Puzzle Relationship Quotes

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Because I can't help doing it," he said with a shrug. "And hey, if I keep loving you, maybe you'll eventually crack and love me too. Hell, I'm pretty sure you're already half in love with me." "I am not! And everything you just said is ridiculous. That's terrible logic." Adrian returned to his crossword puzzle. "Well, you can think what you want, so long as you remember-no matter how ordinary things seem between us-I'm still here, still in love with you, and care about you more than any other guy, evil or otherwise, ever will." "I don't think you're evil." "See? Things are already looking promising.
Richelle Mead (The Indigo Spell (Bloodlines, #3))
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
contiguous, adj. I felt silly for even mentioning it, but once I did, I knew I had to explain. "When I was a kid, "I had this puzzle with all fifty states on it--you know, the kind where you have to fit them all together. And one day I got it in my head that California and Nevada were in love. I told my mom, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I ran and got those two pieces and showed it to her--California and Nevada, completely in love. So a lot of the time when we're like this"--my ankles against the backs of your ankles, my knees fitting into the backs of your knees, my thighs on the backs of your legs, my stomach against your back, my chin folding into your neck--"I can't help but think about California and Nevada, and how we're a lot like them. If someone were drawing us from above as a map. that's what we'd look like; that's how we are." For a moment, you were quiet. And then you nestled in and whispered. "Contiguous." And I knew you understood.
David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go? Perhaps real love was familial, somehow, linked to blood, since love for children did not die as romantic love did.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
Is this a bookstore scavenger hunt?” I bounced on my feet, unable to contain my delight. “Scavenger hunt and puzzle.” Josh’s cheek dimpled. “Have to make sure your brainpower meets my standards, Red. I don’t date dummies.” “Understandable. Someone has to be the brains in the relationship.
Ana Huang (Twisted Hate (Twisted, #3))
Parents and children. The simplest relationship in the world and yet the most complex. One generation passes to the next a suitcase filled with jumbled jigsaw pieces from countless puzzles collected over time and says, ‘See what you can make out of these.
Kate Morton (The Clockmaker’s Daughter)
Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.
David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
The symptoms of abuse are there, and the woman usually sees them: the escalating frequency of put-downs. Early generosity turning more and more to selfishness. Verbal explosions when he is irritated or when he doesn’t get his way. Her grievances constantly turned around on her, so that everything is her own fault. His growing attitude that he knows what is good for her better than she does. And, in many relationships, a mounting sense of fear or intimidation. But the woman also sees that her partner is a human being who can be caring and affectionate at times, and she loves him. She wants to figure out why he gets so upset, so that she can help him break his pattern of ups and downs. She gets drawn into the complexities of his inner world, trying to uncover clues, moving pieces around in an attempt to solve an elaborate puzzle.
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won’t notice where the real action is. He draws you into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep your eyes turned away from the true cause of his abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks. He leads you into a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a wonderful but broken machine for which you need only to find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to its full potential. His desire, though he may not admit it even to himself, is that you wrack your brain in this way so that you won’t notice the patterns and logic of his behavior, the consciousness behind the craziness.
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
Lovers do things together! They rent videos, they ride Ferris wheels, they go out for pizza, they play Scrabble. They . . . they talk!' 'Talk?' He lifted his head and frowned, his eyes puzzled. 'We talk all the time, Raine. I've never had such talkative sex.' 'That's just it!' She wiggled, flailed, but couldn't budge him. 'Two minutes alone with you, and I'm flat on my back. Every single time!' A slow, knowing grin spread over his face. 'Is this your way of telling me you want to be on top?
Shannon McKenna (Behind Closed Doors (McClouds & Friends #1))
Madness is loving the unsolvable puzzle of your soul and replacing the lost pieces with my own.
Shannon L. Alder
We are like puzzle pieces who are perfectly suited to make a giant picture together, but we are assembling ourselves in the dark.
Vironika Tugaleva (The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness)
Sydney might not be an expert in personal relationships but puzzles were familiar territory.
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
No one would have guessed that the jagged pieces of our soul fit the puzzle in this box. We were considered the left over remnants that had no place, except the picture we wanted to create together.
Shannon L. Alder
Really, Mr. Collins,' cried Elizabeth with some warmth, 'you puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as to convince you of its being one.
Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)
That they were left with only this--this awkward, prearranged meet-up, this terrible silence--seemed almost more than she could bear, and the unfairness of it all welled up inside of her. It was his fault, all of it, and yet her hatred for him was the worst kind of love, a tortured longing, a misguided wish that made her heart hammer in her chest. She couldn't ignore the disjointed sensation that they were now two different pieces of two different puzzles, and nothing in the world could make them fit together again.
Jennifer E. Smith (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight)
How could you do that to me?" I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of. Eventually N produces three answers, in this order: 1. "Because I am a complete rotter." I silently agree, but it´s a cop-out: I have maggots, therefore I am dead. 2. "I was stressed at work and unhappy and we were always fighting...and you know I was just crazy..." I cut him off, saying, "You don´t get to be crazy. You did exactly what you chose to do." Which is true, he did. It is what he has always done. He therefore seems slightly puzzled at the need for further diagnosis, which may explain his third response: 3. "I don´t know." This, I feel instinctively, is the correct answer. How can I stay angry with him for being what he is? I was, after all, his wife, and I chose him. No coincidences, that´s what Freud said. None. Ever. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and walk toward the truck, saying to his general direction, "Fine. At least now I know: You don´t know." I stop and turn around and fire one more question: a bullet demanding attention in the moment it enters the skin and spreads outward, an important bullet that must be acknowledged. "What did you feel?" After a lengthy pause, he answers. "I felt nothing." And that, I realize too late, was not the whole truth, but was a valid part of the truth. Oh, and welcome to the Serengeti. That too.
Suzanne Finnamore (Split: A Memoir of Divorce)
We're going to get through this. Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.
David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
There are people like this wherever you go. They are part of the same mystery as you are, but you can't quite tell how you fit together. The world is a puzzle, and we cannot solve it alone.
Lemony Snicket (When Did You See Her Last? (All the Wrong Questions, #2))
If you worked out enough, maybe the man would too. Maybe you would be able to work it out together, as if the two of you were a puzzle that could be solved; otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude.
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1))
She gets my need to fix things that have broken along the way, to mend fences. Maybe if we all just tried to put the pieces back together as soon as they fell out of place, the puzzles in our lives would feel more like an accomplishment than a chore.
Megan Bostic (Never Eighteen)
You will never be able to see clearly when people around you distort your view of truth with their own clouded version. You will begin to read into everything incorrectly and find yourself lost in a delusional story stitched together from the crumbs of over analyzed words once spoken, misunderstandings or speculation. Life should not be wasted by collecting clues or piecing together a puzzle about how someone feels. Love is straightforward and it is clearly seen on the cloudiest days of your life. If someone loves you it will be obvious. They won't let you go, until you ask them to.
Shannon L. Alder
Parents and children. The simplest relationship in the world and yet the most complex. One generation passes to the next a suitcase filled with jumbled jigsaw pieces from countless puzzles collected over time and says, “See what you can make out of these.
Kate Morton (The Clockmaker's Daughter)
In the end all the puzzles of your life will be solved ,until then... laugh at the scepticism, live for the moment and remember everything happens for a reason.
Abhysheq Shukla (Feelings Undefined: The Charm of the Unsaid Vol. 1)
Never make exceptions for people. Your sacrifice becomes their expectation.
Jennifer McVey (Who Were You Born To Be?: Word Seach Puzzles)
Relationships should always be a game of mix and match, not a puzzle that you have to perfectly snap into, or a Jenga tower that will collapse as soon as you try to wiggle one block out of place. Customizability is the best part, yet most people try so hard to make their relationship stick to its premade form, a one-size-fits-all shape. Many people don’t take advantage of their own freedom.
Angela Chen (Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex)
You are the calmest, fiercest person I know, and that is enough to draw me into your world and woo me into your heart. I've always enjoyed a good paradox and puzzle. You are no exception.
Melody Lee (Moon Gypsy)
The right loved one will fill up your life like the final puzzle piece that makes it all complete. You feel it when you meet them. Or sometimes if you aren’t mature enough or wise enough, it can take time to discover that they are the right one. Once your jigsaw puzzle is complete, the rest are often just extra pieces.
Kate McGahan (Jack McAfghan: Return from Rainbow Bridge: An Afterlife Story of Loss, Love and Renewal (Jack McAfghan Pet Loss Trilogy Book 3))
Willow Mosby, when I look at you, all of the broken pieces fit back together.
Courtney Nuckels (Exposing ELE (ELE, #3))
Every one of us is like the pieces of a puzzle. Each one unique and with our own special place where only we can fit, and without every one of us, the picture wouldn’t be complete.
Gina McMurchy-Barber (The Jigsaw Puzzle King)
What a painter inquires into is not the nature of the physical world but the nature of our reactions to it. He is not concerned with causes but with the mechanism of certain effects. His is a psychological problem-that of conjuring up a convincing image despite the fact that not one individual shade corresponds to what we call "reality." In order to understand this puzzle-as far as we can claim to understand it as yet-science had to explore the capacity of our minds to register relationships rather than individual elements.
E.H. Gombrich (Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation)
Again I thought about the family. There was a puzzle in it, something unresolved. What is a person to do, I asked, when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations—to friends, to society, to themselves?
Tara Westover (Educated)
You can say whatever you like to me. I'm your oyster." Before she could restrain herself, an appalled giggle escaped her. "Please don't say that. You're no such thing." "You can choose another word, if you like." Mr. Severin extended his arm to escort her downstairs. "But the fact is, if you ever need anything- any favor, any service, large or small- I'm the one to send for. No questions asked. No obligations attached. Will you remember that?" Cassandra hesitated before taking his arm. "I'll remember." As they proceeded to the first floor, she asked in bewilderment, "But why would you make such a promise?" "Haven't you ever liked someone or something right away, without knowing exactly why, but feeling sure you would discover the reasons later?" She couldn't help smiling at that, thinking, Yes, as a matter of fact. Just now. But it would be too forward to say so, and besides, it would be wrong to encourage him. "I would be glad to call you a friend, Mr. Severin. But I'm afraid marriage will never be a possibility. We don't suit. I could please you only in the most superficial ways." "I would be happy with that," he said. "Superficial relationships are my favorite kind." A regretful smile lingered at her lips. "Mr. Severin, you couldn't give me the life I've always dreamed of." "I hope your dream comes true, my lady. But if it doesn't, I could offer you some very satisfying substitutes." "Not if you're heart is frozen," Cassandra said. Mr. Severin grinned at that, and made no reply. But as they neared the last step, she heard his reflective, almost puzzled murmur. "Actually... I think it just thawed a little.
Lisa Kleypas (Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels, #6))
Uncouth, clannish, lumbering about the confines of Space and Time with a puzzled expression on his face and a handful of things scavenged on the way from gutters, interglacial littorals, sacked settlements and broken relationships, the Earth-human has no use for thinking except in the service of acquisition. He stands at every gate with one hand held out and the other behind his back, inventing reasons why he should be let in. From the first bunch of bananas, his every sluggish fit or dull fleabite of mental activity has prompted more, more; and his time has been spent for thousands of years in the construction and sophistication of systems of ideas that will enable him to excuse, rationalize, and moralize the grasping hand. His dreams, those priceless comic visions he has of himself as a being with concerns beyond the material, are no more than furtive cannibals stumbling round in an uncomfortable murk of emotion, trying to eat each other. Politics, religion, ideology — desperate, edgy attempts to shift the onus of responsibility for his own actions: abdications. His hands have the largest neural representation in the somesthetic cortex, his head the smallest; but he's always trying to hide the one behind the other.
M. John Harrison (The Centauri Device)
If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go- as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
And if you are just alone and there is nobody else, then too love is not possible. Love is a paradoxical phenomenon. It needs two in the first place, and in the last place it needs two to exist as one. It is the greatest enigma; it is the greatest puzzle.
Osho (Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: On Relationships, Sex, Meditation, and Silence)
Different nations speak of the many possible relationships to money when they speak: The French “gain” money (gagner), the English “earn” it, the Americans “make” it, the Russian “works” for it (работать), and in my mother tongue, we “look for” it (keres).
Ernö Rubik (Cubed: The Puzzle of Us All)
I had injected more of myself than I had ever intended into our nonexistent relationship. Now I would have to relocate the bits and pieces of myself that I had lost, and put myself back together, like a waterlogged puzzle whose pieces didn't quite fit anymore.
Catherine Lowell (The Madwoman Upstairs)
How puzzlingly fitting one can be, a couple of opposites. She was loud and fiery; he was quiet and cold. She always defended him verbally; he always defended her physically.
Criss Jami
Life is a series of puzzles; all you have to do is solve the puzzles.
Sam Owen (500 Relationships And Life Quotes: Bite-Sized Advice For Busy People)
It’s not like a puzzle piece where there’s an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.
David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
Scavenger hunt and puzzle.” Josh’s cheek dimpled. “Have to make sure your brainpower meets my standards, Red. I don’t date dummies.” “Understandable. Someone has to be the brains in the relationship.
Ana Huang (Twisted Hate (Twisted, #3))
Soulmate relationships are never complicated, difficult or dramatic. True soulmates are like long-lost puzzle pieces that easily fall into place the moment they are found. And it’s always a perfect fit.
Anthon St. Maarten
We are all beautiful and magical puzzles made up of so many tiny pieces and parts. Without just one of them, something would be missing and we would not be whole. It is all of our parts that make us who we are and make life what it is. Each piece is special and beautiful and necessary. Even those we do not yet understand or that bring up challenges for us and in our life. Every single piece fits perfectly.
Camille Lucy (The (Real) Love Experiment: Explore Love, Relationships & The Self)
He was already looking at their relationship through the lens of the past tense. It puzzled her, the ability of romantic love to mutate, how quickly a loved one could become a stranger. Where did the love go?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
No one cares about the artist Kafka, who troubles us with his puzzling aesthetic, because we'd rather have Kafka as the fusion of experience and work, the Kafka who had a difficult relationship with his father and didn't know how to deal with women.
Milan Kundera (Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts)
If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go—as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping one into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
Wanting All Husband, it's fine the way your mind performs Like a circus, sharp As a sword somebody has To swallow, rough as a bear, Complicated as a family of jugglers, Brave as a sequined trapeze Artist, the only boy I ever met Who could beat me in argument Was why I married you, isn't it, And you have beaten me, I've beaten you, We are old polished hands. Or was it your body, I forget, maybe I foresaw the thousands on thousands Of times we have made love Together, mostly meat And potatoes love, but sometimes Higher than wine, Better than medicine. How lately you bite, you baby, How angels record and number Each gesture, and sketch Our spinal columns like professionals. Husband, it's fine how we cook Dinners together while drinking, How we get drunk, how We gossip, work at our desks, dig in the garden, Go to the movies, tell The children to clear the bloody table, How we fit like puzzle pieces. The mind and body satisfy Like windows and furniture in a house. The windows are large, the furniture solid. What more do I want then, why Do I prowl the basement, why Do I reach for your inside Self as you shut it Like a trunkful of treasures? Wait, I cry, as the lid slams on my fingers.
Alicia Suskin Ostriker
Had anyone asked him, Calvin would have said Elizabeth Zott was what he treasured most in the world, and not because she was pretty, and not because she was smart, but because she loved him and he loved her with a certain kind of fullness, of conviction, of faith, that underscored their devotion to each other. They were more than friends, more than confidants, more than allies, and more than lovers. If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go—as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping one into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
I've heard people describe marriage as two missing pieces of a puzzle coming together, and discovering that they are a perfect fit. But that's just wrong. People are different and that's a good thing. Two pieces of different puzzles cannot and will not fit together, unless one has been forced to bend or break or change to fit the other
Alice Feeney (Rock Paper Scissors)
Everything in her life, she could see now, had taken the same turn—as for love, she often puzzled and puzzled, without ever allowing herself to be fully sad, as to what could be wrong with the formula. It does not work, she thought. At times there were moments when she asked herself if she could have been in the wrong: she would almost rather think that. What she thought she regretted was her lack of guard, her wayward extravagance—but had she all the time been more guarded than she imagined, had she been deceitful, had she been seen through? For what had always happened she could still not account. There seemed to be some way she did not know of by which people managed to understand each other.
Elizabeth Bowen (The Death of the Heart)
Surely the extraordinary success of artificial intelligence is attributable to the fact that it frees us from real intelligence, that by hypertrophying thought as an operational process it frees us from thought's ambiguity and from the insoluble puzzle of its relationship to the world. Surely the success of all these technologies is a result of the way in which they make it impossible even to raise the timeless question of liberty. What a relief! Thanks to the machinery of the virtual, all your problems are over! You are no longer either subject or object, no longer either free or alienated - and no longer either one or the other: you are the same, and enraptured by the commutations of that sameness. We have left the hell of other people for the ecstasy of the same, the purgatory of otherness for the artificial paradises of identity. Some might call this an even worse servitude, but Telecomputer Man, having no will of his own, knows nothing of serfdom. Alienation of man by man is a thing of the past: now man is plunged into homeostasis by machines.
Jean Baudrillard (The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena)
In 2011, Mark Brooks, a consultant to online-dating companies, published the results of an industry survey titled “How Has Internet Dating Changed Society?” The survey responses, from 39 executives, produced the following conclusions: “Internet dating has made people more disposable.” “Internet dating may be partly responsible for a rise in the divorce rates.” “Low quality, unhappy and unsatisfying marriages are being destroyed as people drift to Internet dating sites.” “The market is hugely more efficient … People expect to—and this will be increasingly the case over time—access people anywhere, anytime, based on complex search requests … Such a feeling of access affects our pursuit of love … the whole world (versus, say, the city we live in) will, increasingly, feel like the market for our partner(s). Our pickiness will probably increase.” “Above all, Internet dating has helped people of all ages realize that there’s no need to settle for a mediocre relationship.” From "A Million First Dates How online romance is threatening monogamy" in January/February 2013
Dan Slater (A Million First Dates: Solving the Puzzle of Online Dating)
They were more than friends, more than confidants, more than allies, and more than lovers. If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go—as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping one into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense. They made other couples sick.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
I believe everything in our life, every person in our life, every relationship, everything is there for a reason. And when you really pay attention, there are certain little clues we get, it’s so crystal clear what the next step is. It’s just this puzzle and everything’s in its right place, and as we grow we take the next step, the dots get connected and we eventually become what we’re supposed to be.
Beyoncé Knowles
And in that instant her eyes were brimming and she was not aware that she was voicing an illusion. Yet Anthony knew that there were days when they hurt each other purposely--taking almost a delight in the thrust. Incessantly she puzzled him: one hour so intimate and charming, striving desperately toward an unguessed, transcendent union; the next, silent and cold, apparently unmoved by any consideration of their love or anything he could say
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
Hamlet' dwarfs 'Hamilton' - it dwarfs pretty much everything - but there's a revealing similarity between them. Shakespeare's longest play leaves its audience in the dark about some basic and seemingly crucial facts. It's not as if the Bard forgot, in the course of all those words, to tell us whether Hamlet was crazy or only pretending: He wanted us to wonder. He forces us to work on a puzzle that has no definite answer. And this mysteriousness is one reason why we find the play irresistible. 'Hamilton' is riddled with question marks. The first act begins with a question, and so does the second. The entire relationship between Hamilton and Burr is based on a mutual and explicit lack of comprehension: 'I will never understand you,' says Hamilton, and Burr wonders, 'What it is like in his shoes?' Again and again, Lin distinguishes characters by what they wish they knew. 'What'd I miss?' asks Jefferson in the song that introduces him. 'Would that be enough?' asks Eliza in the song that defines her. 'Why do you write like you're running out of time?' asks everybody in a song that marvels at Hamilton's drive, and all but declares that there's no way to explain it. 'Hamilton', like 'Hamlet', gives an audience the chance to watch a bunch of conspicuously intelligent and well-spoken characters fill the stage with 'words, words, words,' only to discover, again and again, the limits to what they can comprehend.
Lin-Manuel Miranda
Freud focused on the puzzling development of conscience. He reasoned that the child begins life with a sense that all are present to serve him. A youngster eventually recognizes that others exist but not initially that they are complex beings with their own thoughts and relationships. Freud discovered that the child’s life changes dramatically when he realizes that others are subjects, just as he is: subjects in their own right (Covitz 2016). Until that time, the child understands others more or less only in their capacities to satisfy his needs: as either good or bad, as satisfying his demands or not. When the child accepts the complexity of family relationships and is able to understand that Mom and Dad have an independent relationship, he has begun to embrace them as subjects (i.e., as doers) with their own thoughts, feelings, and relationships. He has, Freud would say, developed a conscience (an uber-Ich, or a “Guiding I”). Those who fail to accept others as subjects in their own right comprise the personality-disordered subgroup of humanity.
Bandy X. Lee (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President)
Imagine you live on a planet where the dominant species is far more intellectually sophisticated than human beings but often keeps humans as companion animals. They are called the Gorns. They communicate with each other via a complex combination of telepathy, eye movements & high-pitched squeaks, all completely unintelligible & unlearnable by humans, whose brains are prepared for verbal language acquisition only. Humans sometimes learn the meaning of individual sounds by repeated association with things of relevance to them. The Gorns & humans bond strongly but there are many Gorn rules that humans must try to assimilate with limited information & usually high stakes. You are one of the lucky humans who lives with the Gorns in their dwelling. Many other humans are chained to small cabanas in the yard or kept in outdoor pens of varying size. They are so socially starved they cannot control their emotions when a Gorn goes near them. The Gorns agree that they could never be House-Humans. The dwelling you share with your Gorn family is filled with water-filled porcelain bowls.Every time you try to urinate in one,nearby Gorn attack you. You learn to only use the toilet when there are no Gorns present. Sometimes they come home & stuff your head down the toilet for no apparent reason. You hate this & start sucking up to the Gorns when they come home to try & stave this off but they view this as evidence of your guilt. You are also punished for watching videos, reading books, talking to other human beings, eating pizza or cheesecake, & writing letters. These are all considered behavior problems by the Gorns. To avoid going crazy, once again you wait until they are not around to try doing anything you wish to do. While they are around, you sit quietly, staring straight ahead. Because they witness this good behavior you are so obviously capable of, they attribute to “spite” the video watching & other transgressions that occur when you are alone. Obviously you resent being left alone, they figure. You are walked several times a day and left crossword puzzle books to do. You have never used them because you hate crosswords; the Gorns think you’re ignoring them out of revenge. Worst of all, you like them. They are, after all, often nice to you. But when you smile at them, they punish you, likewise for shaking hands. If you apologize they punish you again. You have not seen another human since you were a small child. When you see one you are curious, excited & afraid. You really don’t know how to act. So, the Gorn you live with keeps you away from other humans. Your social skills never develop. Finally, you are brought to “training” school. A large part of the training consists of having your air briefly cut off by a metal chain around your neck. They are sure you understand every squeak & telepathic communication they make because sometimes you get it right. You are guessing & hate the training. You feel pretty stressed out a lot of the time. One day, you see a Gorn approaching with the training collar in hand. You have PMS, a sore neck & you just don’t feel up to the baffling coercion about to ensue. You tell them in your sternest voice to please leave you alone & go away. The Gorns are shocked by this unprovoked aggressive behavior. They thought you had a good temperament. They put you in one of their vehicles & take you for a drive. You watch the attractive planetary landscape going by & wonder where you are going. You are led into a building filled with the smell of human sweat & excrement. Humans are everywhere in small cages. Some are nervous, some depressed, most watch the goings on on from their prisons. Your Gorns, with whom you have lived your entire life, hand you over to strangers who drag you to a small room. You are terrified & yell for your Gorn family to help you. They turn & walk away.You are held down & given a lethal injection. It is, after all, the humane way to do it.
Jean Donaldson (The Culture Clash: A Revolutionary New Way to Understanding the Relationship Between Humans and Domestic Dogs)
had. All put together, it made for a puzzle where none of the pieces fit smoothly. She felt as though she were trying to fit pieces together that showed trees, sky, half a cat, and part of a barn door. All together they didn’t make a picture. She knew what the images were, but none of them was complete, and she didn’t feel whole, either. She reminded herself that she didn’t need a man to be complete. But so much of the relationship she had with Phil was constantly half-assed. Maybe that was all she needed to know, and eventually act on. There never seemed to be
Danielle Steel (The House)
not because she was pretty, and not because she was smart, but because she loved him and he loved her with a certain kind of fullness, of conviction, of faith, that underscored their devotion to each other. They were more than friends, more than confidants, more than allies, and more than lovers. If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go—as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping one into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense. They made other couples sick.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
Healthy relationships, even those that eventually end with breakups, aren’t a mistake. They’re a chance to grow and learn, about who you are, who you want to be, what kind of relationships are worth your time and energy. I hate this assumption that when people end a romantic relationship they leave a piece of their heart behind, they shatter and will be unable to offer their next partner their whole, pure self. People aren’t puzzles or vases. People have an endless capacity both to learn and to love. People also aren’t property. They do not become less valuable or tarnished by use.
Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney
Subject: SELF WORTH (Very Deep!!!) In a brief conversation, a man asked a woman he was pursuing the question: 'What kind of man are you looking for?' She sat quietly for a moment before looking him in the eye & asking, 'Do you really want to know?' Reluctantly, he said, 'Yes. She began to expound, 'As a woman in this day & age, I am in a position to ask a man what can you do for me that I can't do for myself? I pay my own bills. I take care of my household without the help of any man... or woman for that matter. I am in the position to ask, 'What can you bring to the table?' The man looked at her. Clearly he thought that she was referring to money. She quickly corrected his thought & stated, 'I am not referring to money. I need something more. I need a man who is striving for excellence in every aspect of life. He sat back in his chair, folded his arms, & asked her to explain. She said, 'I need someone who is striving for excellence mentally because I need conversation & mental stimulation. I don't need a simple-minded man. I need someone who is striving for excellence spiritually because I don't need to be unequally yoked...believers mixed with unbelievers is a recipe for disaster. I need a man who is striving for excellence financially because I don't need a financial burden. I need someone who is sensitive enough to understand what I go through as a woman, but strong enough to keep me grounded. I need someone who has integrity in dealing with relationships. Lies and game-playing are not my idea of a strong man. I need a man who is family-oriented. One who can be the leader, priest and provider to the lives entrusted to him by God. I need someone whom I can respect. In order to be submissive, I must respect him. I cannot be submissive to a man who isn't taking care of his business. I have no problem being submissive...he just has to be worthy. And by the way, I am not looking for him...He will find me. He will recognize himself in me. Hey may not be able to explain the connection, but he will always be drawn to me. God made woman to be a help-mate for man. I can't help a man if he can't help himself. When she finished her spill, she looked at him. He sat there with a puzzled look on his face. He said, 'You are asking a lot. She replied, "I'm worth a lot". Send this to every woman who's worth a lot.... and every man who has the brains to understand!!
Dru Edmund Kucherera
The first is that the relationships among all forms of matter are ones of kinship; everything that exists is, in a fairly literal sense, related to everything else. The stone that is the ancestor Raukawa is also, in its own right, an ancestor, being part of the same continuum of creation as the man and the ancestral hero. The second is that the mechanism of creation for everything in the world—not just humans, animals, and gods but even things that we would describe as inorganic, like sand and stones—is a form of sexual reproduction. Creation in traditional Polynesian myths is, fundamentally, a matter of procreation.
Christina Thompson (Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia)
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so – but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus: A Trilogy of Five)
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.” ― The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
asked him, Calvin would have said Elizabeth Zott was what he treasured most in the world, and not because she was pretty, and not because she was smart, but because she loved him and he loved her with a certain kind of fullness, of conviction, of faith, that underscored their devotion to each other. They were more than friends, more than confidants, more than allies, and more than lovers. If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go—as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping one into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense. They made other couples sick.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
and confused if someone does not appreciate their niceness. Others often sense this and avoid giving them feedback not only, effectively blocking the nice person’s emotional growth, but preventing risks from being taken. You never know with a nice person if the relationship would survive a conflict or angry confrontation. This greatly limits the depths of intimacy. And would you really trust a nice person to back you up if confrontation were needed? 3. With nice people you never know where you really stand. The nice person allows others to accidentally oppress him. The “nice” person might be resenting you just for talking to him, because really he is needing to pee. But instead of saying so he stands there nodding and smiling, with legs tightly crossed, pretending to listen. 4. Often people in relationship with nice people turn their irritation toward themselves, because they are puzzled as to how they could be so upset with someone so nice. In intimate relationships this leads to guilt, self-hate and depression. 5. Nice people frequently keep all their anger inside until they find a safe place to dump it. This might be by screaming at a child, blowing up a federal building, or hitting a helpless, dependent mate. (Timothy McVeigh, executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, was described by acquaintances as a very, very nice guy, one who would give you the shirt off his back.) Success in keeping the anger in will often manifest as psychosomatic illnesses, including arthritis, ulcers, back problems, and heart disease. Proper Peachy Parents In my work as a psychotherapist, I have found that those who had peachy keen “Nice Parents” or proper “Rigidly Religious Parents” (as opposed to spiritual parents), are often the most stuck in chronic, lowgrade depression. They have a difficult time accessing or expressing any negative feelings towards their parents. They sometimes say to me “After all my parents did for me, seldom saying a harsh word to me, I would feel terribly guilty complaining. Besides, it would break their hearts.” Psychologist Rollo May suggested that it is less crazy-making to a child to cope with overt withdrawal or harshness than to try to understand the facade of the always-nice parent. When everyone agrees that your parents are so nice and giving, and you still feel dissatisfied, then a child may conclude that there must be something wrong with his or her ability to receive love. -§ Emotionally starving children are easier to control, well fed children don’t need to be. -§ I remember a family of fundamentalists who came to my office to help little Matthew with his anger problem. The parents wanted me to teach little Matthew how to “express his anger nicely.” Now if that is not a formula making someone crazy I do not know what would be. Another woman told me that after her stinking drunk husband tore the house up after a Christmas party, breaking most of the dishes in the kitchen, she meekly told him, “Dear, I think you need a breath mint.” Many families I work with go through great anxiety around the holidays because they are going to be forced to be with each other and are scared of resuming their covert war. They are scared that they might not keep the nice garbage can lid on, and all the rotting resentments and hopeless hurts will be exposed. In the words to the following song, artist David Wilcox explains to his parents why he will not be coming home this Thanksgiving: Covert War by David Wilcox
Kelly Bryson (Don't Be Nice, Be Real)
There was a perpetual imbalance between them that she knew they both understood. She’d been so close to nothing when he’d found her that she would spend their entire relationship owing him something, or everything, just for staying when any reasonable person would have left. It wasn’t wholly unromantic. Actually it was, perversely so. Even when the heat of sex died away there would still be some underlying sense of kinship; an understanding that Marc was shitty with his charming flaws of vice, but Regan would always be shittier, selfish and mercurial and vain. Complimentary pieces in a perfect, shitty puzzle, where she was the broken one and he was normal. She would always be sick and he would always be fine.
Olivie Blake (Alone With You in the Ether)
HOW DO ANY of us turn into adults, with real grown-up lives and real grown-up relationships? Mostly through trial and error, it would seem. By just figuring it out. Many of us, I think, puzzle out our identities only over time, figuring out who we are and what we need in order to get by. We approximate our way into maturity, often following some loose idea of what we believe grown-up life is supposed to look like. We practice and learn, learn and practice. We make mistakes and then start over again. For a long time, a lot feels experimental, unsettled. We try on different ways of being. We sample and discard different attitudes, approaches, influences, and tools for living until, piece by piece, we begin to better understand what suits us best, what helps us most.
Michelle Obama (The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times)
Once upon a time there is nothing but darkness. You stumble around blindly, so close to the edge that you are sure you'll tumble over it. And if you are to be honest, you must admit that you are so low already you don't necessarily think that would be a bad thing. Then one day you meet someone. He finds you kneeling right at the precipice and instead of telling you to get back up he kneels next to you. He tries to see what you are seeing. He doesn't ask anything of you or beg you to snap out of it or remind you there are people who need you. He just waits until you turn and squint and think to yourself, "oh yes, I remember, this is what light looks like." You don't know how it happens, but you become friends. You find yourself looking in the parking lot to see if his car is there. You see something on tv or read it in a book and think, "I must remember to tell him." You learn how he takes his coffee and what his favorite color is, not by asking but by observation. Then you realize your day speeds up when you see him. The hair stands up on the backs of your forearms when his shoulder bumps yours in the elevator. His presence is so filling the absence of him aches. You begin to reconfigure the puzzle of your life with him in it. You don't want to spend time without him if you can help it. You introduce him to family. You suffer their elbow gabs and raised eyebrows, because later it gives you two something to laugh about. You wish you could introduce him to the family members who aren't here anymore. They would have loved him. You see him around children and you think one day.
Jodi Picoult (The Book of Two Ways)
grin. “If I’m going to lay down a fortune for the privilege of experiencing your quivering virgin flesh, I think it goes without saying that I expect to do it without a barrier.” I sat back, clenching my teeth so hard that my head started to ache. My gaze was held fast by the challenge in his ebony eyes. He might have been the most gorgeous creature I’d ever laid my eyes on, but he was also an asshat. He tilted his head at me, puzzled. “Why is that a problem? If we are both cleared by a physician—” I unclenched my jaw just long enough to reply. “Recent medical clearance is not sufficient for me. I’d require celibacy for at least the previous six months, so—” “Then there isn’t a problem.” I highly doubted that. I opened my mouth to call him a liar when Heath leaned forward and put his hand on the table in front of me. Drake’s lawyer cleared his throat, throwing a bland look at me and turning to Drake. “We can work all these details out later in mediation. Mr. Drake does have a plane to catch later today.” Drake’s eyes darted to Heath and back to me. I could tell he was trying to gauge our relationship. It wasn’t the first time a person had looked at the two of us in that unsure, questioning way. Heath was not obviously gay in any way. He wasn’t “fabulous” or flamboyant. He was very masculine in his behavior and mannerisms, so he rarely set off people’s gaydar. My gaze turned back to Drake, drawn to him like a flame pulled into a hot, dry wind. I resented the heat on my cheeks. I was not a habitual blusher. Hardly ever, actually. But this man was bringing my Irish up, as my mother liked to say. And what was worse, the more annoyed I grew with him, the more amused he seemed to be. Drake flicked a glance at Heath and then his lawyer. “Gentlemen, could you excuse us for a moment? You’re free to wait just outside the door.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he glanced at me. “If, of course, that is okay with the lady?” My face flamed hotter and I folded my hands on my lap. “Fine,” I said, wondering if the thirty-something New Yorker was still interested in the
Brenna Aubrey (At Any Price (Gaming the System, #1))
Obama’s claims about teachers and CEOs gets to a broader puzzle about how a capitalist society assigns rewards. At first glance, it seems that there is no relationship between merit and reward. Athletes and entertainers, who provide services much less indispensable than teachers and doctors, earn vastly more than either of those two professions. Earlier I mentioned the example of the parking lot guy who parks all the cars and makes money for the resort, yet he gets a pittance of that money. From his point of view, there is no relationship between work and reward. He does the work, and “they” get the profits. This is pretty much how workers feel in a variety of occupations. They are the “makers” and their bosses are the “takers.” In a truly fair and merit-based society, they should get more and the bosses should get less. These arguments are, whether their proponents recognize it or not, anchored in Karl Marx’s notion of “surplus value.” Marx is largely discredited today, because Communism proved a failure, and Marx’s prophecies proved dead wrong.
Dinesh D'Souza (America: Imagine a World Without Her)
When I was in the doghouse, I felt as if I were assembling a jigsaw puzzle in which each piece had a specific place. Before I put the puzzle together, it all seemed incomprehensible to me, but I was sure that if I ever managed to complete it, the separate parts would each have meaning and the whole would be harmonious. Each piece has a reason for being the way it is, even Colonel García. At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously—as the three Mora sisters said, who could see the spirits of all eras mingled in space. That’s why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory.
Isabel Allende (The House of the Spirits)
My Little Pony Game Helps You Get A Creator With My Little Pony games, you can enjoy many categories such as Dress Up games, Makeover games, riding games, racing games,...Each game brings you the different sentiments and it depends on your hobby that you can choose the suitable game for your free time. At our website, there are many My Little Pony games with full My Little Pony characters and you can meet them such as Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Applejack,,They have the good friendship and relations as well. Now, you will go to our new game called My little pony hairstyle. This is a creator game for you that you can get an opportunity to make new hair for Rainbow Dash. As you know, she has a hairstyle attached to her name. Now, you will help her to change Little about her hairstyle. Not difficult to play this game , you just use your mouse and follow step by step instruction that you can find in this game at our website. I can tell more here to help you play this game easier. In the first game, you will choose a hairstyle in six styles. Then you will choose the color for her hair. You can take one in ten colors in this game such as blue, green, red, purple, yellow, light purple,.. And you mix color as your favorite color. With each my little pony character, you can see the different personality and fashion style. My little pony Rainbow Dash has always the unique hairstyle with the mixing color. This is the creator game because you can show your fashion style about the hair. Besides the dress up game and make up games, we have others games categories such as riding, racing, caring, cooking, fighting,,,All are free here, you can enjoy them at anytime and anywhere. Please recommend our website to your friends as well, you will have the more human counterpart. You will have the good experience, adventure when you come to our website. We provide also descendants games, Elsa games, Daby games, Io games,...It depends on the age, the hobby that you can choose the game in your free time. You can enjoy the life as a child with our games and forget all the worries and stress in your life. I hope that you will like our games as well. My Little Pony Angry is a puzzle game and your task in this game is to use your mouse to drag and drop the pieces and make a complete My Little Pony pictures. In this game, you will get an opportunity to meet again six main My Little Pony such as Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle of the cartoon My Little Pony, they are all very aggressive and angry. We think that this way they want to scare off enemies from Ponyville. You know that My Little Pony or Friendship Is Magic has the content that tells about six main My Little Pony and other supporting characters but with My Little Pony, the content focuses primarily on Twilight Sparkle and her friends, they find out the way to rescue Equestria Land. Each My Little Pony game can give you a good lessons about family, friends, relationship...This is a cheap entertainment and designed for everyone. I hope that you can get the perfectime here and we can make the relationship thank to My Little Pony games on our website. Have fun on our site Gamesmylittlepony.com
Alice Walker
What are the path of love and the path of meditation? There are basically two different paths to enlightenment. These two paths are The path of love and The path of meditation. The path of love is the female path to enlightenment and The path of meditation is the male path to enlightenment. The path of love is the path of love, joy, relationships, devotion and surrender. The path of meditation is the path of meditation, silence, aloneness and freedom. These two paths has different ways, but they have the same goal. Through love and surrender the person that walks The path of love discovers the inner silence. Through meditation and aloneness the person that walks The path of meditation discovers the inner source of love. These two paths are like climbing the mountain of enlightenment through different routes, but the two paths are meeting on the summit of the mountain - and discover an inner integration between love and meditation, between relating and aloneness. Before I accept to work with a student now, I make an intuitive and clairvoyant evaluation about which spiritual paths that the student has walked before in previous lives. This intuitive assessment gives information about the spiritual level that the student has attained, and it also makes it easier to guide the person spiritually if he has followed a certain path in the past. A female student of mine laughed recently when I told her that she had followed The path of love in several past lives. She commented: "You have told me three times now that I have walked the path of love and silence, but with my head I still do not understand it." But this overall assessment of her spiritual growth uptil now, and of the spiritual paths that she had walked, made all the pieces of her life puzzle fit together - and brought a new, creative light to all her life choices in her current life. A male student of mine, who was a Tibetan monk in a previous life, walks The path of meditation, and I notice how I change my language and the methods that I recommend when I guide him along the path of meditation. I now work with students who walk both The path of love and The path of meditation, which also allows me to discover a deeper integration of love and meditation on my path to enlightenment.
Swami Dhyan Giten (Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being)
It’s not the motorcycle maintenance, not the faucet. It’s all of technology they can’t take. And then all sorts of things started tumbling into place and I knew that was it. Sylvia’s irritation at a friend who thought computer programming was ‘creative.’ All their drawings and paintings and photographs without a technological thing in them. Of course she’s not going to get mad at that faucet, I thought. You always suppress momentary anger at something you deeply and permanently hate. Of course John signs off every time the subject of cycle repair comes up, even when it is obvious he is suffering for it. That’s technology. And sure, of course, obviously. It’s so simple when you see it. To get away from technology out into the country in the fresh air and sunshine is why they are on the motorcycle in the first place. For me to bring it back to them just at the point and place where they think they have finally escaped it just frosts both of them, tremendously. That’s why the conversation always breaks and freezes when the subject comes up. Other things fit in too. They talk once in a while in as few pained words as possible about ‘it’ or ‘it all’ as in the sentence, ‘There is just no escape from it.’ And if I asked, ‘From what?’ the answer might be ‘The whole thing,’ or ‘The whole organized bit,’ or even ‘The system.’ Sylvia once said defensively, ‘Well, you know how to cope with it,’ which puffed me up so much at the time I was embarrassed to ask what ‘it’ was and so remained somewhat puzzled. I thought it was something more mysterious than technology. But now I see that the ‘it’ was mainly, if not entirely, technology. But, that doesn’t sound right either. The ‘it’ is a kind of force that gives rise to technology, something undefined, but inhuman, mechanical, lifeless, a blind monster, a death force. Something hideous they are running from but know they can never escape. I’m putting it way too heavily here but in a less emphatic and less defined way this is what it is. Somewhere there are people who understand it and run it but those are technologists, and they speak an inhuman language when describing what they do. It’s all parts and relationships of unheard-of things that never make any sense no matter how often you hear about them. And their things, their monster keeps eating up land and polluting their air and lakes, and there is no way to strike back at it, and hardly any way to escape it.
Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values)
Every human being with normal mental and emotional faculties longs for more. People typically associate their longing for more with a desire to somehow improve their lot in life—to get a better job, a nicer house, a more loving spouse, become famous, and so on. If only this, that, or some other thing were different, we say to ourselves, then we’d feel complete and happy. Some chase this “if only” all their lives. For others, the “if only” turns into resentment when they lose hope of ever acquiring completeness. But even if we get lucky and acquire our “if only,” it never quite satisfies. Acquiring the better job, the bigger house, the new spouse, or world fame we longed for may provide a temporary sense of happiness and completeness, but it never lasts. Sooner or later, the hunger returns. The best word in any language that captures this vague, unquenchable yearning, according to C. S. Lewis and other writers, is the German word Sehnsucht (pronounced “zane-zookt”).[9] It’s an unusual word that is hard to translate, for it expresses a deep longing or craving for something that you can’t quite identify and that always feels just out of reach. Some have described Sehnsucht as a vague and bittersweet nostalgia and/or longing for a distant country, but one that cannot be found on earth. Others have described it as a quasi-mystical sense that we (and our present world) are incomplete, combined with an unattainable yearning for whatever it is that would complete it. Scientists have offered several different explanations for this puzzling phenomenon—puzzling, because it’s hard to understand how natural processes alone could have evolved beings that hunger for something nature itself doesn’t provide.[10] But this longing is not puzzling from a biblical perspective, for Scripture teaches us that humans and the entire creation are fallen and estranged from God. Lewis saw Sehnsucht as reflective of our “pilgrim status.” It indicates that we are not where we were meant to be, where we are destined to be; we are not home. Lewis once wrote to a friend that “our best havings are wantings,” for our “wantings” are reminders that humans are meant for a different and better state.[11] In another place he wrote: Our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside is . . . the truest index of our real situation.[12] With Lewis, Christians have always identified this Sehnsucht that resides in the human heart as a yearning for God. As St. Augustine famously prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you.”[13] In this light, we might think of Sehnsucht as a sort of homing device placed in us by our Creator to lead us into a passionate relationship with him.
Gregory A. Boyd (Benefit of the Doubt: Breaking the Idol of Certainty)
10 Practical Strategies to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills and Unleash Your Creativity In today's rapidly changing world, the ability to think critically and creatively has become more important than ever. Whether you're a student looking to excel academically, a professional striving for success in your career, or simply someone who wants to navigate life's challenges with confidence, developing strong critical thinking skills is crucial. In this blog post, we will explore ten practical strategies to help you improve your critical thinking abilities and unleash your creative potential. 1. Embrace open-mindedness: One of the cornerstones of critical thinking is being open to different viewpoints and perspectives. Cultivate a willingness to listen to others, consider alternative opinions, and challenge your own beliefs. This practice expands your thinking and encourages creative problem-solving. 2. Ask thought-provoking questions: Asking insightful questions is a powerful way to stimulate critical thinking. By questioning assumptions, seeking clarity, and exploring deeper meanings, you can uncover new insights and perspectives. Challenge yourself to ask thought-provoking questions regularly. 3. Practice active listening: Listening actively involves not just hearing, but also understanding, interpreting, and empathizing with the speaker. By honing your active listening skills, you can better grasp complex ideas, identify underlying assumptions, and engage in more meaningful discussions. 4. Seek diverse sources of information: Expand your knowledge base by seeking information from a wide range of sources. Engage with diverse perspectives, opinions, and ideas through books, articles, podcasts, and documentaries. This habit broadens your understanding and encourages critical thinking by exposing you to different viewpoints. 5. Develop analytical thinking skills: Analytical thinking involves breaking down complex problems into smaller components, examining relationships and patterns, and drawing logical conclusions. Enhance your analytical skills by practicing activities like puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers. This will sharpen your ability to analyze information and think critically. 6. Foster a growth mindset: A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Embracing this mindset encourages you to view challenges as opportunities for growth, rather than obstacles. By persisting through difficulties, you build resilience and enhance your critical thinking abilities. 7. Engage in collaborative problem-solving: Collaborating with others on problem-solving tasks can spark creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. Seek out group projects, brainstorming sessions, or online forums where you can exchange ideas, challenge each other's thinking, and find innovative solutions together. 8. Practice reflective thinking: Taking time to reflect on your thoughts, actions, and experiences allows you to gain deeper insights and learn from past mistakes. Regularly engage in activities like journaling, meditation, or self-reflection exercises to develop your reflective thinking skills. This practice enhances your critical thinking abilities by promoting self-awareness and self-improvement. 9. Encourage creativity through experimentation: Creativity and critical thinking often go hand in hand. Give yourself permission to experiment and explore new ideas without fear of failure. Embrace a "what if" mindset and push the boundaries of your thinking. This willingness to take risks and think outside the box can lead to breakthroughs in critical thinking. 10. Continuously learn and adapt: Critical thinking is a skill that can be honed throughout your life. Commit to lifelong learning and seek opportunities to expand your knowledge and skills. Stay curious, be open to new experiences, and embrace change.
Lillian Addison
We fall in love and let our minds fall apart.. We let ourselves fall, and keep falling.. Our minds are caught by one another, mixed up in a random puzzle, piece by piece put together into a different reality.
M. Cochet M. (LITTLE BLACK PIECES OF DYNAMITE INSIDE MY SKULL)
Company Team Buildingis a tool that can help inside inspiring a team for that satisfaction associated with organizational objectives. Today?azines multi-cultural society calls for working in a harmonious relationship with assorted personas, particularly in global as well as multi-location companies. Business team building events strategies is a way by which team members tend to be met towards the requirements of the firm. They help achieve objectives together instead of working on their particular. Which are the benefits of company team building events? Team building events methods enhance conversation among co-workers. The huge benefits include improved upon morality as well as management skills, capacity to handle difficulties, and much better understanding of work environment. Additional positive aspects would be the improvements inside conversation, concentration, decision making, party problem-solving, and also reducing stress. What are the usual signs that reveal the need for team building? The common signs consist of discord or even hostility between people, elevated competitors organizations between staff, lack of function involvement, poor decision making abilities, lowered efficiency, as well as poor quality associated with customer care. Describe different methods of business team development? Company team development experts as well as person programs on ?working collaboratively? can supply different ways of business team building. An important method of business team building is actually enjoyment routines that want communication between the members. The favored activities are fly-fishing, sailing regattas, highway rallies, snow boarding, interactive workshops, polls, puzzle game titles, and so forth. Each one of these routines would help workers be competitive and hone their own side considering abilities. Just what services are offered by the team building events trainers? The majority of the coaches offer you enjoyable functions, coming from accommodation to be able to dishes and much more. The actual packages include holiday packages, rope courses, on-going business office video games, and also ice-breakers. Coaching fees would depend on location, number of downline, classes, and sophistication periods. Special discounts are available for long-term deals of course, if the quantity of associates will be higher. Name some well-known corporate team development event providers within the U.Utes. Several well-liked companies are Accel-Team, Encounter Based Studying Inc, Performance Supervision Organization, Team development Productions, The education Haven Incorporated, Enterprise Upwards, Group Contractors In addition, and Team development USA.If you want to find out more details, make sure you Clicking Here
Business Team Building FAQs
January 26 Look Again and Consecrate If God so clothe the grass of the field, . . . shall He not much more clothe you? Matthew 6:30 A simple statement of Jesus is always a puzzle to us if we are not simple. How are we going to be simple with the simplicity of Jesus? By receiving His Spirit, recognising and relying on Him, obeying Him as He brings the word of God, and life will become amazingly simple. “Consider,” says Jesus, “how much more your Father Who clothes the grass of the field will clothe you, if you keep your relationship right with Him.” Every time we have gone back in spiritual communion it has been because we have impertinently known better than Jesus Christ. We have allowed the cares of the world to come in, and have forgotten the “much more” of our Heavenly Father. “Behold the fowls of the air”—their one aim is to obey the principle of life that is in them and God looks after them. Jesus says that if you are rightly related to Him and obey this Spirit that is in you, God will look after your “feathers.” “Consider the lilies of the field”—they grow where they are put. Many of us refuse to grow where we are put, consequently we take root nowhere. Jesus says that if we obey the life God has given us, He will look after all the other things. Has Jesus Christ told us a lie? If we are not experiencing the “much more,” it is because we are not obeying the life God has given us, we are taken up with confusing considerations. How much time have we taken up worrying God with questions when we should have been absolutely free to concentrate on His work? Consecration means the continual separating of myself to one particular thing. We cannot consecrate once and for all. Am I continually separating myself to consider God every day of my life?
Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest)
At the risk of trespassing in areas I know little or nothing about, let me simply hint at some ways in which this might work out. If you work in information technology, how is your discipline slanted? Is it slanted toward the will to power or the will to love? Does it exhibit the signs of technology for technology’s sake, of information as a means of the oppression of those who do not have access to it by those who do? Is it developing in the service of true relationships, true stewardship and even true worship, or is it feeding and encouraging a society in which everybody creates their own private, narcissistic, enclosed world? Luther’s definition of sin was homo incurvatus in se, “humans turned in on themselves.” Does your discipline foster or challenge that? You may not be able to change the way the discipline currently works. You may be able to take some steps in that direction, given time and opportunity, but that isn’t necessarily your vocation. Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways—fresh ways—of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation.
N.T. Wright (The Challenge of Jesus)
It was only after the conclusion, after everything was over, that the sense of reality returned, long after, in fact, when I had been able to gather the pieces of the puzzle up and put them together to see the pattern. This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principle.
Robert Penn Warren (All The King's Men)
When an entire world had abandoned us, or at least while we felt like that, and even when nasty ogres killed my monk and Arnd's chevalier the brutal way, gathering to be a group of heroes & heroines gave us the recovery and idealism to live-on nonetheless. I had hate, contempt, puzzled looks, and sometimes even understanding for those mainstreamers who knew nothing but sex about adulthood. As I have the roots of a European Barbarian who shared his tales at the campfire (old way of books) PLUS knowing that the intimicy of a mature relationship can be spoiled by sex, but it can never be built and maintained by sex alone... Nah, much to contemplative and honest. Let's link-in some light-hearted fun: Mikey Mason, over at youtube dot come has the songs 'Best Game Ever, and Summer of 83'...
Andrè M. Pietroschek
When an entire world had abandoned us, or at least while we felt like that, and even when nasty ogres killed my monk and Arnd's chevalier the brutal way, gathering to be a group of heroes & heroines gave us the recovery and idealism to live-on nonetheless. I had hate, contempt, puzzled looks, and sometimes even understanding for those mainstreamers who knew nothing but sex about adulthood. As I have the roots of a European Barbarian who shared his tales at the campfire (old way of books) PLUS knowing that the intimacy of a mature relationship can be spoiled by sex, but it can never be built and maintained by sex alone... Nah, much to contemplative and honest. Let's link-in some light-hearted fun: Mikey Mason, over at youtube dot com has the songs 'Best Game Ever, and Summer of 83'...
Andrè M. Pietroschek (Attempted Poetry)
Juselius and Takats (2016) uncover an empirical relationship—‘a puzzling link between low-frequency inflation and population-age structure : the young and old (dependents) are inflationary whereas the working age population is disinflationary’. They use data from 22 countries between 1955 and 2014, breaking up that time period so they are not biased by periods of high or low inflation. Their analysis shows that 6.5% of the disinflation in the USA from 1975 to 2014 can be accounted for by age structure. The age structure, they argue, ‘is forecastable and will increase inflationary pressures over the coming decades’.
Charles Goodhart (The Great Demographic Reversal: Ageing Societies, Waning Inequality, and an Inflation Revival)
Exercise 1: How to Invigorate Your Relationship with Your Romantic Partner STEP 1: Privately, each person should think about time spent with their partner. Without talking about it, each of you should make a list of the shared times together that could best be described as “very pleasant” or “exciting.” Think about things you do at home, for work, in the community, for leisure, on vacation, or anywhere else where you did something with your partner that made you feel excited. For instance, think about when the two of you: Went to a concert or a club Played or watched a sport or games of some kind Shopped Learned a new skill Talked Volunteered Solved a problem Took care of other people, animals, or things Went to a spiritual or religious event/workshop/meeting Played music Had sex (the more details, the better) Worked out Relaxed Spent time in a different environment than you are usually in (beach versus mountains, suburbs versus city, noisy versus quiet, teeming with people versus sparsely populated) Engaged in strenuous physical and/or mental exercise Joined an organization that you both believed in Pursued a hobby Worked on the house, the yard, the car, the boat Cooked new recipes Went to the movies Sat in the same room and did your own thing, like read, did needlework, or worked crossword puzzles Planned the family budget Took a class Something else (the sky is the limit—add any activities that fueled you)
Todd Kashdan (Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life)
When broken people try to complete each other it is like forcing unfit puzzle pieces together because they are somewhat similar.
Lidia Longorio (Hey Humanity)
How we are likely to feel when our needs are being met absorbed adventurous affectionate alert alive amazed amused animated appreciative ardent aroused astonished blissful breathless buoyant calm carefree cheerful comfortable complacent composed concerned confident contented cool curious dazzled delighted eager ebullient ecstatic effervescent elated enchanted encouraged energetic engrossed enlivened enthusiastic excited exhilarated expansive expectant exultant fascinated free friendly fulfilled glad gleeful glorious glowing good-humored grateful gratified happy helpful hopeful inquisitive inspired intense interested intrigued invigorated involved joyous, joyful jubilant keyed-up loving mellow merry mirthful moved optimistic overjoyed overwhelmed peaceful perky pleasant pleased proud quiet radiant rapturous refreshed relaxed relieved satisfied secure sensitive serene spellbound splendid stimulated surprised tender thankful thrilled touched tranquil trusting upbeat warm wide-awake wonderful zestful How we are likely to feel when our needs are not being met afraid aggravated agitated alarmed aloof angry anguished annoyed anxious apathetic apprehensive aroused ashamed beat bewildered bitter blah blue bored brokenhearted chagrined cold concerned confused cool cross dejected depressed despairing despondent detached disaffected disappointed discouraged disenchanted disgruntled disgusted disheartened dismayed displeased disquieted distressed disturbed downcast downhearted dull edgy embarrassed embittered exasperated exhausted fatigued fearful fidgety forlorn frightened frustrated furious gloomy guilty harried heavy helpless hesitant horrible horrified hostile hot humdrum hurt impatient indifferent intense irate irked irritated jealous jittery keyed-up lazy leery lethargic listless lonely mad mean miserable mopey morose mournful nervous nettled numb overwhelmed panicky passive perplexed pessimistic puzzled rancorous reluctant repelled resentful restless sad scared sensitive shaky shocked skeptical sleepy sorrowful sorry spiritless startled surprised suspicious tepid terrified tired troubled uncomfortable unconcerned uneasy unglued unhappy unnerved unsteady upset uptight vexed weary wistful withdrawn woeful worried wretched Summary
Marshall B. Rosenberg (Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships (Nonviolent Communication Guides))
His mind had patterns, patterns that made puzzles, and puzzles that became mazes. Those mazes had color and became labyrinths— labyrinths that went crazy like jungles— and all he could trust me with was letting my fingers get lost in his curls. I played in there, for years trapped in his hair (that overthought and provoked lair)— the only thing between my thoughts and his: the air. But, he was smart not to trust me enough. He knew. The open air looked at him with slight eyes, issued him binds of lies, like library cards ...full of fiction. And I knew this, so how could I forget? Along the way, I turned into every other female he ever loved. It was his destiny that gave me permission to pull his hair again.
Heather Angelika Dooley (Ink Blot in a Poet's Bloodstream)
This insight led ultimately to the recognition of what is known as the Indo-European language family, a group of hundreds of historically related languages, both living and dead, covering a geographic range that stretches from the Indian subcontinent to Iceland. It had, of course, long been understood that there were relationships among languages. Latin and Greek show many similarities; the Romance languages are obviously a group; Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages are all clearly related. But the idea that linguistic relationships might go far beyond this and include languages that seem, on the surface, to have no family resemblance whatsoever—Bengali, Manx, and Armenian, for example—was truly electrifying, as was the idea of a single protolanguage from which this great diversity might have sprung. In Europe, this hypothetical ancestral language, known as Proto-Indo-European, was reconstructed during a period of intense linguistic activity in the nineteenth century by scholars in England, Denmark, France, and Germany (among the field’s early pioneers was one of the fairy-tale-collecting Brothers Grimm), using a methodology that is still practiced today.
Christina Thompson (Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia)
She is a puzzle of ever-changing pieces... But not one to be solved or completed; One to be appreciated and loved. A breathtaking tapestry of possibilities with a passion and loyalty you'll never forget.
Steve Maraboli
Fathers had always ruled homes like sultans, but the Depression had increased all family activities over which patresfamilias reigned; a study of over a hundred families in Pittsburgh discovered that a majority had increased family recreation — Ping-Pong, jigsaw puzzles, checkers, bridge, and parlor games, notably Monopoly. There was also plenty of time for the householders, the doughboys of 1918, to explain to their sons the indissoluble relationship between virility and valor.
William Manchester (Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War)
Slowly, Azure began to understand that family was more than simply those whom you were born into. It was far more intrinsic and nuanced than that, and something within him vibrated with joy, as if he had unlocked or simply understood a key element of the puzzle that left a gaping hole of who he was.
Erin Mc Luckie Moya (The Boy who was King)
Wait. Is a real, live adult person actually asking me details about the games I play? This is unheard of.
Denis Markell (Click Here to Start)
So I implore you, don’t try to read these instructions like a mere book. Go slowly; learn the method; build the necessary tolerance for confusion. Study the possible relationship between ideas when they seem to change direction completely. Study these lines of words for what they really are: the written directions to go and get pieces from everywhere to put together some important puzzles. Be patient every endless time that I pull back and review lead-in lessons for repetitive introductions to different follow-on points. They are needed by most.
Robert Humphrey (Values For A New Millennium: Activating the Natural Law to: Reduce Violence, Revitalize Our Schools, and Promote Cross-Cultural Harmony)
It's odd how relationships work like that: Love is not an accident. It is a delicate union of two complex, complementary puzzle pieces that have inadvertently been created by different manufacturers.
Neil Strauss (The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships)
Residential stability begets a kind of psychological stability, which allows people to invest in their home and social relationships. It begets school stability, which increases the chances that children will excel and graduate. And it begets community stability, which encourages neighbors to form strong bonds and take care of their block.7 But poor families enjoy little of that because they are evicted at such high rates. That low-income families move often is well known. Why they do is a question that has puzzled researchers and policymakers because they have overlooked the frequency of eviction in disadvantaged neighborhoods.8 Between 2009 and 2011, roughly a quarter of all moves undertaken by Milwaukee’s poorest renters were involuntary. Once you account for those dislocations (eviction, landlord foreclosure), low-income households move at a similar rate as everyone else.9 If you study eviction court records in other cities, you arrive at similarly startling numbers. Jackson County, Missouri, which includes half of Kansas City, saw 19 formal evictions a day between 2009 and 2013. New York City courts saw almost 80 nonpayment evictions a day in 2012. That same year, 1 in 9 occupied rental households in Cleveland, and 1 in 14 in Chicago, were summoned to eviction court.10 Instability is not inherent to poverty. Poor families move so much because they are forced to.
Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
Mindfulness is a quiet strength and deeply rooted value which many other cultures understand and often practice better than we do. It can be puzzling to people from other countries as to why Americans are so task-driven and action-oriented.
Susan C. Young (The Art of Action: 8 Ways to Initiate & Activate Forward Momentum for Positive Impact (The Art of First Impressions for Positive Impact, #4))