned, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. 'You are in the wrong room,' he said simply. `You are transit passengers. Please go to the other room.' There is a wonderful calm that comes over you in such situations, particularly when there is a refreshment kiosk involved. We nodded, picked up our gear in a Zen-like manner and made our way back down the corridor to the second room. Here the man in blue crimplene accosted us once more but we patiently explained to him that he could fuck off.

Look at this cup,” he said, pointing to the other small blue ceramic cup still sitting on the white tablecloth. “It is not overanxious to be filled. It sits patient, unmoving, and empty.” Carefully, he poured a small amount of tea into that cup. “You must be like this,” he stated with a mischievous grin, gesturing to the steam gently rising from the second blue cup. “Answers to your questions will come, but if you are not still and empty, you will never be able to retain anything.

First, God doesn’t count time the way we do. With the Lord, a thousand years is like one day. But more important is the reason God is waiting until the last minute to command His Son’s second coming to earth. Peter says this: ‘The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.

Go on.” “Alicia … the first thing Alicia did, when she got home from the hospital—they kept her in for a night after the crash—was she climbed up onto the roof of the house. I did too. We sat up there all night, pretty much. We used to go there all the time, Alicia and me. It was our secret place.” “On the roof?” Paul hesitated. He looked at me for a second, deliberating. He made a decision. “Come on.” He stood up. “I’ll show

I’m tired of only being able to talk to you on the phone, Alyssa...” Silence. “I need to see you...” His voice was strained.  “I need to fuck you...” “Thoreau...” “No, listen to me.” His tone was a warning. “I need to be buried deep inside of you, feeling your pussy throb around my cock as you scream my name—my real name.” A hand trailed down past my stomach and between my thighs, and my fingers began to strum my clit. Slow at first, then faster, faster with every sound of his heavy breaths in my ear. “I’ve been very patient with you...” His voice trailed off. “Don’t you think?” “No...” “I have,” he said. “I’m tired of imagining how wet your pussy can get, how loudly you’ll scream when I suck your tits as you ride me...How hard I’ll pull your hair when I bend you over my desk and fuck you until you can’t breathe...Tired.” I shut my eyes, letting my other hand squeeze my breast, letting my thumb pinch my nipple. “I’m giving you two weeks to come to your fucking senses...” “What?” “Two weeks,” he whispered. “That’s when you and I are going to meet face to face, and I’m going to claim every inch of you.” “I can’t...I can’t agree to...that.” “You will.” His breathing was now in sync with mine. “And the second you do, you’re going to invite me over and I’m going to remind you of everything you’ve teased me with over the past six months.

Oh,for God's sake," I scolded myself, channeling Frankie. "It's just a French session.It's just a French session with a cute guy.It's just a French session with a cute guy who no longer has a girlfriend, who drunk e-mailed me about my name, and who makes me feel like I've swallowed a caterpillar." I thought maybe I should sit down. The green hood of Alex's car nosed into view at 5:09. I flung myself out of the room, down the stairs, and then had to lean against the sofa for a second to compose myself. Then I stood right behind the door, counting a slow ten after he knocked before opening it. Wouldn't want to look eager, now, would I? "Hi," he said. "Hi." What else could I say? It had turned seriously cold over the break. He was wearing a big black peacoat with Russian symbols on the buttons. I tried to remember if I'd ever known the Russian word for "hi." I didn't think so. He waited patiently for a minute, then asked, "Okay if I come in?" I flushed and stepped back.

Do you know how long I’ve wanted you? You’re like sunlight and water and air to me. All you need do is walk across my line of sight and my whole world lights up.” “You love your crusade more than you love me,” Kate said, her lips trembling. “You’ll kill yourself! You’ll die because you’re too arrogant to think another doctor could work with those patients as well as you.” She stepped forward, bumping against him and grabbing the lapels of his coat. “Please . . . we could be so good together.” He pulled away. “Don’t touch me, Kate. Don’t come near me. I love you, but you don’t know the meaning of the word. You only love when it’s easy, when there are no storm clouds on the horizon.” “Trevor, I’m afraid.” “Of course you’re afraid!” he shouted. “Do you imagine for one second that I’m not? But I won’t give in to it. I would lay down my life for you. I would lay down my life for any one of the thirty-two people lying in those beds upstairs, and I won’t turn my back on them. If I run away from what I’ve been fighting for all my life, then I begin dying. Then my purpose will be over.” She flinched and began straightening her shirt. “I’ve got to get out of here.” “Don’t go.” She twisted away to fumble with the doorknob. He tried to turn her to face him. “Kate, don’t go, please. Stay and fight this out.” She shook him off and fled from the closet as though it were on fire. He braced his hands on the doorframe, watching her dart around the people in the hallway. He wanted to run after her, drag her back into the closet, and plead with her to stay.

Sherri Solvig had had cancer, lymphatic cancer, but due to valiant efforts by her doctors she had gone into remission. However, encoded in the memory-tapes of her brain was the datum that patients with lymphoma who go into remission usually eventually lose their remission. They aren’t cured; the ailment has somehow mysteriously passed from a palpable state into a sort of metaphysical state, a limbo. It is there but it is not there. So despite her current good health, Sherri (her mind told her) contained a ticking clock, and when the clock chimed she would die. Nothing could be done about it, except the frantic promotion of a second remission. But even if a second remission were obtained, that remission, too, by the same logic, the same inexorable process, would end. Time had Sherri in its absolute power. Time contained one outcome for her: terminal cancer. This is how her mind had factored the situation out; it had come to this conclusion, and no matter how good she felt or what she had going for her in her life, this fact remained a constant. A cancer patient in remission, then, represents a stepped-up case of the status of all humans; eventually you are going to die.

Five days later, I'm on the same journey, edging down the turnpike with the scrim of sunset lowering in the west, passing through Florida City, strip malls and car dealerships, melting into swampland and fishing tackle shops, past Manatee Bay onto the Overseas Highway. It's drifter territory, where people go to forget and to be forgotten. I've come to think of this land as a second home. The prison motel; the familiar faces though few of us have exchanged names. Each of us serving our sentence, waiting, waiting, because prison has made us more patient than we ever knew we could be, until we get the call that it's time; the end of the sentence, or just the end.

Dr. Mark Crisplin, a Portland, Oregon, ER doctor, reviewed the original EEG readings of a number of patients claimed by the scientists as being flatlined or “dead” and discovered that this was not at all the case. “What they showed was slowing, attenuation, and other changes, but only a minority of patients had a flat line, and it [dying] took longer than 10 seconds. The curious thing was that even a little blood flow in some patients was enough to keep EEGs normal.” In fact, most cardiac patients were given CPR, which by definition delivers some oxygen to the brain (that’s the whole point of doing it). Crisplin concluded: “By the definitions presented in the Lancet paper, nobody experienced clinical death. No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead, much less brain dead. Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead.’ It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”31 Again, since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when one part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain—quite possibly the left-hemisphere interpreter described by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga—interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is interpreted as supernormal or paranormal.

Think about two young adults who go to college. One is brilliant, a genius who floats above her colleagues like a cirrus cloud, the other is merely a plodder: dogged, determined, competent. Throughout their education, the genius has always been able to leap obstacles as though they’re not there while the plodder has, through necessity, learned patiently to climb walls. One day, say in the second year of their Ph.D. programme, that genius will come across a wall so high even she can’t jump it. But she doesn’t know how to climb. The plodder, on the other hand, rubs his hands, checks his equipment, and starts hammering in the first piton. Who do you think will reach the top first?

The first is that students have become increasingly less patient with the time it takes to understand the syntactically demanding sentence structures in denser texts and increasingly averse to the effort needed to go deeper into their analysis. The second is that student writing is deteriorating. I have, to be sure, heard this criticism of undergraduates as long as I have been teaching. The question is nevertheless important for every age to confront. In our epoch, we must ask whether current students’ diminishing familiarity with conceptually demanding prose and the daily truncating of their writing on social media is affecting their writing in more negative ways than in the past.

We say that we mourn the dead, and there is some truth in that. We lament the flower frozen in full bloom, cut off at the moment of promise, or another long wilted, whose slow fading and drawn-out, painful diminishment cast a shadow over a vibrant and glorious past. And yet. Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living. And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. We gaze upon the stillness that is unending and feel our self-importance crack and the myth of our immortality smash. We stare upon the face of death to see ourselves more clearly, to satisfy our curiosity, to make peace with the inescapable. We hold our breath, try to imagine what it would be like never to take another and what the departed know now that we don’t. We try to conjure what the life we have left would look like if such knowledge were ours. We try to imagine ourselves kind and expansive and giving, balanced and patient, more honest, more thankful, more peaceful, content with what we have, mindless of what we have not. We imagine ourselves happy. For a moment, we believe we can be. And then, because we can’t help ourselves, we breathe and, breathing, are reminded of the many other things we cannot help. The faith of a moment fades and hope is replaced by the intimate knowledge of our imperfections. Lonely, weeping, we stand with our feet anchored to the ground, watching our better angels fly above us and beyond us to time out of mind, and we mourn.

The connection between dopamine and belief was established by experiments conducted by Peter Brugger and his colleague Christine Mohr at the University of Bristol in England. Exploring the neurochemistry of superstition, magical thinking, and belief in the paranormal, Brugger and Mohr found that people with high levels of dopamine are more likely to find significance in coincidences and pick out meaning and patterns where there are none. In one study, for example, they compared twenty self-professed believers in ghosts, gods, spirits, and conspiracies to twenty self-professed skeptics of such claims. They showed all subjects a series of slides consisting of people’s faces, some of which were normal while others had their parts scrambled, such as swapping out eyes or ears or noses from different faces. In another experiment, real and scrambled words were flashed. In general, the scientists found that the believers were much more likely than the skeptics to mistakenly assess a scrambled face as real, and to read a scrambled word as normal. In the second part of the experiment, Brugger and Mohr gave all forty subjects L-dopa, the drug used for Parkinson’s disease patients that increases the levels of dopamine in the brain. They then repeated the slide show with the scrambled or real faces and words. The boost of dopamine caused both believers and skeptics to identify scrambled faces and real and jumbled words as normal. This suggests that patternicity may be associated with high levels of dopamine in the brain. Intriguingly, the effect of L-dopa was stronger on skeptics than believers. That is, increased levels of dopamine appear to be more effective in making skeptics less skeptical than in making believers more believing.8 Why? Two possibilities come to mind: (1) perhaps the dopamine levels of believers are already higher than those of skeptics and so the latter will feel the effects of the drug more; or (2) perhaps the patternicity proclivity of believers is already so high that the effects of the dopamine are lower than those of skeptics. Additional research shows that people who profess belief in the paranormal—compared to skeptics—show a greater tendency to perceive “patterns in noise,”9 and are more inclined to attribute meaning to random connections they believe exist.

HERE IS HOW TO RECOVER STOLEN CRYPTO // MUYERN TRUST HACKER ( Mail them at: muyerntrusted( at ) mail-me( dot )com ) ( Telegram for fast communication ( at )muyerntrusthacker ) ( Website: https:// muyerntrusthack. solutions/ )It's not often you feel the ground disappear beneath your feet, but when my online investment platform froze and my $200,000 savings vanished into thin air, that's exactly what happened. Panic, disbelief, and a crushing sense of helplessness washed over me. My life savings are gone. My dreams shattered. Days blurred into nights as I desperately searched for answers – frantic emails, endless phone calls, and countless online forums fueled by despair. My hope dwindled with each passing hour, leaving only a gnawing fear that the money was truly lost. Then Muyern Trust Hacker appeared, offering a ray of hope. My friend, god bless them, recommended that I check out their website after coming across it. I reached out to them, skeptical but clinging to hope, ready for another letdown. But something felt different. From the first email, Muyern Trust Hacker exuded professionalism and empathy. They listened to my story patiently, outlined their recovery process, and kept me informed every step of the way. They were the lifeline I desperately needed. The days that followed were a rollercoaster of emotions. Hope flickered, then dimmed, then flared again with each update. But slowly, steadily, progress was made. Muyern Trust Hacker unraveled the complexities of my case, navigated legal hurdles, and chipped away at the mountain of despair I had built around myself. Finally, the news arrived. My funds, all $200,000 of them, were recovered. Tears of relief streamed down my face as I read the confirmation email. It felt like a miracle, a second chance at life. My experience with Muyern Trust Hacker wasn't just about getting my money back. It was about regaining my faith in humanity, the possibility of justice, and the existence of good people who fight for what's right. Today, I stand here, no longer a victim, but a survivor. This is a testament to the power of resilience, the importance of hope, and the incredible work of companies like Muyern Trust Hacker. Don't give up if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Seek help, reach out, and remember – even when the darkness seems absolute, a light is always waiting to be found. Better contact Muyern Trust Hacker ASAP.

I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of the tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in the case and preparing to come out. I waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand. That little body, I do believe is the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the rhythm of people and things

Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33 Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression." TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy. Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know -- TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases. Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false. TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible. Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling. TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind? Freyd: Does that happen? TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.

Chapter 17   I was on my way from Rambam Hospital to Tiberias, when the news first came across the radio about a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Maggie was still at the Hematology  Ward. I tried to imagine how she felt listening to the news. Surely she was as shocked as everyone else. There in the ward, patients were fighting for their lives, and now in another place in the country, people had perished in seconds. The entire country was horrified by the horrible scenes that aired on all the media. Gradually, the magnitude of the disaster started to be known. A suicide bomber detonated a charge inside a bus, while travelers were going up and down the bus at the heart of the city. It was a few minutes before nine in the morning. There were over twenty dead and dozens wounded. At home, sitting in front of the TV, I watched the extensive coverage. This transition from the sick atmosphere of the hospital in the morning, to the atmosphere of the evening suicide bombing, was depressing. The TV coverage was painful and brought an atmosphere of sadness. I had a feeling that the broadcast intended to clarify to all the people who were still healthy  that their health would not help them. That their end could come just as it did to those victims of the terrorism act on the bus. People did not stop thinking about the event, and the harsh images which were shown repeatedly on the television. Reporters broadcasted from the scene in heightened excitement and everything was filmed live. It seemed that someone was afraid, lest, God forbid, there would be a single person in the country who did not watch this horror. It was appalling. It was one of the first suicide bombings in Israel, and perhaps one of the largest ones.

When she turned back to me, her eyes were full of tears. Then she unbuckled herself, slid across the seat, and climbed into my lap. My heart jumped at the unexpected affection. I pulled her in and tucked her head under my chin, breathing in the smell of her hair. The feel of her small, warm body in my arms was like home. There was no other word for it. She was home. It was hard to see how much he affected her. This was the second time I’d seen her crying and both times had been over him. The jealousy was almost more than I could handle. This woman was mine. She was mine, not his. Why couldn’t he have stayed away from her? Let her just get over him? But then I realized the truth. She wasn’t mine—she never was. I’m hers. And it’s not the same thing. I’d been fine being patient, because I was just waiting for her to come out of it. I hadn’t been braced for him to come back into her life. And now, faced with the reality that I might lose her altogether, I realized what I’d known for weeks. I’m in love with her. And now this guy that I couldn’t even begin to compete with might take her from me. I felt helpless. Panicked. A fight response triggered inside and it had nowhere to go, because I couldn’t do shit about this. All I could do was be me, and that wasn’t good enough. A sex thing. It will only ever be a sex thing. She raised her head and planted a soft kiss under my chin, and it almost broke my fucking heart. She was never like this with me. And as much as I loved it, it was all fueled by her feelings for someone else. He hurt her and I was here, so I got to be the one to comfort her. But it was something. At least I could do something for her beyond just scratching an itch. She was with me, holding me. Letting me hold her. I needed to enjoy the moment because I didn’t know how many more of them I’d get. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced down the lump in my throat, tried to focus on her breath on my neck, her cheek pressed to my collarbone—the vulnerability she was giving me that I only ever saw when she was sleeping curled up next to me on those nights when she let me in. I vowed to make tonight fun so she’d forget. And so I’d have something to remember when she left.

When Malcolm X, who is considered the movement’s second-in-command, and heir apparent, points out that the cry of “violence” was not raised, for example, when the Israelis fought to regain Israel, and, indeed, is raised only when black men indicate that they will fight for their rights, he is speaking the truth. The conquests of England, every single one of them bloody, are part of what Americans have in mind when they speak of England’s glory. In the United States, violence and heroism have been made synonymous except when it comes to blacks, and the only way to defeat Malcolm’s point is to concede it and then ask oneself why this is so. Malcolm’s statement is not answered by references to the triumphs of the N.A.A.C.P., the more particularly since very few liberals have any notion of how long, how costly, and how heartbreaking a task it is to gather the evidence that one can carry into court, or how long such court battles take. Neither is it answered by references to the student sit-in-movement, if only because not all Negroes are students and not all of them live in the South. I, in any case, certainly refuse to be put in the position of denying the truth of Malcolm’s statements simply because I disagree with his conclusions, or in order to pacify the liberal conscience. Things are as bad as the Muslims say they are—in fact, they are worse, and the Muslims do not help matters—but there is no reason that black men should be expected to be more patient, more forbearing, more farseeing than whites; indeed, quite the contrary. The real reason that nonviolence is considered to be a virtue in Negroes—I am not speaking now of its racial value, another matter altogether—is that white men do not want their lives, their self-image, or their property threatened. One wishes they would say so more often. At the end of a television program on which Malcolm X and I both appeared, Malcolm was stopped by a white member of the audience who said, “I have a thousand dollars and an acre of land. What’s going to happen to me?” I admired the directness of the man’s question, but I didn’t hear Malcolm’s reply, because I was trying to explain to someone else that the situation of the Irish a hundred years ago and the situation of the Negro today cannot very usefully be compared.

HERE IS HOW TO RECOVER STOLEN CRYPTO // MUYERN TRUST HACKER ( Mail them at: muyerntrusted( at ) mail-me( dot )com ) ( Telegram for fast communication ( at )muyerntrusthacker ) ( Website: https:// muyerntrusthack. solutions/ ) It's not often you feel the ground disappear beneath your feet, but when my online investment platform froze and my $200,000 savings vanished into thin air, that's exactly what happened. Panic, disbelief, and a crushing sense of helplessness washed over me. My life savings are gone. My dreams shattered. Days blurred into nights as I desperately searched for answers – frantic emails, endless phone calls, and countless online forums fueled by despair. My hope dwindled with each passing hour, leaving only a gnawing fear that the money was truly lost. Then Muyern Trust Hacker appeared, offering a ray of hope. My friend, god bless them, recommended that I check out their website after coming across it. I reached out to them, skeptical but clinging to hope, ready for another letdown. But something felt different. From the first email, Muyern Trust Hacker exuded professionalism and empathy. They listened to my story patiently, outlined their recovery process, and kept me informed every step of the way. They were the lifeline I desperately needed. The days that followed were a rollercoaster of emotions. Hope flickered, then dimmed, then flared again with each update. But slowly, steadily, progress was made. Muyern Trust Hacker unraveled the complexities of my case, navigated legal hurdles, and chipped away at the mountain of despair I had built around myself. Finally, the news arrived. My funds, all $200,000 of them, were recovered. Tears of relief streamed down my face as I read the confirmation email. It felt like a miracle, a second chance at life. My experience with Muyern Trust Hacker wasn't just about getting my money back. It was about regaining my faith in humanity, the possibility of justice, and the existence of good people who fight for what's right. Today, I stand here, no longer a victim, but a survivor. This is a testament to the power of resilience, the importance of hope, and the incredible work of companies like Muyern Trust Hacker. Don't give up if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Seek help, reach out, and remember – even when the darkness seems absolute, a light is always waiting to be found. Better contact Muyern Trust Hacker ASAP.

And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; 13 And to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. And be at peace among yourselves. 14 Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feebleminded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. 15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men. 16 Rejoice evermore. 17 Pray without ceasing. 18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. 19 Quench not the Spirit. 20 Despise not prophesyings. 21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 22 Abstain from all appearance of evil. 23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. 25 Brethren, pray for us. 26 Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. 27 I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. 28 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. ¶     The first epistle unto the Thessalonians was written from Athens. Holy Bible 2 Thessalonians 1 2 3 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. CHAPTER 1 PAUL, and Silvanus, and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: 2 Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because that your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity of every one of you all toward each other aboundeth; 4 So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: 5 Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: 6 Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you; 7 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 8 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; 10 When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.

For God’s sake, Anders, your pacing is driving me wild,” Leigh said with exasperation. “Sit down.” Anders paused with surprise and turned to peer at the brunette curled up in the corner of the couch with a book in her hands. “I’m not pacing, I’m . . .” She arched her eyebrows, waiting, and he sighed. “Pacing,” he acknowledged and sank onto the nearest chair. He rested his elbows on his spread knees, allowing his hands to dangle between them, and stared out the window. After several minutes, he dropped back in the chair with a heavy sigh, then straightened and asked impatiently, “What the devil is she doing up there?” “She’s checking with her academic advisor to ensure that missing the first two weeks of classes won’t bugger her up for the term,” Leigh reminded him patiently. “Yeah, but that should have been a five-minute conversation. She’s been up there over an hour,” he complained. Valerie had helped clean up the kitchen after breakfast, then had taken Roxy with her and escaped upstairs on the pretext of calling the veterinary college to be sure she was still welcome after missing the first two weeks of the semester. “Yes, well, perhaps whoever she needs to speak to wasn’t available and she’s waiting for a call back,” Leigh suggested. “Or maybe they had work for her to do to keep from falling behind and she’s up their reading her textbooks and studying.” “Or maybe she’s hiding,” Anders said unhappily. Leigh tsked with irritation. “Why would she be hiding?” Anders didn’t respond, but in his mind he was remembering their kiss that morning . . . well, kisses. Or maybe one kiss. He wasn’t sure how to classify it. Did you have to come up for air to classify it as more than one kiss? Or was it counted in minutes or seconds? Because it had been a constant devouring of each other’s mouths for several minutes. “Oh my, yes. I see,” Leigh murmured. Anders glanced up at her murmur and noted her narrowed concentration on him. She’d read his damn mind. “Yes, that might have made her want to hide out,” she said sympathetically. “It wasn’t that long ago when I had my first encounter with life mate passion. It was pretty terrifying. And she didn’t have any idea what was happening. I mean, as an immortal you had heard about it, had some idea of what to expect, and yet you were still overwhelmed by it. Imagine how she must feel. She got hit by a nuclear explosion of passion out of nowhere.” Anders sighed and ran one hand wearily over his closely cropped hair. Leigh wasn’t saying a damned thing he hadn’t already thought of. Which was why he suspected Valerie was hiding out. The question was, how long would she hide? And how was he supposed to get her to know and trust him if she wouldn’t come out of her room?

Chapter One Vivek Ranadivé “IT WAS REALLY RANDOM. I MEAN, MY FATHER HAD NEVER PLAYED BASKETBALL BEFORE.” 1. When Vivek Ranadivé decided to coach his daughter Anjali’s basketball team, he settled on two principles. The first was that he would never raise his voice. This was National Junior Basketball—the Little League of basketball. The team was made up mostly of twelve-year-olds, and twelve-year-olds, he knew from experience, did not respond well to shouting. He would conduct business on the basketball court, he decided, the same way he conducted business at his software firm. He would speak calmly and softly, and he would persuade the girls of the wisdom of his approach with appeals to reason and common sense. The second principle was more important. Ranadivé was puzzled by the way Americans play basketball. He is from Mumbai. He grew up with cricket and soccer. He would never forget the first time he saw a basketball game. He thought it was mindless. Team A would score and then immediately retreat to its own end of the court. Team B would pass the ball in from the sidelines and dribble it into Team A’s end, where Team A was patiently waiting. Then the process would reverse itself. A regulation basketball court is ninety-four feet long. Most of the time, a team would defend only about twenty-four feet of that, conceding the other seventy feet. Occasionally teams played a full-court press—that is, they contested their opponent’s attempt to advance the ball up the court. But they did it for only a few minutes at a time. It was as if there were a kind of conspiracy in the basketball world about the way the game ought to be played, Ranadivé thought, and that conspiracy had the effect of widening the gap between good teams and weak teams. Good teams, after all, had players who were tall and could dribble and shoot well; they could crisply execute their carefully prepared plays in their opponent’s end. Why, then, did weak teams play in a way that made it easy for good teams to do the very things that they were so good at? Ranadivé looked at his girls. Morgan and Julia were serious basketball players. But Nicky, Angela, Dani, Holly, Annika, and his own daughter, Anjali, had never played the game before. They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening. Ranadivé lives in Menlo Park, in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley. His team was made up of, as Ranadivé put it, “little blond girls.” These were the daughters of nerds and computer programmers. They worked on science projects and read long and complicated books and dreamed about growing up to be marine biologists. Ranadivé knew that if they played the conventional way—if they let their opponents dribble the ball up the court without opposition—they would almost certainly lose to the girls for whom basketball was a passion. Ranadivé had come to America as a seventeen-year-old with fifty dollars in his pocket. He was not one to accept losing easily. His second principle, then, was that his team would play a real full-court press—every game, all the time. The team ended up at the national championships. “It was really random,” Anjali Ranadivé said. “I mean, my father had never played basketball before.” 2. Suppose you were to total up all the wars over the past two hundred years that occurred between very large and very small countries. Let’s say that one side has to be at least ten times larger in population and armed might

Our patients predict the culture by living out consciously what the masses of people are able to keep unconscious for the time being. The neurotic is cast by destiny into a Cassandra role. In vain does Cassandra, sitting on the steps of the palace at Mycenae when Agamemnon brings her back from Troy, cry, “Oh for the nightingale’s pure song and a fate like hers!” She knows, in her ill-starred life, that “the pain flooding the song of sorrow is [hers] alone,” and that she must predict the doom she sees will occur there. The Mycenaeans speak of her as mad, but they also believe she does speak the truth, and that she has a special power to anticipate events. Today, the person with psychological problems bears the burdens of the conflicts of the times in his blood, and is fated to predict in his actions and struggles the issues which will later erupt on all sides in the society. The first and clearest demonstration of this thesis is seen in the sexual problems which Freud found in his Victorian patients in the two decades before World War I. These sexual topics‒even down to the words‒were entirely denied and repressed by the accepted society at the time. But the problems burst violently forth into endemic form two decades later after World War II. In the 1920's, everybody was preoccupied with sex and its functions. Not by the furthest stretch of the imagination can anyone argue that Freud "caused" this emergence. He rather reflected and interpreted, through the data revealed by his patients, the underlying conflicts of the society, which the “normal” members could and did succeed in repressing for the time being. Neurotic problems are the language of the unconscious emerging into social awareness. A second, more minor example is seen in the great amount of hostility which was found in patients in the 1930's. This was written about by Horney, among others, and it emerged more broadly and openly as a conscious phenomenon in our society a decade later. A third major example may be seen in the problem of anxiety. In the late 1930's and early 1940's, some therapists, including myself, were impressed by the fact that in many of our patients anxiety was appearing not merely as a symptom of repression or pathology, but as a generalized character state. My research on anxiety, and that of Hobart Mowrer and others, began in the early 1940's. In those days very little concern had been shown in this country for anxiety other than as a symptom of pathology. I recall arguing in the late 1940's, in my doctoral orals, for the concept of normal anxiety, and my professors heard me with respectful silence but with considerable frowning. Predictive as the artists are, the poet W. H. Auden published his Age of Anxiety in 1947, and just after that Bernstein wrote his symphony on that theme. Camus was then writing (1947) about this “century of fear,” and Kafka already had created powerful vignettes of the coming age of anxiety in his novels, most of them as yet untranslated. The formulations of the scientific establishment, as is normal, lagged behind what our patients were trying to tell us. Thus, at the annual convention of the American Psychopathological Association in 1949 on the theme “Anxiety,” the concept of normal anxiety, presented in a paper by me, was still denied by most of the psychiatrists and psychologists present. But in the 1950's a radical change became evident; everyone was talking about anxiety and there were conferences on the problem on every hand. Now the concept of "normal" anxiety gradually became accepted in the psychiatric literature. Everybody, normal as well as neurotic, seemed aware that he was living in the “age of anxiety.” What had been presented by the artists and had appeared in our patients in the late 30's and 40's was now endemic in the land.

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE

If you’re reading this you’re already blessed, not that you’re receiving something special, it’s more that you have the existence of sight aiding you. Take a moment to be thankful for what you’ve received, and I’m not speaking in the materialistic vain, but rather for what we undervalue. Be grateful for your ability to take that first breath every morning, to place both feet on the ground and stand, be thankful… Be thankful for the people in your life right this very moment, and those that communicate with you via the internet. Be thankful for the time already spent on this planet, and for what’s to come. I’d like you to stop whatever it is you’re doing this very second, and take a moment for self reflection. That unexpected jolt of reality that life hit’s us with during a crisis or when accolades are given is powerful. None of that is happening right now, so this is the time to show gratitude, and share a moment with no one else but you. Just take a moment and be thankful. What am I most thankful for?... I’m most thankful for doing the best I can with what I’ve got, because I’m cradled in blessings.

transporter? It is important for leaders to demystify language so that every member of the team understands the goal and can have the authority to achieve it. “Patient-centered care” can be summed up as the way I want my parents to be treated in a hospital. Period.

Given how nervous and keyed up we as patients usually are when we interact with our health care providers, because that’s when we are likely to be at our most vulnerable, the experience of having someone say hello or take an extra minute to make sure we’re okay—let alone send off a thank-you note!—can often outshine any experience we have in receiving the actual physical care. Don’t forget the paradox we’re talking about here: This is a

They say that in the reign of Lysimachus the folk of Abdera were stricken by a plague that was something like this, my good Philo. In the early stages all the population had a violent and persistent fever right from the very beginning, but at about the seventh day it was dispelled, in some cases by a copious flow of blood from the nostrils, in others by perspiration, that also copious, but it affected their minds in a ridiculous way; for all had a mad hankering for tragedy, delivering blank verse at the top of their voices. In particular they would chant solos from ‘Euripides’ Andromeda, singing the whole of Perseus’ long speech and the city was full of all those pale, thin seventh-day patients ranting ‘And you, O Eros, lord of gods and men’. And loudly declaiming the other bits, and over a long period too, till the coming of winter and a heavy frost put an end to their nonsense!

Abortion is one of the most commonly performed medical procedures in the United States, and it is tragic that many women who have abortions are all too often mischaracterized and stigmatized, their exercise of moral agency sullied. Their judgment is publicly and forcefully second-guessed by those in politics and religion who have no business entering the deliberation. The reality is that women demonstrate forethought and care; talk to them the way clergy do and witness their sense of responsibility. Women take abortion as seriously as any of us takes any health-care procedure. They understand the life-altering obligations of parenthood and family life. They worry over their ability to provide for a child, the impact on work, school, the children they already have, or caring for other dependents. Perhaps the woman is unable to be a single parent or is having problems with a husband or partner or other kids.2 Maybe her contraception failed her. Maybe when it came to having sex she didn’t have much choice. Maybe this pregnancy will threaten her health, making adoption an untenable option. Or perhaps a wanted pregnancy takes a bad turn and she decides on abortion. It’s pretty complicated. It’s her business to decide on the outcome of her pregnancy—not ours to intervene, to blame, or to punish. Clergy know about moral agency through pastoral work. Women and families invite us into their lives to listen, reflect, offer sympathy, prayer, or comfort. But when it comes to giving advice, we recognize that we are not the ones to live with the outcome; the patient faces the consequences. The woman bears the medical risk of a pregnancy and has to live with the results. Her determination of the medical, spiritual, and ethical dimensions holds sway. The status of her fetus, when she thinks life begins, and all the other complications are hers alone to consider. Many women know right away when a pregnancy must end or continue. Some need to think about it. Whatever a woman decides, she needs to be able to get good quality medical care and emotional and spiritual support as she works toward the outcome she seeks; she figures it out. That’s all part of “moral agency.” No one is denying that her fetus has a moral standing. We are affirming that her moral standing is higher; she comes first. Her deliberations, her considerations have priority. The patient must be the one to arrive at a conclusion and act upon it. As a rabbi, I tell people what the Jewish tradition says and describe the variety of options within the faith. They study, deliberate, conclude, and act. I cannot force them to think or do differently. People come to their decisions in their own way. People who believe the decision is up to the woman are typically called “pro-choice.” “Choice” echoes what is called “moral agency,” “conscience,” “informed will,” or “personal autonomy”—spiritually or religiously. I favor the term “informed will” because it captures the idea that we learn and decide: First, inform the will. Then exercise conscience. In Reform Judaism, for instance, an individual demonstrates “informed will” in approaching and deciding about traditional dietary rules—in a fluid process of study of traditional teaching, consideration of the personal significance of that teaching, arriving at a conclusion, and taking action. Unitarian Universalists tell me that the search for truth and meaning leads to the exercise of conscience. We witness moral agency when a member of a faith community interprets faith teachings in light of historical religious understandings and personal conscience. I know that some religious people don’t do

The opening of this letter is the easy part. Jesus praises the church for the positive things it is being and doing. The Lord repeats this pattern of opening each letter with encouraging words throughout this section of Scripture. Ironically, praise is crucial to recovery. It instills hope. Most men who struggle sexually have hidden their secret lives of sin for so long that they are hounded by a tremendous fear of being found out. If their fears come true, they may fall into a pit of despair. By contrast, it is the Lord’s nature to be gentle with his people, even when they are in sin. He truly is longsuffering. As the second chapter in Romans points out, “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” (2:4). By offering praise, Jesus gently affirms his love for them. He continued to John in Revelation, “Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols” (2:20). The Lord now transitions into the real issue. First, notice the use of the word tolerate. It appears this church knew what was going on but just looked the other way. Were the leaders merely putting up with open immorality? Not only that, but the woman somehow worked her way into a position of authority—a self-made leader. This situation isn’t unique to the first century. We see the same thing happening today. Many pastors refuse to believe that the men, women, and youth in their churches are viewing pornography and engaging in immoral sexual behaviors. Either they simply don’t want to believe it or they are trapped by the same problems and feel a lack of credibility to address those who are in the wrong. Today, the word tolerance is used as if it were a great virtue. I want to dispel this myth. No doubt God is patient, and we are all living proof of his patience. However, God is not tolerant in that he is consistent in what he does and doesn’t like in our behaviors and hearts. Otherwise Jesus would not have had to die for the sin of the world. The same things that upset him in Genesis upset him throughout Scripture. Remember, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perception across the continuum of care.

Actions speak more forcibly than words, and when actions and words are aligned, engagement will follow.

Back in 1903, Thomas Edison predicted that the “doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of [the] human frame in diet and in the cause and prevention of diseases.”12 Sadly, all it takes is a few minutes watching pharmaceutical ads on television imploring viewers to “ask your doctor” about this or that drug to know that Edison’s prediction hasn’t come true. A study of thousands of patient visits found that the average length of time primary-care doctors spend talking about nutrition is about ten seconds.

Getting in the dunk tank, so to speak, is a purposeful decision. It’s not always easy, but it sure is worthwhile. We’ll warn you, though, that regardless of what you do, you’re going to run into detractors—people who will never buy in. But we’re here to tell you that the risk is worth the reward: Giving people the permission to have fun at work—even when they do serious work like providing health care—creates phenomenal results. Not only will your patients enjoy their experience more, but (we dare say) your associates will enjoy their jobs more as well. What’s not to like about that combination?

care” can be summed up as the way I want my parents to be treated in a hospital. Period.

Patient-centered care” can be summed up as the way I want my parents to be treated in a hospital.

Hospitals have missed the point that the best way to improve the patient experience is to build better engagement with their employees, who will then provide better service and health care to patients.

Patient-centered care” can be summed up as the way I want my parents to be treated in a hospital. Period.

Jamie nodded back. ‘Ms Cartwright—’ ‘It’s Mrs,’ she said automatically, the colour still drained from her cheeks. Her hand had moved from her mouth to her collarbones now as she processed it. ‘Would you mind if I took a look at those files?’  She shook her head, her eyes vacant. ‘No, no — there’s nothing much to see, but… Of course—’ She cut off, squeezing her face into a frown. ‘He’s… dead? But how? What happened? My God,’ she muttered. ‘He was… My God.’ Jamie stepped around her, leaving Roper to the interview. He was better at that sort of thing anyway. She rarely found interviewees easy to deal with. They always got emotional, blathered.  ‘Do you mind if I record this conversation?’ Roper asked behind her as she walked towards the back room. ‘No,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Great, thanks.’ He exhaled slowly, fiddling with the buttons, adding the audio file to the case. ‘What can you tell me about Ollie?’  The voices faded away as she reached the door and pushed on the handle. Inside looked to be a rehearsal room. On the left there were two steps leading up to a red door that opened onto the side of the stage, and the floor was bare concrete painted red. The paint had been chipped from years of use and the blue paint job underneath was showing through. Mary had a desk set up with two chairs in front of it, but no computer. In fact there was nothing of any value in the room.  On the right there was an old filing cabinet, and laid against it were rusted music stands as well as a mop and bucket and a couple of bottles of bargain cleaning supplies that had the word ‘Value’ written across them.  At the back of the room there was an old bookcase filled with second-hand literature — mostly children’s books and charity shop novels. Next to that an old plastic covered doctor’s examination bed was pushed against the wall. Sponge and felt were showing through the ripped brown covering.  Stood on the floor was a trifold cotton privacy screen that looked new, if not cheap. On the cracked beige walls, there was also a brand new hand-sanitiser dispenser and wide paper roll holder. She approached and checked the screws. They were still shiny. Brass. They had been put up recently. At least more recently than anything else in there.  The dispenser looked like it had come straight out of a doctor’s office, the roll holder too. Paper could be pulled out and laid over the bed so patients didn’t have to sit on the bare covering. Jamie stared at them for a second and then reached out, squirting sanitiser onto her hands.  She massaged it in before moving on.

Drew winced. “My back hurts. What did you do to me in your front yard? One minute I was standing, then I was flat on my back in the grass.” “I swept the leg,” she said matter-of-factly. “But why?” “Why not? It’s the fastest way to get someone to the ground.” “But we were standing on your lawn.” “Exactly. We were on nice, soft grass. I would have wrestled you sooner, but it’s not safe on the pavement.” “Do you always wrestle with guys?” “Just the ones I like.” She tapped him on the nose. “Boop.” He tapped her right back. “Boop.” She asked, “Now that I’ve taught you to watch out for the leg sweep, what else can I do for you? Breakfast in bed? Pack you a bagged lunch for work today?” He checked the time on her alarm clock. “It’s Saturday, which is a light day, but I do have a few patients after lunch.” “What do you mean it’s a light day? You’re not fully booked? You must not be a very good dentist. Maybe I should get a second opinion on that cap you glued into my mouth all willy-nilly.” He dropped his jaw in mock outrage. “Not a very good dentist? Those are fighting words, you bad girl.” She raised her eyebrows. “Want to take this back out to the front lawn?” “I think we gave your neighbors enough of a show last night.” “True,” she said. “Plus, we already got grass stains all over one change of clothes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Grass stains.” He groaned. He leaned back, resting his head on Megan’s second pillow, where Muffins normally slept. The sea-foam-green linens were a perfect complement to his skin tone. His brown eyes were a rich chocolate with bright flecks and an inner ring that was nearly green. The sheets had been purchased to complement Muffins, with his orange fur and entirely green eyes, but they looked even better around Dr. Drew Morgan. Drew asked, “What are you thinking about?” He reached up to run his fingers through her tangled morning hair. She normally hated that, but it felt good when Drew did it. “I’m thinking that you look really good in my sheets. You look good in sea-foam green.” “Thanks.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see how you look in my bed.” “You think you’re going to get me into your bed?” “Sure. I know how it’s done. You just sweep the leg.” “I shouldn’t have told you all my secrets.” Muffins returned and situated himself between them for a bath. Drew propped himself up on one elbow and petted the cat. “So what do I have to do to get you to my place in the first place?” “Reverse psychology works well on me. You could tell me to never come over. You could ban me from your house.” He chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t show up naked under a trench coat.” “What makes you think I’d show up naked in a trench coat?” “You’re a wild girl. Exactly what I need right now.” “You need me? Are we talking about, like, a medical type of emergency?” “You tell me.” He scooped up Muffins, placed him on the chair next to the bed, and pulled Megan close to him.

For this reason we should not try, through contempt or arrogant zeal, to attain this kind of contemplative knowledge prematurely; rather we should practice the commandments of Christ in due order and proceed undistracted through the various stages of contemplation previously discussed. Once we have purified the soul through patient endurance and with tears of fear and inward grief, and have reached the state of seeing the true nature of things, then - initiated spiritually by the angels - the intellect spontaneously attains this contemplative knowledge. But if a person is presumptuous and tries to reach the second stage before having reached the first, then not only will he fail to conform to God's purpose, but he will provoke many battles against himself, particularly through speculating about the nature of man, as we have learnt in the case of Adam. Those still subject to the passions gain nothing by attempting to act or think as if they were dispassionate: solid food is not good for babies, even though it is excellent for the mature (cf. Heb. 5:14). Rather they should exercise discrimination, yearning to act and think like the dispassionate, but holding back, as being unworthy. Yet when grace comes they should not reject it out of despair or laziness, neither should they presumptuously demand something prematurely, lest by seeking what has its proper time before that time has come, as St John Klimakos says, they fail to attain it in its proper time, and fall into delusion, perhaps beyond the help of man or the Scriptures.

The key to stopping an outbreak was containment. The first step in containment was to isolate anyone who was infected, and the second step was to interview all the infected patients and develop a list of every person they had come into contact with—a process called contact tracing.

The biggest obstacle to all revolutions is usually this sentence: Be patient, bad days will pass, good days will come! This is just a ridiculous sentence! A country in need of revolution needs an immediate revolution, not patience, not even for a second!

As a boy, I was fascinated by speed, the wild range of speeds in the world around me. People moved at different speeds; animals much more so. The wings of insects moved too fast to see, though one could judge their frequency by the tone they emitted—a hateful noise, a high E, with mosquitoes, or a lovely bass hum with the fat bumblebees that flew around the hollyhocks each summer. Our pet tortoise, which could take an entire day to cross the lawn, seemed to live in a different time frame altogether. But what then of the movement of plants? I would come down to the garden in the morning and find the hollyhocks a little higher, the roses more entwined around their trellis, but, however patient I was, I could never catch them moving. Experiences like this played a part in turning me to photography, which allowed me to alter the rate of motion, speed it up, slow it down, so I could see, adjusted to a human perceptual rate, details of movement or change otherwise beyond the power of the eye to register. Being fond of microscopes and telescopes (my older brothers, medical students and bird-watchers, kept theirs in the house), I thought of the slowing down or the speeding up of motion as a sort of temporal equivalent: slow motion as an enlargement, a microscopy of time, and speeded-up motion as a foreshortening, a telescopy of time. I experimented with photographing plants. Ferns, in particular, had many attractions for me, not least in their tightly wound crosiers or fiddleheads, tense with contained time, like watch springs, with the future all rolled up in them. So I would set my camera on a tripod in the garden and take photographs of fiddleheads at hourly intervals; I would develop the negatives, print them up, and bind a dozen or so prints together in a little flickbook. And then, as if by magic, I could see the fiddleheads unfurl like the curled-up paper trumpets one blew into at parties, taking a second or two for what, in real time, took a couple of days.

Dave then described what it was like to get the drug, which echoed many of Nash’s warnings. The total process, he said, took seven to eight hours. After the nurses settled him comfortably into a lounge chair and attached an IV, they conducted a battery of blood tests to make sure his numbers were good. Then they ran a liter of saline solution into his body, diluting his blood so that the kidneys would be able to flush the drug through quickly. The saline drip took an hour, followed by a fifteen-minute infusion of Benadryl, to tamp down any allergic reaction he might have to the amphotericin. Meanwhile, the nurses hung an evil-looking opaque brown bag, which contained the liposomal amphotericin. When all is ready, Dave said, they turn a valve that starts the amphotericin. The liquid is expected to spend three or four hours creeping out of the bag and into the patient’s arm. “So what happened when you got the drug?” I asked. “I watched that limoncello-colored solution come down through the tubes and go into me,” Dave said. “And within seconds—seconds!—of it entering my veins, I felt a big pressure on my chest and a pain in my back. I felt this profound tightness in my chest, with really difficult breathing, and my head felt like it was in flames.

I know the food isn’t…okay but…” he tells his father. Trying to pacify Mr. Wylder is beginning to seem an impossible task and to Dane’s credit, he’s been having this conversation since the crack of dawn and hasn’t lost his temper once. Side note: it hasn’t escaped my notice that witnessing how patient he is with his father means he’ll be patient with our child. I grasp onto this discovery with both hands and hold it close to my heart. “No, you’re not. And if you give me one more minute of grief, Stella and I are gettin’ on the next flight back to New York…that’s what I thought…okay. We’ll see you in a couple of hours. Yep.” I stand corrected. Ending the call, he exhales tiredly. “Don’t look at me like that.” “That was a bit harsh, don’t you think?” “He was seconds from runnin’ out of there bare-assed. I had to steal his clothes last night ’cause I knew what was coming.” “Oh,” is all I can say, a smile overtaking my face.

We live in a world that we know is infinitely complex, overpoweringly beautiful, and often times deeply mysterious. From time immemorial, human beings have peered into the heavens and contemplated the meaning of the world around them, and the meaning of their own lives within this world. When we human beings do begin to contemplate the meaning of our reality, there are really only two mutually exclusive conclusions that we can possible come to. And we must choose between one of these two possible explanations. The first way of viewing reality tries to convince us that the world we see around us is ultimately devoid of any real and lasting meaning. That everything happens in a thoroughly random manner. That the world is an inherently chaotic place, without an ultimate purpose, or any higher principle governing what happens in our cosmos or what happens to us. We are alone. This uninspired response to the mysteries of the world around us is the typical secular materialist response. It is the depressing conclusion that the atheist comes to. This atheistic way of viewing reality is now the dominant worldview, purposefully and systematically foisted upon us for over two centuries by those who control public discourse and culture. The second way in which we can choose to see our world tells us just the very opposite of the above pessimistic and ultimately hopeless scenario. This second way envisions the universe around us as being full of deep meaning and alive with exciting possibility. Our cosmos is understood to be a reality in which, while oftentimes seemingly chaotic or confusing at a cursory glance, is in actuality governed by a higher and benevolent intelligence. It is a reality in which a nuanced order, balance, harmony and purpose lay hidden behind every important occurrence. Ours is a cosmos that is ruled by Natural Law. Though each and every one of these eternal principles of this Natural Law are not necessarily all known to us at all times, they are nonetheless discernible by those among us who are wise, patient and sensitive enough to listen to the quiet whispers of nature and to humbly open ourselves to the many lessons to be learned from Her. When we fully realize the nature and power of this Natural Law, and live according to its wise guidance, then we are living in harmony with the cosmos, and we open ourselves to experiencing the peace, health, joy, sense of oneness with all of creation and with every being in creation, and deep sense of meaning that each of us, in our own way, yearns for. This second response to the mystery of our cosmos represents the optimistic and hopeful world-view of Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Natural Way. The spiritual path of Sanatana Dharma, or “The Eternal Natural Way”, is the most ancient spiritual culture and tradition on the earth. Indeed, it is "sanatana", or eternal. To one degree or another, it forms the archetypal antecedent of every other later religion, denomination, and spiritually-minded culture known to humanity.

He watched me grieve and he didn’t try to make things more comfortable by interrupting or analyzing the issue. He let me tell the story in whatever way I needed to say" "Of course, there are times when something just isn't right between therapists, and patient, when the therapist's countertransference is getting in the way. One sign: having negative feelings about the patient". "Our experiences with this person are important because we're probably feeling something very similar to what everyone else in these patients' life feels." "If you expect an hour of sympathetic head nodding, you've come to the wrong place. Therapist will be supportive, but our support is for your growth, not for our low opinion of your partner (our role is to understand your perspective but not necessarily endorse it)" "A therapist will hold up the mirror in the most compassionate way possible, to stare back at it and say "oh isn’t that interesting? Now what instead of turning away?" "The therapist explained that often-different parts of ourselves want different things and if we silence the parts we find unacceptable they'll find other ways to be heard." "So many of our destructive behaviors take root in an emotional void, an emptiness that calls out of something to fill it." "Whenever one person in the family system starts to make changes, even if the changes are healthy or positive, it's not unusual for other members in this family to do everything they can do to maintain the status quo and bring things back to homeostasis." "Once we know what we are feeling we can make choices about where we want to go with them. But if we push them away the second they appear, often we end up veering off in the wrong direction, getting lost yet again in the land of chaos." "I know that therapy won't make all my problems disappear, prevent new ones from coming, or ensure that Ill always act from a place of enlightenment. Therapists don’t perform personality transplants; they just help to take the sharp edges off. Therapy is about understanding the self that you are. But part of getting to know yourself is to unknown yourself- let go of the limiting stories you've told yourself about who you are, so that you aren’t trap by them, so that you can live your life and not the story you've been telling yourself about your life." "The noonday demon: "The opposite of depression isn't happiness but vitality" "We marry our unfinished business" "Babies can die from lack of touch, and so can adults (adults who are touched regularly live longer). There is even a name for this condition: skin hunger" "What most people mean by type is a sense of attraction a type of physical appearance or a type of personality turns them on. But what underlies a person's type, in fact, is a sense of familiarity, It is not coincidence that people who had angry parents, often end up choosing angry partners.

I think I’m the only woman you’ve loved in forever. And you were going to pitch me out that fast, just because I make you nervous. I thought you didn’t trust me, but now I think you don’t trust yourself.” She shook her head. “I don’t want a man like that. I need a man with guts, who’s sure of himself. Confident enough to stand by me. I need a man who’s not afraid to take a risk or two for something important.” “I’ve taken a risk or two,” he said. “And you don’t scare me. Come up here on the porch.” “No. Not until you say that if we stay solid, there will be a real relationship and a family. I don’t want any of this ‘I don’t get involved’ shit. It’s all crap, Luke. You can have some time to be sure, I’m patient. But I’m not giving you up.” He smiled at her. “I don’t need time to be sure. I know how I feel.” “Still on that? Still that ‘never gonna happen’ bullshit?” “Okay, I guess it could happen,” he said. “If it did happen, it would happen with you. I just always thought you deserved more.” “More than everything I’ve ever wanted in the world? See what an idiot you turned out to be?” He had to laugh. She was something, this woman. “Shelby, come here. I don’t have to think about it—you’re the most solid thing I’ve ever had in my life. Now come here.” “I thought I wasn’t enough for you—but I was too much,” she said. “And you don’t get to decide what I deserve. What I deserve is a man who looks at me grow fat on his baby and feels pride. Love and pride.” “Okay then,” he said. “I love you. Come here.” “Not good enough. You have to say something to convince me this is worth the gamble. I came a long way and I came alone. I was betting on you, on us. I love you and you love me and I’m sick of screwing around. Say the right thing for once. Say something profound.” He stared at her and his smile slowly faded. He put his hands on his hips. He took a deep breath and felt tears gather in his eyes. “You’re all I need to be happy, Shelby,” he said. “You’re everything I need…” He actually surprised her. Her arms dropped from over her chest and she gaped at him for a second. “You’re everything,” he said. “It scares me to death, but I want it all with you. I want you for life. I want what you want, and I want it right now.” “Huh?” “Everything, Shelby. I want you to be the lead in my shoes that keeps me on the ground. The mother of my children. My best friend, my wife, my mistress. It’s a tall order.” He took a breath. “If you won’t quit, I won’t.” “You’re sure about that?” she asked him. “Sure it scares the hell out me you’ll change your mind? Or sure I want it all? Oh, yeah, honey. I’m sure.” “I won’t change my mind,” she said softly. “I can’t hear you!” he yelled. “I can’t hear you because you won’t come out of the frickin’ rain!” She ran up the porch steps and into his arms.

Don’t forget the paradox we’re talking about here: This is a business in which no one wants to be the customer!

If you say: what is the way to knowing Him? I would say: were a small boy or an impotent person to say to us: what is the way to know the pleasure of sexual intercourse, and to perceive its essential reality? we would say: there are two ways here: one of them is for us to describe it to you, so that you can know it; the other is to wait patiently until you experience the natural instinct of passion in yourself, and then for you to engage in intercourse so that you experience the pleasure of intercourse yourself, and so come to know it. This second way is the authentic way, leading to the reality of knowledge.

She lives here now, Mom. With me. And it won’t be long before you can meet her, but there’s one more thing. During that short time we knew each other in Grants Pass, we had a little…ah, a little…blessing, that’s what it was. We had a blessing. Well, actually a couple of blessings. On the way. Soon.” Dead silence answered him. “It came as a shock to poor Abby at first, and I admit—I was pretty surprised, but we’re very happy about it. Happy and excited.” Silence. It stretched out. “Mom? Twins. We know one is a boy, but the other one is hiding.” Again, a vacuum. Then he heard his mother shriek, “Edward! Come here! Cameron got some girl pregnant!” “Mom! Just have a little sip of that wine!” “I think it’s going to take something a little stronger! Twins? You got some girl pregnant with twins?” He couldn’t help it—he laughed. “Mom,” he said. “She’s not some girl—she’s not a girl. Her name is Abby and she’s thirty-one.” “Cameron, how in the world—” “Now, Mother, I’m not going to explain. You’ll just have to trust me, I’ve never been careless and neither has Abby. So—here’s the deal. She’s probably going to go early, though the babies are due the second of July. Anytime, Mom. Abby wants to have her mother come as soon as they’re delivered, so I hope you can be a little patient. Twins is a pretty big—” “Cameron! Are you married?” “Not yet, Mom. Even though we’re in this together, completely, we just haven’t had time to get married. That will come—we’ll take care of the details. No point in rushing it now. Besides, we’re not going to be fooling anybody, including the great-grandmothers and great-aunt Jean, by rushing into it right now. They’re nearly here.” “Dear God in heaven,” his mother said. And in the background he could hear his father, Ed, saying, “What? What? What?” “I’ll call you the moment they’re born. Tomorrow, when I’m at the clinic, I’ll get Mel to take a picture of me and Abby and e-mail it to you. By then you will have calmed down.” “But, Cameron,” she said, “you haven’t given me time to knit anything!” He laughed again. “Well, get started. Abby’s really ready to unload. She just has to make it a couple more weeks to be completely safe.” “Oh, dear God in heaven,” she muttered.

The patient experience centers around the story you tell your spouse when you get home from your appointment. Nobody

You aren’t going to have me brought up on charges, are you?” She posed the question casually then frowned, as if it had come out of her mouth all unintended. “Oh, that’s a splendid notion,” the earl said as he accepted the second muffin. “Tell the whole world the Moreland heir was subdued by his housekeeper who thought he was trying to molest a chambermaid in his own home.” “Well, you were. And it wasn’t well done of you, my lord.” “Mrs. Seaton.” He glared down his nose at her. “I do not accost women under my protection. Her buttons were caught in the mesh of the screen, and she could not free herself. Nothing more.” “Her buttons…?” Her hand went to her mouth, and in her expression, Westhaven could see his explanation put a very different light on her conclusions. “My lord, I beg your pardon.” “I’ll mend, Mrs. Seaton.” He almost smiled at her distress. “Next time, a simple ‘My lord, what are you about?’ might spare us both a great lot of indignity.” He handed her his glass. “I will have my revenge, though.” “You will?” “I will. I make a terrible patient.

By the fifth night his perseverance was rewarded with a smile from Amy after Swift Antelope escorted her home from their daily walk. With flushed cheeks, Amy regaled Loretta with the details of her time spent with Swift Antelope, about the doe and twin fawns they had spied upon, about the flowers Swift Antelope had picked for her, about the birdcalls and sign language he was teaching her, about the silly tricks he played on her. Clearly Swift Antelope was making headway with Amy; the girl was beginning to heal. Hunter’s already low spirits plummeted. It was a sad state of affairs when an untried boy had more luck with women than a grown man. It was especially upsetting because Hunter knew he had paid dearly, not once but twice, for the right to possess Loretta, that he could exercise his rights at any time he chose, yet found himself hesitating because of the shadows in her eyes. Recalling his father’s advice, he could only scoff. The way things were going, if he was to become his woman’s friend before he became her lover, they might never move on to the second stage of their relationship. The more disgruntled Hunter became over the situation, the more he glowered, and the more he glowered, the more uneasy Loretta was in his presence. The worst part was, Hunter couldn’t blame her. Their bargain hung over them like a dark cloud, her promises binding her to him yet holding them apart. He knew she dreaded the moment when he would confront her, demanding that she lie with him. With each passing day, the prospect seemed to grow more frightening to her. Hunter was perceptive enough to realize that waiting patiently for her to come around wasn’t abetting him in his cause, yet he couldn’t bring himself to force her, either.

twenty-nine-year-old patient she had recently cared for who had an inoperable brain tumor that continued to grow through second-line chemotherapy. The patient elected not to attempt any further chemotherapy, but getting to that decision required hours of discussion, for this was not the decision he had expected to make. First, the oncologist said, she had a discussion with him alone. They reviewed the story of how far he’d come, the options that remained. She was frank. She told him that in her entire career she had never seen third-line chemotherapy produce a significant response in his type of brain tumor. She had looked for experimental therapies, and none were truly promising. And, although she was willing to proceed with chemotherapy, she told him how much strength and time the treatment would take away from him and his family. He did not shut down or rebel. His questions went on for an hour. He asked about this therapy and that therapy. Gradually, he began to ask about what would happen as the tumor got bigger, what symptoms he’d have, what ways they could try to control them, how the end might come. The oncologist next met with the young man together with his family. That discussion didn’t go so well. He had a wife and small children, and at first his wife wasn’t ready to contemplate stopping chemo. But when the oncologist asked the patient to explain in his own words what they’d discussed, she understood. It was the same with his mother, who was a nurse. Meanwhile, his father sat quietly and said nothing the entire time. A few days later, the patient returned to talk to the oncologist. “There should be something. There must be something,” he said. His father had shown him reports of cures on the Internet. He confided how badly his father was taking the news. No patient wants to cause his family pain. According to Block, about two-thirds of patients are willing to undergo therapies they don’t want if that is what their loved ones want.

The other problem regarding lack of preparation was insufficient transport capacity. Liquid medical oxygen is transported in specialised containers that can handle its supercooled cryogenic form. When the second wave hit, India had a total of 1,224 tankers able to ferry liquid oxygen, with a total capacity of 16,700 tons.40 Each tanker had a capacity of 15 tons and a turnaround time—i.e., being filled, transported, unloaded and then returning to be filled again—of about six days. This was inevitable because some states, like Delhi, did not produce any oxygen. And so the total amount that could be delivered on average daily was not the production capacity of 9,000 tons but 2,700 tons—less than half of what just Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra alone required. The result could only be a gross shortfall of what was needed across the country. And when that happened, Indians began to die from a lack of oxygen. The first deaths from a lack of oxygen had actually come during the first wave. In May 2020, it was already known that a surging wave caused deaths because normally functioning hospitals could rapidly run short of oxygen, a problem that had killed several patients in Mumbai that month.41 Aditi Priya, a research associate at Krea University, compiled the instances of oxygen deaths in the second wave that were reported in the media. The Modi government itself produced no document on the shortage or what it had wrought.

She and Lisa Jo were oblivious to Mabel’s near- death experience. They were too busy trying to still look cool and not quite pulling it off. As they hurried to the restrooms, Mabel looked once more for her hero. There he was! Standing next to the building that led to the changing rooms, there stood this tall, skinny kid. He’d been patiently tying his little brother’s shoe. He barely looked up but when he saw those strawberry-blonde curls, he became mesmerized. As though in a trance, he walked over to Mabel. Words wouldn’t come for either of them but something...electric seemed to pass through them. On an impulse she never could quite explain, Mabel reached over and kissed him. On the lips! Something she had never done before she was suddenly an expert at. Though it lasted a mere second or two, its effect on George branded him for life. And, just as the tumultuous waters of the Davidson River had pulled these two into its current, George somehow knew his life would never be the same.

If you want to impact people, don't talk about your successes. Talk about your failures. Civil rights activist, Cornell West, says, 'Humility means two things. One -a capacity for self-criticism. The second is allowing others to shine. Affirming others. Empowering and enabling others.' Those who lack humility are dogmatic and egotistical. That masks the deep sense of insecurity. They feel the success of others is at the expense of their own fame and glory. So how do you actively pursue humility? I recommend that you follow the advice of pastor and author Rick Warren, who advises that humility comes from: -admitting our weaknesses -being patient with others' weaknesses -being open to correction -and, pointing the spotlight at others. Do that with people, and they will relate to you and listen to what you have to say.

According to Plato, internal strife, class war, fomented by self-interest and especially material or economic self-interest, is the main force of ‘social dynamics’. The Marxian formula ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggle’8 fits Plato’s historicism nearly as well as that of Marx. The four most conspicuous periods or ‘landmarks in the history of political degeneration’, and, at the same time, ‘the most important … varieties of existing states’, are described by Plato in the following order. First after the perfect state comes ‘timarchy’ or ‘timocracy’, the rule of the noble who seek honour and fame; secondly, oligarchy, the rule of the rich families; ‘next in order, democracy is born’, the rule of liberty which means lawlessness; and last comes ‘tyranny … the fourth and final sickness of the city’. As can be seen from the last remark, Plato looks upon history, which to him is a history of social decay, as if it were the history of an illness: the patient is society; and, as we shall see later, the statesman ought to be a physician (and vice versa)—a healer, a saviour. [...] We see that Plato aimed at setting out a system of historical periods, governed by a law of evolution; in other words, he aimed at a historicist theory of society. This attempt was revived by Rousseau, and was made fashionable by Comte and Mill, and by Hegel and Marx; but considering the historical evidence then available, Plato’s system of historical periods was just as good as that of any of these modern historicists. (The main difference lies in the evaluation of the course taken by history. While the aristocrat Plato condemned the development he described, these modern authors applauded it, believing as they did in a law of historical progress.) [...] It is important to note that Plato explicitly identified this best and oldest among the existing states with the Dorian constitution of Sparta and Crete, and that these two tribal aristocracies did in fact represent the oldest existing forms of political life within Greece. Most of Plato’s excellent description of their institutions is given in certain parts of his description of the best or perfect state, to which timocracy is so similar. (Through his doctrine of the similarity between Sparta and the perfect state, Plato became one of the most successful propagators of what I should like to call ‘the Great Myth of Sparta’—the perennial and influential myth of the supremacy of the Spartan constitution and way of life.)

According to Plato, internal strife, class war, fomented by self-interest and especially material or economic self-interest, is the main force of ‘social dynamics’. The Marxian formula ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is a history of class struggle’ fits Plato’s historicism nearly as well as that of Marx. The four most conspicuous periods or ‘landmarks in the history of political degeneration’, and, at the same time, ‘the most important … varieties of existing states’, are described by Plato in the following order. First after the perfect state comes ‘timarchy’ or ‘timocracy’, the rule of the noble who seek honour and fame; secondly, oligarchy, the rule of the rich families; ‘next in order, democracy is born’, the rule of liberty which means lawlessness; and last comes ‘tyranny … the fourth and final sickness of the city’. As can be seen from the last remark, Plato looks upon history, which to him is a history of social decay, as if it were the history of an illness: the patient is society; and, as we shall see later, the statesman ought to be a physician (and vice versa)—a healer, a saviour. [...] We see that Plato aimed at setting out a system of historical periods, governed by a law of evolution; in other words, he aimed at a historicist theory of society. This attempt was revived by Rousseau, and was made fashionable by Comte and Mill, and by Hegel and Marx; but considering the historical evidence then available, Plato’s system of historical periods was just as good as that of any of these modern historicists. (The main difference lies in the evaluation of the course taken by history. While the aristocrat Plato condemned the development he described, these modern authors applauded it, believing as they did in a law of historical progress.) [...] It is important to note that Plato explicitly identified this best and oldest among the existing states with the Dorian constitution of Sparta and Crete, and that these two tribal aristocracies did in fact represent the oldest existing forms of political life within Greece. Most of Plato’s excellent description of their institutions is given in certain parts of his description of the best or perfect state, to which timocracy is so similar. (Through his doctrine of the similarity between Sparta and the perfect state, Plato became one of the most successful propagators of what I should like to call ‘the Great Myth of Sparta’—the perennial and influential myth of the supremacy of the Spartan constitution and way of life.)

Femtochemistry constructs those timelines, in steps as small as 10−15 seconds (one femtosecond). With understanding, increasingly, comes control. Lasik eye surgery exploits femtosecond laser pulses to remodel patients’ corneas.

[Love Wasn’t as They Said] Love wasn’t as they said… It didn’t last forever as they claimed… It is fleeting moments only recognized By those with sight and insight… And perhaps only captured By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky… And, like lightning perhaps, we never know Where love goes after it strikes… And perhaps the only love that lasts Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away… ** Love wasn’t synonymous with honor As they defined honor... It is often the awareness that falls upon us After betraying or letting down the loved ones… Love wasn’t holding hands forever, It is boring afternoons spent together With no words And no activities… It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction As many claimed… It is the companionship that remains After the hormonal fires are put out, When the noises of immaturity go silent, And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop… It is the home that remains erected Long after getting erectile dysfunction… It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period… It is that strange feeling of elation That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”, To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality… ** Love a widow brushing her hair, On a bus or in a public place, Unbothered by onlookers or passersby, As she opens her shabby handbag And takes out an apple to bite on With the teeth she has left… Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles But is finally able to see the world Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically, Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion… ** Love is shreds of joy Interspersed with long intervals Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment… It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps, It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high… It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries… Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis And may move mountains despite the rheumatism… ** Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years… Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger On a bus, in a train, or on a plane… It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game, But there’s not much they can do about it… ** Love wasn’t as they said It wasn’t as they said… It is not 1+1=2… It is sometimes three or more… At other times, it grows at point zero or lower, In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion… Isn’t it time, I wonder, to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly attributed to love? Or is it that love burns and dies Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands? [Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]

[Love Wasn’t as They Said] Love wasn’t as they said… It didn’t last forever as they claimed… It is fleeting moments only recognized By those with sight and insight… And perhaps only captured By those patiently waiting as if to see a lightning in the sky… And, like lightning perhaps, we never know Where love goes after it strikes… And perhaps the only love that lasts Is one that know when to stay and when to walk away… ** Love wasn’t synonymous with honor As they defined honor... It is often the awareness that falls upon us After betraying or letting down the loved ones… Love wasn’t holding hands forever, It is boring afternoons spent together With no words And no activities… It wasn’t lifetime sexual attraction As many claimed… It is the companionship that remains After the hormonal fires are put out, When the noises of immaturity go silent, And after the childish quarrels and squabbles stop… It is the home that remains erected Long after getting erectile dysfunction… It that appetite for life after the last egg from the last period… It is that strange feeling of elation That may come after what is mistakenly called a “midlife crisis”, To fill that frightening gap between hope and reality… ** Love is a widow brushing her hair, On a bus or in a public place, Unbothered by onlookers or passersby, As she opens her shabby handbag And takes out an apple to bite on With the teeth she has left… Love is an eye surrounded with wrinkles But is finally able to see the world Sensitively, insightfully, and more realistically, Without exaggerated embellishment or distortion… ** Love is shreds of joy Interspersed with long intervals Of boredom, exhaustion, reproach, and disappointment… It’s not measured with red flowers, bears, and expensive gifts in shiny wraps, It is who remains when the glucose, blood pressure and cholesterol numbers are high… It’s those who stay after the heart catheterization and knee replacement surgeries… Love gets stronger after getting osteoporosis And may move mountains despite the rheumatism… ** Love is the few seconds when our eyes cross with strangers Who awaken in us feelings we hadn’t experienced with those living with us in years… Or perhaps it’s rubbing arms and shoulders with a passenger On a bus, in a train, or on a plane… It is that fleeting look from a passerby in the street Convey to us that they, too, have understood the game, But there’s not much they can do about it… ** Love wasn’t as they said It wasn’t as they said… It is not 1+1=2… It is sometimes three or more… At other times, it grows at point zero or lower, In solitude, in loneliness, and in seclusion… Isn’t it time, I wonder, to demolish everything falsely, unfairly, and misleadingly attributed to love? Or is it that love burns and dies Precisely when we try to capture it in our hands? [Original poem published in Arabic on October 27, 2022 at ahewar.org]

BerylHealth got lucky when its employees stepped up to the plate to help the organization expunge a cancer rather than simply getting sick of it and leaving—something that happens all too often in organizations. And losing great people because we as leaders are afraid or ignorant of the behaviors of those few bad apples is something an organization simply cannot afford—especially these days, when it is hard to find and keep great people. Once we have found superstars, we don’t want to lose them.

PRIDE program (Peers Recognizing Individual Deeds of Excellence).

. . . psychological distress is often associated with rashes, hives, psoriasis, acne, impotence, coughing, as well as diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, and low and high blood pressure. Gastrointestinal symptoms are so common in mental illnesses that some doctors call the intestines a 'second brain.' Stress can also lead to non-epileptic seizures, tremor, visual impairment, back pain, and gait abnormalities. In fact, the majority of people in the United States and the UK with common mental illnesses, such as anxiety disorder and depression, do not present with psychological complaints. They go to their primary care physicians who attempt to treat bodily symptoms and likely never find out if the patient is anxious or depressed unless the patient describes his problems as at least partially psychological. All symptoms, including psychological ones, have a biological component, even if they originate from environmental stressors; and, conversely, many biological phenomena have a psychological component. We need only think about something as simple as blushing, which most people will agree is caused by an uncomfortable social interaction, or sometimes just the fantasy about such an interaction. Embarrassment triggers a reaction in which chemicals and hormones come into play to dilate our veins, bring blood to the surface of the skin, and cool the body. Our heart rate increases too. Moreover, scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that psychiatric conditions, and stressors in general, are a significant risk factor for a variety of different medical illnesses.

In this life, there are always three parts to our path. The first is what our minds want to do. We think we know, and sometimes we use logic to uncover our way. But in the end, that isn’t always the right decision. “The second part comes from our hearts,” he continued. “Like the young lady said, we long to make our hearts happy. Reason would make you think that if we make our hearts happy, our minds would be at peace.” Sean hadn’t heard the professor talk like this since he’d met the grouch. Now, all of the sudden, he was a philosopher? Still, he listened patiently to see where the old man was going with his point. “The last, and probably most important part has nothing to do with our hearts or our minds. In fact, it has very little to do with us as individuals. It has to do with the bigger picture, the grand scale of things. It is what we are called to do.” He let the words hang in the old sanctuary for a few moments. Sean understood what Firth was saying. Sometimes, what people wanted didn’t really even matter. It was what the world needed of them, what life needed of them. Firth narrowed his eyes. “What the universe needs of us takes all precedence. And sometimes, it may not be what is best for us. It may even call us to give up our lives. But if that is what is needed, that is what we must do.

Second, Jinnah died an exhausted man, unable to even get a functioning ambulance to take him from the airport in Karachi to his residence. According to M.J. Akbar, Jinnah’s personal physician in his last days, Col Ilahi Baksh, has recorded that once Jinnah, on his deathbed, lost his cool while speaking to Liaquat Ali, who had come to see him. Jinnah described Pakistan as ‘the biggest blunder of my life’. The story was printed in Peshawar’s Frontier Post in November 1987 and quotes Jinnah as saying, ‘If now I get an opportunity I will go to Delhi and tell Jawaharlal to forget about the follies of the past and become friends again.’56 According to Sarila if Col Elahi Baksh, the doctor who attended on Jinnah during the last phase of his illness in August–September 1948 at Ziarat near Quetta, is to be believed, he heard his patient say: ‘I have made it [Pakistan] but I am convinced that I have committed the greatest blunder of my life.’ And, around the same period, Liaquat Ali Khan, upon emerging one day from the sick man’s room after receiving a tongue-lashing, was heard to murmur: ‘The old man has now discovered his mistake.’57 To conclude, the

All your life you've done the right thing. All your life you've been the golden boy. But this past year, you've done some things you don't feel good about. Things you probably never thought you'd do." Laurel watched her husband, trying to judge the effect of these words. "Your reasons are your own business," Kyle went on, "but right now, you're overcome with guilt. You think you're about to be exposed. Ruined. You're going to lose the respect of all those patients who think you're Albert Schweitzer. So what do you do? Try to pull the whole house down around you before that happens. You want to show the world that nobody's more disgusted with Warren Shields than Dr. Shields himself." Auster laughed ruefully. "Partner, I know about self-disgust. And I know about confession. I can tell you from experience, it doesn't help the soul one bit. You'll feel better for about five seconds. Then you'll pay for the rest of your life. And if you keep doing what you're doing now, all those bad things you're dreading will come true. Patients won't ever look at you the same way again. You may even lose your right to practice medicine. Is that what you want?

Abortion is one of the most commonly performed medical procedures in the United States, and it is tragic that many women who have abortions are all too often mischaracterized and stigmatized, their exercise of moral agency sullied. Their judgment is publicly and forcefully second-guessed by those in politics and religion who have no business entering the deliberation. The reality is that women demonstrate forethought and care; talk to them the way clergy do and witness their sense of responsibility. Women take abortion as seriously as any of us takes any health-care procedure. They understand the life-altering obligations of parenthood and family life. They worry over their ability to provide for a child, the impact on work, school, the children they already have, or caring for other dependents. Perhaps the woman is unable to be a single parent or is having problems with a husband or partner or other kids.2 Maybe her contraception failed her. Maybe when it came to having sex she didn’t have much choice. Maybe this pregnancy will threaten her health, making adoption an untenable option. Or perhaps a wanted pregnancy takes a bad turn and she decides on abortion. It’s pretty complicated. It’s her business to decide on the outcome of her pregnancy—not ours to intervene, to blame, or to punish. Clergy know about moral agency through pastoral work. Women and families invite us into their lives to listen, reflect, offer sympathy, prayer, or comfort. But when it comes to giving advice, we recognize that we are not the ones to live with the outcome; the patient faces the consequences. The woman bears the medical risk of a pregnancy and has to live with the results. Her determination of the medical, spiritual, and ethical dimensions holds sway. The status of her fetus, when she thinks life begins, and all the other complications are hers alone to consider. Many women know right away when a pregnancy must end or continue. Some need to think about it. Whatever a woman decides, she needs to be able to get good quality medical care and emotional and spiritual support as she works toward the outcome she seeks; she figures it out. That’s all part of “moral agency.” No one is denying that her fetus has a moral standing. We are affirming that her moral standing is higher; she comes first. Her deliberations, her considerations have priority. The patient must be the one to arrive at a conclusion and act upon it. As a rabbi, I tell people what the Jewish tradition says and describe the variety of options within the faith. They study, deliberate, conclude, and act. I cannot force them to think or do differently.

She marched up to the door, banged it open with a satisfying crash, brandished her scythe, and announced herself to any and all therein. “Get your heathen, trespassing backsides out of this carriage house immediately, lest I inform your papas of your criminal conduct—and your mamas.” “Good lord,” a cultured and ominously adult male voice said softly from Ellen’s right, “we’re about to be taken prisoner. Prepare to defend your borders, my friend. Sleeping Beauty has awakened in a state.” Ellen’s gaze flew to the shadows, where a tall, dark-haired man was regarding her with patient humor. The calm amusement in his eyes suggested he posed no threat to her, while his dress confirmed he was a person of some means. Ellen had no time to further inventory that stranger, because the sound of a pair of boots slowly descending the steps drew her gaze across the room. Whoever was coming down those stairs was in no hurry and was certainly no boy. Long, long legs became visible, then muscles that looked as if they’d been made lean and elegant from hours in the saddle showed off custom riding boots and excellent tailoring. A trim, flat torso came next, then a wide muscular chest and impressive shoulders. Good lord, he was taller than the fellow in the corner, and that one was a good half a foot taller than she. Ellen swallowed nervously and tightened her grip on the scythe. “Careful,” the man in the shadows said softly, “she’s armed and ready to engage the enemy.” Those dusty boots descended the last two steps, and Ellen forced herself to meet the second man’s face. She’d been prepared for the kind of teasing censorship coming from the one in the corner, a polite hauteur, or outright anger, but not a slow, gentle smile that melted her from the inside out. “Mrs. FitzEngle.” Valentine Windham bowed very correctly from the waist. “It has been too long, and you must forgive us for startling you. Lindsey, I’ve had the pleasure, so dredge up your manners.” “Mr. Windham?” Ellen lowered her scythe, feeling foolish and ambushed, and worst of all—happy. So

Human bodies are extremely complicated and over the years I learned three important things about them, none of which I had been taught by lecturers or professors at my medical school. First, I learned that no two bodies are identical and there are an infinite number of variations. Not even twins are truly identical. When I first started to study medicine I used to think how much easier it would be for us all (doctors and patients) if bodies came with an owner's manual, but the more I learned about medicine the more I realised that such a manual would have to contain so many variations, footnotes and appendices that it wouldn't fit into the British Museum let alone sit comfortably on the average bookshelf. Even if manuals were individually prepared they would still be too vast for practical use. However much we may think we know about illness and health there will always be exceptions; there will always be times when our prognoses and predictions are proved wrong. Second, I learned that the human body has enormous, hidden strengths, and far greater power than most of us ever realise. We tend to think of ourselves as being delicate and vulnerable. But, in practice, our bodies are tougher than we imagine, far more capable of coping with physical and mental stresses than most of us realise. Very few of us know just how strong and capable we can be. Only if we are pushed to our limits do we find out precisely what we can do. Third, I learned that our bodies are far better equipped for selfdefence than most of us imagine, and are surprisingly well-equipped with a wide variety of protective mechanisms and self-healing systems which are designed to keep us alive and to protect us when we find ourselves in adverse circumstances. The human body is designed for survival and contains far more automatic defence mechanisms, designed to protect its occupant when it is threatened, than any motor car. To give the simplest of examples, consider what happens when you cut yourself. First, blood will flow out of your body for a few seconds to wash away any dirt. Then special proteins will quickly form a protective net to catch blood cells and form a clot to seal the wound. The damaged cells will release special substances into the tissues to make the area red, swollen and hot. The heat kills any infection, the swelling acts as a natural splint - protecting the injured area. White cells are brought to the injury site to swallow up any bacteria. And, finally, scar tissue builds up over the wounded site. The scar tissue will be stronger than the original, damaged area of skin. Those were the three medical truths I discovered for myself. Over the years I have seen many examples of these three truths. But one patient always comes into my mind when I think about the way the human body can defy medical science, prove doctors wrong and exhibit its extraordinary in-built healing power.

Helicopters Nothing has done more to change the face of wilderness rescue than helicopters. They land in remote areas that were inaccessible to aircraft only a few years ago. If the spot isn’t flat enough, helicopters have been known to land on one skid while a patient is quickly loaded. When there is no spot to land, they have hovered with a rescuer hanging from a rope or cable, a rescuer equipped to attach the patient to the hauling system for evacuation. Helicopters go where the pilot wants because of the rapid spinning of two sets of blades. The large overhead blades create air by forcing air down. The pilot can vary the angle at which the blades attack the air and the speed at which they rotate to vary the amount of lift. The entire rotor can be tilted forward, backward, or sideways to determine the direction of travel. Without a second set of blades spinning in an opposite direction, the helicopter would turn circles helplessly in the air. Some large helicopters have two large sets of blades spinning in opposite directions, one fore and one aft, but most helicopters used in the wilderness maintain stability with one small tail rotor. When they are close to the ground, the spinning blades build a cushion of air that helps support the helicopter. This cushion of air varies in its ability to work, depending on its density. Rising air temperatures and increasing altitude reduce air density. So trying to land a helicopter on a mountaintop on a hot day is dangerous, and the weight of one person may prevent liftoff. Air density also is altered by the nearness of a mountainside. The downward shove of air by the blades can recirculate off the mountainside and reduce lift. One of the greatest fears of mountain flying is a sudden downdraft of air that can slam a helicopter toward the ground. Downdrafts are not only dangerous but also unpredictable. Add to air density and downdrafts the possibility of darkness and fog and wind, and you can understand that even if a helicopter is available it may not be able to come to your rescue.

Professionalism and discipline in Bombay cricket was paramount. You could be India’s leading test cricketer or the most precociously talented but the rules applied. Raghunath playing for Indian Gymkhana, has seen Ashok Mankad and Hanumant Singh as captains castigate and drop test cricketers who were even a minute late reporting for the game. The captain could merely be a respected cricketer and not necessarily a highly ranked state cricketer, but his writ would run. If Vasu Paranjpe decided to sit out a test bowler for coming late, then that was it and the test bowler would carry drinks for the day. In that respect alone Bombay was head and shoulders over Madras. Madras had a superbly organized cricket league, but their cricketers somehow never had the focus and discipline of the Bombay cricketer. Venkat was the glorious exception and for his stern discipline alone was he greatly resented by the easy going Madras cricketer. One incident remains etched in Giridhar’s memory. It was January 1972 and the second morning of the match between Madras and Mysore at the Central College grounds in Bangalore. 9 am and an hour more for play to begin, I (Giridhar) walk into the ground to chat with Venkat. He is already in full cricket gear, taking his customary practice catches. He is surrounded by only four fellow cricketers and as he takes his catches he keeps calling for the rest of his teammates to join him for practice. They all come in dribs and drabs, some still not in gear. He talks patiently and cheerfully to me but turns and lets out a fusillade at a fellow player who comes running, tucking his shirt in, and with his spiked cricket shoes in the other hand. Ask Venkat and he will tell you that no Bombay cricketer would ever take his cricket so lightly. Cricket was and is God to the middle-class Maharashtrian.

How long should it take for an app icon to animate up from its place on the home screen to fill the entire display? How far should you have to drag your finger on the screen for it to be possible to interpret the touch as a swipe gesture? How much should a two-finger pinch gesture allow you to zoom in on an image in the Photos app? The answers to all of these questions were numbers, and might be 0.35 seconds for the app animation, or 30 pixels for the swipe gesture, or 4x for photo zooming, but the number was never the point. The values themselves weren’t provably better in any engineering sense. Rather, the numbers represented sensible defaults, or pleasing effects, or a way to give people what they meant rather than what they did. It takes effort to find what these things are, which is appropriate, since the etymological root of “heuristic” is eureka, which (of course) comes from the Greek and means “to find.” This is where that word, “eureka,” actually figured into our development process, since good heuristics don’t come in brilliant flashes, but only after patient searches, and it wasn’t always clear to us that we had found the right heuristic even when we had. We arrived at our final decisions only with judgment and time. Heuristics are like this. They’re subjective.

The rain-filled potholes, set in naked rock are usually devoid of visible plant life but not of animal life. In addition to the inevitable microscopic creatures there may be certain amphibians like the spadefoot toad. This little animal lives through dry spells in a state of estivation under the dried-up sediment in the bottom of a hole. When the rain comes, if it comes, he emerges from the mud singing madly in his fashion, mates with the handiest female and fills the pool with a swarm of tadpoles, most of them doomed to a most ephemeral existence. But a few survive, mature, become real toads, and when the pool dries up they dig into the sediment as their parents did before, making burrows which they seal with mucus in order to preserve that moisture necessary to life. There they wait, day after day, week after week, in patient spadefoot torpor, perhaps listening - we can imagine - for the sounds of raindrops pattering at last on the earthen crust above their heads. If it comes in time the glorious cycle is repeated; if not, this particular colony of Bufonidae is reduced eventually to dust, a burden on the wind. Rain and puddles bring out other amphibia, even in the desert. It's a strange, stirring, but not uncommon thing to come on a pool at night, after an evening of thunder and lightning and a bit of rainfall, and see the frogs clinging to the edge of their impermanent pond, bodies immersed in water but heads out, all croaking away in tricky counterpoint. They are windbags: with each croak the pouch under the frog's chin swells like a bubble, then collapses. Why do they sing? What do they have to sing about? Somewhat apart from one another, separated by roughly equal distances, facing outward from the water, they clank and croak all through the night with tireless perseverance. To human ears their music has a bleak, dismal, tragic quality, dirgelike rather than jubilant. It may nevertheless be the case that these small beings are singing not only to claim their stake in the pond, not only to attract a mate, but also out of spontaneous love and joy, a contrapuntal choral celebration of the coolness and wetness after weeks of desert fire, for love of their own existence, however brief it may be, and for the joy in the common life. Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless. Therefore the frogs, the toads, keep on singing even though we know, if they don't that the sound of their uproar must surely be luring all the snakes and ringtail cats and kitfoxes and coyotes and great horned owls toward the scene of their happiness. What then? A few of the little amphibians will continue their metamorphosis by way of the nerves and tissues of one of the higher animals, in which process the joy of one becomes the contentment of the second. Nothing is lost except an individual consciousness here and there, a trivial perhaps even illusory phenomenon. The rest survive, mate, multiply, burrow, estivate, dream, and rise again. The rains will come, the potholes shall be filled. Again. And again. And again.

After shaving and showering and throwing on fresh jeans and a white T-shirt, I left my trailer around 8:30 p.m. and headed towards the lake trail. The setting sun was a soft fiery red and the sky was streaked with purple gashes. The surface of the lake was perfect, pinkish-silver calm glass, and as I walked down to the edge of the lake I thought of Johnny’s comment about “our bench.” With the street lights sparkling uphill to my right, and the smooth lake surface on my left, and the brushed concrete trail under me, I felt like I was approaching an intersection point in the setting Johnny had created for Vermilion Lake. It took about ten minutes to see the bench in the distance and a person sitting there. As I got closer, I saw Johnny, but she looked different. She had come to the bench straight from a late meeting with Will New, and she was dressed in a formal dark-blue business suit with jacket and knee-length skirt. She was wearing a stark-white buttoned blouse and her bare legs were slipped into black high heels. Her red hair was up in an extremely formal looking bun without a strand free. I’d not seen her with glasses the night before and she looked very scholarly. She stood up as I approached, and said, “Hi Tom,” and gave me a gentle hug. As I held her for a second against my chest I could feel her soft breasts through the layers of her suit, and the scent of her hair was beautiful, and then she stepped back and said, “Please sit down. We’ve got a lot to discuss.” The whole scene felt very different from the previous night. And from this meeting onwards I wouldn’t quite know what to make of Johnny. She was about to become a character composed of incongruous pieces, sometimes strong, sometimes fragile—almost patient-like. It was as if she had fallen apart and some force was in the process of reassembling her as a beautiful mess.

HERE IS HOW TO RECOVER STOLEN CRYPTO // MUYERN TRUST HACKER ( Mail them at: muyerntrusted( at ) mail-me( dot )com ) ( Telegram for fast communication ( at )muyerntrusthacker ) ( Website: https:// muyerntrusthack. solutions/ )It's not often you feel the ground disappear beneath your feet, but when my online investment platform froze and my $200,000 savings vanished into thin air, that's exactly what happened. Panic, disbelief, and a crushing sense of helplessness washed over me. My life savings are gone. My dreams shattered. Days blurred into nights as I desperately searched for answers – frantic emails, endless phone calls, and countless online forums fueled by despair. My hope dwindled with each passing hour, leaving only a gnawing fear that the money was truly lost. Then Muyern Trust Hacker appeared, offering a ray of hope. My friend, god bless them, recommended that I check out their website after coming across it. I reached out to them, skeptical but clinging to hope, ready for another letdown. But something felt different. From the first email, Muyern Trust Hacker exuded professionalism and empathy. They listened to my story patiently, outlined their recovery process, and kept me informed every step of the way. They were the lifeline I desperately needed. The days that followed were a rollercoaster of emotions. Hope flickered, then dimmed, then flared again with each update. But slowly, steadily, progress was made. Muyern Trust Hacker unraveled the complexities of my case, navigated legal hurdles, and chipped away at the mountain of despair I had built around myself. Finally, the news arrived. My funds, all $200,000 of them, were recovered. Tears of relief streamed down my face as I read the confirmation email. It felt like a miracle, a second chance at life. My experience with Muyern Trust Hacker wasn't just about getting my money back. It was about regaining my faith in humanity, the possibility of justice, and the existence of good people who fight for what's right. Today, I stand here, no longer a victim, but a survivor. This is a testament to the power of resilience, the importance of hope, and the incredible work of companies like Muyern Trust Hacker. Don't give up if you ever find yourself in a similar situation. Seek help, reach out, and remember – even when the darkness seems absolute, a light is always waiting to be found. Better contact Muyern Trust Hacker ASAP.