Perfection Doesn't Exist Quotes

One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn't exist.....Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist

Accept your dark side, understanding it will help you to move with the light. Knowing both sides of our souls, helps us all to move forward in life and to understand that, perfection doesn't exist.

My dream is to find a guy who'll love me despite my flaws and won't turn away from me when a perfect girl walks by. Maybe a boy like that doesn't even exist.

The real questions for parents should be: "Are you engaged? Are you paying attention?" If so, plan to make lots of mistakes and bad decisions. Imperfect parenting moments turn into gifts as our children watch us try to figure out what went wrong and how we can do better next time. The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn't exist, and I've found what makes children happy doesn't always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.

Perfection' is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe.... If you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.

Perfection doesn't exist," I reply. "It's a mask people wear to conceal their ugly truths. Never trust someone who only ever smiles at you.

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely. The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion. Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, 'this might be all part of God’s plan,' or 'there are no accidents in life,' or 'everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves' - these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this.

All I can do is go forward, and to do that, I must stop chasing perfection. It doesn't exist. I can never please everyone. It's hard enough just pleasing myself. Instead, I must focus on giving what I have, not what people want, because that is all I can give.

I don't know whether to cry or scream or do both. It feels like I've done more than enough of both. And it feels like I haven't done enough. And at some point, I know I'm going to have to crawl out of this bed and pick up the pieces but right now, it can be just me. Just me, these four walls, and this bed. The universe doesn't have to exist outside this bedroom, and that's perfectly okay.

The wish of death had been palpably hanging over this otherwise idyllic paradise for a good many years. All business and politics is personal in the Philippines. If it wasn't for the cheap beer and lovely girls one of us would spend an hour in this dump. They [Jehovah's Witnesses] get some kind of frequent flyer points for each person who signs on. I'm not lazy. I'm just motivationally challenged. I'm not fat. I just have lots of stored energy. You don't get it do you? What people think of you matters more than the reality. Marilyn. Despite standing firm at the final hurdle Marilyn was always ready to run the race. After answering the question the woman bent down behind the stand out of sight of all, and crossed herself. It is amazing what you can learn in prison. Merely through casual conversation Rick had acquired the fundamentals of embezzlement, fraud and armed hold up. He wondered at the price of honesty in a grey world whose half tones changed faster than the weather. The banality of truth somehow always surprises the news media before they tart it up. You've ridden jeepneys in peak hour. Where else can you feel up a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl without even trying? [Ralph Winton on the Philippines finer points] Life has no bottom. No matter how bad things are or how far one has sunk things can always get worse. You could call the Oval Office an information rain shadow. In the Philippines, a whole layer of criminals exists who consider that it is their right to rob you unhindered. If you thwart their wicked desires, to their way of thinking you have stolen from them and are evil. There's honest and dishonest corruption in this country. Don't enjoy it too much for it's what we love that usually kills us. The good guys don't always win wars but the winners always make sure that they go down in history as the good guys. The Philippines is like a woman. You love her and hate her at the same time. I never believed in all my born days that ideas of truth and justice were only pretty words to brighten a much darker and more ubiquitous reality. The girl was experiencing the first flushes of love while Rick was at least feeling the methadone equivalent. Although selfishness and greed are more ephemeral than the real values of life their effects on the world often outlive their origins. Miriam's a meteor job. Somewhere out there in space there must be a meteor with her name on it. Tsismis or rumours grow in this land like tropical weeds. Surprises are so common here that nothing is surprising. A crooked leader who can lead is better than a crooked one who can't. Although I always followed the politics of Hitler I emulate the drinking habits of Churchill. It [Australia] is the country that does the least with the most. Rereading the brief lines that told the story in the manner of Fox News reporting the death of a leftist Rick's dark imagination took hold. Didn't your mother ever tell you never to trust a man who doesn't drink? She must have been around twenty years old, was tall for a Filipina and possessed long black hair framing her smooth olive face. This specter of loveliness walked with the assurance of the knowingly beautiful. Her crisp and starched white uniform dazzled in the late-afternoon light and highlighted the natural tan of her skin. Everything about her was in perfect order. In short, she was dressed up like a pox doctor’s clerk. Suddenly, she stopped, turned her head to one side and spat comprehensively into the street. The tiny putrescent puddle contrasted strongly with the studied aplomb of its all-too-recent owner, suggesting all manner of disease and decay.

If you're looking for Mr. Perfect, you‟re going to spend your whole life being disappointed, because he doesn‟t exist. You have to get the best deal you can, but there will always be problems.

I was never yours, and you were never mine, Maven. And not because of him, either. I thought you were perfect, I thought you were strong and brave and good. I thought you were better than him." Better than Cal. Those are words Maven thought no one would ever say. He flinches, and for a second, I can see the boy I used to know. A boy that doesn't exist anymore.

The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you’re famous. P izza tastes good regardless of your job title. The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

We're told perfection doesn't exist, but that couldn't be true. Maybe perfection couldn't last, but it certainly could occur. It had to, because as I stood there staring at this beautifully flawed girl and realized she was mine, no moment had ever felt so perfect.

Hey, look at this!" He holds up a glistening, perfect pearl about the size of a pea. "You know, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls," he says earnestly to Finnick. "No, it doesn't," says Finnick dismissively. But I crack up, remembering that's how a clueless Effie Trinket presented us to the people of the Capitol last year, before anyone knew us. As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.

I can see why she feels left behind. Maybe even discarded. Is that why she refuses to accept my love and return it? Afraid that love doesn't last? Doesn't really exist? Afraid if her own father can withdraw his love (or at least the manifestation of his love), that maybe she somehow isn't worthy of the emotion?

Love requires courage, persistence, and maintenance. Love just doesn’t lie there with us as we live our lives, and engulf us, providing us with an assurance that it exists.” “Love is developed, and it is never perfect. We, as people, are flawed. Therefore, love is flawed. Most people live their lives trying to find the perfect person to provide them what they believe to be the perfect love. In my opinion, people should find someone that provides them with affection, someone that makes them feel, then develop and maintain the perfect love. That is the closest thing to real love that could ever possibly exist,

I said earlier that making decisions is a key anxiety trigger, If we drill down a bit we can see that this happens because we work to the belief there's a perfect decision out there to be made. But such a thing doesn't exist. And clutching at something that doesn't exist is enough to send anyone into a drowning panic.

When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. -Brad Gilbert

You Can't Write Perfect Software. Did that hurt? It shouldn't. Accept it as an axiom of life. Embrace it. Celebrate it. Because perfect software doesn't exist. No one in the brief history of computing has ever written a piece of perfect software. It's unlikely that you'll be the first. And unless you accept this as a fact, you'll end up wasting time and energy chasing an impossible dream.

Remember that our Heavenly Father knows us perfectly and knows what's best for us . . . . Surely, His knowledge is greater than ours. We just have to have faith in Him. If we don't, well, that doesn't change what happened, it just makes us more miserable because we refuse to trust His will. Our Heavenly Father wants us to have joy. And happiness. But we need to look for those opportunities that give us joy. If we don't, what would be the purpose for existing?

Let me explain why. "Perfection" is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe. There is no perfection. It's really the world's greatest con game; it promises riches and delivers misery. The harder you strive for perfection, the worse your disappointment will become because it's only an abstraction, a concept that doesn't fit reality. Everything can be improved if you look at it closely and critically enough—every person, every idea, every work of art, every experience, everything. So if you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.

I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, Molly mine. And when I look at you, that’s all I’m ever going to see, the woman I love. It doesn’t matter if you’re perfect. To me, you will be, and that’s all that counts. It’ll be that way always. Even years from now, when you’re old and withered, I’ll see you with my heart, not my eyes. That’s just the way it is when you love someone. The imperfections don’t exist. If you see them at all, you think they’re beautiful.

Perfect doesn't exist for people like us, Bartholomew. Passable. That's what I want. Just simply passable. If I could have a passable existence, I think I'd be very grateful.

Over the years you will go through seasons in which you have to learn to love a person who you didn’t marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have to make changes that you don’t want to make, and so will your spouse. The journey may eventually take you into a strong, tender, joyful marriage. But it is not because you married the perfectly compatible person. That person doesn’t exist.

Third-level, life-long relationships are generally few because “their existence implies that those involved have reached a stage simultaneously in which the teaching-learning balance is actually perfect.” That doesn’t mean, however, that we necessarily recognize our third-level assignments; in fact, generally we don’t. We may even feel hostility toward these particular people. Someone with whom we have a lifetime’s worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow. Sometimes it represents someone with whom we participate lovingly all our lives, and sometimes it represents someone who we experience as a thorn in our side for years, or even forever. Just because someone has a lot to teach us, doesn’t mean we like them. People who have the most to teach us are often the ones who reflect back to us the limits to our own capacity to love, those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds—the places where we feel we can’t love any more, can’t connect any more deeply, can’t forgive past a certain point. We are in each other’s lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.

For Kierkegaard, for Heidegger, for Sartre, the more profound the awareness, the more authentic the existence. They measure honesty and the essence of experience by the degree of awareness. But is our humanity really built on awareness? Doesn't awareness--that forced, extreme awareness--arise among us, not from us, as something created by effort, the mutual perfecting of ourselves in it, the confirming of something that one philosopher forces onto another? Isn't man, therefore, in his private reality, something childish and always beneath his own awareness? And doesn't he feel awareness to be, at the same time, something alien, imposed and unimportant? If this is how it is, this furtive childhood, this concealed degradation are ready to explode your systems sooner or later.

Normal people don't know how hard it is to fangirl over celebrities who don't know you exist and fictional characters who die and try to not act like you are insane in public, trying to read all the 130 million books that exist in this world while also staying on top of classes and getting good grades while also socializing with actual people and completing all the tasks on time and battle anxiety while also being a perfect student who gives great speeches and doesn't have stage fear with impeccable grammar and is articulate like GEEZ! I would rather stay crazy!

Let’s pretend that time doesn’t exist. Let’s pretend that this week isn’t ending. Let’s pretend that we will always be us—happy, sunburnt, and tangled up together. It would hurt. It would really hurt, but it would be wonderful, too—one last perfect day with him.

Naive people tend to generalize people as—-good, bad, kind, or evil based on their actions. However, even the smartest person in the world is not the wisest or the most spiritual, in all matters. We are all flawed. Maybe, you didn’t know a few of these things about Einstein, but it puts the notion of perfection to rest. Perfection doesn’t exist in anyone. Nor, does a person’s mistakes make them less valuable to the world. 1. He divorced the mother of his children, which caused Mileva, his wife, to have a break down and be hospitalized. 2.He was a ladies man and was known to have had several affairs; infidelity was listed as a reason for his divorce. 3.He married his cousin. 4.He had an estranged relationship with his son. 5. He had his first child out of wedlock. 6. He urged the FDR to build the Atom bomb, which killed thousands of people. 7. He was Jewish, yet he made many arguments for the possibility of God. Yet, hypocritically he did not believe in the Jewish God or Christianity. He stated, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.

In your life, you will inevitably: misspeak, trust the wrong person, underreact, overreact, hurt the people who didn't deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat. These mistakes will cause you to lose things. But, losing things doesn't just mean losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too. Life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once. Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release; you can't carry all things, decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go. Oftentimes, the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there's more room for them. NEVER BE ASHAMED OF TRYING.

You will not remember much from school. School is designed to teach you how to respond and listen to authority figures in the event of an emergency. Like if there's a bomb in a mall or a fire in an office. It can, apparently, take you more than a decade to learn this. These are not the best days of your life. They are still ahead of you. You will fall in love and have your heart broken in many different, new and interesting ways in college or university (if you go) and you will actually learn things, as at this point, people will believe you have a good chance of obeying authority and surviving, in the event of an emergency. If, in your chosen career path, there are award shows that give out more than ten awards in one night or you have to pay someone to actually take the award home to put on your mantlepiece, then those awards are more than likely designed to make young people in their 20's work very late, for free, for other people. Those people will do their best to convince you that they have value. They don't. Only the things you do have real, lasting value, not the things you get for the things you do. You will, at some point, realise that no trophy loves you as much as you love it, that it cannot pay your bills (even if it increases your salary slightly) and that it won't hold your hand tightly as you say your last words on your deathbed. Only people who love you can do that. If you make art to feel better, make sure it eventually makes you feel better. If it doesn't, stop making it. You will love someone differently, as time passes. If you always expect to feel the same kind of love you felt when you first met someone, you will always be looking for new people to love. Love doesn't fade. It just changes as it grows. It would be boring if it didn't. There is no truly "right" way of writing, painting, being or thinking, only things which have happened before. People who tell you differently are assholes, petrified of change, who should be violently ignored. No philosophy, mantra or piece of advice will hold true for every conceivable situation. "The early bird catches the worm" does not apply to minefields. Perfection only exists in poetry and movies, everyone fights occasionally and no sane person is ever completely sure of anything. Nothing is wrong with any of this. Wisdom does not come from age, wisdom comes from doing things. Be very, very careful of people who call themselves wise, artists, poets or gurus. If you eat well, exercise often and drink enough water, you have a good chance of living a long and happy life. The only time you can really be happy, is right now. There is no other moment that exists that is more important than this one. Do not sacrifice this moment in the hopes of a better one. It is easy to remember all these things when they are being said, it is much harder to remember them when you are stuck in traffic or lying in bed worrying about the next day. If you want to move people, simply tell them the truth. Today, it is rarer than it's ever been. (People will write things like this on posters (some of the words will be bigger than others) or speak them softly over music as art (pause for effect). The reason this happens is because as a society, we need to self-medicate against apathy and the slow, gradual death that can happen to anyone, should they confuse life with actually living.)

Idols You put her on a pedestal. Love her, adore her, crown her as your queen. Then you watch and wait, for a slip, a split second when her guard is down. You would tear her into pieces just to claim a fragment of her story. No one can be perfect all the time. Why do you expect her to be any different? Why is she held to an impossible standard? Why do you take it so personally when she contradicts the version of herself that exists only in your head? You think you know her, that she owes you somehow. That her existence is only relative to yours. But she is her own person. She lives and breathes, she hopes and dreams. She has a life, a love, a family, a purpose. And she doesn’t owe anyone a damn thing.

He stepped into her line of sight and brushed the robe aside to press a tender kiss on her scarred breast. “They are part of you. I think you are beautiful with them.” “I’m not perfect like other shifters.” “I don’t want perfect because it doesn’t exist in any species.

This book is less a sequel to my last one and more a collection of bizarre essays and conversations and confused thoughts stuck together by spilled boxed wine and the frustrated tears of baffled editors who have no choice but to accept my belief that it’s perfectly acceptable to make up something if you need a word that doesn’t already exist, and that punctuation is really more of a suggestion than a law.

If you think anyone in this world doesn’t have cracks, scars, and a story, then you’re not looking close enough. We weren’t brought into this world to be perfect; we were brought here to be human. To live. To feel. To hurt. To love. To cry. To exist.” “And with that, comes a few broken parts. You don’t have to be perfect to love or be loved. You just have to be brave enough to show the world your scars and call them beautiful.

We seem normal only to those who don't know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on an early dinner date would be; "And how are you crazy?" The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don't care enough to do the hard work of enlightening us. One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with. We make mistakes, too, because are so lonely. No one can be in an optimal state of mind to choose a partner when remaining single feels unbearable. We have to be wholly at peace with the prospect of many years of solitude in order to be appropriately picky; otherwise, we risk loving no longer being single rather more than we love the partner who spared us that fate. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for. The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn't exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently - the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the "not overly wrong" person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition. Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling. We end up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not "normal." We should learn to accommodate ourselves to "wrongness", striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and our partners.

Perfect doesn't exist. Realness does. Realness is what I need.

Perfection doesn't exist here, AWESOME does.

A person only gets to move to New York City for the first time in her life once, Angela, and it’s a pretty big deal. Perhaps this idea doesn’t hold any romance for you, since you are a born New Yorker. Maybe you take this splendid city of ours for granted. Or maybe you love it more than I do, in your own unimaginably intimate way. Without a doubt, you were lucky to be raised here. But you never got to move here—and for that, I am sorry for you. You missed one of life’s great experiences. New York City in 1940! There will never be another New York like that one. I’m not defaming all the New Yorks that came before 1940, or all the New Yorks that came after 1940. They all have their importance. But this is a city that gets born anew in the fresh eyes of every young person who arrives here for the first time. So that city, that place—newly created for my eyes only—will never exist again. It is preserved forever in my memory like an orchid trapped in a paperweight. That city will always be my perfect New York.

The worst thing we can do is think that something we’re feeling is so wrong and horrible that we isolate ourselves from God, thinking we’re not worthy of being in His presence. We must remember that Allah doesn’t expect us to be perfect; after all, our sense of self-worth is not dependent on us, but on God. When we bring our poverty, our neediness, and our nothingness to God, He meets us with His generosity (Al-Karim), His ability to satisfy all needs (As-Samad), and His richness (Al-Ghaniy). Just as if you want light in your room you must open the blinds, if you want the shadows and dark places in your being to dissolve, you have to open your heart to the light of Allah. In essence, all of existence is just a reflection of the light of God’s grace manifesting into different forms.

And, see, those metaphors – 'up front' and 'out in the open' – are part of a system we call atavistic purism. AP implies the existence of an ethically perfect state, which not only doesn't exist and never existed, but it's usually used to shore up the prejudices of whoever's making the judgments.

When the solution to a given problem doesn’t lay right before our eyes, it is easy to assume that no solution exists. But history has shown again and again that such assumptions are wrong. This is not to say the world is perfect. Nor that all progress is always good. Even widespread societal gains inevitably produce losses for some people. That’s why the economist Joseph Schumpeter referred to capitalism as “creative destruction.” But humankind has a great capacity for finding technological solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and this will likely be the case for global warming. It isn’t that the problem isn’t potentially large. It’s just that human ingenuity—when given proper incentives—is bound to be larger. Even more encouraging, technological fixes are often far simpler, and therefore cheaper, than the doomsayers could have imagined. Indeed, in the final chapter of this book we’ll meet a band of renegade engineers who have developed not one but three global-warming fixes, any of which could be bought for less than the annual sales tally of all the Thoroughbred horses at Keeneland auction house in Kentucky.

You can't be an important and life changing presence for some people without also being a joke an an embarrassment to others. You just can't. Because there's no such thing as lack of adversity. It doesn't exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there's a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that's perfectly fine. The point isn't to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Your body isn’t a thing to be looked at and judged against some standard of perfection that doesn’t even really exist. It’s the vessel that takes you through life, allowin’ you to experience all the beautiful things life has to offer. Food. Sex. Sunsets. Music. Hugs. Laughter. A healthy body is a gift. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t treat it like some cheap one-night stand. Treat it like the love of your life. Treat it with respect and tenderness, but most of all, gratitude.

That thing over there was more there than it’s there! Yes, sometimes I cry about the perfect body that doesn’t exist. But the perfect body is the bodiest body there can be, And the rest are the dreams men have, The myopia of someone who doesn’t look very much,

Geometry exist everywhere.It is necessary, however, to have eyes to see it, intelligence to understand it , and spirit to wonder at it.The wild Bedouin sees geometric forms but doesn't understand them ; the Sunni understands them but does not admire them; the artist, finally, perceives the perfection of figures, understands beauty, and admires order and harmony.God was the Great Geometer.He geometrized heaven and earth.

Because here’s another sneaky little truth about life. You can’t be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You just can’t. Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

Stop searching for that perfect person you hope for. Stop searching for someone who would meet the standards you set as spouse material, instead love the one who's already next to you, who has always been there for you, and never done you wrong. Perfection doesn't exist in anyone, including you.

I used to believe that I could do everything and be everywhere. I could work longer hours, make the dead line, cook delicious meals, play with the kids, get enough sleep, focus on my health. And I can absolutely can do all these things. But not at the same time. Not on the same day. Realizing that was a delightful freedom. Letting go of that notion of constant balance was releasing a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding. You mean I don't have to be everything to everyone all the time? I don't have to keep all the balls in the air all the time? I can change balls? I can choose different balls? Balance is finding the correct weight for every area of life and understanding that the correctness of that weight will change over time. Balance is fluid and flexible. Balance is alive and aware. Balance is intention. This idea of balance- a correctness rather than an equalness has taught me some of the most important lessons of my life. - I can not be everything to everyone - I can not be in all places at once. - Saying yes to one thing means saying no to another. - Saying no to one thing means I can say yes to another. - Perfection doesn't exist. Let it go. - I can not change people - I have to stop comparing myself to others. They aren't me. I'm not them. - I will never finish the laundry - I can't control everything - Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. - My kids aren't me. - Being all in a moment means I'm all out of another. - Envy and jealousy are different things. - Achievements never look like I thought they were going to. - Being kind to others is addictive. - I can't always be self- possessed. - Sometimes I need a cheerleader. - I like being part of a community. - Asking for help is hard, but necessary. Embrace the wobbly balance.

It's perfectly clear to me that religion is a myth. It's something we have invented to explain the inexplicable. My religion and the spiritual side of my life come from a sense of connection to the humankind and nature on this planet and in the universe. I am in overwhelming awe of it all: It is so fantastic, so complex, so beyond comprehension. What does it all mean -- if it has any meaning at all? But how can it all exist if it doesn't have some kind of meaning? I think anyone who suggests that they have the answer is motivated by the need to invent answers, because we have no such answers.

There are gradations, then, in Hauerwas’s Law. Some people are really, really the wrong people to marry. But everyone else is still incompatible. All who win through to a good, long-term marriage know what Hauerwas is talking about. Over the years you will go through seasons in which you have to learn to love a person who you didn’t marry, who is something of a stranger. You will have to make changes that you don’t want to make, and so will your spouse. The journey may eventually take you into a strong, tender, joyful marriage. But it is not because you married the perfectly compatible person. That person doesn’t exist.

Every writer is obliged to create his own language, as every violinist is obliged to create his own “tone”…. I don’t mean to say that I like original writers who write badly. I prefer—and perhaps it’s a weakness—those who write well. But they begin to write well only on condition that they’re original, that they create their own language. Correctness, perfection of style do exist, but on the other side of originality, after having gone through all the faults, not this side. Correctness this side—“discreet emotion,” “smiling good nature,” “most abominable of all years”—doesn’t exist. The only way to defend language is to attack it, yes, yes, Madame Straus!

The United States isn’t perfect; there’s injustice everywhere I turn. But there’s also a mechanism that protects its citizens—the right to question when something is wrong, to speak out, to protest, to be heard. It doesn’t always work, sometimes the system fails those it was designed to protect, but at least that opportunity—the hope of it—exists.

And so the milk ran dry. But first we had the luck of those creams, those spilled-down sauces, that summer of appetite that began with a soufflé cheesecake. There are very few ingredients to the recipe. Butter doesn't make the cake, nor cream. Its secret is ephemerality. Pull it from the oven and it is perfect; the next moment it is cooling, flattening, collapsing beneath the gravity of time. This is a flavor untasted by diners and critics, no record of its existence but for a private memory that lingers on one or two tongues.

From this perspective, we can see that perfection doesn’t exist; it is a goal that fuels a never-ending process of adaptation.

Could we imagine that beauty itself doesn’t just exist in society’s version of aesthetic perfection? Beauty also emerges from places and things that tell us stories.

Perfection doesn’t exist, but beauty does

perfect software doesn't exist. No one in the brief history of computing has ever written a piece of perfect software.

No one is perfect, Katy. Perfect doesn’t exist. What we had was pretty fucking good, though.

abandon the idea of "perfect" because it doesn't exist

The perfect country doesn't exist, the perfect consciousness doesn't exist, the perfect cosmos doesn't exist.

I want to win an award that doesn’t exist yet. Well, I want my clone to win it, and that’s almost the same thing—and he also doesn’t exist yet, so it’s perfect.

perfection doesn’t exist; it is a goal that fuels a never-ending process of adaptation.

It's a never-ending quest for a state of perfection that doesn't exist

The truth is are will never be as effortless as it used to be, not now that people have expectations of me. All I can do is go forward, and to do that, I must stop chasing perfection. It doesn't exist. I can never please everyone. It's hard enough just pleasing myself. Instead, I must focus on giving what I have, not what people want, because that is all I can give.

Little do you know that, while you’re envying a person’s beauty, money, or success, they may be battling to live. Those things that they have that you don’t have may be a way of helping them cope. Those things may be a way of proving to them that perfection does not exist. It cannot exist. Just because people don’t complain to you doesn’t mean that they don’t have problems. It means that they’ve learned to accept their problems and deal with them without wanting you to worry. They think of how to keep you happy while you wonder how they could be so happy.

When it comes to relationships, Maximizers—like Steven— mistakenly believe that with the right amount of exploration, they can find the perfect person and have absolute confidence in their decision. But this perfect person (and complete certainty) doesn’t exist. That’s why maximizing leads to anguish, delays in decision-making, and missed opportunities. In other words, it’s better to be a Satisficer.

As theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking once said: “One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.

It is strange that God, who is beyond the limits of time, manifests Himself within time and its transformations. If you don’t know “where” God is – and people sometimes ask such questions – you have to look at everything that changes and moves, that doesn’t fit into a shape, that fluctuates and disappears: the surface of the sea, the dances of the sun’s corona, earthquakes, the continental drift, snows melting and glaciers moving, rivers flowing to the sea, seeds germinating, the wind that sculpts mountains, a foetus developing in its mother’s belly, wrinkles near the eyes, a body decaying in the grave, wines maturing, or mushrooms growing after a rain. God is present in every process. God is vibrating in every transformation. Now He is there, now there is less of Him, but sometimes He is not there at all, because God manifests Himself even in the fact that He is not there. People – who themselves are in fact a process – are afraid of whatever is impermanent and always changing, which is why they have invented something that doesn’t exist – invariability, and recognised that whatever is eternal and unchanging is perfect. So they have ascribed invariability to God, and that was how they lost the ability to understand Him.

These emotions, this love, this fear, this gratitude, this relief, the grief – none of it really exists. None of it has mass or location, none of it can be weighed or photographed. None of these emotions last, none of them can be measured – except in that very moment when we're feeling them. They're like music – once the notes are played, they disappear. They only exist in that moment in time. Love isn't merely something we feel, it's something we create – something we have to keep creating in each and every moment. It's a song we have to keep playing. Because we know it doesn't really exist. We can't hold it. We can't lock it away. We can't insure it. It's just a melody we play on and on. Our own Songline. We can only go on playing it, moment by moment, until we're all out of moments. It seems sort of pointless, striving so hard for perfection in something that doesn't really exist. But, my, what a symphony it is. And it's funny really, because for something that doesn't exist, it seems to be the only thing that human beings never run out of. As long as we have faith in its magic, love is the only thing that lasts.

The princess stops us walking. She holds the lantern up between us, and she looks at me with the eyes of all the princesses and queens in the history book. Eyes as old as Judas The Hero and Micah's boat of stars. She is ancient and profound, and she has Internment fascinated, copying her hair and her clothing in an attempt to understand. She looks at me now the way the whole floating city looks at her--hoping for some sort of answer that doesn't exist.

Rules only have meaning as long as you're abiding by them. As soon as you start ignoring them, it turns out that you don't owe anyone anything, you're not obligated to make up all kinds of silly stories about things you actually know nothing about. Then it turns out that you can get by just fine without all those made-up stories, and there aren't any rules - what they're showing you doesn't exist anymore, so there's nothing to say. It's all a sham, they're just trying to use you... and it's all perfectly legal, of course. It's like school all over again. The thing is that we all grew up a long time ago, but we're still being treated like kids, like unintelligent, deceitful, irrational bastards who need to be coerced and corrected and have the right answers beaten out of them.

The sky isn’t more beautiful if you have perfect skin. Music doesn’t sound more interesting if you have a six-pack. Dogs aren’t better company if you’re famous. Pizza tastes good regardless of your job title. The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

Love doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s inextricably intertwined with self-sacrifice, vulnerability, risk…and yes, pain. Maybe that’s why we’re so often disillusioned by it. We demand it to be perfect when in essence love can’t exist without the risk of pain and the cost of safety.

From this perspective, we can see that perfection doesn't exist; it is a goal that fuels a never-ending process of adaptation. If nature, or anything, were perfect it wouldn't be evolving. Organisms, organizations and individual people are always highly imperfect but capable of improving. So rather than getting stuck hiding our mistakes and pretending we're perfect, it makes sends to find our imperfections and deal with them. You will either learn valuable lessons from your mistakes and press on, better equipped to succeed- or you won't and you will fail. p145

It’s like my grandpa always used to say, ‘A butter knife would make a deadlier weapon than a melting stick of butter.’”
 “Your grandpa never said that.”
 “No, but he should have. He was a damn fool not to have uttered those words.”
 “My grandpa was a janitor, in the Great Depression. The greatest thing he ever said was, ‘Greg, I just Gregged all over your floor. Do you have a mop I can use to clean it up?’”
 “Who’s Greg?”
 “I don’t know.”
 “What the shit kind of story is that? That story is bullshit. Greg doesn’t exist. Nobody knows nobody named Greg. It’s a unicorn name—it’s complete mythology.”
 “What about Lou Greg, the baseball player?”
 “Lou who? Lou Gehrig?”
 “Here’s a Lou for you. Greg Louganis.”
 “Bah, Greg Louganis doesn’t exist. He was a myth created by the Soviets to push their divers to perfection. The Russians realized they couldn’t be the best until they deceived their divers into believing there was someone who was always better.”
 “I’ve seen Greg Louganis, and he’s as real as you or me.”
 “You’ve seen what they wanted you to see. They gave you a blindfold to wear and convinced you it would improve your eyesight.”


Fuck, she tied you up.” “She’ll never be happy, Knight, I know it. And yeah, that ties me up.” “You wanna make her happy.” “She’ll never be happy.” “You wanna make her happy.” “Yeah, in that perfect world that doesn’t exist, I’d wanna make her happy. But we don’t live in a perfect world.

Higher purpose: I am here to serve. I am here to inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed. Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone. Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do. I will look in the mirror and describe myself exactly as if I were the perfect mother or father I wish I had had (beginning with the sentence “How beautiful you are in my eyes”). Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them. I will outline a novel based on my life (every incident will be true, but no one would ever guess that I am the hero). I will invent something in my mind that the world desperately needs. Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible. Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently. I will lie in a quiet place by the ocean, or with a tape of the sea, and breathe in its rhythms. Bonding: When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger. Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him- or herself. I will give my children as much of my undivided time today as they want. Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

In the nineteenth century, Emile Durkheim, the founder of sociology and an early pioneer of the social sciences, ran a thought experiment in one of his books: What if there were no crime? What if there emerged a society where everyone was perfectly respectful and nonviolent and everyone was equal? What if no one lied or hurt each other? What if corruption did not exist? What would happen? Would conflict cease? Would stress evaporate? Would everyone frolic in fields picking daises and singing the "Hallelujah" chorus from Handel's Messiah? Durkheim said no, that in fact the opposite would happen. He suggested that the more comfortable and ethical a society became, the more that small indiscretions would become magnified in our minds. If everyone stopped killing each other, we wouldn't necessarily feel good about it. We'd just get equally upset about the more minor stuff. Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn't make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure. A young person who has been sheltered form dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove it.

The world wasn't what I wanted it to be," Pong went on. "Not Chattana. Not even Tanaburi. I thought if I ran far enough, I could find that perfect place where life is fair and everything is good. But even if I make it to the sea, even if I go all the way to the end of the world, I'll never find a place like that. It doesn't exist.

One thing I’ve learnt in this life is that everyone is different. There is no cookie cutter mold to create the perfect look, the perfect shape, the perfect size. It doesn’t exist. The only thing that truly exists is imperfection. And it’s in all of us. Learning to embrace our imperfections, even loving them, is the biggest hurdle most of us face.

But now that I'm older, I realize life isn't a fairy tale. And no matter how much work you put into it, happily ever after doesn't exist." Of all the things his daughter had said so far, this concerned John the most. He took Alex by the hands, sat her at the kitchen table, and had a seat beside her. "Sweetheart, happily ever after does exist, it's just not what you think," he said. "Happily ever after isn't a solution to life's problems or a guarantee that life will be easy; it's a promise we make ourselves to always live our best lives, despite whatever circumstance comes our way. When we focus on joy in times of heartbreak, when we choose to laugh on the days it's hard to smile, and when we count our blessings over our losses - that's what a true happily ever after is all about. You don't get there by being perfect; on the contrary, it's our humanity that guides us. And that's what fairy tales have been trying to teach us all along." "But what about death?" Conner asked. "How do you keep living a happily ever after when you lose someone you love?" "Now you're troubled over something you can't control," John said. "The only power we have over death is how we choose to define it. Personally, when someone dies, I don't believe they cease to exist. The people we love the most will always be alive, thanks to the stories we tell and the memories we share. As long as we keep our loved ones in our hearts, their pulse will continue to beat through our own.

Be like gravity, man, just like motherfucking gravity. When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety-five percent head-wise, you’re going to win. But if you’re ninety-five percent game-wise and fifty percent head-wise, you’re going to lose, lose, lose.

I always felt that someone, a long time ago, organized the affairs of the world into areas that made sense-catagories of stuff that is perfectible, things that fit neatly in perfect bundles. The world of business, for example, is this way-line items, spreadsheets, things that add up, that can be perfected. The legal system-not always perfect, but nonetheless a mind-numbing effort to actually write down all kinds of laws and instructions that cover all aspects of being human, a kind of umbrella code of conduct we should all follow. Perfection is crucial in building an aircraft, a bridge, or a high-speed train. The code and mathematics residing just below the surface of the Internet is also this way. Things are either perfectly right or they will not work. So much of the world we work and live in is based upon being correct, being perfect. But after this someone got through organizing everything just perfectly, he (or probably a she) was left with a bunch of stuff that didn't fit anywhere-things in a shoe box that had to go somewhere. So in desperation this person threw up her arms and said, 'OK! Fine. All the rest of this stuff that isn't perfectible, that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else, will just have to be piled into this last, rather large, tattered box that we can sort of push behind the couch. Maybe later we can come back and figure where it all is supposed to fit in. Let's label the box ART.' The problem was thankfully never fixed, and in time the box overflowed as more and more art piled up. I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. The have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. Art is all just perfectly imperfect. Once the word ART enters the description of what you're up to , it is almost getting a hall pass from perfection. It thankfully releases us from any expectation of perfection. In relation to my own work not being perfect, I just always point to the tattered box behind the couch and mention the word ART, and people seem to understand and let you off the hook about being perfect a go back to their business.

It is possible to conceive, Anselm said, of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. Even an atheist can conceive of such a superlative being, though he would deny its existence in the real world. But, goes the argument, a being that doesn't exist in the real world is, by that very fact, less than perfect. Therefore we have a contradiction and, hey presto, God exists!

Stop being cruel." "The world is cruel. This world is, anyway. Tell me, Your Ladyship, what's it like in your fairy-tale land?" She snatched the shilling from his hand. As he looked on in irritation, she stood, cocked her arm, and winged the coin with all her strength. He pushed to his feet. "You just tossed away a perfectly good shilling. I can't imagine a better example of your pampered existence. That's a day's wages for a workingman." "You have millions of shillings, as you're so fond of telling everyone." "Yes, but I never forget that I came from far less. I couldn't forget that, even if I tried." "I have tried to forget. To forget where I came from, to deny the past. You don't know how I've tried." Her voice crumbled at the edges. "I may not have known poverty, but that doesn't mean I haven't known pain." Gabe pushed a hand through his hair. He recognized the ring of truth in her voice. She was being honest, and he was being an ass. Her character was finally coming into focus. He didn't know who or what had hurt her, but the blade had sunk deep. The world didn't hold enough kittens to fill that wound- but that hadn't stopped her from trying.

Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine. The point isn’t to get away from the shit. The point is to find the shit you enjoy dealing with.

And that’s the trap of marginal thinking. You can see the immediate costs of investing, but it’s really hard to accurately see the costs of not investing. When you decide that the upside of investing in the new product isn’t substantial enough while you still have a perfectly acceptable existing product, you aren’t taking into account a future in which somebody else brings the new product to market. You’re assuming everything else—specifically, the money you make on the old product—will continue forever exactly as it has up until now. A company may not see any consequences of that decision for some time. It might not get “caught” in the short term if a competitor doesn’t get ahead. But the company that makes all its decisions through this marginal-costs lens will, eventually, pay the price.

If life was perfect,how in the hell would v evr learn to depend on someone other dn ourselves?If anything,dt’s wat life’s taught me.D need to b perfect is stemmed in d very belief dt it’s actually something v cn achieve.Self-actualization —doesn’t exist.” “Does dt mean v don’t try then?” “No.” “It just means wen u reach end of ur rope,u shdn’t regret a damn thing,bt applaud urself for trying impossible

From this perspective, we can see that perfection doesn’t exist; it is a goal that fuels a never-ending process of adaptation. If nature, or anything, were perfect it wouldn’t be evolving. Organisms, organizations, and individual people are always highly imperfect but capable of improving. So rather than getting stuck hiding our mistakes and pretending we’re perfect, it makes sense to find our imperfections and deal with them.

It was very important to me to maintain the classic imagery in the stories by the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Anderson, but even more important to have diversity - which doesn't always exist in fairy-tale adaptations. The Fairy Council was the perfect way to feature characters of different ethnicities, LGBTQIA characters, and characters with disabilities in the series who could play a vital role in the plot of each book.

...we’re all a little broken. If you think anyone in this world doesn’t have cracks, scars, and a story, then you’re not looking close enough. We weren’t brought into this world to be perfect; we were brought here to be human. To live. To feel. To hurt. To love. To cry. To exist. And with that, comes a few broken parts. You don’t have to be perfect to love or be loved. You just have to be brave enough to show the world your scars and call them beautiful.

You really don’t believe that anything can have a value of its own beyond what function it serves for human beings?” Resaint said. “Value to who?” Resaint asked Halyard to imagine a planet in some remote galaxy—a lush, seething, glittering planet covered with stratospheric waterfalls, great land-sponges bouncing through the valleys, corals budding in perfect niveous hexagons, humming lichens glued to pink crystals, prismatic jellyfish breaching from the rivers, titanic lilies relying on tornadoes to spread their pollen—a planet full of complex, interconnected life but devoid of consciousness. “Are you telling me that, if an asteroid smashed into this planet and reduced every inch of its surface to dust, nothing would be lost? Because nobody in particular would miss it?” “But the universe is bloody huge—stuff like that must happen every minute. You can’t go on strike over it. Honestly it sounds to me to like your real enemy isn’t climate change or habitat loss, it’s entropy. You don’t like the idea that everything eventually crumbles. Well, it does. If you’re this worried about species extinction, wait until you hear about the heat death of the universe.” “I would be upset about the heat death of the universe too if human beings were accelerating the rate of it by a hundred times or more.” “And if a species’ position with respect to us doesn’t matter— you know, those amoebae they found that live at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, if they’re just as important as Chiu Chiu or my parents’ dog, even though nobody ever gets anywhere near them—if distance in space doesn’t matter, why should distance in time? If we don’t care about whether their lives overlap with our lives, why even worry about whether they exist simultaneously with us? Your favorite wasp—Adelo-midgy-midgy—” “Adelognathus marginatum—” “It did exist. It always will have existed. Extinction can’t take that away. It went through its nasty little routine over and over again for millions and millions of years. The show was a big success. So why is it important that it’s still running at the same time you are? Isn’t that centering the whole thing on human beings, which is exactly what we’re not supposed to be doing? I mean, for that matter—reality is all just numbers anyway, right? I mean underneath? That’s what people say now. So why are you so down on the scans? Hacks aside. Why is it so crucial that these animals exist right now in an ostensibly meat-based format, just because we do? My point is you talk about extinction as if you’re taking this enlightened post-human View from Nowhere but if we really get down to it you’re definitely taking a View from Karin Resaint two arms two legs one head born Basel Switzerland year of our lord two-thousand-and-when-ever.” But Resaint wasn’t listening anymore.

Why doesn't he say something to her? But I knew why. Because there's the creeping fear that these moments don't actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people thing precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all? We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don't want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It's too perfect. That little second of hope is worth something, possibly for ever, as we lie on out deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and we can't help but quickly give on last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we'd actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando's seventy-four years earlier.

No doubt about it, she’s good. And this piece, it’s technically perfect, but something’s missing. It’s like she’s playing to get it right, to get an A on some test that doesn’t exist. But that’s not what music’s about. Music isn’t like scoring points in a basketball game or knowing all the answers to a pop quiz. It’s pouring all your emotions into an instrument and letting that instrument express every inch of you. That’s real music – the stuff that makes you feel something.

Unsuspecting empaths often open their hearts, their bank accounts, and their bodies in order to help these vampires heal their so-called wounds, which actually don’t exist. This is not because the empath is a fool. It results, instead, from the perfect storm of the empath’s desire to be a healing force in the world, combined with the predatory skills of the vampire—and, very often, the unhealed wounds of the empath, who often doesn’t feel worthy of the best life has to offer.

Worship is God's gift of grace to us before it's our offering to God. We simply benefit from the perfect offering of the Son to the Father through the power of the Spirit (Ephesians 2:18). Worship is our humble, constant, appropriate, glad response to God's self-revelation and his enabling invitation. Apart from this perspective, leading worship can become self-motivated and self-exalting. We can become burdened by the responsibility to lead others and can think that we might not be able to deliver the goods. We subtly take pride in our worship, our singing, our playing, our planning, our performance, our leadership. Ultimately we separate ourselves from the God who drew us to worship him in the first place. That's why biblical worship is God-focused (God is clearly seen), God-centered (God is clearly the priority), and God-exalting (God is clearly honored). Gathering to praise God can't be a means to some "greater" end, such as church growth, evangelism, or personal ministry. God isn't a genie we summon by rubbing the bottle called "worship." He doesn't exist to help us get where we really want to go. God is where we want to go. So God's glory is the end of our worship, and not simply a means to something else. In the midst of a culture that glorifies our pitiful accomplishments in countless ways, we gather each week to proclaim God's wondrous deeds and to glory in his supreme value. He is holy, holy, holy. There is no one, and nothing, like the Lord.

Mr Unavailable blindly assumes that he acts as he does because he’s never met the ‘right’ woman. His ego forgets to remind himself that in his unavailable state, he’s not the right man – for anyone. By playing silly games (even if he doesn’t think he is), he gets to let himself off the hook and continue looking to the future where he thinks that his perfect woman exists. He’s failed to recognise that his resistance in relationships isn’t caused by the women he’s involved with, but by himself.

before memory. We like to think of ourselves as emerging from this primordial fog with our characters fully formed, like Aphrodite rising perfect from the sea foam. But thanks to increasing research into the development of the brain, we know this is not the case. We are born with a brain half-formed—more like a muddy lump of clay than a divine Olympian. As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.
This is frightening, for obvious reasons. Who knows what indignities we suffered, what torments and abuses, in this land before memory? Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid; anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me. But I suspect it originated in my relationship with my father, around whom I was never safe.

Hey, look at this!” He holds up a glistening, perfect pearl about the size of a pea. “You know, if you put enough pressure on coal it turns to pearls,” he says earnestly to Finnick. “No, it doesn’t,” says Finnick dismissively. But I crack up, remembering that’s how a clueless Effie Trinket presented us to the people of the Capitol last year, before anyone knew us. As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain. Peeta rinses the pearl off in the water and hands it to me. “For you.

Perfection" is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe. There is no perfection. It's really the world's greatest con game; it promises riches and delivers misery. The harder you strive for perfection, the worse your disappointment will become because it's only an abstraction, a concept that doesn't fit reality. Everything can be improved if you look at it closely and critically enough—every person, every idea, every work of art, every experience, everything. So if you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.

Acting is such a desperately futile profession anyway. Playing out the lives of other men. Knowing of their failures and successes long before they ever do. Living, suffering, murdering, dying … all in the space of three hours. Sometimes only two. And in such a confined little area. And over and over again every night. Can you imagine anything more perfectly stupid? Squeezing a whole existence into a measly evening’s entertainment on the stage? And not only that – in the middle of it all – pausing for an intermission. It makes one’s own life seem unbearably preposterous, doesn’t it?

What can be said to characterize the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, of unreality. Even Keats could write, in a letter to Browne just before he died: ‘I feel as if I had died already and am now living a posthumous existence.’ This is the sense of unreality, that can strike out of a perfectly clear sky. Good health and strong nerves can make it unlikely; but that may be only because the man in good health is thinking about other things and doesn’t look in the direction where the uncertainty lies. And once a man has seen it, the world can never afterwards be quite the same straightforward place.

Ultimately, though, it was Super Mario Bros. that taught me what remains perhaps the most important lesson of my life. I am being perfectly sincere. I am asking you to consider this seriously. Super Mario Bros., the 1.0 edition, is perhaps the all-time masterpiece of side-scrolling games. When the game begins, Mario is standing all the way to the left of the legendary opening screen, and he can only go in one direction: He can only move to the right, as new scenery and enemies scroll in from that side. He progresses through eight worlds of four levels each, all of them governed by time constraints, until he reaches the evil Bowser and frees the captive Princess Toadstool. Throughout all thirty-two levels, Mario exists in front of what in gaming parlance is called “an invisible wall,” which doesn’t allow him to go backward. There is no turning back, only going forward—for Mario and Luigi, for me, and for you. Life only scrolls in one direction, which is the direction of time, and no matter how far we might manage to go, that invisible wall will always be just behind us, cutting us off from the past, compelling us on into the unknown. A small kid growing up in small-town North Carolina in the 1980s has to get a sense of mortality from somewhere, so why not from two Italian-immigrant plumber brothers with an appetite for sewer mushrooms?

We must invent our enemy. If he doesn't exist, we must create him.' 'But that's crazy,' said Radius. 'It'd be like choosing to have hallucinations--seeing something that doesn't exist and saying that it does.' 'Comrade Radius,' said Flight, 'listen. There's no such thing as a perfect enemy. A real enemy is always imperfect: never perfectly evil and never perfectly invincible. He has mild, even gentle characteristics. He's vulnerable. The perfect enemy is the one you create yourself.' 'But why can't we have an imperfect enemy?' Radius persisted. 'If evil is imperfect, if it's so weak and helpless, why should we force things and give it a perfection it doesn't possess?' 'Because *we* have to be perfect,' said Flight.

It isn’t because they are pathologically unable to feel emotion and use humour to disguise it, it’s because jokes on negative subjects need to be made. No one needs jokes when their day is all flowers and kittens. They need jokes when things are difficult. This gallows humour is part of how we cope with horrible events and circumstances. Someone should make jokes about senseless loss of life, because otherwise we would all simply weep at the futility of existence, and that doesn’t get anything done. Aristophanes knew perfectly well that a risky joke on a painful subject was an important thing to include in his huge, ridiculous play. Jokes shouldn’t always be simple and painless, precisely because the world isn’t simple or painless either. If art imitates life, even low art like cheap jokes, it can’t just pick the nice bits.

The possibility of shaking off old mental models is enticing, but the quest for new ones comes with caveats. First, always remember that ‘the map is not the territory’, as the philosopher Alfred Korzybski put it: every model can only ever be a model, a necessary simplification of the world, and one that should never be mistaken for the real thing. Second, there is no correct pre-analytic vision, true paradigm or perfect frame out there to be discovered. In the deft words of the statistician George Box, ‘All models are wrong, but some are useful.’39 Rethinking economics is not about finding the correct one (because it doesn’t exist); it’s about choosing or creating one that best serves our purpose—reflecting the context we face, the values we hold, and the aims we have. As humanity’s context, values and aims continually evolve, so too should the way that we envision the economy.

inspire. I am here to love. I am here to live my truth. Communion: I will appreciate someone who doesn’t know that I feel that way. I will overlook the tension and be friendly to someone who has ignored me. I will express at least one feeling that has made me feel guilty or embarrassed. Awareness: I will spend ten minutes observing instead of speaking. I will sit quietly by myself just to sense how my body feels. If someone irritates me, I will ask myself what I really feel beneath the anger—and I won’t stop paying attention until the anger is gone. Acceptance: I will spend five minutes thinking about the best qualities of someone I really dislike. I will read about a group that I consider totally intolerant and try to see the world as they do. I will look in the mirror and describe myself exactly as if I were the perfect mother or father I wish I had had (beginning with the sentence “How beautiful you are in my eyes”). Creativity: I will imagine five things I could do that my family would never expect—and then I will do at least one of them. I will outline a novel based on my life (every incident will be true, but no one would ever guess that I am the hero). I will invent something in my mind that the world desperately needs. Being: I will spend half an hour in a peaceful place doing nothing except feeling what it is like to exist. I will lie outstretched on the grass and feel the earth languidly revolving under me. I will take in three breaths and let them out as gently as possible. Efficiency: I will let at least two things out of my control and see what happens. I will gaze at a rose and reflect on whether I could make it open faster or more beautifully than it already does—then I will ask if my life has blossomed this efficiently. I will lie in a quiet place by the ocean, or with a tape of the sea, and breathe in its rhythms. Bonding: When I catch myself looking away from someone, I will remember to look into the person’s eyes. I will bestow a loving gaze on someone I have taken for granted. I will express sympathy to someone who needs it, preferably a stranger. Giving: I will buy lunch and give it to someone in need on the street (or I will go to a café and eat lunch with the person). I will compliment someone for a quality that I know the individual values in him- or herself. I will give my children as much of my undivided time today as they want. Immortality: I will read a scripture about the soul and the promise of life after death. I will write down five things I want my life to be remembered for. I will sit and silently experience the gap between breathing in and breathing out, feeling the eternal in the present moment.

Maybe your priority actually is money. Or maybe it’s family. Maybe it’s influence or change. Maybe it’s building an organization that lasts, or serves a purpose. All of these are perfectly fine motivations. But you do need to know. You need to know what you don’t want and what your choices preclude. Because strategies are often mutually exclusive. One cannot be an opera singer and a teen pop idol at the same time. Life requires those trade-offs, but ego can’t allow it. So why do you do what you do? That’s the question you need to answer. Stare at it until you can. Only then will you understand what matters and what doesn’t. Only then can you say no, can you opt out of stupid races that don’t matter, or even exist. Only then is it easy to ignore “successful” people, because most of the time they aren’t—at least relative to you, and often even to themselves. Only then can you develop that quiet confidence Seneca talked about.

Staying focused on the problem also prevents you from falling into the fatal trap of assuming the world is waiting with bated breath for your product to launch. When I used to work in advertising, we would joke that the “insight” in the creative brief was often something along the lines of, “I wish there were a crunchy cereal with raisins that was healthy and also delicious.” But people do not wish this. They might have a hard time finding a quick breakfast that doesn’t make them feel fat or sluggish. And maybe your crunchy raisin cereal is the perfect response to this issue. But they are not waking up in the morning wishing for raisiny, crunchy goodness. Similarly, people are not wishing for your idea to exist, because they don’t even know it’s an option. So when you sit down to clarify what problem you’re solving, a great initial test is to imagine someone’s inner monologue. Is the problem you’ve identified something that a real human might actually be thinking?

Neither do I express well nor do I know how to write perfectly charming like writers do yet here I sit every night under the stars hoping one to break away so I could wish for the missing peace of my puzzle of life .. * Selfish isn't it wishing something to break so we can join ourselves  maybe thats the law of nature. One always has to give up for something to live. Tree dies  leaving the seed for a new bud behind.  Crazy! The sacrifice for one becomes the breath for the other one without even  him realizing what suffering something went through for its precious life * It gets cold fast once you decide to swim deep into your thoughts . Every thing from a star to even the buzzing of bees tell you a story about what your existence might be for but the city's lights and sound never let you realize how small yet how fascinating your existence is . We tend to forget the meaning of life even after preaching the same for others ourselves. . It feels good and at peace with nobody to bother you anymore . You can think and imagine stuff that might never be but this wonderful brain imagines  it . If not forever Atleast for sometime   you can feel the feeling you forever lust for.  Sure the usual disturbances try to lure my mind away from things but I'm used to it now . The gloominess  inside doesn't let them affect inside anymore. * The sky gets dark it really does . Maybe like the night sky's supposed to be so are my thoughts with a beating heart to support them and keep the flame of fight lit like the moon lights up the sky even if that means reflecting the harsh rays of sun. * The time flies and so do the body shivers for warmth but I feel like staying. Sure the exposed sky gives peace but it comes at a cost so I try to bargain with  it every night. She's a good at negotiating though only gives me some hours before she signal that time's over. * Hesitantly I move my numb body using the last remaining gas in  the dying  shell known as body. How much i try it won't let me stay so here I leave heartbroken once again like every other night.

When girls like me, who are relatively smart and pretty, who have something to say, and who have their own points of view, spend every Friday night home alone watching reality TV, this is because all of the guys they might potentially have dated are out with Adventure Barbie. You know who she is—that girl with the perfectly tousled hair, long legs, and no fat anywhere because she doesn’t eat. She wears super-high heels, which she can walk in perfectly, but she also comes equipped with hiking boots. A guy who finds himself an A.B. is pleased to find out that she is equally at home zip-lining and fine dining. She will go with him to his kickboxing gym and impress all the guys there, and then she will go home and change into a little black dress and five-inch heels. A.B. does not exist in nature; she is her own creation. And no regular girl can match her. A regular girl’s face betrays her panic when she is asked to go rock climbing or cliff diving. A regular girl looks like a drowned rat after an afternoon of white-water rafting. But not Adventure Barbie.

Everett thought that measurement, as presented in von Neumann’s textbook, was “a ‘magic’ process in which something quite drastic [occurs] (collapse of the wave function), while in all other times systems [are] assumed to obey perfectly natural continuous laws.” Measurement shouldn’t be fundamentally different from other physical processes. And even worse, according to Everett, von Neumann’s approach doesn’t even tell you what measurements are. If a measurement only happens when someone looks at a system, who, in particular, has to look? Everett argued that this line of reasoning leads inevitably to solipsism—the idea that you are the only being in the universe, and everyone else is somehow illusory or secondary, existing in states of indeterminate reality until you, the High Arbiter of Wave Function Collapse, deign to observe them. In his thesis, Everett admitted that this is an internally consistent view, but that “one must feel uneasy when, for example, writing textbooks on quantum mechanics, describing [wave function collapse], for the consumption of other persons to whom it does not apply.

The Real World' The real word doesn't take flight the way dreams do. No muffled voice, no doorbell can dispel it, no shriek, no crash can cut it short. Images in dreams are hazy and ambiguous, and can generally be explained in many different ways. Reality means reality: that's tougher nut to crack. Dreams have keys. The real world opens on its own and can't be shut. Report canrds and stars pour from it, butterflies and flatiron warmers shower down, headless caps and shards of clouds. Together they form a rebus that can't be solved. Without us dreams couldn't exist. The one on whom the real world depends is still unknown, and the products of his insomnia are avaialble to anyone who wakes up. Dreams aren't crazy- it's the real world that's insane, if only in the stubbornness with which it sticks to the current of events. In dreams our recently deceased are still alive, in perfect health, no less, and restored to the full bloom of youth. The real world lays the corpse in front of us. The real world doesn't blink an eye. Dreams are featherweights, and memory can shake them off with ease. The real world doesn't have to fear forgetfulness. It's a tough customer. It sits on our shoulders, weights on our hearts, tumbles to our feet. There's no escaping it, it tags along each time we flee. And there's no stop along our escape route where reality isn't expecting us.

In general, love stories end badly. You’ve known this for as long as you can remember--but that’s not all. You’ve also repeatedly been told you’re going to fall in love several times, and so how could the first man be the right one? You’ve been warned endlessly that there will be temptations along the way. And that’s without taking into account that he, too, will have no shortage of options. Yes, it’s all true. Statistically speaking, you’re (far) more likely to break up with him than to love him till death do you part. If he doesn’t call you back, then he wasn’t worth it. He’ll find someone he is more suited to. And so much the better--for you both. But it’s the exception that makes the rule--and isn’t life the sum of these exceptions? You can never be absolutely sure (in love or, for that matter, in anything), and the perfect man doesn’t exist: they all need to be wrong for the one to be right. Love is the only part of your life in which you truly have no choice. The good news is that over the course of your various liaisons--and incidentally all your not-so-glorious moments-- you have learned to truly know yourself, to be strong and independent, to get by on your own. And so you don’t need anyone else to be happy. But you have to admit that, with him, it’s better. In Paris, like anywhere else, it’s good to know how to look beyond your preconceptions, in order to become a girl in love

[THE DAILY BREATH] Blaise Pascal, the famous mathematician, once said: "To those who wish to see, God gives them sufficient light. To those who doesn't wish to see, God gives them sufficient darkness." Seeing the Truth is a choice. Listening to my words is a choice. Healing is a choice. If want scientific evidence about the existence of God, there is a wealth of data to support it. Dr. Jeffrey Long, M.D. used the best scientific techniques available today to study more than 4,000 people who had near-death experiences and found themselves face to face with our Heavenly Father. Read the book "God and the Afterlife" and you will find it. If you want scientific evidence about Jesus being the Son of God, Lee Strobel, an atheist investigative journalist discovered it. Read the book "The Case for Christ" and you will find it. If you want scientific evidence about Jesus still healing today, study the ministries of Dr. Charles Ndifon, T.L. Osborn, Kathryn Kuhlman among others, and you will find it. But most importantly, if you want to fill the emptiness within you, and experience the perfect love, mercy and forgiveness, if you want to live in the peace of our Heavenly Father, give your body, your mind and your heart to Christ. Give your life to Jesus. The empty place you feel in your heart is reserved only for the spirit of Christ and nothing from this world will fill it. Look up to heaven, behold Jesus and Live.

Most of my friends put their preferred pronoun in their Instagram bios—he/she, him/her, they/their—but I respond to any and all of them. I like to think of it as collecting pronouns: the more I get, the more fun I’m having. To get the obvious out of the way, because that’s apparently important to people, I think of myself as post-gender. I was trying to figure out how to explain that because sometimes it’s a paragraph and sometimes it’s a term paper depending on who I’m talking to, and I have no idea who will be reading this in the aftermath. Then I noticed that one of my fellow passengers has a cat with him, and that’s perfect. When you visit a friend and find they have a cat, you just see it as a cat in all its pure catness, it doesn’t require further definition. You’ll probably get a name, and if you ask, whether it was born male or female, but even after you have that information you still don’t think of it any differently. It’s not a He-Cat or a She-Cat or a They-Cat. It’s just a cat. And unless the cat’s name has any gender-specific connotations you’ll probably forget pretty fast which gender it was born into. My name is Theo, and by that logic, I am a cat. What I was or was not born into has nothing to do with how I see myself. It’s not about going from one gender to another, or suggesting that they don’t exist. Some of my friends say that the moment you talk about gender you invalidate the conversation because you’re accepting the limits of outmoded paradigms, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I just think gender shouldn’t matter. If you’re a man, aren’t there moments when you feel more female, like when you’re listening to music, or your cheek is being gently stroked, or you see a spectacularly handsome man walk into the room? If you’re a woman, aren’t there moments when you feel more male, when you have to be strong in the face of conflict, or stand behind your opinion, or when a spectacularly beautiful woman walks into the room? Well, in those moments, you are all of those things, so why deny that part of yourself? For me, it’s not about being binary or non-binary. It’s about moving the needle to the center of the dial and accepting all definitions as equally true while remaining free to shift in emphasis from moment to moment. It’s about being a Person, not a She-Person or a He-Person or a They-Person. (...) When you go into a clothing store, you don’t just go to the “one size fits all” rack. You look for clothes that fit your waist, hips, legs, chest, and neck, clothes that complement your form and shape, and reflect not just how you see yourself but how you want to be seen by others. If it’s still not quite right, and you can afford it, you get the clothes tailored to fit exactly who you are. That’s what I’m doing. Post-gender is one term for it. Another might be tailored gender. Maybe bespoke gender. But definitely not one-size-fits-all. The world doesn’t get to decide what best fits who I am and how I choose to be seen. I do.

Finally, we the people exercise power by speaking our minds. Many of the early patriots in our nation had experienced tyranny that prevented them from expressing their opinions. They could not speak against the king or against the established church. They knew that America’s citizens would need to be free to express themselves if they were to rule. Thus they set in place the Constitution’s First Amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of speech and expression. We’ve preserved this freedom so that our government doesn’t usually try to prevent the people from speaking. Recognizing this achievement, many assert that there is no restriction of speech in the United States and that everyone is completely free to express themselves. Unfortunately, this is a naive claim. Today the political correctness (PC) police are the biggest threat to America’s freedom of speech, and they are doing their best to squelch the opinions of “we the People.” There is not an officially established PC police force, but its members exist in government, throughout the media, in educational institutions, etc. Members of the PC police are those who carefully monitor the speech and behavior of anyone they consider to be a threat to their leftist ideological domination. The PC police do not care that people disagree with them, as long as those people remain silent. But if someone openly disagrees with them, they demonize that person with ridicule and infantile name-calling. This kind of speech policing has created fear in a large portion of our populace, causing them to remain silent rather than face the repercussions of expressing themselves honestly.

In this short philosophical novel he completely undermined the kind of optimism about humanity and the universe that Pope and Leibniz had expressed, and he did it in such an entertaining way that the book became an instant bestseller. Wisely Voltaire left his name off the title page, otherwise its publication would have landed him in prison again for making fun of religious beliefs. Candide is the central character. His name suggests innocence and purity. At the start of the book, he is a young servant who falls hopelessly in love with his master's daughter, Cunégonde, but is chased out of her father's castle when he is caught in a compromising position with her. From then on, in a fast-moving and often fantastical tale, he travels through real and imaginary countries with his philosophy tutor Dr Pangloss, until he finally meets up with his lost love Cunégonde again, though by now she is old and ugly. In a series of comical episodes Candide and Pangloss witness terrible events and encounter a range of characters along the way, all of whom have themselves suffered terrible misfortunes. Voltaire uses the philosophy tutor, Pangloss, to spout a caricatured version of Leibniz's philosophy, which the writer then pokes fun at. Whatever happens, whether it is a natural disaster, torture, war, rape, religious persecution or slavery, Pangloss treats it as further confirmation that they live in the best of all possible worlds. Rather than causing him to rethink his beliefs, each disaster just increases his confidence that everything is for the best and this is how things had to be to produce the most perfect situation. Voltaire takes great delight in revealing Pangloss' refusal to see what is in front of him, and this is meant to mock Leibniz's optimism. But to be fair to Leibniz, his point wasn't that evil doesn't occur, but rather that the evil that does exist was needed to bring about the best possible world. It does, however, suggest that there is so much evil in the world that it is hardly likely that Leibniz was right – this can't be the minimum needed to achieve a good result. There is just too much pain and suffering in the world for that to be true. In

Bringing back the Golden Fleece,” I repeated, mocking him. “As if it exists.” Castor frowned. “What’s biting you? Of course it exists! We told you what Jason said. It belonged to a marvelous ram sent by the gods to rescue two royal children, Phrixus and Helle, from their murderous stepmother. A pity it wasn’t a perfect rescue. Phrixus reached Colchis safely, but his sister, Helle, fell off in mid-flight and drowned. Jason says that’s why the place where she plunged into the sea’s called the Hellespont. If that doesn’t prove the story’s true, what will satisfy you?” “Anyone can give a place a name,” I said, rolling my eyes. “When I get home, I’ll name that olive grove near our training ground Wolf Forest and see what happens. A ram with a fleece of real gold, a flying ram that could carry the children through the skies to Colchis, where there are dragons, oh yes, that’s believable! That’s worth risking your lives for on a voyage across the world! I’ll bet you don’t care if that story’s true or not. You just want an excuse to go off chasing fame!” Polydeuces set a honey cake on my already heaping plate. “There must be something waiting for us in Colchis, little sister,” he said gently. “Maybe not the gold fleece of a flying ram, but something. Why would Jason go to the trouble and expense of outfitting a ship for such a long, dangerous voyage otherwise?” He smiled wistfully and added, “You mustn’t worry about us. We’ll come back; we’ll be fine.” He was right: I was worried about what would become of my brothers on that great adventure. But more than that, I envied them with all my heart. So what if the goal of their expedition was the phantom fleece of a ram that never existed? The fascinating lands my brothers would see and the exploits they’d share would be real enough. And I’d be left behind. They’ll see marvels I can’t being to imagine, I thought. Maybe they’ll even see that old sailor’s five-legged monster! Meanwhile, I’m going to be trundled home in an oxcart so thickly hedged around by Spartan soldiers that all I’ll see during my journey will be spears. It’s not fair! I can handle a sword almost as well as either of them, and I know I’m better with a bow and arrow!

Given the scientific investigation, the only causal machine in human existence, in the ultimate end, is the brain, which seems to be mainly out of control: The sensation, perception and imagination of the external world are automatically determined by the interpretation of input signals receiving through sense organs; making a choice and decision are automatically realized on the base of this interpretation, which, In later period, regulate the behavior patterns in a social environment. The only causal and interpretation machine, as described above, the brain is thought to be automatically shaped by various external factors, such as genetic programming that determines the design of a brain – various proportions among the various circuits in such a way that if your brain devotes more space for aggression and anxiety centre, for example, then it is very high probability that you are a ‘wild beast’ inside. As you cannot pick out your brain when you are born, because at least the genetic inheritance is out of your control, it is nearly impossible for you to avoid the very fact that your internal world is so. Maybe, your inner wildness doesn’t reveal itself in the everyday world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have conscious control over it. Because of being hidden mainly in your unconsciousness, even your conscious mind can be unaware of the very fact of its existence. From scientific perspective, it can be stated, in this case, that the censor system of your brain is quite active to make sufficiently well-considered selection among desires that unintentionally emerge in aggression and anxiety circuits, and to hide most of them, which involve an extreme violence and destruction, in hidden consciousness in order to protect the ‘perfect’ image of your personality in social system, or simply to avoid to be punished on the grounds of these implausible, unfavorable desires in that system. If this is so, where is your freedom – free choice? Doesn’t it seem that the naked truth is that your brain, instead of you, makes a choice, decides, controls, regulates of almost everything in your life, leaving for you a room for being just a ‘perfect’ bio-social robot that lives in his or her illusion of free will?

Here’s a sentence in a book I’m reading: ‘We belong, of course, to a generation that’s seen through things, seen how futile everything is, and had the courage to accept futility, and say to ourselves: There’s nothing for it but to enjoy ourselves as best we can.’ Well, I suppose that’s my generation, the one that’s seen the war and its aftermath; and, of course, it is the attitude of quite a crowd; but when you come to think of it, it might have been said by any rather unthinking person in any generation; certainly might have been said by the last generation after religion had got the knock that Darwin gave it. For what does it come to? Suppose you admit having seen through religion and marriage and treaties, and commercial honesty and freedom and ideals of every kind, seen that there’s nothing absolute about them, that they lead of themselves to no definite reward, either in this world or a next which doesn’t exist perhaps, and that the only thing absolute is pleasure and that you mean to have it — are you any farther towards getting pleasure? No! you’re a long way farther off. If everybody’s creed is consciously and crudely ‘grab a good time at all costs,’ everybody is going to grab it at the expense of everybody else, and the devil will take the hindmost, and that’ll be nearly everybody, especially the sort of slackers who naturally hold that creed, so that they, most certainly, aren’t going to get a good time. All those things they’ve so cleverly seen through are only rules of the road devised by men throughout the ages to keep people within bounds, so that we may all have a reasonable chance of getting a good time, instead of the good time going only to the violent, callous, dangerous and able few. All our institutions, religion, marriage, treaties, the law, and the rest, are simply forms of consideration for others necessary to secure consideration for self. Without them we should be a society of feeble motor-bandits and streetwalkers in slavery to a few super-crooks. You can’t, therefore, disbelieve in consideration for others without making an idiot of yourself and spoiling your own chances of a good time. The funny thing is that no matter how we all talk, we recognise that perfectly. People who prate like the fellow in that book don’t act up to their creed when it comes to the point. Even a motor-bandit doesn’t turn King’s evidence. In fact, this new philosophy of ‘having the courage to accept futility and grab a good time’ is simply a shallow bit of thinking; all the same, it seemed quite plausible when I read it.

The most visible feature of self-oriented perfectionism is this hypercompetitive streak fused to a sense of never being good enough. Hypercompetitiveness reflects a paradox because people high in self-oriented perfectionism can recoil from competition due to fear of failure and fear of losing other people's approval. Socially-prescribed perfectionism makes for a hugely pressured life, spent at the whim of everyone else's opinions, trying desperately to be somebody else, somebody perfect. Perfectionism lurks beneath the surface of mental distress. Someone who scores high on perfectionism also scores high on anxiety. The ill-effects of self-oriented perfectionism correlate with anxiety and it predicts increases in depression over time. There are links between other-oriented perfectionism and higher vindictiveness, a grandiose desire for admiration and hostility toward others, as well as lower altruism, compliance with social norms and trust. People with high levels of socially-prescribed perfectionism typically report elevated loneliness, worry about the future, need for approval, poor-quality relationships, rumination and brooding, fears of revealing imperfections to others, self-harm, worse physical health, lower life satisfaction and chronically low self-esteem. Perfectionism makes people extremely insecure, self-conscious and vulnerable to even the smallest hassles. Perfection is man's ultimate illusion. It simply doesn't exist in the universe. If you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do. Socially-prescribed perfectionism has an astonishingly strong link with burnout. What I don't have - or how perfectionism grows in the soil of our manufactured discontent. No matter what the advertisement says, you will go on with your imperfect existence whether you make that purchase or not. And that existence is - can only ever be - enough. Make a promise to be kind to yourself, taking ownership of your imperfections, recognizing your shared humanity and understanding that no matter how hard your culture works to teach you otherwise, no one is perfect and everyone has an imperfect life. Socially-prescribed perfectionism is the emblem of consumer culture. Research shows that roaming outside, especially in new places, contributes to enhanced well-being. Other benefits of getting out there in nature include improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and even upticks in empathy and cooperation. Perfection is not necessary to live an active and fulfilling life.

With awareness we can easily understand why relationships don’t work — with our parents, with our children, with our friends, with our partner, and even with ourselves. Why doesn’t the relationship with ourselves work? Because we are wounded and we have all that emotional poison that we can hardly handle. We are full of poison because we grew up with an image of perfection that is not true, which does not exist, and in our mind it isn’t fair. We have seen how we create that image of perfection to please other people, even though they create their own dream that has nothing to do with us. We try to please Mom and Dad, we try to please our teacher, our minister, our religion, and God. But the truth is that from their point of view, we are never going to be perfect. That image of perfection tells us how we should be in order to acknowledge that we are good, in order to accept ourselves. But guess what? This is the biggest lie we believe about ourselves, because we are never going to be perfect. And there is no way that we can forgive ourselves for not being perfect. That image of perfection changes the way we dream. We learn to deny ourselves and reject ourselves. We are never good enough, or right enough, or clean enough, or healthy enough, according to all those beliefs we have. There is always something the Judge can never accept or forgive. That is why we reject our own humanity; that is why we never deserve to be happy; that is why we are searching for someone who abuses us, someone who will punish us. We have a very high level of self-abuse because of that image of perfection. When we reject ourselves, and judge ourselves, and find ourselves guilty and punish ourselves so much, it looks like there is no love. It looks like there is only punishment, only suffering, only judgment in this world. Hell has many different levels. Some people are very deep in hell and other people are hardly in hell, but still they are in hell. There are very abusive relationships in hell and relationships with hardly any abuse. You are no longer a child, and if you have an abusive relationship, it is because you accept that abuse, because you believe you deserve it. You have a limit to the amount of abuse you will accept, but no one in the whole world abuses you more than you abuse yourself. The limit of your self-abuse is the limit you will tolerate from other people. If someone abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you walk away, you run, you escape. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself, perhaps you stay longer. You still deserve that abuse.

Waiting on God doesn’t mean sitting around and hoping. Waiting means believing he will do what he’s promised and then acting with confidence. Waiting on God is not at all like the meaningless waiting that you do at the dentist’s office. You know, he’s overbooked, so you’re still sitting there more than an hour past your scheduled appointment. You’re a man, but you’re now reading Family Circle magazine. You’ve begun to read the article titled “The 7 Best Chicken Recipes in the World.” When you’re a man and you’re getting ready to tear a chicken recipe out of Family Circle magazine because the recipe sounds so good, you know that you have been waiting too long! But waiting on God is not like that. Waiting on God is an active life based on confidence in his presence and promises, not a passive existence haunted by occasional doubt. Waiting on God isn’t internal torment that results in paralysis. No, waiting on God is internal rest that results in courageous action. Waiting is your calling. Waiting is your blessing. Every one of God’s children has been chosen to wait, because every one of God’s children lives between the “already” and the “not yet.” Already this world has been broken by sin, but not yet has it been made new again. Already Jesus has come, but not yet has he returned to take you home with him forever. Already your sin has been forgiven, but not yet have you been fully delivered from it. Already Jesus reigns, but not yet has his final kingdom come. Already sin has been defeated, but not yet has it been completely destroyed. Already the Holy Spirit has been given, but not yet have you been perfectly formed into the likeness of Jesus. Already God has given you his Word, but not yet has it totally transformed your life. Already you have been given grace, but not yet has that grace finished its work. You see, we’re all called to wait because we all live right smack dab in the middle of God’s grand redemptive story. We all wait for the final end of the work that God has begun in and for us. We don’t just wait—we wait in hope. And what does hope in God look like? It is a confident expectation of a guaranteed result. We wait believing that what God has begun he will complete, so we live with confidence and courage. We get up every morning and act upon what is to come, and because what is to come is sure, we know that our labor in God’s name is never in vain. So we wait and act. We wait and work. We wait and fight. We wait and conquer. We wait and proclaim. We wait and run. We wait and sacrifice. We wait and give. We wait and worship. Waiting on God is an action based on confident assurance of grace to come.

What would be the natural thing? A man goes to college. He works as he wants to work, he plays as he wants to play, he exercises for the fun of the game, he makes friends where he wants to make them, he is held in by no fear of criticism above, for the class ahead of him has nothing to do with his standing in his own class. Everything he does has the one vital quality: it is spontaneous. That is the flame of youth itself. Now, what really exists?" "...I say our colleges to-day are business colleges—Yale more so, perhaps, because it is more sensitively American. Let's take up any side of our life here. Begin with athletics. What has become of the natural, spontaneous joy of contest? Instead you have one of the most perfectly organized business systems for achieving a required result—success. Football is driving, slavish work; there isn't one man in twenty who gets any real pleasure out of it. Professional baseball is not more rigorously disciplined and driven than our 'amateur' teams. Add the crew and the track. Play, the fun of the thing itself, doesn't exist; and why? Because we have made a business out of it all, and the college is scoured for material, just as drummers are sent out to bring in business. "Take another case. A man has a knack at the banjo or guitar, or has a good voice. What is the spontaneous thing? To meet with other kindred spirits in informal gatherings in one another's rooms or at the fence, according to the whim of the moment. Instead what happens? You have our university musical clubs, thoroughly professional organizations. If you are material, you must get out and begin to work for them—coach with a professional coach, make the Apollo clubs, and, working on, some day in junior year reach the varsity organization and go out on a professional tour. Again an organization conceived on business lines. "The same is true with the competition for our papers: the struggle for existence outside in a business world is not one whit more intense than the struggle to win out in the News or Lit competition. We are like a beef trust, with every by-product organized, down to the last possibility. You come to Yale—what is said to you? 'Be natural, be spontaneous, revel in a certain freedom, enjoy a leisure you'll never get again, browse around, give your imagination a chance, see every one, rub wits with every one, get to know yourself.' "Is that what's said? No. What are you told, instead? 'Here are twenty great machines that need new bolts and wheels. Get out and work. Work harder than the next man, who is going to try to outwork you. And, in order to succeed, work at only one thing. You don't count—everything for the college.' Regan says the colleges don't represent the nation; I say they don't even represent the individual.

In truth, no matter what we think we know, we are probably wrong, and no matter what anyone else thinks they know, they are probably wrong. No one knows what’s going on in any fundamental sense. Nothing about this life is simple or clear, and from the perspective of the stars, nothing down here on earth—including us—matters all that much to anything beyond itself. Paradoxically, in this, we find great opportunity for wisdom, humility, exploration, and profound experience in our lives. “Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough,” said renowned theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. In even the most common and mundane things, there is complexity and strangeness. We don’t even know why we sleep or dream. We don’t know how most of our brain works or what consciousness is. We don’t know if time is real in any physical sense. We don’t know what gravity is or why it is. We don’t know if there are infinite other universes or dimensions around us. We don’t know why energy or matter even came to be in the first place—or why it was followed by a perfect sequence of colliding, combining, exploding, and emerging, all to put us here, right now, able to ask why. At the base of almost everything, the resulting truth is this: we don’t know. When we disregard this unknowingness, we can easily become disinterested, uninspired, and worn out of this life. We can put great stress on things that perhaps don’t matter all that much and neglect experiences and things that do. We can feel the pressure and anxiety of chasing perfection and certainty, which do not exist. We should look to the universe often, not solely for answers but for perspective; for a helpful adjustment and an aerial consideration of our daily life. With this practice, the little things in life become more striking, the mistakes and the annoyances become less significant, the calm comes more easily, and the everyday activities of our lives that we so often view as wasteful and tedious reveal themselves to be wonderfully strange and curious parts of our existence that we should make effort to ponder and appreciate as often as we can. As if to say, I’d love to marvel at and enjoy this work of art I’ve created, the universe gave itself humanity. “Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence,” said twentieth-century American-British philosopher Alan Watts. What a shame it would be to waste this experience by failing to appreciate the glory and magnificence found in the unknown. We must try to remember as often as we can that the unknown permeates everything. Its wonder is always above us, below us, around us, and inside us, whenever we need

If we follow Jesus, our status before God is righteous. The gavel has come down and our righteousness is secure in the work of Jesus Christ. God’s verdict is not subject to change based on our performance. We didn’t become righteous because of our performance, and we can’t lose our righteousness because of our performance. We don’t have to worry about getting escorted off God’s premises. We have access, we have resources, and we have blessings because of Jesus. It is easy to hear this sort of message and get excited about it. We hear a preacher talking about God’s forgiveness and grace on Sunday, and we’re like, “Woohoo! I’m in! This is great!” But then Monday comes around, and it’s really hard to apply this reality when we’re having one of those moments when we lose our minds, or make dumb decisions, or go off on somebody, or do that stupid, ridiculous thing we swore we’d never do again. Suddenly, here comes the negative emotion. Here come the bad feelings. Here comes that sense that our status cannot possibly be the same as it was in church yesterday. That’s what the Bible calls condemnation. It’s a very real phenomenon. If you are a follower of Jesus, a Christian, and have never experienced condemnation, you might be God. For the rest of us mortals, we’ve all experienced it. Guilt. Shame. A sense that our status has changed. I’m going to take this a step further. This might sound weird at first, but I think we actually, in a very sadistic way, enjoy condemnation. Why? Because condemnation is logical; and in a weird, twisted, dark sense, it gratifies our flesh. It actually feels right to feel horrible, to feel depressed, to feel dejected, to feel despair. “I messed up. I did something so stupid. This serves me right.” But in fact, condemnation doesn’t serve us at all. In the verses above, the Bible says that condemnation should have no part in our existence on this planet if we belong to Jesus. As humans, we are experts at confusing our feelings with reality. We take our negative emotions and thoughts at face value, and we think, I feel bad, so I must be bad. I feel guilty, so I must be guilty. And if I’m disappointed and mad at myself, God must be way more disappointed and mad at me. Since we feel condemned, we think we are condemned. And since we think we are condemned, we work harder to regain our lost status. Instead of going confidently to God and asking for his grace to get back up and move forward in life, we try to patch ourselves up and put ourselves back together so we can attain the status of righteous before God again. Ironically, since we will never measure up to perfection, the more we try to earn our righteousness, the worse we feel. It’s the cycle of condemnation. I find it’s far easier to believe we are sinners than to believe we are righteous. But we are already righteous through Jesus. It’s a gift, and it’s called grace. How much time do we waste as Jesus followers trying to recover what we have had all along?

*There is only one God*. Whatever exists is *ipso facto* individual; to be one it needs no extra property and calling it one merely denies that it is divided. Simple things are neither divided nor divisible; composite things do not exist when their parts are divided. So existence stands or falls with individuality, and things guard their unity as they do their existence. But what is simply speaking one can yet in certain respects be many: an individual thing, essentially undivided, can have many non-essential properties; and a single whole, actually undivided, can have potentially many parts. Only when one is used to count with does it presuppose in what it counts some extra property over and above existence, namely, quantity. The one we count with contrasts with the many it counts in the way a unity of measurement contrasts with what it measures; but the individual unity common to everything that exists contrasts with plurality simply by lacking it, as undividedness does division. A plurality is however *a* plurality: though simply speaking many, inasmuch as it exists, it is, incidentally, one. A continuum is homogeneous: its parts share the form of the whole (every bit of water is water); but a plurality is heterogeneous: its parts lack the form of the whole (no part of the house is a house). The parts of a plurality are unities and non-plural, though they compose the plurality not as non-plural but as existing; just as the parts of a house compose the house as material, not as not houses. Whereas we define plurality in terms of unity (many things are divided things to each of which is ascribed unity), we define unity in terms of division. For division precedes unity in our minds even if it doesn’t really do so, since we conceive simple things by denying compositeness of them, defining a point, for example, as lacking dimension. Division arises in the mind simply by negating existence. So the first thing we conceive is the existent, then―seeing that this existent is not that existent―we conceive division, thirdly unity, and fourthly plurality. There is only one God. Firstly, God and his nature are identical: to be God is to be this individual God. In the same way, if to be a man was to be Socrates there would only be one man, just as there was only one Socrates. Moreover, God’s perfection is unlimited, so what could differentiate one God from another? Any extra perfection in one would be lacking in the other and that would make him imperfect. And finally, the world is one, and plurality can only produce unity incidentally insofar as it too is somehow one: the primary and non-incidental source of unity in the universe must himself be one. The one we count with measures only material things, not God: like all objects of mathematics, though defined without reference to matter, it can exist only in matter. But the unity of individuality common to everything that exists is a metaphysical property applying both to non-material things and to God. But what in God is a perfection has to be conceived by us, with our way of understanding things, as a lack: that is why we talk of God as lacking a body, lacking limits and lacking division.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."  13 In that He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (NKJV)        Covenant determines how God relates to people.        The Old (Law) Covenant: God had to relate to sinful people as a Holy Righteous God would/had to. Do bad get cursed, do good get blessed.        The New (Grace) Covenant: God relates to sinful people through Jesus, reconciling them to Himself and no longer relating to them through the Law since Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the law on the behalf of people. Heb 7:18-19              The former regulation is set aside because it was weak and useless 19 (for the law made nothing perfect), and a better hope is introduced, by which we draw near to God. (NIV)        The Law Covenant was weak and useless in providing people with right-standing before God because nobody could ever keep it perfectly (Gal 3:10, James 2:10, James 4:17).        The better hope by which we draw near to God is not our own righteousness or holiness, but through Jesus Christ’s free gift of righteousness. (Eph 2:8-9, Rom 3:20-26)        Because of this Jesus qualifies you to do the same works and greater because you have the same right-standing before God as Jesus has. (John 14:12). Gal 3:11-14              Clearly no one is justified before God by the law, because, "The righteous will live by faith."  12 The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, "The man who does these things will live by them."  13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."  14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (NIV)        NO ONE is justified by the law. No one can please God by keeping the law and living holy.        Righteousness (right standing before God) is attained by faith in Christ only.        The Law is not of faith which makes relating to God through it not pleasing to Him. (Heb 11:6)        Jesus became a curse for us, removing the right of the curse of the Law to come on us. (This doesn’t mean the curse doesn’t exist)        Living under the Law, trying to be justified by your own efforts to live holy and pleasing to God is A CURSE! No good will come from it.        In fact, you alienate yourself from the life of Christ by doing it. (Gal 5:1-5) 2 Cor 3:4-9              Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant- — not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious? 9 If the ministry that condemns men is glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! (NIV)        Law Covenant: Ministry of DEATH and CONDEMNATION.        Engraved on stone: 10 Commandments.        Grace Covenant: Ministry of LIFE and the SPIRIT.        Engraved on our hearts Rom 8:1              There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (NKJV)

The first step of good democracy is to choose a good leader, or more importantly, to not choose an animal as a leader - yet we made that ghastly mistake in 2016 by electing the most non-presidential creature on earth as the leader of our United States of America. There are good presidents, there are not so good presidents, but the unique problem with the president that we chose in the previous election was that it was not even a civilized human to begin with - it was an "it" not a he or she or they, and even after being handed over the very lives of the people that savage beast showed no sign of accountability whatsoever. Thus, we broke our democracy in 2016, but with sheer determination and conscientious persistence we have succeeded in fixing that mistake. Yes, I am filled with joy unspeakable to say out loud, that we have corrected our mistake and fixed the democracy into its usual imperfect but functional state. I say imperfect because democracy by nature is not perfect, but the problem we created last time was that we took things too far, and in the process turned a somewhat functional democracy into an absolutely dysfunctional one - in short, we broke it. And had the leader we chose been a smart one, that is, if that idiot had been not an idiot, but an actual cunning dictator, we wouldn't be celebrating our victory as a civilized people today, instead we would be mourning the burial of democracy. Fortunately, the insane ravings of a brainless, spineless and heartless maniac will no longer have to be considered as the statements originating from the sacred office of the President of the United States of America. We have fixed the broken democracy - yes - but the problems that existed before the maniac came to power still exist today. Therefore, we may cherish the restoration of our democracy as much as we want, the real work begins now. Choosing a proper human as a President doesn't magically make the problems of our nation disappear - those problems still exist - and they'll continue to give us chills time and again, unless we as a people stand accountable, both the government and the citizenry alike, and start working on those problems. Remember, the United States of America is not the responsibility of merely the President, the Vice President and their administration, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us whose veins carry the spirit of liberty and whose nerves carry the torrents of bravery. We have won the battle of making the White House human again, but the war has just begun - the war against systemic racism, against misogyny, against homophobia, against islamophobia, against gun violence, and against post-pandemic health and economic crisis. So, though we may celebrate the victory for a short while, we mustn't lose sight of the issues - we must now actually start working as one people - as the American people to heal the wounds on the soul of our land of liberty. It's time to once again start dreaming and working towards the impossible dream - the dream of freedom not oppression, the dream of assimilation not discrimination, and above all, the dream of ascension not descension. Never forget my friend, AMERICA means Affectionate, Merciful, Egalitarian, Responsible, Inclusive, Conscientious and Accepting.

The world’s not perfect but sometimes it’s better to lose people than to lose yourself. Perfection doesn’t exist

The mandate is not to be perfect and raise happy children. Perfection doesn’t exist, and I’ve found that what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.

Freedom doesn’t exist in a vacuum. No one is free to disobey the laws of existence. Our freedom is the freedom to pursue our will to power as we see fit. Yet will to power is actually – when viewed from the outside rather than inside – a mathematical drive to establish perfect symmetry, to restore the symmetry that was broken by the Big Bang.

Mia is the bane of my existence. The apple of not only her father’s eye, but my mother’s too; she’s spent the last fifteen years soaking up every ounce of their attention and being a serious pain in my ass, and while I’m far too old to complain about sibling rivalries now, I’m perfectly content just pretending she doesn’t exist.

Let’s pretend that time doesn’t exist. Let’s pretend that this week isn’t ending. Let’s pretend that we will always be us—happy, sunburnt, and tangled up together. It would hurt. It would really hurt, but it would be wonderful, too—one last perfect day with him. “All right,” I whispered, squeezing his hand back. “We’ll pretend.

There is a wonderful story of a group of American car executives who went to Japan to see a Japanese assembly line. At the end of the line, the doors were put on the hinges, the same as in America. But something was missing. In the United States, a line worker would take a rubber mallet and tap the edges of the door to ensure that it fit perfectly. In Japan, that job didn’t seem to exist. Confused, the American auto executives asked at what point they made sure the door fit perfectly. Their Japanese guide looked at them and smiled sheepishly. “We make sure it fits when we design it.” In the Japanese auto plant, they didn’t examine the problem and accumulate data to figure out the best solution—they engineered the outcome they wanted from the beginning. If they didn’t achieve their desired outcome, they understood it was because of a decision they made at the start of the process. At the end of the day, the doors on the American-made and Japanese-made cars appeared to fit when each rolled off the assembly line. Except the Japanese didn’t need to employ someone to hammer doors, nor did they need to buy any mallets. More importantly, the Japanese doors are likely to last longer and maybe even be more structurally sound in an accident. All this for no other reason than they ensured the pieces fit from the start. What the American automakers did with their rubber mallets is a metaphor for how so many people and organizations lead. When faced with a result that doesn’t go according to plan, a series of perfectly effective short-term tactics are used until the desired outcome is achieved. But how structurally sound are those solutions? So many organizations function in a world of tangible goals and the mallets to achieve them. The ones that achieve more, the ones that get more out of fewer people and fewer resources, the ones with an outsized amount of influence, however, build products and companies and even recruit people that all fit based on the original intention. Even though the outcome may look the same, great leaders understand the value in the things we cannot see. Every instruction we give, every course of action we set, every result we desire, starts with the same thing: a decision. There are those who decide to manipulate the door to fit to achieve the desired result and there are those who start from somewhere very different. Though both courses of action may yield similar short-term results, it is what we can’t see that makes long-term success more predictable for only one. The one that understood why the doors need to fit by design and not by default.

Because there’s no such thing as a lack of adversity. It doesn’t exist. The old saying goes that no matter where you go, there you are. Well, the same is true for adversity and failure. No matter where you go, there’s a five-hundred-pound load of shit waiting for you. And that’s perfectly fine.

It's easier to rebel against hair norms if you're a woman generally unburdened by them in the first place. My hair—brown hair—is politicized in every direction. It's either an unearthly glory, hair so perfect that people want to buy it in bags, or it's an unholy and crude display of the most aggressive kind of femininity: the kind that doesn't actually care about what you consider feminine. When Lena Dunham grows her armpit hair, it's a stance, but not one with much weight. For it to really matter, for your rebellion to extend outside yourself, you have to have been born with hair-baggage—that nagging reminder that what comes out of your body naturally makes you repulsive, or tells people that you are deserving of a slur, or that your sexuality can exist only in a specific vacuum of kink or a generous acceptance. Black and brown women know this, in two different ways, but few others do. When Lena grows her body hair out, it's a rebellion. When a brown woman does it, it's a mutiny.

Within the world there is no place for other creations. There is just an opportunity for reintegration and continuity. Everything that could exist already exists. Nothing else can be created but revealed.—If, the more evolved the man, the more he tries to summarize, evaluate and establish principles and laws for his life, how could God—in any sense, even the conscious God of the religions—not have absolute laws as a result of his own perfection? A God endowed with free will is lesser than a God of one law. The same way a concept is so much truer the more it is one only and doesn’t need to transform with each particular instance. God’s perfection is proven more by the impossibility of miracles than by their possibility. To work miracles, for a humanized God of the religions, is to be unfair—thousands of people need miracles equally and at the same time—or to recognize an error, correcting it—which, more than kindness or “proof of character,” means an error was made.—Neither understanding or volition are part of God’s nature, says Spinoza. This makes me happier and freer. Because the idea of the existence of a conscious God is horribly dissatisfying.

There is always a flaw in the system. Perfection doesn’t exist.

The picture-perfect “happily ever after” is never what it seems. It doesn’t exist.

you have to give yourself some grace to stumble. Perfection doesn’t exist.

The belief that mathematics exists somewhere else than within us, that it is discovered more than created, is called Platonism, after Plato’s belief in a non-spatiotemporal realm that was the region of the perfect forms of which the objects on earth were imperfect reproductions. By definition, the non-spatiotemporal realm is outside time and space. It is not the creation of any deity, it simply is. To say that it is eternal or that it has always existed is to make a temporal remark, which does not apply. It is the timeless nowhere which never has and never will exist anywhere but which nevertheless is. The physical world is temporal and declines, the non-spatiotemporal one is ideal and doesn’t.

everything is perfect. There are pieces missing, sure, and not just in the living room floor, but whose life doesn’t have a few missing pieces? Missing pieces are what makes it real, rather than just a painting of a life that could never actually exist. Missing pieces are essential.

God doesn’t get sick so neither need you, since you are God. So what causes sickness? It is the negative ego. Sai Baba says that “God equals man minus ego.” The ego doesn’t exist in God’s reality and ideally, it shouldn’t exist in yours. When you get rid of the negative ego you recognize that you are perfect

Perfect life doesn't exist. Problems - smaller or bigger - will always be present, but you can't let them dominate you. They come and go. When you learn this, life will become perfectly imperfect. You'll be happy.

The moon always has its face to us because that is part of its geometrically-perfect tracking-path around Earth. That, in turn, effects our geometrically-perfect tracking-path around the sun. If, for some reason, in some distant day, the moon’s orbit of Earth was even slightly altered (by the endless possibility of things that can and probably do happen in the universe), then our planet would also slowly change its orbit around the sun. Over generations, the Earth’s population would adjust to the changes, gradually stop reproducing. and eventually humans would cease to exist. Probably, some other life forms would remain for much longer as many are more malleable than us. It seems a rather gentle and kind way for humanity to eventually decline. Besides, if we can appear on a brilliant, blue gem of a planet, at some point in time and space, we can just as easily reappear somewhere else. Creation doesn’t stop. It changes. It’s the changes that help it to continue on its constant creative path.

Love never leaves us because it flows through us, our lives, as direct descendants of Go, the divine source of all love in humanity, forever and ever available to us to draw from and to steer and direct our actions, manifesting love through the things we do. People, on the other hand, leave our lives all the time. Even when I think about getting married one day, I remind myself that in a perfect marriage-loving and healthy and full of wonderful and memorable experiences-sooner or later, your spouse will leave you as well. Until death do us part, so it goes. But even in divorce or breakups, just because two people part ways and decide it's best top move on separately, it doesn't mean that one or both people are bad, or not good enough. The reasons why a relationship ends are independent of your value as a person, which existed long before the relationship began, and still exists even when the other person exits. Love never leaves us, but people do-and that's okay. Love is inseparable from people-it's literally a part of human nature to love, to be loved, and to desire such a thing.

Love never leaves us because it flows through us, our lives, as direct descendants of God, the divine source of all love in humanity, forever and ever available to us to draw from and to steer and direct our actions, manifesting love through the things we do. People, on the other hand, leave our lives all the time. Even when I think about getting married one day, I remind myself that in a perfect marriage-loving and healthy and full of wonderful and memorable experiences-sooner or later, your spouse will leave you as well. Until death do us part, so it goes. But even in divorce or breakups, just because two people part ways and decide it's best top move on separately, it doesn't mean that one or both people are bad, or not good enough. The reasons why a relationship ends are independent of your value as a person, which existed long before the relationship began, and still exists even when the other person exits. Love never leaves us, but people do-and that's okay. Love is inseparable from people-it's literally a part of human nature to love, to be loved, and to desire such a thing.

Love never leaves us because it flows through us, our lives, as direct descendants of God, the divine source of all love in humanity, forever and ever available to us to draw from and to steer and direct our actions, manifesting love through the things we do. People, on the other hand, leave our lives all the time. Even when I think about getting married one day, I remind myself that in a perfect marriage-loving and healthy and full of wonderful and memorable experiences-sooner or later, your spouse will leave you as well. Until death do us part, so it goes. But even in divorce or breakups, just because two people part ways and decide it's best to move on separately, it doesn't mean that one or both people are bad, or not good enough. The reasons why a relationship ends are independent of your value as a person, which existed long before the relationship began, and still exists even when the other person exits. Love never leaves us, but people do-and that's okay. Love is inseparable from people-it's literally a part of human nature to love, to be loved, and to desire such a thing.

Your body isn’t a thing to be looked at and judged against some standard of perfection that doesn’t even really exist. It’s the vessel that takes you through life, allowin’ you to experience all the beautiful things life has to offer. Food. Sex. Sunsets. Music. Hugs. Laughter. A healthy body is a gift. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t treat it like some cheap one-night stand. Treat it like the love of your life. Treat it with respect and tenderness, but most of all, gratitude. And a healthy dose of awe, too. Your body is made of remnants of stars and massive explosions in the galaxies. Every few years, the bulk of your body is newly created by the regeneration of your cells, but you have things in you that are as old as the universe. We’re literally stardust. Every one of us is a little miracle. You’re a miracle, Joellen. Think about that the next time you’re standin’ naked in front of the mirror and want to focus on some stray dimple you don’t like.

Your body isn’t a thing to be looked at and judged against some standard of perfection that doesn’t even really exist. It’s the vessel that takes you through life, allowin’ you to experience all the beautiful things life has to offer. Food. Sex. Sunsets. Music. Hugs. Laughter. A healthy body is a gift. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t treat it like some cheap one-night stand. Treat it like the love of your life. Treat it with respect and tenderness, but most of all, gratitude. And a healthy dose of awe, too. Your body is made of remnants of stars and massive explosions in the galaxies. Every few years, the bulk of your body is newly created by the regeneration of your cells, but you have things in you that are as old as the universe. We’re literally stardust. Every one of us is a little miracle. You’re a miracle, Joellen. Think about that the next time you’re standin’ naked in front of the mirror and want to focus on some stray dimple you don’t like.

If that doesn’t make you perfect then”—I shrug—“perfect doesn’t exist. And if it does, and it’s not that, then it’s stupid anyway, and I don’t want it.

We wanted to save those we loved without them growing and learning through their own hardships and life’s struggles, not realizing that in the absence of pain one can think they’re invincible. When in reality, they’ve been saved so many times that they’ve never had to feel pain. Saving them conditioned them to think that life is perfect, even when they see others around them struggling. Because that struggle hadn’t touched them yet, they believe it doesn’t truly exist.

When we collide It’s like taking a bite of your favorite dish. one that you haven't had in a while. So satisfying and necessary. When we collide It’s so legendary that people speak about our union. like it's a myth that doesn't exist. When we collide it's like a chef's kiss. So perfect and amazing in every way. When we collide, I wish I could be with you forever. giving and receiving pleasure that's always beyond measure. that's only achieved when we're together. When we collide our bodies, our hearts, and our minds intertwine. and move smoothly as one. Our collision is second to none. and when I think that it's done you sing softly in my ear. We’ve only just begun.

Perfection? More like a unicorn – elusive, mythical, and probably doesn’t exist. Why chase after something that’s as real as fairy dust? Embrace the quirks, the imperfections, the beautifully messy bits that make life interesting. After all, it’s the wobbly lines and smudges on the canvas that give the masterpiece its character. So, let go of the quest for perfection and dive headfirst into the messy, chaotic, wonderfully imperfect journey called life. Trust me, it’s way more fun this way!

Like maybe the "magic" isn't just about believing in mermaids; it's about believing peope like me don't exist, Like maybe admitting I've needed crutched dispels the myths we want to believe about people. That we're not perfect. That our bodies have needs. That this doesn't make us any less real. Any less human.

There is no cookie cutter mold to create the perfect look, the perfect shape, the perfect size. It doesn’t exist. The only thing that truly exists is imperfection. And it’s in all of us. Learning to embrace our imperfections, even loving them, is the biggest hurdle most of us face.

There may be nothing but chemistry between us, but that shit’s real, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it except lock it in a box and pretend it doesn’t exist.

It does nothing for me to see people 'talking' to other people, while meanwhile turning all possibles into impossibles for me. Back in '20 I was able to do college level math no problem, and now I need to use my fingers to subtract 5 from 10 and I still lose track. You literally made me into a retard. All my work and articulations are mocked and ridiculed as a result. What can a retard do? Is it even possible for a retard to connect with others? I am going to school when I struggle to do simple arithmetic? Now that essential human need for connection is completely screwed. You know as well as I do they would have to know _what happened_ before I'd have any hope with that in my state. I know the scoop. It doesn't matter. If you needed or wanted anything from me, you wouldn't have retarded me. At the start of '21, I found someone who went from 2k to 20k a month and a mil in 2 years, starting from $10k saved. I paid them $1k to help me not shoot myself in the foot. You did a wonderful job tearing me and possibilities down, and with perfect timing too! I'm tired of being in pain all the time. Tired of not being capable of doing anything meaningful. Tired of not being able to enjoy anything because it's too foggy and hurts too much to be awake. I guess I'll do like Elon and have my own big local giveaway, at least I'll get to make some difference in someone's life before the end of me. I could never move on a griefer who makes me continuously feel like I am not worth existing.

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn’t care to, or he doesn’t exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely. The only sense to make of tragedies like this is that terrible things can happen to perfectly innocent people. This understanding inspires compassion. Religious faith, on the other hand, erodes compassion. Thoughts like, “this might be all part of God’s plan,” or “there are no accidents in life,” or “everyone on some level gets what he or she deserves”—these ideas are not only stupid, they are extraordinarily callous. They are nothing more than a childish refusal to connect with the suffering of other human beings. It is time to grow up and let our hearts break at moments like this. —Sam Harris

The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting. It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. The narrator of this story is Steve Jobs, the legendary CEO of Apple. The story was part of his famous Stanford commencement speech in 2005.[23] It’s a perfect illustration of how passion and purpose drive success, not the crossing of an imaginary finish line in the future. Forget the finish line. It doesn’t exist. Instead, look for passion and purpose directly in front of you. The dots will connect later, I promise—and so does Steve.

Life is indeed perfect in itself. You see, the best religions in the world have members so afraid to lose them, that they themselves will fear any change and, in doing so, stop such religion from progressing and, in such attitude, lead it to an inevitable destruction. The art of detachment can be ignored for as long as one can attach, but the level at which one attaches to things will bring forth an equally leveled suffering, and so, the higher the emotional attachment, the higher the amount of pain one feels at the end. The atheists, on the other hand, are ironically the most commonly individuals possessed by spirits, and often, due to their lower vibrations, demons. Their lack of spirituality is both a disease and a justification for such mental disease. Whatever they say serves them well, but makes them suffer at the same time. And evil, evil can only be ignored insofar as people have options that allow ignoring it. As soon as those options vanish or are all under the control of evil, revolutions become inevitable. And so, one can say that truth doesn’t need faith to exist but is surely more easily recognized under the right beliefs, and as much as spirituality doesn’t need religion, but is more easily found inside one.

Don't think you can act perfectly. A perfect person doesn't exist. Always strive to give your best effort, and that's it.

Given the scientific investigation, the only causal machine in human existence, in the ultimate end, is the brain, which seems to be mainly out of control: The sensation, perception and imagination of the external world are automatically determined by the interpretation of input signals receiving through sense organs; making a choice and decision are automatically realized on the base of this interpretation, which, In later period, regulate the behavior patterns in a social environment. The only causal and interpretation machine, as described above, the brain is thought to be automatically shaped by various external factors, such as genetic programming that determines the design of a brain – various proportions among the various circuits in such a way that if your brain devotes more space for aggression and anxiety center, for example, then it is very high probability that you are a ‘wild beast’ inside. As you cannot pick out your brain when you are born, because at least the genetic inheritance is out of your control, it is nearly impossible for you to avoid the very fact that your internal world is so. Maybe, your inner wildness doesn’t reveal itself in the everyday world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have conscious control over it. Because of being hidden mainly in your unconsciousness, even your conscious mind can be unaware of the very fact of its existence. From scientific perspective, it can be stated, in this case, that the censor system of your brain is quite active to make sufficiently well-considered selection among desires that unintentionally emerge in aggression and anxiety circuits, and to hide most of them, which involve an extreme violence and destruction, in hidden consciousness in order to protect the ‘perfect’ image of your personality in social system, or simply to avoid to be punished on the grounds of these implausible, unfavorable desires in that system. If this is so, where is your freedom – free choice? Doesn’t it seem that the naked truth is that your brain, instead of you, makes a choice, decides, controls, regulates of almost everything in your life, leaving for you a room for being just a ‘perfect’ bio-social robot that lives in his or her illusion of free will?

There’s Tom,” Becky says. He’s been tromping around the city half the day, but I don’t see a speck of mud on him. Though he dresses plain, it always seems he rolls out of bed in the morning with his hair and clothes as neat and ordered as his arguments. We walk over to join him, and he acknowledges us with a slight, perfectly controlled nod. He’s one of the college men, three confirmed bachelors who left Illinois College to join our wagon train west. Compared to the other two, Tom Bigler is a bit of a closed book—one of those big books with tiny print you use as a doorstop or for smashing bugs. And he’s been closing up tighter and tighter since we blew up Uncle Hiram’s gold mine, when Tom negotiated with James Henry Hardwick to get us out of that mess. “How goes the hunt for an office?” I ask. “Not good,” Tom says. “I found one place—only one place—and it’s a cellar halfway up the side of one those mountains.” Being from Illinois, which I gather is flat as a griddle, Tom still thinks anything taller than a tree is a mountain. “Maybe eight foot square, no windows and a dirt floor, and they want a thousand dollars a month for it.” “Is it the cost or the lack of windows that bothers you?” He pauses. Sighs. “Believe it or not, that’s a reasonable price. Everything else I’ve found is worse—five thousand a month for the basement of the Ward Hotel, ten thousand a month for a whole house. The land here is more valuable than anything on it, even gold. I’ve never seen so many people trying to cram themselves into such a small area.” “So it’s the lack of windows.” He gives me a side-eyed glance. “I came to California to make a fortune, but it appears a fortune is required just to get started. I may have to take up employment with an existing firm, like this one.” Peering at us more closely, he says, “I thought you were going to acquire the Joyner house? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but it seems things have gone poorly?” “They’ve gone terribly,” Becky says. “They haven’t gone at all,” I add. “They’ll only release it to Mr. Joyner,” Becky says. Tom’s eyebrows rise slightly. “I did mention that this could be a problem, remember?” “Only a slight one,” I say with more hope than conviction. “Without Mr. Joyner’s signature,” Becky explains, “they’ll sell my wedding cottage at auction. Our options are to buy back what’s ours, which I don’t want to do, or sue to recover it, which is why I’ve come to find you.” If I didn’t know Tom so well, I might miss the slight frown turning his lips. He says, “There’s no legal standing to sue. Andrew Junior is of insufficient age, and both his and Mr. Joyner’s closest male relative would be the family patriarch back in Tennessee. You see, it’s a matter of cov—” “Coverture!” says Becky fiercely. “I know. So what can I do?” “There’s always robbery.” I’m glad I’m not drinking anything, because I’m pretty sure I’d spit it over everyone in range. “Tom!” Becky says. “Are you seriously suggesting—?” “I’m merely outlining your full range of options. You don’t want to buy it back. You have no legal standing to sue for it. That leaves stealing it or letting it go.” This is the Tom we’ve started to see recently. A little angry, maybe a little dangerous. I haven’t made up my mind if I like the change or not. “I’m not letting it go,” Becky says. “Just because a bunch of men pass laws so other men who look just like them can legally steal? Doesn’t mean they should get away with it.” We’ve been noticed; some of the men in the office are eyeing us curiously. “How would you go about stealing it back, Tom?” I ask in a low voice, partly to needle him and partly to find out what he really thinks. He glances around, brows knitting. “I suppose I would get a bunch of men who look like me to pass some laws in my favor and then take it back through legal means.” I laugh in spite of myself. “You’re no help at all,” Becky says.

I’d given a part of myself to Reese, a part I didn’t realize still existed. And now I was split into two perfectly even, jagged halves. I wasn’t whole, and therefore I couldn’t feel whole — couldn’t feel complete.

The most perfect mockery of life would be if the person who propounded the deepest truth were not a dreamer but a doubter. And that isn't inconceivable, for no one can propound the positive truth as excellently as a doubter, except that he himself doesn't believe in it. If he were a hypocrite the joke would be on him; if he were a doubter who perhaps wanted to believe what he doubted, the mockery would be entirely objective, existence would be mocking itself through him; he would be propounding a doctrine able to explain everything and the whole race could repose in it, but this doctrine could not explain its own founder. Were a person clever enough to conceal the fact of his own madness, he could make the whole world mad.

Perfection doesn't exist," I reply. "It's a mask people wear to conceal their ugly truths. Never trust someone who only ever smiles at you." She's quiet for a beat. "Ray only ever smiles at me." I kiss the top of her head.

The Interview The largest determining factor in whether you get a job is usually the interview itself. You’ve made impressions all along—with your telephone call and your cover letter and resume. Now it is imperative that you create a favorable impression when at last you get a chance to talk in person. This can be the ultimate test for a socially anxious person: After all, you are being evaluated on your performance in the interview situation. Activate your PMA, then build up your energy level. If you have followed this program, you now possess the self-help techniques you need to help you through the situation. You can prepare yourself for success. As with any interaction, good chemistry is important. The prospective employer will think hard about whether you will fit in—both from a production perspective and an interactive one. The employer may think: Will this employee help to increase the bottom line? Will he interact well as part of the team within the social system that already exists here? In fact, your chemistry with the interviewer may be more important than your background and experience. One twenty-three-year-old woman who held a fairly junior position in an advertising firm nonetheless found a good media position with one of the networks, not only because of her skills and potential, but because of her ability to gauge a situation and react quickly on her feet. What happened? The interviewer began listing the qualifications necessary for the position that was available: “Self-starter, motivated, creative . . .” “Oh,” she said, after the executive paused, “you’re just read my resume!” That kind of confidence and an ability to take risks not only amused the interviewer; it displayed some of the very skills the position required! The fact that interactive chemistry plays such a large role in getting a job has both positive and negative aspects. The positive side is that a lack of experience doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get a particular job. Often, with the right basic education and life skills, you can make a strong enough impression based on who you are and how capable you seem that the employer may feel you are trainable for the job at hand. In my office, for example, we interviewed a number of experienced applicants for a secretarial position, only to choose a woman whose office skills were not as good as several others’, but who had the right chemistry, and who we felt would fit best into the existing system in the office. It’s often easier to teach or perfect the required skills than it is to try to force an interactive chemistry that just isn’t there. The downside of interactive chemistry is that even if you do have the required skills, you may be turned down if you don’t “click” with the interviewer.

You know what your problem is, Miss Perfect? Your so busy trying to create this picture perfect fucking life that doesn’t exist. Your life is now, Aoife, stop waiting for something better to come along and appreciate what you already have.

Movements in literature were not caricatures - in the sense that they actually functioned as an ideology in politics does. As now a monopolistic ideology in politics prevails in the literature as well a single movement prevails: that of networking as a literary quality. Quality = networking is the magic formula: take a Krijn Peter Hesselink, never managed to score a positive review but reviews are old news: it is only referential authority trickling down from that network pyramid that counts. Thus, nowadays its perfectly possible to be on top of the Pyramid without ever getting a positive review, or - even worse - I even see people rising in literary ranks that have never written any books at all. Ergo, your point that another ideology would make a 'caricature' of literary history is exactly the same reasoning used by neoliberals to deconstruct any political change: another ideology? Impossible, because they no longer exist, only we still exist. In this way you get a pyramid shape you also see in popular music. It's still the bands from the 70's and 80's who earn the big money. New talent can't really play ball anymore. This of course embedded in a sauce of eternal talent shows, because the incumbent males have to just keep pretending they are everyone's benefactors. In the literature its the same: it is still Pfeijffer that gets the large sums of money from the Foundation of Literature, and it's still Samuel Vriezen pretending that that doesn't matter. 'Controversy' therefore structurally undesirable. After all, it would require a redistribution of power. The pyramid is especially interested in promoting mediocre types that promote safe and boring life visions, because then one ever needs to fear for his position, which, in case of serious controversy, they'd be forced to defend. Ergo, 100 interviews with Maria Barnas, and zero with Martinus Benders.

"I saw you and I see you every day. I greet you every day. Can you read my eyes? I miss you every day. I love you every day. What was this guy’s story? Doorman? Bus driver? Receptionist? Who’s the girl? Has she noticed him? Is he anyone to her, or just the fella behind the counter at Benji’s? Why doesn’t he say something to her? But I knew why. Because there’s the creeping fear that these moments don’t actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people think precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all? We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don’t want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It’s too perfect. That little second of hope is worth something, possibly for ever, as we lie on our deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren, and we can’t help but quickly give one last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we’d actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando’s seventy-four years earlier. It’s the what if? The what then? And we know that if we go for it, if we risk it, we immediately stand to lose it. But weirdly, some part of us believes the feeling is two-way, because it must be; it’s too special not to be. We believe that something’s been shared, even if the evidence we have is … what? A look that lasted a breath longer than we’re used to? A second glance, when the glance could easily have been to check whether there are any cabs coming, or whether the jacket we’re wearing that’s caught their eye would look good on their boyfriend, or why it is we seem to be staring at them."

Maybe you're looking for the kind of man who doesn't exist, Ash. You want somebody who'll fit your life perfectly and that'll never happen. There has to be a bit of give and take, you know.' 'I know,' Ash said sharply. 'But I don't want to do all of the giving and none of the taking.

Perfect” doesn’t exist without “imperfect” because “perfect” isn’t “perfect” unless we have something to compare it against. We can’t think that someone is “pretty” without thinking someone else is “ugly”.

The teachers want we to be perfect (Nobody is perfect, perfection doesn't exist) - if it exists what's the purpose we to be on this planet when we are not perfect? However in some subjects it's not quite, it's not possible to focus and get a better grade than this!

Most people will say that this story which I told "It's not a happy"... doesn't exist, but sorry it exist. I made in normal age, like 10 or 14 years old to can be saw the drama, if it was baybe, the baybe will cry, won't it? The age which I put the girl was the perfect, teenager in the same time, mother which is lost which will mean she has died... her father with a strange past still a mystery.

It’s one thing to battle oppression from the outside, but what do you do when the ideas that are attacking you are your own? As with all forms of oppression, sizeism doesn't exist in a vacuum. It interacts with and impacts other forms of oppression, including ableism. For those of us with disabilities where extra weight can make moving around that much harder, the threat of losing what mobility we have can loom over our heads. Ableism tells us that we must walk and become as “independent” as possible; sizeism blackmails us into making sure we stay that way. They both reinforce the man-made idea of an ideal body, one that everyone should aspire to have. Both feed into the capitalist idea that we must pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, that we must fend for ourselves, that we must not be a burden on anyone else. The two work in tandem with sexism as well – a female body should be Barbie doll skinny, sleek and sophisticated, and anything else is just gross. Our culture's standard definition of beautiful depends on preconceived notions about how the perfect body should be, notions that rely on various forms of oppression to legitimize them. A model body should ideally be white or white-passing, slim and nondisabled. Is it any wonder we don’t see fat, visibly disabled people of color posing on the covers of fashion magazines?" -Cara Liebowitz, "Palsy Skinny: A Mixed Up, Muddled Journey into Size and Disability," Criptiques, 2014.

Don't expect perfection in your self because perfection doesn't exist in this imperfect world.

Perfection doesn’t exist, and I’ve found that what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults. The same is true for schools. I haven’t encountered a single problem that isn’t attributed to some combination of parental, teacher, administrative, and/or student disengagement and the clash of competing stakeholders vying to define one purpose.

Contrary to what I thought, being a college grad and fluent in English doesn’t make one a good English teacher. I was surprised to learn that all the stuff I didn’t know about the language was more than I knew—by a multiple of ten. I knew my nouns, verbs and adjectives. I could speak intelligently about the past, present and future tenses. No problem. But my students were asking me about aspects of English way out in the hinterlands of my understanding. Holy hell! When did English get more than three tenses? Turns out a world existed beyond verbs and nouns. A big world that, for me at the time, seemed as deep and incomprehensible as quantum physics. Tenses like the past perfect, the subjunctive, the pluperfect, the present perfect, the future perfect continuous. Often

I'm fickle, tied to a life that doesn't exist any more - true love, perfect life, good friends. Everything is so damned difficult for me! Like a never- ending dance where the choreographer is never satisfied!

I know. It seems too good to be true, doesn't it? He's perfect and we're just…us. But Kristina, the only reason you even exist is because He wanted you to. So you see, it doesn't matter if your parents didn’t want you or some man left you or anybody else threw you away. The Creator of the universe wanted you and if that's not a reason to live, I don't know what is

I am in no way perfect. Perfection doesn’t exist. It is a standard that no one can achieve. The only thing that you can be perfect at is being you. In this sense, you are already perfect-perfectly a work in progress.

Perfect worlds don’t exist. What you’re referring to is a utopia, and even the inventor of that word doesn’t believe in it. Thomas Moore coined the term and it was a joke, he took it from the greek roots ou-topos, meaning ‘nowhere’. Because no such things exists.

She claimed that in every relationship one person always loves the other more. There’s no perfect balance as we all want to believe. That just doesn’t exist. For example, there’s always one person who would cope better if the other left.

Once you have reached a deep level of inner clarity, you will notice that just because you are content with reality doesn’t mean you don’t interact with it. The world continues to appear before you, but there’s nothing personal about it anymore. It is just the part of creation passing before you at that moment. Reality doesn’t bother you because you don’t need anything from it. It simply exists and you simply exist—in perfect harmony. Every moment unfolding in front of you is there for you to serve. It can be as simple as appreciating it, or you may be able to raise the energy of the moment passing before you. A smile, a kind word, a helping hand—these are all ways of raising the energy as it passes by. Doing your job to the best of your ability, taking care of your family, serving your community—these simple acts are just as much service to the universe as anything else.

We’re all little broken. If you think anyone in this world doesn’t have cracks, scars, and a story, then you’re not looking close enough. We weren’t brought into this world to be perfect; we were brought here to be human. To live. To feel. To hurt. To love. To cry. To exist. And with that, comes a few broken parts. You don’t have to be perfect to love or be loved. You just have to be brave enough to show the world your scars and call them beautiful.

No, God doesn’t have some intricate, preconceived blueprint for your future, or some grandiose vision projected on the divine screen of Her mind as to who you are supposed to become and what you are supposed to do. There is no spiritual maze to tirelessly wander in hopes of finally discovering and following God’s so-called “perfect will.” It doesn’t exist. Instead, you are God’s perfect will. As you are. Where you are, or wherever you go. You are the fulfillment of all expectation. You are the sum of Divine aspiration. You are the road God delights in traveling. God did not create you to become something or do something “big” that you are not already. There is no grandiose, perfect path to unlock, choose, or achieve. Instead, you are the “big” thing God is doing. You are the revival God is bringing to the cosmos.

have always been skeptical of love triangles in books and movies, struggling to understand how someone could love another man when they’re already so much in love with someone. However, I know now I was naïve to believe it doesn’t exist. Now I’ve had cause to seriously think about the subject, it makes perfect sense. I love my mom and my dad. I love both my besties. When I have children, I imagine I will love them all with the fullness of my heart. So, it stands to reason I can love two men at the same time. I just never looked at it like that before.

WHY IS HELL SO HORRIBLE? Hell was not prepared for man but for the devil and his angels (Matt. 25:41). God never intended for man to go there. Even now He is preparing a place in heaven for those who make the right choice (John 14:2). Why is hell so horrific? It’s a place where God’s attributes are not present. Many do not realize that all the good we enjoy is from God. Good doesn’t exist apart from Him, in fact. James 1:17 states, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights.” As Henry M. Morris and Martin E. Clark say in The Bible Has the Answer, “Essentially, hell is the place where all aspects of the presence of God will be completely withdrawn forever.”23 The same word that is used in Matthew 25:41 for prepared, hetoimazo, where it says God prepared hell for the devil, is also used in John 14:2, where Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you” in heaven. Heaven is filled with all the attributes of His holiness and glory. But in God’s preparation of hell He removed all of His attributes and goodness.

The universe doesn't exist to make you happy. ... life never actually failed to do what it said it would do, because it never said it would do anything. Because it's just a construct that it made a deal with us. It lets the hurt just be hurt. Manslaughter instead of murder one.

Because she knew it, too. She felt that freedom. It felt like love. The best thing I ever did was letting your mother go. No one is perfect, Katy. Perfect doesn’t exist. What we had was pretty fucking good, though.

Objectivity is for things I love less than this. That doesn't mean ignoring the flaws or pretending they don't exist. It just means forgiving them. And, more broadly, it means forgiving our own childhoods, and even to some extent forgiving ourselves. Doctor Who is rarely perfect. But it's frequently good enough to be enthralling, and it enthralled an awful lot of people over the years. It was precious to many of us.

Your body isn’t a thing to be looked at and judged against some standard of perfection that doesn’t even really exist. It’s the vessel that takes you through life, allowin’ you to experience all the beautiful things life has to offer. Food. Sex. Sunsets. Music. Hugs. Laughter. A healthy body is a gift. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t treat it like some cheap one-night stand. Treat it like the love of your life. Treat it with respect and tenderness, but most of all, gratitude. “And a healthy dose of awe, too. Your body is made of remnants of stars and massive explosions

Perhaps all Creation as we know it is an extraction from a totality, which I have chosen to call the ‘Source'. Three psychics have told me the same thing: ‘You’ve touched Source energy.’ Though I don’t know what that means, sometimes I do have an experience of traveling to a place in which everything I need for healing is in infinite supply. My mind moves into super-consciousness and a sense of higher intelligence, then past that into peace, and past that into Nothingness – a place of pure potential where all possibilities exist at the same time. The higher I go, the less I feel. The Source doesn’t do anything, it just is. The best way I can describe the Nothing that contains Everything is through the metaphor of white light. Physicists tell us it contains all other colors: when we see red or green or yellow, that’s a subtraction from white. Perhaps by touching the Source I can give my patients what they need to heal, because the Source offers an infinite number of simultaneous existences transcending time and space. Just as I speculate that Creation may be a subtraction from the perfection of Nothingness, I see disease as a subtraction from perfect health. I find that I am unconsciously drawn to physical need in others, and that somehow I’m able to offer a patient what he or she requires. Instead of time travel backward or forward perhaps I’m able to access some kind of universal energy, intelligence, awareness, or information beyond my perception. I can’t describe any of this more clearly – that’s why we have poets!

I feel weak for needing to grieve since no one has died. It doesn't make sense that I grieve so much for those who never even existed.

When did we become so damn sensitive about everything? We love freedom, but yet we create more and more rules and seek new models for perfect behavior—behavior that doesn’t even exist.