Phd Life Quotes

The key to a good life is this: If you're not going to talk about something during the last hour of your life, then don't make it a top priority during your lifetime.

Don't sweat the small stuff...and it's all small stuff.

Meanwhile, life keeps moving forward. The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?

I was exhilarated by the new realization that I could change the character of my life by changing my beliefs. I was instantly energized because I realized that there was a science-based path that would take me from my job as a perennial “victim” to my new position as “co-creator” of my destiny. (Prologue, xv)

Perfectionist parents seem to operate under the illusion that if they can just get their children to be perfect, they will be a perfect family. They put the burden of stability on the child to avoid facing the fact that they, as parents, cannot provide it. The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems. Once again, the child is saddled with the blame.

Life is painful, suffering is optional.

If we could only live the way we know deep down we should, we would guarantee ourselves a life of richness & fulfillment.

It's not an advantage to be without a PhD. But it's an advantage not to have taken a PhD because of the things that they do to you to get you into the slot that they want you in.

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town.

She had been living like a hermit herself, in a cramped, seedy apartment in Somerville, spending long hours in the lab. All-nighters had become a regular thing. She didn't have any close friends, didn't go out on dates, didn't even go to the movies by herself. She had sacrificed a normal life in order to get a PhD, and become a scientist.

Celebrating small wins gives them something to repattern our life around.

You go to more doctors. You celebrate Arlenny's Ph.D. defense. And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and: The half life of love is forever.

Life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Nothing is ever good enough the way it is.

No, you don't understand because it isn't happening to you, and no one can understand but me. I don't blame you. You've got your job to do, and your Ph.D. to get, and-oh, yes don't tell me, I know you're in this largely out of love of humanity, but you've got your life to live and we don't happen to belong on the same level. I passed your floor on the way up, nad now I'm passing it on the way down, and I don't think I'll be taking this elevator again. So let's just say good-bye here and now.

So, then, now you know your task: to become what the gods want, not what your parents want, not what your tribe wants, but what the gods want, and what your psyche will support if consciousness so directs.

How much more complicated life is than the attainment of a Ph.D. would lead one to believe!

Sometimes “Good bye” is just another way of saying “I love you

There is a tremendous difference between existing and thriving. Regardless of our age, we need the life force of joy—joie de vivre.

A minimalist by intent, I live a beautiful life with fewer things—simple, yet full.

Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, and what we think is what we live.

Peace is the result of retraining your mind to process life as it is, rather than as you think it should be.

Being "nowhere" is a step towards getting somewhere. Today, if you feel like you are nowhere, you are in a powerful position to choose the "somewhere" you want to go.

He who has little problems, shows little love. He who has overcome huge problems, has giant love. Because he understands what it means and won’t have others suffer like he did.

All hurt is founded on attachment to anything regardless of its nature. When we detach we vibrationally send ourselves back into the flow of life.

If there's no challenge in your life, then there's no enjoyment in your life.

The experience of speaking from the heart and being taken seriously builds the psychic architecture that supports the capacity to bear life.

People with autism don't need wheelchairs, artifical legs, or a guide dog. Their prosthesis is people,' says Ruth Christ Sullivan, Ph.D., a founder of the Autism Society of America (ASA), and I could agree with her more. Having good direct support staff in your loved one's life is what makes the difference between a good life and a dismal one.

This leaves us with the urgent question: How can we be or become a caring community, a community of people not trying to cover the pain or to avoid it by sophisticated bypasses, but rather share it as the source of healing and new life? It is important to realize that you cannot get a Ph.D. in caring, that caring cannot be delegated by specialists, and that therefore nobody can be excused from caring. Still, in a society like ours, we have a strong tendency to refer to specialists. When someone does not feel well, we quickly think, 'Where can we find a doctor?' When someone is confused, we easily advise him to go to a counselor. And when someone is dying, we quickly call a priest. Even when someone wants to pray we wonder if there is a minister around.

Do not wait, there will never be a right time, start from where you stand.

Jail is preschool. Prison is for those earning a Ph.D. in brutality.

In moments of great change we suffer, somehow hoping deep down that our emotions and our dramas can change the future or prevent it from happening. Future happens regardless.

Unlike the hollow, risk-pursuing few who are deprived of a seventh sense [conscience], you will go through your life fully aware of the warm and comforting, infuriating, confusing, compelling, and sometimes joyful presence of other human beings, and along with your conscience you will be given the chance to take the largest risk of all, which, as we all know, is to love.

If it's true there's a beginning to the universe, as modern cosmologists now agree, then this implies a cause that transcends the universe. If the laws of physics are fine-tuned to permit life, as contemporary physicists are discovering, then perhaps there's a designer who fine-tuned them. If there's information in the cell, as molecular biology shows, then this suggests intelligent design. To get life going in the first place would have required biological information; the implications point beyond the material realm to a prior intelligent cause. -Stephen C Meyer, PHD

Work hard, play well, be kind to animals and old people, don't cheat, never ever lie. Grantland Rice, old sports-caster said it best, " When the great Scorer comes to write your name, it matters not whether you won or lost, but how you played the game.

Within a couple of weeks of starting the Ph.D. program, though, she discovered that she'd booked passage on a sinking ship. There aren't any jobs, the other students informed her; the profession's glutted with tenured old men who won't step aside for the next generation. While the university's busy exploiting you for cheap labor, you somehow have to produce a boring thesis that no one will read, and find someone willing to publish it as a book. And then, if you're unsually talented and extraordinarily lucky, you just might be able to secure a one-year, nonrenewable appointment teaching remedial composition to football players in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, the Internet's booming, and the kids we gave C pluses to are waltzing out of college and getting rich on stock options while we bust our asses for a pathetic stipend that doesn't even cover the rent.

Mindfulness is the open-hearted energy of being aware in the present moment. It’s the daily cultivation—practice—of touching life deeply.

Each of us has an undeniable responsibility to our self and the rest of the world to be our personal best on any given day.

When we see somebody in a difficult situation, we can understand them only if we had the same experience and had lived through it. Otherwise, we just think we know.

You cannot be afraid of the unknown. In every moment and with every step you take, the unknown becomes the known.

When we are restless, it only implies that we are everywhere else but in the moment.

Great achievers see failure as a stepping stone to success.

Sometimes breaking down is the only solution to stepping up.

Work with whatever tool you may have at your disposal, and you shall find better tool as you go ahead.

If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.

When we fall in love, we recognise in the other the fragments of ourselves that we have lost.

With every dream and with every love, you have to die to the old, and be reborn to the new. You must leave what you know behind, and surrender to the unknown.

God lives in the Now. There is always peace in the present moment.

There is only one way to make your dream a reality: make the decision and then not change it.

The fundamental emotional need of every child is being-with.

If you're tired, if you're in pain, if you're worried or afraid - you're human. Remember that Superman is not your patron Saint. Be kind to you.

In the pursuit of dreams, we all have different beginnings. Your past is not negotiable. You must let go of the hope for a better past.

Life is messy. The only thing we can control is how we react to what happens to us and move forward.

Everything is nothing to an individual until they recognize and define it to be something.

Changing the external conditions of your lives - earn more money, be in a better physical shape, have another partner or travel more - will not change how you feel. It never works because the emptiness is not around, is within. The only way to come back to life is to acknowledge that little voice rising from your heart and begging you to return to love, to return to truth.

He whistles. Que viva Colombia. Hands you back the Book. You really should write the cheater's guide to love. You think? I do. It takes a while. You see the tall girl. You go to more doctors. You celebrate Arlenny's Ph.D defense. And then one June night you scribble the ex's name and: The half-life of love is forever. You bust out a couple more things. Then you put your head down. The next day you look at the new pages. For once you don't want to burn them or give up writing forever. It's a start, you say to the room. That's about it. In the months that follow you bend to the work, because it feels like hope, like grace—and because you know in your lying cheater's heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.

CHOOSE A SUBLIME IDEAL If you dedicate yourself to a sublime ideal, your life will continually grow in richness, strength and intensity. It is like a capital investment: you place your capital in a Heavenly bank so that, instead of deteriorating or going to waste, it increases and makes you richer. —Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov

Fatigue is epidemic among women in general, and mothers in particular. Mothers talk about sleep the way someone who is starving talks about food. Fatigue can overshadow your life, making everything seem like too much trouble.

When you remember that you are a unique and very important person created by a divine being we call God, and in "His" very image, then you relax well knowing that your life is a divine plan, and your job is to surrender and allow

Fate is what is given to us; destiny is what we are summoned to become. In the interplay of the two, human character plays a role. Hubris, or the fantasy that we know enough to know enough, seduces us toward choices that lead to unintended consequences. Hamartia, the failure to see clearly enough, to see humbly enough, is a lens through which we imperfectly envision the world, unavoidably distorting and reductive, but convincing at the moment nonetheless.

In the end, what I love most about contemporary yoga is its ability to synthesize the everyday with the extraordinary, the practical with the visionary, the mundane with the sacred. I love that yoga can work to release my tense muscles, negative emotions, and psychic detritus at the same time. That it can connect me to my body in ways that create new neural pathways in my brain. That it offers a practical tool for coping with everyday stress, as well as an intuitive opening to the hidden magic of everyday life.

Anita Johnston, Ph.D., author of Eating in the Light of the Moon, taught me to look in the mirror with curiosity rather than fear. So I may look at my reflection and think, ‘That’s interesting. I wonder why my body seems bigger today than it did yesterday. Maybe it’s water weight. Maybe it’s my outfit. Or maybe my eyes are just playing tricks on me.’ I know it’s not possible for me to gain a noticeable amount of weight overnight, so I will go no further than that. I move on with my day without skipping a beat—and definitely without missing a meal.

As your days, so shall your strength be.’ When I’m lying awake the night before having to make one of those speeches, I say that to myself. It reassures me.” “What does that mean to you, that text?” “That when the trials of life come, you’ll be given the strength to cope with them, day by day. So often I’ve thought at the start of a dreaded day—having to defend my Ph.D. thesis, giving a talk to an intimidating audience, or even just going to the dentist!—‘Well, of course, I shall get through this because I have to. I will find the strength. And, anyway, by this time tomorrow it will be over.

To call up modern versions of the old stories, one has to go forth and live life. As a result then, one will have the challenge of not only living the story, taking it all in, but also interpreting it in whatever ways are useful. So too, one will reap the reward of telling all about it afterward. One's interest in the world, and in having experiences, is really an interest in hearing, having, living one more story, and then one more, then one more story, till one cannot live them out loud any longer. Perhaps it should be said that the drive to live out stories is as deep in the psyche, when awakened, as it is compelling to the psyche to listen to stories and learn from them. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. in Introduction to the 2004 edition of The hero with a thousand faces (J.Campbell)

Most people accept living unhappy lives because it is the only way they know, they refuse to be open to the new emerging possibilities and refuse to make positive changes. Because they are afraid of being outside their own comfort zone and don’t risk anything, they live lives that are far less fulfilling than they could actually have.

I read these biographies all the time about these successful people and one of the patterns that I've discovered, and what I've discovered in myself and all of my friends who have become very successful, has been the fact that they say "Yes" to a lot of commitments. If you just have this one goal, then that one thing may get shoved under the rug and procrastinated on. But if you say yes to a lot of things; if you almost overcommit, then you probably won't get all of the things you've committed to complete. But you'll get a good portion of them. The 80% that you DO get done will still be more than that one person who said no to a lot of things. The busiest people get the most things done.

Don’t determine what you want based on what’s missing in your life. Determine, and focus on what you want based on what you truly believe you deserve for your life

Giving up on your dreams because it's getting harder is like stopping to paddle your boat in the midst of strong winds: you shall drown.

The same home can be a prison or a palace. It all depends on what you decide it to be.

Life is nothing other than what we internally translate it to be.

Life is nothing more than what we internally translate it to be.

What’s inside something doesn’t make that something, what’s inside it. People are not their behavior.

The only consistent and unconditional happiness that we are promised can only be found INSIDE each one of us

Sometimes the best solution is the most painful option

We call them miracles because they are sourced in the timeless infinite, and uncontemplatable by the time-based ego-mind.

So many businesses today have wind-up because of fear of failing.

The most essential step in marketing your services is selecting an occupation you can throw yourself into wholeheartedly.

You have to really believe that you can move mountains.

You should focus on those things that will lead you to succeed instead of wasting your time on trivial issues.

One of the most vital goals in life is to be consistently inspired to be flexible to change, so that we can easily take on different strategies until we arrive at our desired destination

A ray of sunshine, I bring to the world my passion of guiding others to their point of power by first loving themselves from the inside out. I Am on a never ending journey of self discovery and that has earned me a PHd in life experience I share with you. If your ready to walk the path of happy, I am your partner and together we Can transform your world into something extraordinarily awesome.

Disconnection, separation, division, detachment, disassociation - these are all words that describe the way we view our world and ourselves. We are disconnected from the Earth herself, separated from the delicate web she has woven, divided from each other by arbitrary encumbrances, detached from the very meaning of our existence, and disassociated from the awe and mystery of the world and the universe. Our daily lives are filled with more events than our elaborate datebooks can contain, we live by the litany “oh, that there were only more hours in the day,” and we bemoan our lot in life. We are scared to death of spiders and cockroaches, consider the natural world as wild, untamed and therefore dangerous, and resist awareness into the intricacies of our world for fear of having to take on one more responsibility.

A negative experience is just a story that one allows to dwell in his/her mind. And it should never influence their inner peace or diminish their thrill to shoot for the stars. Remember, it is just a "STORY.

Now. 1973. Exactly." He tipped back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. "So much changed in the sixties, the war, the rights of women, civil rights, the vote, protest against the war. On and on. I was getting my Ph.D. in Chicago and you were in college but that time was upheaval with a purpose. Now we've drawn back into our shells, wondering what we have done and what do we believe.? And is there any purpose to our lives?

What kind of god would allow the starlight from distant stars to continue forever, even after the star has 'died,'--a fundamental premise of contemporary astrophysics--yet would not provide the same opportunity for our personal biophotons?

Every age, every generation has its built in assumptions, that the world is flat, that the world is round etc. There are hundreds of hidden assumptions, things we take for granted, that may or may not be true. Of-course in the vast majority of cases historically, these things aren’t true. So presumably, if history is any guide, much about what we take for granted about the world simply isn’t true. But we’re locked into these precepts without even knowing it. That’s a paradigm.

It is said that Christianity, if it is to survive, must face the modern world, must come to terms with the way things are in the sense of the current drift of things. It is just the other way around: If we are to survive, we must face Christianity. The strongest reactionary force impeding progress is the cult of progress itself, which, cutting us off from our roots, makes growth impossible and choice unnecessary. We expire in the lazy, utterly helpless drift, the spongy warmth of an absolute uncertainty. Where nothing is ever true, or right or wrong, there are no problems; where life is meaningless we are free from responsibility, the way a slave or scavenger is free. Futility breeds carelessness, against which stands the stark alternative: against the radical uncertainty by which modern man has lived – as in a game of Russian roulette, stifled in the careless “now” between the click and the explosion, living by the dull grace of empty chambers – the risk of certainty. —John Senior, Ph.D.

Thus we are forced into a difficult choice—anxiety and depression. If we move forward, as our soul insists, we ... In such difficult choice one must choose anxiety, for anxiety at least is a path of potential growth; depression is a stagnation and defeat of life.

In contrast to ordinary memories both good and bad, which are mutable and dynamically changing over time, traumatic memories are fixed and static. They’re imprints, engrams from past overwhelming experiences. Deep impressions carved into the sufferer’s brain body and psyche. These harsh and frozen imprints do not yield to change, nor do they readily update with current information. The fixity of imprints prevents us from forming new strategies and extracting new meanings. There is no fresh ever-changing now, and no real flow in life. In this way, the past lives on in the present.

My mother, Delle Hunter, was a physically small woman, yet she was the biggest person I’ve ever known. She had total focus, an attribute that deeply impressed me. She taught me by example that how we live impacts how we die. She lived a life of courage, beauty, and integrity; she died in the same manner.

In other words to break an addiction we have to be able to face the unfaceable, think the unthinkable, bear the unbearable... The only way to go through them again is to go through them, to go down in that anxiety state and to feel what we really feel, is to go through and to break the tyranny of the addiction

Beauty may be as simple as a stem of hyacinth unfolding with fragrance and glorious color under a sunny sky. It may be as complex as a symphony, tapestry, or memoir of a life well lived. Its intensity and ability to pierce the heart and soul with brilliant rays of joy do not depend upon its parts, but upon its presence!

Ethical actions can often entail short-term pain, but will always result in long-term gains. By contrast, unethical actions frequently have short-term gains, which make them so attractive. But I guarantee that unethical actions will always result in some form of long-term pain and ultimate collapse, frequently in unexpected ways.

Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments. "Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science," she told me. "I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you." And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.

What is famously called "the midlife crisis" is precisely such an erosion of programs and projections. We expect that by investing sincere energy in a career, a relationship, a set of roles, that they will return the investment in manifold, satisfying ways. We feverishly renew the projections, up the ante, and anxiously repress the insurgence of doubt once more. We do not realize that a projection has occurred, for it is an unconscious mechanism of our energeic unconscious. Only after it has painfully dissolved may we begin to recognize that we placed such a large agenda on such a frangible place, that we asked too much of the beloved, of others, of institutions, and perhaps of life itself.

According to a 2012 Gallup survey, only 15 per cent of Americans think that Homo sapiens evolved through natural selection alone, free of all divine intervention; 32 per cent maintain that humans may have evolved from earlier life forms in a process lasting millions of years, but God orchestrated this entire show; 46 per cent believe that God created humans in their current form sometime during the last 10,000 years, just as the Bible says. Spending three years in college has absolutely no impact on these views. The same survey found that among BA graduates, 46 per cent believe in the biblical creation story, whereas only 14 per cent think that humans evolved without any divine supervision. Even among holders of MA and PhD degrees, 25 per cent believe the Bible, whereas only 29 per cent credit natural selection alone with the creation of our species.1

Psychologist and mindfulness expert David Richo, Ph.D., has focused on how these healthy connections are formed and what is needed to keep them alive. He describes the “5 A’s” as the qualities and gifts we all naturally seek out from the important people in our lives, including family, friends, and especially partners. What are these 5 A’s? • Attention—genuine interest in you, what you like and dislike, what inspires and motivates you without being overbearing or intrusive. You experience being heard and noticed. • Acceptance—genuinely embracing your interests, desires, activities, and preferences as they are without trying to alter or change them in any way. • Affection—physical comforting as well as compassion. • Appreciation—encouragement and gratitude for who you are, as you are. • Allowing—it is safe to be yourself and express all that you feel, even if it is not entirely polite or socially acceptable. What Richo is describing, in essence, are those genuine needs we have that form the basis of secure, healthy relationships. The 5 A’s are what we all should have received most of the time from our caregivers when we were growing up. They are also what we want in our adult relationships today. In his book How to Be an Adult in Relationships, Richo compares and contrasts the 5 A’s with what happens in unhealthy or unequal relationships.

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.

Fewer than eight hundred Americans earn a Ph.D. in physics each year. Worldwide, the number is probably in the thousands. And yet from this small pool comes the discovery and innovation that shapes the way we live and think. From X-rays, lasers, radio waves, transistors, atomic energy—and atomic weapons—to our view of space and time, and the nature of the universe, all this has arisen from this dedicated pool of individuals. To be a physicist is to have an enormous potential to change the world.

Exciting news,” she said. “Today we’re going to study three different types of chemical bonds: ionic, covalent, and hydrogen. Why learn about bonds? Because when you do you will grasp the very foundation of life. Plus, your cakes will rise.” From homes all over Southern California, women pulled out paper and pencils. “Ionic is the ‘opposites attract’ chemical bond,” Elizabeth explained as she emerged from behind the counter and began to sketch on an easel. “For instance, let’s say you wrote your PhD thesis on free market economics, but your husband rotates tires for a living. You love each other, but he’s probably not interested in hearing about the invisible hand. And who can blame him, because you know the invisible hand is libertarian garbage.” She looked out at the audience as various people scribbled notes, several of which read “Invisible hand: libertarian garbage.” “The point is, you and your husband are completely different and yet you still have a strong connection. That’s fine. It’s also ionic.” She paused, lifting the sheet of paper over the top of the easel to reveal a fresh page of newsprint.

Fynn disguise nobody but Fynn. At the time of writing I have known him for a couple of years. But there is another way in which I have known him all my life. For there is about him that transparent vulnerability which makes for a total and immediate correspondence with anyone who is prepared to throw prejudices to the wind and celebrate life as a lump of mysterious and joyful awe. But all the speculation about a trained scientist or theologian with imaginative leanings and communications was pretty well wide of the mark. Fynn, thank God, was not trained as either of these. Intelligent to the eyelashes and with a gargantuan appetite for knowledge, Fynn was early advised to eschew (may his adviser rest in peace) universities and other institutions for the purveying of processed thought. Some of his most formative thinking took place far from the quads and colleges and punted rivers amongst the small streets, warehouses, and canals of the East End. But with his modest job and his Woolworth's do-it-yourself laboratory he produced thought to which few PhD's have approximated.