Realization About True Friends Quotes

The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. It was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life. But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.

Is it not true that no two human beings understand anything whatsoever about each other, that those who consider themselves bosom friends may be utterly mistaken about their fellow and, failing to realize this sad truth throughout a lifetime, weep when they read in the newspapers about his death?

No one really needs me," he says, and there's no self pity in his voice. It's true his family doesn't need him. They will mourn him, as will a handful of friends. But they will get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on. I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me. "I do," I say. "I need you." he looks upset, takes a deep breath as if to begin a long argument, and that's no good, no good at all, because he'll start going on about Prim and my mother and everything and I'll just get confused. So before he can talk, i stop his lips with a kiss.

As you grow older, you realize it becomes less important to have more friends and more important to have real ones. People nowadays don't know the true meaning of friendship and loyalty. People always suddenly miss you more once they see how much happier you are without them. Learn the real from the fake....and don't worry about the mistakes you make. There are no mistakes in life, just lessons. The only people worthy to be in your life are the ones that help you through the hard times and laugh with you after the hard times pass.

believe that this way of living, this focus on the present, the daily, the tangible, this intense concentration not on the news headlines but on the flowers growing in your own garden, the children growing in your own home, this way of living has the potential to open up the heavens, to yield a glittering handful of diamonds where a second ago there was coal. This way of living and noticing and building and crafting can crack through the movie sets and soundtracks that keep us waiting for our own life stories to begin, and set us free to observe the lives we have been creating all along without ever realizing it. I don’t want to wait anymore. I choose to believe that there is nothing more sacred or profound than this day. I choose to believe that there may be a thousand big moments embedded in this day, waiting to be discovered like tiny shards of gold. The big moments are the daily, tiny moments of courage and forgiveness and hope that we grab on to and extend to one another. That’s the drama of life, swirling all around us, and generally I don’t even see it, because I’m too busy waiting to become whatever it is I think I am about to become. The big moments are in every hour, every conversation, every meal, every meeting. The Heisman Trophy winner knows this. He knows that his big moment was not when they gave him the trophy. It was the thousand times he went to practice instead of going back to bed. It was the miles run on rainy days, the healthy meals when a burger sounded like heaven. That big moment represented and rested on a foundation of moments that had come before it. I believe that if we cultivate a true attention, a deep ability to see what has been there all along, we will find worlds within us and between us, dreams and stories and memories spilling over. The nuances and shades and secrets and intimations of love and friendship and marriage an parenting are action-packed and multicolored, if you know where to look. Today is your big moment. Moments, really. The life you’ve been waiting for is happening all around you. The scene unfolding right outside your window is worth more than the most beautiful painting, and the crackers and peanut butter that you’re having for lunch on the coffee table are as profound, in their own way, as the Last Supper. This is it. This is life in all its glory, swirling and unfolding around us, disguised as pedantic, pedestrian non-events. But pull of the mask and you will find your life, waiting to be made, chosen, woven, crafted. Your life, right now, today, is exploding with energy and power and detail and dimension, better than the best movie you have ever seen. You and your family and your friends and your house and your dinner table and your garage have all the makings of a life of epic proportions, a story for the ages. Because they all are. Every life is. You have stories worth telling, memories worth remembering, dreams worth working toward, a body worth feeding, a soul worth tending, and beyond that, the God of the universe dwells within you, the true culmination of super and natural. You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.

Peeta and I sit on the damp sand, facing away from each other, my right shoulder and hip pressed against his. ... After a while I rest my head against his shoulder. Feel his hand caress my hair. "Katniss... If you die, and I live, there's no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You're my whole life", he says. "I would never be happy again." I start to object but he puts a finger to my lips. "It's different for you. I'm not sayin it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living." ... "Your family needs you, Katniss", Peeta says. My family. My mother. My sister. And my pretend cousin Gale. But Peeta's intension is clear. That Gale really is my family, or will be one day, if I live. That I'll marry him. So Peeta's giving me his life and Gale at the same time. To let me know I shouldn't ever have doubts about it. Everithing. That's what Peeta wants me to take from him. ... "No one really needs me", he says, and there's no self-pity in his voice. It's true his family doesen't need him. They will mourn him, as will a handful of friends. But they will get on. Even Haymitch, with the help of a lot of white liquor, will get on. I realize only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me. "I do", I say. "I need you." He looks upset, takes a deep breath as if to begin a long argument, and that's no good, no good at all, because he'll start going on about Prim and my mother and everything and I'll just get confused. So before he can talk, I stop his lips with a kiss. I feel that thing again. The thing I only felt once before. In the cave last year, when I was trying to get Haymitch to send us food. I kissed Peeta about a thousand times during those Games and after. But there was only one kiss that made me feel something stir deep inside. Only one that made me want more. But my head wound started bleeding and he made me lie down. This time, there is nothing but us to interrupt us. And after a few attempts, Peeta gives up on talking. The sensation inside me grows warmer and spreads out from my chest, down through my body, out along my arms and legs, to the tips of my being. Instead of satisfying me, the kisses have the opposite effect, of making my need greater. I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind.

And it's true. It's so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve... I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask. But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. 'Hold tight,' I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d seen it coming or not. Adrian was totally unsuitable for me, and it had nothing to do with his many vices or potential descent into insanity. Adrian was a vampire. True, he was a Moroi—one of the good, living vampires—but it made no difference. Humans and vampires couldn’t be together. This was one point the Moroi and Alchemists stood firmly together on. It was still amazing to me that Adrian had voiced those feelings to me. It was amazing that he could even have them or that he’d had the nerve to kiss me, even if it was a kiss that had left me dizzy and breathless. I’d had to reject him, of course. My training would allow nothing less. Our situation here in Palm Springs forced the two us to constantly be together in social situations, and it had been rough since his declaration. For me, it wasn’t just the awkwardness of our new relationship. I…well, I missed him. Before this debacle, he and I had been friends and spent a lot of time together. I’d gotten used to his smirky smile and the quick banter that always flowed between us. Until those things were gone, I hadn’t realized how much I relied on them. How much I needed them. I felt empty inside...which was ridiculous, of course. Why should I care so much about one vampire? Sometimes it made me angry. Why had he ruined such a good thing between us? Why had he made me miss him so much? And what had he expected me to do? He had to have known it was impossible for us to be together. I couldn’t have feelings for him. I couldn’t. If we’d lived among the Keepers—a group of uncivilized vampires, humans, and dhampirs—maybe he and I could have…no. Even if I had feelings for him—and I firmly told myself I didn’t—it was wrong for us to even consider such a relationship. Now, Adrian spoke to me as little as possible. And always, always, he watched me with a haunted look in his green eyes, one that made my heart ache and—

How To Tell If Somebody Loves You: Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage! Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “Oh, my God, so sick. Need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all. Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you. Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s “Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!" It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is fucking love. Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to. Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment. Somebody loves you if they give you oral sex without expecting anything back. Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other. No one is the prostitute. Somebody loves you if they’ll watch a movie starring Kate Hudson because you really really want to see it. Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them. Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention.

When the moment shifts, and you realize you don't actually want to be alone, that underneath the bravado is an ache that won’t quite fade away, you’re not only aware of how lonely you are, but how much you've been lying to yourself.

As I grow in age, I value women who are over forty most of all. Here are just a few reasons why: A woman over forty will never wake you in the middle of the night to ask, “What are you thinking?” She doesn’t care what you think. If a woman over forty doesn’t want to watch the game, she doesn’t sit around whining about it. She does something she wants to do. And, it’s usually something more interesting. A woman over forty knows herself well enough to be assured in who she is, what she is, what she wants and from whom. Few women past the age of forty give a hoot what you might think about her or what she’s doing. Women over forty are dignified. They seldom have a screaming match with you at the opera or in the middle of an expensive restaurant. Of course, if you deserve it, they won’t hesitate to shoot you, if they think they can get away with it. Older women are generous with praise, often undeserved. They know what it’s like to be unappreciated. A woman over forty has the self-assurance to introduce you to her women friends. A younger woman with a man will often ignore even her best friend because she doesn’t trust the guy with other women. Women over forty couldn’t care less if you’re attracted to her friends because she knows her friends won’t betray her. Women get psychic as they age. You never have to confess your sins to a woman over forty. They always know. A woman over forty looks good wearing bright red lipstick. This is not true of younger women. Once you get past a wrinkle or two, a woman over forty is far sexier than her younger counterpart. Older women are forthright and honest. They’ll tell you right off if you are a jerk, if you are acting like one! You don’t ever have to wonder where you stand with her. Yes, we praise women over forty for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it’s not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed hot woman of forty-plus, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some twenty-two-year-old waitress. Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free,” here’s an update for you. Now 80 percent of women are against marriage, why? Because women realize it’s not worth buying an entire pig, just to get a little sausage.

The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have been better--but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care. I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't say, 'But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven.' If so, I was going to reply, 'You know what? You're right. Fine.' I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries--I believed in that. I believed in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn [his oncologist], that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research. Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe--what other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be. Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day. And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism. Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed.

As he soars, he thinks, suddenly, of Dr. Kashen. Or not of Dr. Kashen, necessarily, but the question he had asked him when he was applying to be his advisee: What's your favorite axiom? (The nerd pickup line, CM had once called it.) "The axiom of equality," he'd said, and Kashen had nodded, approvingly. "That's a good one," he'd said. The axiom of equality states that x always equals x: it assumes that if you have a conceptual thing named x, that it must always be equivalent to itself, that it has a uniqueness about it, that it is in possession of something so irreducible that we must assume it is absolutely, unchangeably equivalent to itself for all time, that its very elementalness can never be altered. But it is impossible to prove. Always, absolutes, nevers: these are the words, as much as numbers, that make up the world of mathematics. Not everyone liked the axiom of equality––Dr. Li had once called it coy and twee, a fan dance of an axiom––but he had always appreciated how elusive it was, how the beauty of the equation itself would always be frustrated by the attempts to prove it. I was the kind of axiom that could drive you mad, that could consume you, that could easily become an entire life. But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated. And in that microsecond that he finds himself suspended in the air, between ecstasy of being aloft and the anticipation of his landing, which he knows will be terrible, he knows that x will always equal x, no matter what he does, or how many years he moves away from the monastery, from Brother Luke, no matter how much he earns or how hard he tries to forget. It is the last thing he thinks as his shoulder cracks down upon the concrete, and the world, for an instant, jerks blessedly away from beneath him: x = x, he thinks. x = x, x = x.

Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird. But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she thought: “I’m going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again.” The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage. She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: “Now you have everything you could possibly want.” However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage. One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds. If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body. Without the bird, her life too lost all meaning, and Death came knocking at her door. “Why have you come?” she asked Death. “So that you can fly once more with him across the sky,” Death replied. “If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him ever more; alas, you now need me in order to find him again.

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.

I left Abnegation because I wasn't selfless enough,no matter how hard I tried to be." "That's not entirely true." He smiles at me. "That girl who let someone throw knives at her to spare a friend,who hit my dad with a belt to protect me-that selfless girl,that's not you?" He's figured out more about me than I have. And even though it seems impossible that he could feel something for me,given all that I'm not...maybe it isn't.I frown at him. "You've been paying close attention,haven't you?" "I like to observe people." "Maybe you were cut out for Candor, Four, because you're a terrible liar." He puts his hand on the rock next to him, his fingers lining up with mine. I look down at our hands. He has long, narrow fingers. Hands made for mine, deft movements.Not Dauntless hands, which should be thick and tough and ready to break things. "Fine." He leans his face closer to mine, his eyes focusing on my chin, and my lips,and my nose. "I watched you because I like you." He says it plainly, boldly, and his eyes flick up to mine. "And don't call me 'Four," okay? It's nice to hear my name again." Just like that,he has finally declared himself, and I don't know how to respond. My cheeks warm,and all I can think to say is, "But you're older than I am...Tobias." He smiles at me. "Yes,that whopping two-year gap really is insurmountable, isn't it?" "I'm not trying to be self-deprecating," I say, "I just don't get it. I'm younger. I'm not pretty.I-" He laughs,a deep laugh that sounds like it came from deep inside him, and touches his lips to my temple. "Don't pretend," I say breathily. "You know I'm not. I'm not ugly,but I am certainly not pretty." "Fine.You're not pretty.So?" He kisses my cheek. "I like how you look. You're deadly smart.You're brave. And even though you found out about Marcus..." His voice softens. "You aren't giving me that look.Like I'm a kicked puppy or something." "Well," I say. "You're not." For a second his dark eyes are on mine, and he's quiet. Then he touches my face and leans in close, brushing my lips with his.The river roars and I feel its spray on my ankles.He grins and presses his mouth to mine. I tense up at first,unsure of myself, so when he pulls away,I'm sure I did something wrong,or badly.But he takes my face in his hands,his figners strong against my skin,and kisses me again, firmer this time, more certain. I wrap an arm around him,sliding my hand up his nack and into his short hair. For a few minutes we kiss,deep in the chasm,with the roar of water all around us. And when we rise,hand in hand, I realize that if we had both chosen differently,we might have ended up doing the same thing, in a safer place, in gray clothes instead of black ones.

I have come to realize that bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons, and not just about business but also about relationships. One has many more supposed friends when one is up than when one is down, because most people like to be with winners and shun losers. True friends are the opposite.

You must realize that the true desire to express affection can be motivated by things other than true love.... In short, one might simply say: save your kisses--you might need them someday. And when anyof you--men and women--are given entrance to the heart of a trusting young friend, you stand on holy ground. In such a place you must be honest with yourself--and with your friend--about love and the expression of it's symbols.

bargaining This stage is characterized by the non-BP making concessions in order to bring back the “normal” behavior of the person they love. The thinking goes, “If I do what this person wants, I will get what I need in this relationship.” We all make compromises in relationships. But the sacrifices that people make to satisfy the borderlines they care about can be very costly. And the concessions may never be enough. Before long, more proof of love is needed and another bargain must be struck. depression Depression sets in when non-BPs realize the true cost of the bargains they’ve made: loss of friends, family, self-respect, and hobbies. The person with BPD hasn’t changed. But the non-BP has.

I loathed being sixty-four, and I will hate being sixty-five. I don’t let on about such things in person; in person, I am cheerful and Pollyannaish. But the honest truth is that it’s sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere—friends dying and battling illness. A miasma of melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact that your life, however happy and successful, has been full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big ones. There are dreams that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that will never quite be realized. There are, in short, regrets. Edith Piaf was famous for singing a song called “Non, je ne regrette rien.” It’s a good song. I know what she meant. I can get into it; I can make a case that I regret nothing. After all, most of my mistakes turned out to be things I survived, or turned into funny stories, or, on occasion, even made money from. But

What is the spirit of Christmas, you ask?  Let me give you the answer in a true story... On a cold day in December, feeling especially warm in my heart for no other reason than it was the holiday season, I walked through the store sporting a big grin on my face.  Though most people were far too busy going about their business to notice me, one elderly gentleman in a wheelchair brought his eyes up to meet mine as we neared each other traveling opposite directions.  He slowed in passing just long enough to speak to me. "Now that's a Christmas smile if I ever saw one," he said. My lips stretched to their limit in response, and I thanked him for the compliment.  Then we went our separate ways. But, as I thought about the man and how sweetly he'd touched me, I realized something simply wonderful!  In that brief, passing interaction we'd exchanged heartfelt gifts! And that, my friend, is the spirit of Christ~mas. 

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanation for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: "You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.

During the few months Troy had been back home, he’d told his friends about us, and so we quickly eased into the conversation as though we’d all known each other for many years. They embarrassed us with great thanks for having served overseas. They recounted combat events Troy had told them, and we realized by the context of their stories that Troy had made us heroes for his friends because we’d been heroes to him. At this point I was the saddest I’d yet been over Troy’s passing, because the true friend from war is the friend who obliterates his own story by telling the stories of others.

No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. 'Hold tight,' I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to

Finally, as the sky began to grow light in the morning, I’d feel that I might be drifting off. But that wasn’t sleep. My fingertips were just barely brushing against the outermost edge of sleep. And all the while, my mind was awake. I would feel a hint of drowsiness, but my mind was there, in its own room, on the other side of a transparent wall, watching me. My physical self was drifting through the feeble morning light, and all the while it could feel my mind staring, breathing, close beside it. I was both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake. The incomplete drowsiness would continue on and off all day. My head was always foggy. I couldn’t get an accurate fix on the things around me—their distance or mass or texture. The drowsiness would overtake me at regular, wavelike intervals: on the subway, in the classroom, at the dinner table. My mind would slip away from my body. The world would sway soundlessly. I would drop things. My pencil or my purse or my fork would clatter to the floor. All I wanted was to throw myself down and sleep. But I couldn’t. The wakefulness was always there beside me. I could feel its chilling shadow. It was the shadow of myself. Weird, I would think as the drowsiness overtook me, I’m in my own shadow. I would walk and eat and talk to people inside my drowsiness. And the strangest thing was that no one noticed. I lost fifteen pounds that month, and no one noticed. No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates, realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. Hold tight, I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

I recently discovered that a friend who was re-reading Bleak House had done no other Dickens apart from Barnaby Ridge. That's just weird. I shamed and nagged him into picking up Great Expectations instead. But when I tried to recall anything about it other than its excellence, I failed. Maybe there was something about a peculiar stepfather? Or was that This Boy's Life? And I realized that, as this is true of just about every book I consumed between the ages of, say fifteen to forty, I havent even read the books I think I've read. I can't tell you how depressing this is. What's the fucking point?

Life is a good teacher and a good friend. Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between state is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs. To stay with that shakiness — to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge — that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic — this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior. We catch ourselves one zillion times as once again, whether we like it or not, we harden into resentment, bitterness, righteous indignation — harden in any way, even into a sense of relief, a sense of inspiration.

People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!

It’s true I’ve been hurt a few times after revealing myself. There are people who lie in wait for the vulnerable and pounce as a way to feel powerful. But God forgive them. I’m willing to take the occasional blow to find people I connect with. As long as you’re willing to turn the other cheek with the mean ones, vulnerability can get you a wealth of friends. Can you imagine coming to the end of your life, being surrounded by people who loved you, only to realize they never fully knew you? Or having poems you never shared or injustices you said nothing about? Can you imagine realizing, then, it was too late? How can we be loved if we are always in hiding?

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that's all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I've been travelling for three years, I've been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: you never leave a woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. There are moments—rarely—when you make a landmark, you realize that you're going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926. That's living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it's a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. You seem to start at the beginning: "It was a fine autumn evening...

Everyone was so worried about me when I broke my ankle and it confused me. I have a huge, loving family and a solid circle of friends, but these things were something of an abstraction, something to take for granted, and then all of a sudden, they weren't... There were lots of concerned texts and e-mails, and I had to face something I've long pretended wasn't true, for reasons I don't fully understand. If i died, I would leave people behind who would struggle with my loss. I finally recognized that I matter to the people in my life and that I have a responsibility to matter to myself and take care of myself so they don't have to lose me before my time, so I can have more time. When I broke my ankle, love was no longer an abstraction. It became this real, frustrating, messy, necessary thing, and I had a lot of it in my life. It was an overwhelming thing to realize. I am still trying to make sense of it all even though it has always been there.

Winnie woke early next morning. The sun was only just opening its own eye on the eastern horizon and the cottage was full of silence. But she realized that sometime during the night she had made up her mind: she would not run away today. “Where would I go, anyway?” she asked herself. “There’s nowhere else I really want to be.” But in another part of her head, the dark part where her oldest fears were housed, she knew there was another sort of reason for staying at home: she was afraid to go away alone. It was one thing to talk about being by yourself, doing important things, but quite another when the opportunity arose. The characters in the stories she read always seemed to go off without a thought or care, but in real life--well, the world was a dangerous place. People were always telling her so. And she would not be able to manage without protection. They were always telling her that, too. No one ever said precisely what it was that she would not be able to manage. But she did not need to ask. Her own imagination supplied the horrors. Still, it was galling, this having to admit she was afraid. And when she remembered the toad, she felt even more disheartened. What if the toad should be out by the fence again today? What if he should laugh at her secretly and think she was a coward? Well, anyway, she could at least slip out, right now, she decided, and go into the wood. To see if she could discover what had really made the music the night before. That would be something, anyway. She did not allow herself to consider the idea that making a difference in the world might require a bolder venture. She merely told herself consolingly, “Of course, while I’m in the wood, if I decide never to come back, well then, that will be that.” She was able to believe in this because she needed to; and, believing, was her own true, promising friend once more.

Every morning when you get up, you should search your heart. Know deep down that you’re being true to who God called you to be. Then you won’t have to look to the left or to the right. Just stay focused on your goals. If people don’t understand you, that is okay. If some get upset because you don’t fit into their mold, don’t worry about it. If you lose a friend because you won’t let that person control you, then you didn’t need them anyway, because that person was not a true friend. If people talk about you, being jealous, critical, and trying to make you look bad, don’t let that change you. You don’t need their approval when you have God’s approval. If you will get free from what everyone else thinks and start being who you were created to be, you will rise to a new level. We spend too much time trying to impress people, trying to gain their approval, wondering what they’re going to think if we take this job or wear a new outfit or move into a new neighborhood. Instead of running our races, we often make decisions based on superficial things. I heard somebody say, at twenty years old we wonder what everybody thinks about us, and at forty years old we don’t care what anybody thinks about us. Then, at sixty, we realize nobody was thinking about us.

Finally, as the sky began to grow light in the morning, I’d feel that I might be drifting off. But that wasn’t sleep. My fingertips were just barely brushing against the outermost edge of sleep. And all the while, my mind was awake. I would feel a hint of drowsiness, but my mind was there, in its own room, on the other side of a transparent wall, watching me. My physical self was drifting through the feeble morning light, and all the while it could feel my mind staring, breathing, close beside it. I was both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake. The incomplete drowsiness would continue on and off all day. My head was always foggy. I couldn’t get an accurate fix on the things around me—their distance or mass or texture. The drowsiness would overtake me at regular, wavelike intervals: on the subway, in the classroom, at the diner table. My mind would slip away from my body. The world would sway soundlessly. I would drop things. My pencil or my purse or my fork would clatter to the floor. All I wanted was to throw myself down and sleep. But I couldn’t. The wakefulness was always there beside me. I could feel its chilling shadow. It was the shadow of myself. Weird, I would think as the drowsiness overtook me, I’m in my own shadow. I would walk and eat and talk to people inside my drowsiness. And the strangest thing was that no one noticed. I lost fifteen pounds that month, and no one noticed. No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates, realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. Hold tight, I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

His voice grew more remote. She wondered if he was calling from his condominium, where he’d lost his best friend, or from Avalon, where he’d lost himself. “I like you, Billie. You’re a nice person. Good company. But tonight was a mistake.” She flung an arm over her eyes and swallowed the lump of tears that had lodged in her throat. “Oh? Which part? The part where you introduced me to your family and exposed yourself as coming from a perfectly average, wholesome background? Or the part where you touched me and turned me inside-out while swaying in a hammock in the rich, beautiful woods—one of the most searing sexual experiences of my life? Which part do you regret, Adrian?” “All of it. I can’t have those things with you. You know what I am.” “Yes, Adrian, I know what you are. A gentle man. A likable one. Smart. Cultured. Sexy. I know what you are.” “But the other part—” “What about the other part? You hide behind the other part.” She yanked the pillow out from beneath her head and winged it across the bedroom, furious suddenly. “Did you call to tell me I’m not going to see you anymore? Because if that’s the case, hurry up and say it. Then hang up and go back to work, and don’t worry one bit about me. I’ve been on my own a long time, and I’m tougher than you think. I won’t cling to any man who’d rather be a-a—” She stumbled, bit back the ugly words rushing to her lips. “A what?” he countered softly. “A whore? A gigolo? Go ahead and say it, Billie. If you’re going to waste your time caring about me, then you’d better get used to the idea, because I can’t change. I won’t. Not for you or anyone.” She bit back a sound of pure derision. “How about for you? Think you could walk the straight and narrow for yourself?” He didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. Billie already knew the answer. “You’re afraid.” She sat up among the sheets as cold realization washed through her. “Afraid to live without women clambering to pay top dollar for you. All that money…it’s a measure of your value, right? It’s your self-esteem. What would happen if you were paid in love instead of cash? Would the world end? My God, Adrian. You’re running scared.” The half-whispered accusation seemed to permeate his impassivity. “I was fine before you.” His voice came low and furious. Finally, finally. True emotion. “Damn it, Billie. I want my life back.” “Then hang up and don’t call me again, because I’m not going to pay you for sex, Adrian. What I offer is a worthless currency in your world.

I could hear the *click clack* of my heels on the brick walkway. *click* A boy starts a ballet class and doesn’t worry about what his friends will say. *clack* A college student reads Judith Butler. *click* A transgender person understands that, while they have a difficult life to face, they will not be alone. *clack* A sex worker reclaims her dignity and autonomy from a world that says she’s worthless. *click* A woman finds freedom from her abusive husband. *clack* A friend, struggling with bulimia, realizes that she is beautiful. *click* All people, man and woman, realize that in some small way, they have not been true to themselves, and the bonds of gender stereotypes and heterosexism dissolve into truth.

OPEN YOURSELF TO SERENDIPITY Chance encounters can also provide enormous benefits for your projects—and your life. Being friendly while standing in line for coffee at a conference might lead to a conversation, a business card exchange, and the first investment in your company a few months later. The person sitting next to you at a concert who chats you up during intermission might end up becoming your largest customer. Or, two strangers sitting in a nail salon exchanging stories about their families might lead to a blind date, which might lead to a marriage. (This is how I met my wife. Lucky for me, neither stranger had a smartphone, so they resorted to matchmaking.) I am consistently humbled and amazed by just how much creation and realization is the product of serendipity. Of course, these chance opportunities must be noticed and pursued for them to have any value. It makes you wonder how much we regularly miss. As we tune in to our devices during every moment of transition, we are letting the incredible potential of serendipity pass us by. The greatest value of any experience is often found in its seams. The primary benefits of a conference often have nothing to do with what happens onstage. The true reward of a trip to the nail salon may be more than the manicure. When you value the power of serendipity, you start noticing it at work right away. Try leaving the smartphone in your pocket the next time you’re in line or in a crowd. Notice one source of unexpected value on every such occasion. Develop the discipline to allow for serendipity.

Something I’ve been thinking about, which will sound harsh and I’m sorry: you said you’d always be my friend but you’re not, actually, are you? I’ve only realized that recently. You don’t have any interest in my life. This is going to seem bitter but I don’t mean it that way, V., I’m just stating a fact here: you’ll only ever call me if I call you first. Have you noticed that? If I call and leave a message you’ll call me back, but you will never call me first. And I think that’s kind of a horrible thing, V., when you’re supposed to be someone’s friend. I always come to you. You always say you’re my friend but you’ll never come to me and I think I have to stop listening to your words, V., and take stock instead in your actions. My friend C. thinks my expectations of friendship are too high but I don’t think he’s right.

it’s sad to be over sixty. The long shadows are everywhere—friends dying and battling illness. A miasma of melancholy hangs there, forcing you to deal with the fact that your life, however happy and successful, has been full of disappointments and mistakes, little ones and big ones. There are dreams that are never quite going to come true, ambitions that will never quite be realized. There are, in short, regrets

In the years since the disaster, I often think of my friend Arturo Nogueira, and the conversations we had in the mountains about God. Many of my fellow survivors say they felt the personal presence of God in the mountains. He mercifully allowed us to survive, they believe, in answer to our prayers, and they are certain it was His hand that led us home. I deeply respect the faith of my friends, but, to be honest, as hard as I prayed for a miracle in the Andes, I never felt the personal presence of God. At least, I did not feel God as most people see Him. I did feel something larger than myself, something in the mountains and the glaciers and the glowing sky that, in rare moments, reassured me, and made me feel that the world was orderly and loving and good. If this was God, it was not God as a being or a spirit or some omnipotent, superhuman mind. It was not a God who would choose to save us or abandon us, or change in any way. It was simply a silence, a wholeness, an awe-inspiring simplicity. It seemed to reach me through my own feelings of love, and I have often thought that when we feel what we call love, we are really feeling our connection to this awesome presence. I feel this presence still when my mind quiets and I really pay attention. I don’t pretend to understand what it is or what it wants from me. I don’t want to understand these things. I have no interest in any God who can be understood, who speaks to us in one holy book or another, and who tinkers with our lives according to some divine plan, as if we were characters in a play. How can I make sense of a God who sets one religion above the rest, who answers one prayer and ignores another, who sends sixteen young men home and leaves twenty-nine others dead on a mountain? There was a time when I wanted to know that god, but I realize now that what I really wanted was the comfort of certainty, the knowledge that my God was the true God, and that in the end He would reward me for my faithfulness. Now I understand that to be certain–-about God, about anything–-is impossible. I have lost my need to know. In those unforgettable conversations I had with Arturo as he lay dying, he told me the best way to find faith was by having the courage to doubt. I remember those words every day, and I doubt, and I hope, and in this crude way I try to grope my way toward truth. I still pray the prayers I learned as a child–-Hail Marys, Our Fathers–-but I don’t imagine a wise, heavenly father listening patiently on the other end of the line. Instead, I imagine love, an ocean of love, the very source of love, and I imagine myself merging with it. I open myself to it, I try to direct that tide of love toward the people who are close to me, hoping to protect them and bind them to me forever and connect us all to whatever there is in the world that is eternal. …When I pray this way, I feel as if I am connected to something good and whole and powerful. In the mountains, it was love that kept me connected to the world of the living. Courage or cleverness wouldn’t have saved me. I had no expertise to draw on, so I relied upon the trust I felt in my love for my father and my future, and that trust led me home. Since then, it has led me to a deeper understanding of who I am and what it means to be human. Now I am convinced that if there is something divine in the universe, the only way I will find it is through the love I feel for my family and my friends, and through the simple wonder of being alive. I don’t need any other wisdom or philosophy than this: My duty is to fill my time on earth with as much life as possible, to become a little more human every day, and to understand that we only become human when we love. …For me, this is enough.

I remember talking to my friend Ben once about a person who had once lied to me. We’d been working on a project together, and this person lied about some of the finances. Ben is a decade older than me, a cinematographer with a gentle heart, a guy you’d think could easily be taken advantage of. But when I told him about my friend, Ben said, “Don, I’ve learned there are givers and takers in this life. I’ve slowly let the takers go and I’ve had it for the better.” He continued, “God bless them, when they learn to play by the rules they are welcomed back, but my heart is worth protecting.” At first, it was hard to act on what Ben was talking about, about the givers and the takers. I felt like a jerk for letting my friend go. But then I realized I didn’t have a healthy relationship with him in the first place. When there are lies in a relationship, it’s not like you’re actually connecting. And I realized another thing too: it wasn’t me who was walking away from my friend. It was my friend who hadn’t played by the rules and was incompatible in a healthy relationship. And here’s another thing that’s strange. After distancing myself from my friend I loved him more, not less. I protected myself for sure, but my anger went away. Once he wasn’t hurting me anymore, I could finally have compassion and grace. It makes me wonder how many people have damaged their own lives by mistaking enablement for grace?

My vocation in life is to wonder about at the nature of the universe. This leads me into philosophy, psychology, religion, and mysticism, not only as subjects to be discussed but also as things to be experienced, and thus I make an at least tacit claim to be a philosopher and a mystic. Some people, therefore, expect me to be their guru or messiah or exemplar, and are extremely disconcerted when they discover my “wayward spirit” or element of irreducible rascality, and say to their friends, “How could he possibly be a genuine mystic and be so addicted to nicotine and alcohol?” Or have occasional shudders of anxiety? Or be sexually interested in women? Or lack enthusiasm for physical exercise? Or have any need for money? Such people have in mind an idealized vision of the mystic as a person wholly free from fear and attachment, who sees within and without, and on all sides, only the translucent forms of a single divine energy which is everlasting love and delight, as which and from which he effortlessly radiates peace, charity, and joy. What an enviable situation! We, too, would like to be one of those, but as we start to meditate and look into ourselves we find mostly a quaking and palpitating mess of anxiety which lusts and loathes, needs love and attention, and lives in terror of death putting an end to its misery. So we despise that mess, and look for ways of controlling it and putting “how the true mystic feels” in its place, not realizing that this ambition is simply one of the lusts of the quaking mess, and that this, in turn, is a natural form of the universe like rain and frost, slugs and snails, flies and disease. When the “true mystic” sees flies and disease as translucent forms of the divine, that does not abolish them. I—making no hard-and-fast distinction between inner and outer experience—see my quaking mess as a form of the divine, and that doesn’t abolish it either. But at least I can live with it.

It is probably true, as some have argued, that sympathy for Leninism on the part of English and American liberal opinion in the twenties was swung by consideration of home politics. But it was also due to simple misinformation. My friend knew little of Russia’s past and this little had come to him through polluted Communist channels. When challenged to justify the bestial terror that had been sanctioned by Lenin—the torture-house, the blood-bespattered wall—Nesbit would tap the ashes out of his pipe against the fender knob, recross sinistrally his huge, heavily shod, dextrally crossed legs, and murmur something about the “Allied Blockade.” He lumped together as “Czarist elements” Russian émigrés of all hues, from peasant Socialist to White general—much as today Soviet writers wield the term “Fascist.” He never realized that had he and other foreign idealists been Russians in Russia, he and they would have been destroyed by Lenin’s regime as naturally as rabbits are by ferrets and farmers.

In Paris, Simon Thibault had loved his wife, though not always faithfully or with a great deal of attention. They had been married for twenty-five years. There had been two children, a summer month spent every year at the sea with friends, various jobs, various family dogs, large family Christmases that included many elderly relatives. Edith Thibault was an elegant woman in a city of so many thousands of elegant women that often over the course of years he forgot about her. Entire days would pass when she never once crossed his mind. He did not stop to think what she might be doing or wonder if she was happy, at least not Edith by herself, Edith as his wife. Then, in a wave of government promises made and retracted, they were sent to this country, which, between the two of them was always referred to as ce pays maudit, “this godforsaken country.” Both of them faced the appointment with dread and stoic practicality, but within a matter of days after their arrival a most remarkable thing happened: he found her again, like something he never knew was missing, like a song he had memorized in his youth and had then forgotten. Suddenly, clearly, he could see her, the way he had been able to see her at twenty, not her physical self at twenty, because in every sense she was more beautiful to him now, but he felt that old sensation, the leaping of his heart, the reckless flush of desire. He would find her in the house, cutting fresh paper to line the shelves or lying across their bed on her stomach writing letters to their daughters who were attending university in Paris, and he was breathless. Had she always been like this, had he never known? Had he known and then somehow, carelessly, forgotten? In this country with its dirt roads and yellow rice he discovered he loved her, he was her. Perhaps this would not have been true if he had been the ambassador to Spain. Without these particular circumstances, this specific and horrible place, he might never have realized that the only true love of his life was his wife.

He reached out and took her hand, wrapping it tightly in both of his. “Look, Vi, I don’t know exactly how to say this, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I don’t think I could handle it if something, or someone, hurt you.” The tone of his voice was still immovable and stubborn, despite the sweet sentiment lurking behind it. He squeezed her hand, though . . . firmly, as if emphasizing his point. “I know it’s selfish, and I don’t really care if it is, but I’m not gonna stand by and let you put yourself in danger, even if it is to catch a killer.” He eased up on her throbbing fingers, and his voice got all husky and rough again. “I can’t lose you,” he explained, shrugging as if those weren’t the most wonderful words she’d ever heard before. “Not now that I finally have you.” She felt years pricking in her eyes, and she blinked hard to try to stop them from coming. She was completely overwhelmed by what she’d just figured out . . . she’d realized it even before he finished talked. She knew what it was that he wasn’t saying while he lectured her about safety. He loved her. Jay Heaton, her best friend since childhood, was in love with her. He didn’t say it, but she knew that it was true. And the part that really freaked her out, the part of it that caught her completely off guard, was that he wasn’t in it alone. Because even though she’d been denying it for a long, long time, it had always been there . . . waiting just beneath the surface of their friendship. And now that it was out, there was no going back. And it was so weird to even be thinking it, but . . . . . . she was in love with him too.

because I know too many of her secrets.” “Secrets?” He laughed at this, imagining internecine Claremont Mom drama from which he’d been thankfully excluded. “Anyway. I’m sure that’s not true. You’re her best friend.” “You know what Billie’s like,” she continued, a flush stealing up her cheeks. “You spend all this time with her, talking, and you feel like you’re getting in there; and then when you walk away, you realize she hasn’t told you anything real about herself at all. She’s mostly just reflected you back at yourself. What you most want to see.

She was suddenly self-conscious of the fact that she and Jay were on the bed together, even though they'd been there, together like that, hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times before. And it had never bothered her then, when they were still just friends; but somehow with her father just a few feet away, especially right after they'd been making out, she felt like they were doing something wrong. "We're fine, Dad!" she called back, trying to sound cool and composed. And then she glared at Jay for his part in making her shout to begin with. They listened to the sound of her father walking away, and Violet noticed that even his footsteps were soft and unobtrusive. There was a long silence once they were alone again. Words that needed to be said, and maybe some that didn't, were like invisible fireworks exploding in the empty space between them. Jay was the first to give in. He reached out and took her hand, wrapping it tightly in both of his. "Look, Vi, I don't know exactly how to say this, but I don't want anything bad to happen to you. I don't think I could handle it if something, or someone, hurt you." The tone of his voice was still immovable and stubborn, despite the sweet sentiment lurking behind it. He squeezed her hand, though...firmly, as if emphasizing his point. "I know it's selfish, and I don't really care if it is, but I'm not gonna stand by and let you put yourself in danger, even if it is to catch a killer." He eased up on her throbbing fingers, and his voice got all husky and rough again. "I can't lose you," he explained, shrugging as if those weren't the most wonderful words she'd ever heard before. "Not now that I finally have you." She felt tears prickling in her eyes, and she blinked hard to try to stop them from coming. She was completely overwhelmed by what she'd just figured out...she'd realized it even before he'd finished talking. She knew what it was that he wasn't saying while he lectured her about safety. He loved her. Jay Heaton, her best friend since childhood, was in love with her. He didn't say it, but she knew that it was true. And the part that really freaked her out, the part of it that caught her completely off guard, was that he wasn't in it alone. Because even though she'd been denying it for a long long time, it had always been there...waiting just beneath the surface of their friendship. And now that it was out, there was no going back. And it was so weird to even be thinking it, but... ...she was in love with him too.

You probably think you know all about men, because you read a lot of romance novels, so you think you're an expert on men. But I'm gonna tell you a little secret: the men in those books are fiction. They do not at all represent how men in real life actually think. Those romance novels were written for women by women (and a few men who know what women like to read, so they write romance to make a quick buck.) When you read a book like Grey, Christian's inner monologue does not at all sound like how a man actually thinks in real life. It sounds like a woman does a poor job of imagining how a man thinks. The fictitious men in romance novels are as fake and imaginary as vampires. They're not real. Right about now, there's probably a little voice in your head, screaming: “NOOO!!! You can't say that! You can't speak for all men! Every man is different!!” True. No two dogs are alike. And yet, all dogs have something in common that makes them dogs, and makes them different from cats. The same goes for men and women. The trouble starts when cats don't realize that dogs are different. Dogs think differently, and perceive the world differently, than cats do. I'm a dog. You're a cat. And a dog knows better what it's like to be a dog than a cat does.

Success isn’t getting that raise or promotion. Success isn’t that trophy or that hard-earned thing you wanted in life. Success isn’t about what you do for yourself but what you do for others while embracing what God has done for you. True success mends the broken heart and heals the shattered spirit. It mends a family and keeps it a tightly knit group of friends rather than enemies always at each other’s throats. True success is a solid marriage rather than a broken or lost one. True success is helping someone who wants to die realize that life is worth living because you love them. Real success produces life and blesses the soul.

I don’t know when I started to realize that my country’s past was incomprehensible and obscure to me, a real shadowy terrain, nor can I remember the precise moment when all that i’d believed so trustworthy and predictable—the place I’d grown up, whose language I speak and customs I know, the place whose past I was taught in school and in university, whose present I have become accustomed to interpreting and pretending I understand—began to turn into a place of shadows out of whcih jumped horrible creatures as soon as we dropped our guard. With time I have come to think that this is the true reason why writers write aboutn the places of childhood and adolescence and even their early touth: you don’t write about what you know and understand, and much less do you write because you know and understand, but because you understand that all your knowledge and comprehension is false, a mirage and an illusion, so your books are not, could not be, more than elaborate displays of disorientation: extensive and multifarious declarations of preplexity. All that I thought was so clear, you then think, now turns out to be full of duplicities and hidden intentions, like a friend who betrays us. To that revelation, which is always annoying and often frankly painful, the writer responds in the only way one knows how: with a book. And that’s how you try to mitigate your disconcertion, reduce the space between what you don’t know and what can be known, and most of all resolve your profound disagreement with that unpredictable reality. “Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric,” wrote Yeats. “Out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.” And what happens when both quarrels arise at the same time, when fighting with the world is a reflection or a transfiguration of the subterranean but constant confrontation you have with yourself? Then you write a book like the one I’m writing now, and blindly trust that the book will mean something to somebody else.

Only date people who respect your standards and make you a better person when you’re with them. Consider the message of the movie A Walk to Remember. Landon Carter is the reckless leader who is skating through high school on his good looks and bravado. He and his popular friends at Beaufort High publicly ridicule everyone who doesn’t fit in, including the unfashionable Jamie Sullivan, who wears the same sweater day after day and gives free tutoring lessons to struggling students. By accident, events thrust Landon into Jamie’s world and he can’t help but notice that Jamie’s different. She doesn’t care about conforming and fitting in with the popular kids. Landon’s amazed at how sure of herself she seems and asks, “Don’t you care what people think about you?” As he spends more time with her, he realizes she has more freedom than he does because she isn’t controlled by the opinions of others, as he is. Soon, despite their intentions not to, they have fallen in love and Landon has to choose between his status at Beaufort...and Jamie. “This girl’s changed you,” his best friend yells, “and you don’t even know it.” Landon admits, “She has faith in me. She wants me to be better.” He chooses her. After high school graduation, Jamie reveals to Landon that she’s dying of leukemia. During her final months, Landon does all he can to make her dreams come true, including marrying her in the same church her mother and father were married in. They spend a wonderful summer together, truly in love. Despite Jamie’s dream for a miracle, she dies. Heartbroken, but inspired by Jamie’s belief in him, Landon works hard to go to medical school. But he laments to her father that he couldn’t fulfill her last desire, to see a miracle. Jamie’s father assures him that Jamie did see a miracle before she died, for someone’s heart had truly changed. And it was his. Now that’s a movie to remember! Never apologize for having high standards and don’t ever lower your standards to please someone else.

What kind of regrets? For me, very few books cause tears, much less require a handkerchief, but Bronnie Ware’s 2012 book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying did both. Ware spent many years caring for those facing their own mortality. When she questioned the dying about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, Bronnie found that common themes surfaced again and again. The five most common were these: I wish that I’d let myself be happier—too late they realized happiness is a choice; I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends—too often they failed to give them the time and effort they deserved; I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings—too frequently shut mouths and shuttered feelings weighed too heavy to handle; I wish I hadn’t worked so hard—too much time spent making a living over building a life caused too much remorse. As tough as these were, one stood out above them all. The most common regret was this: I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself not the life others expected of me. Half-filled dreams and unfulfilled hopes: this was the number-one regret expressed by the dying. As Ware put it, “Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.” Bronnie Ware’s observations aren’t hers alone. At the conclusion of their exhaustive research, Gilovich and Medvec in 1994 wrote, “When people look back on their lives, it is the things they have not done that generate the greatest regret.... People’s actions may be troublesome initially; it is their inactions that plague them most with long-term feelings of regret.” Honoring our hopes and pursuing productive lives through faith in our purpose and priorities is the message from our elders. From the wisest position they’ll ever have comes their clearest message. No regrets. So make sure every day you do what matters most. When you know what matters most, everything makes sense. When you don’t know what matters most, anything makes sense. The best lives aren’t led this way.

Maybe we should do some more homework.” Homework had been their code word for making out before they’d realized that they hadn’t been fooling anyone. But Jay was true to his word, especially his code word, and his lips settled over hers. Violet suddenly forgot that she was pretending to break free from his grip. Her frail resolve crumbled. She reached out, wrapping her arms around his neck, and pulled him closer to her. Jay growled from deep in his throat. “Okay, homework it is.” He pulled her against him, until they were lying face-to-face, stretched across the length of the couch. It wasn’t long before she was restless, her hands moving impatiently, exploring him. She shuddered when she felt his fingers slip beneath her shirt and brush over her bare skin. He stroked her belly and higher, the skin of his hands rough against her soft flesh. His thumb brushed the base of her rib cage, making her breath catch. And then, like so many times before, he stopped, abruptly drawing back. He shifted only inches, but those inches felt like miles, and Violet felt the familiar surge of frustration. He didn’t say a word; he didn’t have to. Violet understood perfectly. They’d gone too far. Again. But Violet was frustrated, and it was getting harder and harder to ignore her disappointment. She knew they couldn’t play this unsatisfying game forever. “So you’re going to Seattle tomorrow?” He used the question to fill the rift between them, but his voice shook and Violet was glad he wasn’t totally unaffected. She wasn’t as quick to pretend that everything was okay, especially when what she really wanted to do was to rip his shirt off and unbutton his jeans. But they’d talked about this. And, time and time again, they’d decided that they needed to be sure. One hundred percent. Because once they crossed that line… She and Jay had been best friends since the first grade, and up until last fall that’s all they’d ever been. Now that she was in love with him, she couldn’t imagine losing him because they made the wrong decision. Or made it too soon. She decided to let Jay have his small talk. For now. “Yeah, Chelsea wants to go down to the waterfront and maybe do some shopping. It’s easier to be around her when it’s just the two of us. You know, when she’s not always…on.” “You mean when she’s not picking on someone?” “Exactly.

Is it true, what I once heard your sister say, that you don't like to be embraced?" She took some time to think. "Sometimes Livia needs to hold someone, and I'm the only suitable person nearby. When I was little, I used to wriggle out of her arms and escape to a corner of our room. But it wasn't so much that I couldn't stand being held as that I didn't want to be held indefinitely. Later I taught myself to count to three hundred to mark five minutes―which helped me to realize that she needed only about half that time. I can take two to three minutes of being held. But Livia remains hesitant to this day―she's still scarred by my bolting away from her embrace." He would be, too. In fact, sometimes he felt scarred by her, even though she had never done anything except be an excellent friend.

Anne. It’s true that they seem younger than Claudia and me (they don’t care much about clothes or boys yet—although Kristy did just go to her first dance), and Mary Anne is unbelievably shy, and Kristy’s sort of a tomboy. But they’re my friends, and I belong with them. Which is more than I can say about certain traitors I left behind in New York. “All right, here’s one plan,” Kristy was saying. “It’s a school afternoon. Mrs. Newton realizes that it’s time to go to the hospital. She calls Mr. Newton or a cab or whatever, then calls us, and one of us goes to stay with Jamie.” “What if we’re all busy?” I asked. “Hmm,” said Kristy. “Maybe from now on, one of us should be free each afternoon so Mrs. Newton will be guaranteed a baby-sitter. It will be a special service for her, since the Newtons are such good customers.

I turned to Kitty Sue and surprised myself by answering honestly, "I'm fine. Lee's fine. Lee's more fine than me. I'm having troubles adjusting. Lee seems pretty sure of himself. Lee seems pretty sure of everything." This, I realized, was true about Lee always. I'd never met someone as confident in my life. Well, maybe Hank, but Hank's confidence was quiet and assured. And there was Lee's best friend, Eddie, of course. But Eddie was like Lee's twin, separated at birth, cut from the same cloth. Lee's confidence, and Eddie's, wasn't like Hank's. It was cocky and assertive. "And you aren't sure?" Kitty Sue asked. I looked at her and thought maybe I should have lied. It was too late now. "Nope. He scares me," I admitted. She nodded. "Yep, he's pretty dang scary." I stared. My God, the woman was talking about her son. "You agree?" She looked at Lee then back at me. "Honey, that boy drives me to distraction. It's like he's not of my loins. I don't even know where he came from. If Ally hadn't been the exact replica of Lee, personality-wise, except female I would have wondered if there was a mix up at the hospital." I kept staring. Kitty Sue kept talking. "Hank's just like his Dad. Smart, cautious, controlled, taking only calculated risks. I'm sure Lee calculates his risks, but I think he allows for a much larger margin for error and counts on ... I don't know what he counts on to get him out of whatever scrapes he gets into." I couldn't stop staring. She kept talking, and everything that came out of her mouth was like a verbal car accident. If she was trying to convince me to stick with her son, she should have tried a different tact. "He does ... you know?" Kitty Sue said. I realized she was asking me a question, so I shook my head that no, I didn't know. She explained, "He gets out of every scrape. Always did and always did it on his own. Though it'll take some kind of woman to live a life like that, knowing what he's like, knowing the risks he takes." Her hand went to my knee and she squeezed it before she went on. "Not anyone here would think less of you if you aren't that woman. I'm telling you because it's true. We all love you both and we'll always love you both, no matter what happens between you." She stopped, sighed and continued, "Anyway, I don't even know if that kind of woman exists. I'm his mother. I've lived with him surviving scrapes that would make your hair stand on end and I worry about him every day. He scares the hell out of me.

What to Make a Game About? Your dog, your cat, your child, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your mother, your father, your grandmother, your friends, your imaginary friends, your summer vacation, your winter in the mountains, your childhood home, your current home, your future home, your first job, your worst job, the job you wish you had. Your first date, your first kiss, your first fuck, your first true love, your second true love, your relationship, your kinks, your deepest secrets, your fantasies, your guilty pleasures, your guiltless pleasures, your break-up, your make-up, your undying love, your dying love. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your secrets, the dream you had last night, the thing you were afraid of when you were little, the thing you’re afraid of now, the secret you think will come back and bite you, the secret you were planning to take to your grave, your hope for a better world, your hope for a better you, your hope for a better day. The passage of time, the passage of memory, the experience of forgetting, the experience of remembering, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago on the street and not recognizing her face, the experience of meeting a close friend from long ago and not being recognized, the experience of aging, the experience of becoming more dependent on the people who love you, the experience of becoming less dependent on the people you hate. The experience of opening a business, the experience of opening the garage, the experience of opening your heart, the experience of opening someone else’s heart via risky surgery, the experience of opening the window, the experience of opening for a famous band at a concert when nobody in the audience knows who you are, the experience of opening your mind, the experience of taking drugs, the experience of your worst trip, the experience of meditation, the experience of learning a language, the experience of writing a book. A silent moment at a pond, a noisy moment in the heart of a city, a moment that caught you unprepared, a moment you spent a long time preparing for, a moment of revelation, a moment of realization, a moment when you realized the universe was not out to get you, a moment when you realized the universe was out to get you, a moment when you were totally unaware of what was going on, a moment of action, a moment of inaction, a moment of regret, a moment of victory, a slow moment, a long moment, a moment you spent in the branches of a tree. The cruelty of children, the brashness of youth, the wisdom of age, the stupidity of age, a fairy tale you heard as a child, a fairy tale you heard as an adult, the lifestyle of an imaginary creature, the lifestyle of yourself, the subtle ways in which we admit authority into our lives, the subtle ways in which we overcome authority, the subtle ways in which we become a little stronger or a little weaker each day. A trip on a boat, a trip on a plane, a trip down a vanishing path through a forest, waking up in a darkened room, waking up in a friend’s room and not knowing how you got there, waking up in a friend’s bed and not knowing how you got there, waking up after twenty years of sleep, a sunset, a sunrise, a lingering smile, a heartfelt greeting, a bittersweet goodbye. Your past lives, your future lives, lies that you’ve told, lies you plan to tell, lies, truths, grim visions, prophecy, wishes, wants, loves, hates, premonitions, warnings, fables, adages, myths, legends, stories, diary entries. Jumping over a pit, jumping into a pool, jumping into the sky and never coming down. Anything. Everything.

What I cannot understand is how your uncle could consider these two men suitable when they aren’t. Not one whit!” “We know that,” Elizabeth said wryly, bending down to pull a blade of grass from between the flagstones beneath the bench, “but evidently my ‘suitors’ do not, and that’s the problem.” As she said the words a thought began to form in her mind; her fingers touched the blade, and she went perfectly still. Beside her on the bench Alex drew a breath as if to speak, then stopped short, and in that pulsebeat of still silence the same idea was born in both their fertile minds. “Alex,” Elizabeth breathed, “all I have to-“ “Elizabeth,” Alex whispered, “it’s not as bad as it seems. All you have to-“ Elizabeth straightened slowly and turned. In that prolonged moment of silence two longtime friends sat in a rose garden, looking raptly at each other while time rolled back and they were girls again-lying awake in the dark, confiding their dreams and troubles and inventing schemes to solve them that always began with “If only…” “If only,” Elizabeth said as a smile dawned across her face and was matched by the one on Alex’s, “I could convince them that we don’t suit-“ “Which shouldn’t be hard to do,” Alex cried enthusiastically, “because it’s true!” The joyous relief of having a plan, of being able to take control of a situation that minutes before had threatened her entire life, sent Elizabeth to her feet, her face aglow with laughter. “Poor Sir Francis,” she chuckled, looking delightedly from Bentner to Alex as both grinned at her. “I greatly fear he’s in for the most disagreeable surprise when he realizes what a-a” she hesitated, thinking of everything an old roué would most dislike in his future wife-“a complete prude I am!” “And,” Alex added, “what a shocking spendthrift you are!” “Exactly!” Elizabeth agreed, almost twirling around in her glee. Sunlight danced off her gilded hair and lit her green eyes as she looked delightedly at her friends. “I shall make perfectly certain to give him glaring evidence I am both. Now then, as to the Earl of Canford…” “What a pity,” Alex said in a voice of exaggerated gloom, “you won’t be able to show him what a capital hand you are with a fishing pole. “Fish?” Elizabeth returned with a mock shudder. “Why, the mere thought of those scaly creatures positively makes me swoon!” “Except for that prime one you caught yesterday,” Bentner put in wryly. “You’re right,” she returned with an affectionate grin at the man who’d taught her to fish. “Will you find Berta and break the news to her about going with me? By the time we come back to the house she ought to be over her hysterics, and I’ll reason with her.” Bentner trotted off, his threadbare black coattails flapping behind him.

The parasol wasn’t a very good cane. Its tip dug into the hard, grassless earth, and the folded frame creaked as Kestrel limped across the grounds. But it brought her where she needed to go. She found Arin walking through the bare orange grove, horse tack draped over his shoulder. It jangled when he stopped and stared at her. He stood, shoulders stiff. As Kestrel came close she saw that his jaw was clenched, and that there was no trace of what her guards had done to him. No bruises. Nor would there be, not for something that had happened nearly a month ago. “Did I shame you?” Kestrel said. Something strange crossed his face. “Shame me,” Arin repeated. He looked up into the empty branches as if he expected to see fruit there, as if it weren’t almost winter. “The book. The inscription I read. The duel. The way I tricked you. The order I gave to have you imprisoned. Did I shame you?” He crossed his arms over his chest. He shook his head, his gaze never wavering from the trees. “No. The god of debts knows what I owe.” “Then what is it?” Kestrel was trying so hard not to ask about the rumors or the woman in the market that she said something worse. “Why won’t you look at me?” “I shouldn’t even be speaking with you,” he muttered. It dawned on her why it had never made sense that Rax had been the one to release Arin. “My father,” she said. “Arin, you don’t have to worry about him. He’ll be leaving the morning of the Firstwinter ball. The entire regiment has been ordered east to fight the barbarians.” “What?” He glanced at her, eyes sharp. “Things can be as they were.” “I don’t think so.” “But…you are my friend.” His expression changed, though not in a way Kestrel could read. “Just tell me what’s wrong, Arin. Tell me the truth.” When he spoke, his voice was raw. “You own me. How can you believe I’ll tell you the truth? Why would I?” The parasol trembled in Kestrel’s grip. She opened her mouth to speak, yet realized that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to control what she said. “I will tell you something you can trust is true.” Arin’s eyes held hers. “We are not friends.” Kestrel swallowed. “You’re right,” she whispered. “We’re not.

How did you find me?" "I've followed you for a long time." He must have mistaken the look on my face for alarm or fear, and said, "Not literally. I just mean I never lost track." But it wasn't fear, or anything like that. It was an instant of realization I'd have a lot in the coming days: I'd been thinking of him as coming back from the dead, but the fact was he'd been there all along. He'd been alive when I cried in my room over him being gone. He'd been alive when I started a new school without him, the day I made my first friend a Jones Hall, the time I ran into Ethan at the library. Cameron Quick and I had existed simultaneously on the planet during all of those moments. It didn't seem possible that we could have been leading separate lives, not after everything we'd been through together. "...then I looked you up online," he was saying, "and found your mom's wedding announcement from before you changed your name. I didn't even need to do that. It's easy to find someone you never lost." I struggled to understand what he was saying. "You mean...you could have written to me, or seen me, sooner?" "I wanted to. Almost did, a bunch of times." "Why didn't you? I wish you had." And I did, I wished it so much, imagined how it would have been to know all those years that he was there, thinking of me. "Things seemed different for you," he said, matter-of-fact. "Better. I could tell that from the bits of information I found...like an interview with the parents who were putting their kids in your school when it first started. Or an article about that essay contest you won a couple years ago." "You knew about that?" He nodded. "That one had a picture. I could see just from looking at you that you had a good thing going. Didn't need me coming along and messing it up." "Don't say that," I said quickly. Then: "You were never part of what I wanted to forget." "Nice of you to say, but I know it's not true." I knew what he was thinking, could see that he'd been carrying around the same burden all those years as me. "You didn't do anything wrong." It was getting cold on the porch, and late, and the looming topic scared me. I got up. "Let's go in. I can make coffee or hot chocolate or something?" "I have to go." "No! Already?" I didn't want to let him out of my sight. "Don't worry," he said. "Just have to go to work. I'll be around." "Give me your number. I'll call you." "I don't have a phone right now." "Find me at school," I said, "or anytime. Eat lunch with us tomorrow." He didn't answer. "Really," I continued, "you should meet my friends and stuff." "You have a boyfriend," he finally said. "I saw you guys holding hands." I nodded. "Ethan." "For how long?" "Three months, almost." I couldn't picture Cameron Quick dating anyone, though he must have at some point. If I'd found Ethan, I was sure Cameron had some Ashley or Becca or Caitlin along the way. I didn't ask. "He's nice," I added. "He's..." I don't know what I'd planned to say, but whatever it was it seemed insignificant so I finished that sentence with a shrug. "You lost your lisp." And about twenty-five pounds, I thought. "I guess speech therapy worked for both of us." He smiled. "I always liked that, you know. Your lisp. It was...you." He started down the porch steps. "See you tomorrow, okay?" "Yeah," I said, unable to take my eyes off of him. "Tomorrow.

Raising both of her glowing palms, she beckoned him with wiggling fingers. “Come on, then. I’ll go another round. Though by now even an amoeba would’ve learned not to fuck with me.” Everyone grew still, silent. Then Cade started back down for her, redoubling his speed. “No, Cade, I’ve got this,” she said evenly, never looking away from Bowe. Meanwhile, Bowe had subtly pulled his head back, feeling as if he’d just been presented with a species of creature he had never seen. Then he caught Rydstrom’s look of amusement—the demon was obviously loving this—and he found himself . . . grinning. “Kitten’s quick to bear those claws, is she no’?” Rydstrom ruefully shook his head at Bowe, as if sorry for his unavoidable and imminent demise, then got everyone, including a reluctant Cade, moving again. As Bowe passed Mariketa, he leaned in close. Not bothering to hide his surprise, he murmured to her, “And damn if she does no’ have them sunk into me.” Her gray-eyed gaze was wary. He noted that she kept her palms fired up for some time after they continued on. Even after her blatant show of magick, he felt so proud she’d held her ground that he wanted to stand tall and point her out as his female. That’s my lass. Mine. But his heart was also thundering because he realized that in the heart of the full moon, when he was completely turned, she might not run from him. He still intended to get her away from him before this full moon, but for the future . . . Excitement burned within him, and he found himself closing in on her and saying, “You’re bonny when you’re about to strike.” “You would know.” “Come, then, sheath your claws, kitten. And we’ll be friends once more.” “We weren’t friends to begin with!” “You’re warming to me. I can tell.” “True. I only throw guys I dig. And don’t you dare call me kitten again!” “You look like one with your wee, pointed ears.” “Are you done?” “Canna say.” He was silent for a moment, then added, “Think you’re the bravest lass I’ve ever seen. Though I doona care for your using magick against me so readily. Do you enjoy it?” She seemed to mull this for a moment, then raised her brows. “I do. Besides, I think you need someone to threaten you now and again. To remind the great and powerful Lykae that you’re not so unbeatable.” “Aye, I do.” He clasped her hand in his. “Sign on.” She pulled out of his grasp. “I don’t do temp jobs. And that’s all you’re offering.

This is weird for me, too, you know. It’s like, ever since I got that letter…” He hesitates. “Forget it.” “Just say it,” I say. “Ever since I got that letter, things have been messed up between us. It’s not fair. You got to say everything you wanted to say, and I’m the one who has to rearrange the way I think about you; I have to make sense of it in my head. You totally blindsided me, and then you just shut me out. You start dating Kavinsky, you stop being my friend.” He exhales. “Ever since I got your letter…I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.” Whatever I was expecting him to say, it wasn’t that. It definitely wasn’t that. “Josh…” “I know you don’t want to hear it, but just let me say what I need to say, okay?” I nod. “I hate that you’re with Kavinsky. I hate it. He’s not good enough for you. I’m sorry to say it, but he’s just not. In my opinion, no guy will ever be good enough for you. Least of all me.” Josh ducks his head, and then suddenly he looks up at me and says, “There was this one time, I guess it was a couple of summers ago. We were walking home from somebody’s house--I think it was Mike’s.” It was hot, around dusk. I was mad because Mike’s older brother Jimmy had said he’d give us a ride home, and then he went somewhere and didn’t come back, so we had to walk. I was wearing espadrilles and my feet were hurting something terrible. Josh kept telling me to keep up with him. Quietly he says, “It was just me and you. You had on that tan suede shirt you used to wear, with the straps, and it showed your belly button.” “My Pocahontas-meets-seventies-Cher-style shirt.” Oh, how I loved that shirt. “I almost kissed you that day. I thought about it. It was this weird impulse I had. I just wanted to see what it would be like.” My heart stops. “And then?” “And then I don’t know. I guess I forgot about it.” I let out a sigh. “I’m sorry you got that letter. You were never supposed to see that. It wasn’t meant for you to ever read. It was just for me.” “Maybe it was fate. Maybe this was all supposed to happen just like this, because…because it was always gonna be you and me.” I say the first thing that comes to mind. “No, it wasn’t.” And I realize it’s true. This is the moment I realize I don’t love him, that I haven’t for a while. That maybe I never did. Because he’s right there for the taking: I could kiss him again; I could make him mine. But I don’t want him. I want someone else. It feels strange to have spent so much time wishing for something, for someone, and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.

Have you ever known someone who worried about dating a long-time friend? If you have, you’ve probably heard that person say something like this: “He asked me out, but I’m just afraid that if we start actually dating it will change our friendship.” What is this person really saying? People who make statements like that, whether or not they realize it, recognize that dating encourages romantic expectations. In a true friendship you don’t feel pressured by knowing you “like” the other [35] person or that he or she “likes” you back. You feel free to be yourself and do things together without spending three hours in front of the mirror, making sure you look perfect. C. S. Lewis describes friendship as two people walking side by side toward a common goal. Their mutual interest brings them together. . . . In dating, romantic attraction is often the relationship’s cornerstone. The premise of dating is “I’m attracted to you; therefore, let’s get to know each other.” The premise of friendship, on the other hand, is “We’re interested in the same things; let’s enjoy these common interests together.” If, after developing a friendship, romantic attraction forms, that’s an added bonus. . . . A relationship based only on physical attraction and romantic feelings will last only as long as the feelings last.

Believe in Your Ability to Cope with Negative Feedback Just like everyone has a vision blind spot, everyone has cognitive blond spots that can lead to making less than stellar choices. For example, you think an outfit looks good on you, and in reality it doesn’t. Or you thought you understood what your boss wanted but later realize you took the instructions in an unintended direction. Since we all have blind spots, making some mistakes and getting some negative feedback is unavoidable. Therefore, unless you plan to go live in a cave, you’re going to need a game plan for how you’ll cognitively and emotionally cope when negative feedback happens. We’ll cover behavioral strategies later in the chapter, but let’s work on the thinking and emotional aspects for now. Experiment: Think about a specific scenario in which you fear negative feedback. If your fears came true: --How would you go about making the required changes? --How could you be self-accepting of your sensitivity to criticism? How could you talk to yourself gently about the emotions you’re feeling instead of criticizing yourself for feeling upset? How could you be patient with yourself while you’re having those feelings? --What self-care would you do while you wait for your heart and upset feelings to pass? (Yes, rewatching episodes of ‘90s TV is a totally acceptable answer.) --What personal support would you access to cope with your emotions? For example, you’d talk to a friend.

It was certainly true that I had “no sense of humour” in that I found nothing funny. I didn’t know, and perhaps would never know, the feeling of compulsion to exhale and convulse in the very specific way that humans evolved to do. Nor did I know the specific emotion of relief that is bound to it. But it would be wrong, I think, to say that I was incapable of using humour as a tool. As I understood it, humour was a social reflex. The ancestors of humans had been ape-animals living in small groups in Africa. Groups that worked together were more likely to survive and have offspring, so certain reflexes and perceptions naturally emerged to signal between members of the group. Yawning evolved to signal wake-rest cycles. Absence of facial hair and the dilation of blood vessels in the face evolved to signal embarrassment, anger, shame and fear. And laughter evolved to signal an absence of danger. If a human is out with a friend and they are approached by a dangerous-looking stranger, having that stranger revealed as benign might trigger laughter. I saw humour as the same reflex turned inward, serving to undo the effects of stress on the body by activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Interestingly, it also seemed to me that humour had extended, like many things, beyond its initial evolutionary context. It must have been very quickly adopted by human ancestor social systems. If a large human picks on a small human there’s a kind of tension that emerges where the tribe wonders if a broader violence will emerge. If a bystander watches and laughs they are non-verbally signaling to the bully that there’s no need for concern, much like what had occurred minutes before with my comments about Myrodyn, albeit in a somewhat different context. But humour didn’t stop there. Just as a human might feel amusement at things which seem bad but then actually aren’t, they might feel amusement at something which merely has the possibility of being bad, but doesn’t necessarily go through the intermediate step of being consciously evaluated as such: a sudden realization. Sudden realizations that don’t incur any regret were, in my opinion, the most alien form of humour, even if I could understand how they linked back to the evolutionary mechanism. A part of me suspected that this kind of surprise-based or absurdity-based humour had been refined by sexual selection as a signal of intelligence. If your prospective mate is able to offer you regular benign surprises it would (if you were human) not only feel good, but show that they were at least in some sense smarter or wittier than you, making them a good choice for a mate. The role of surprise and non-verbal signalling explained, by my thinking, why explaining humour was so hard for humans. If one explained a joke it usually ceased to be a surprise, and in situations where the laughter served as an all-clear-no-danger signal, explaining that verbally would crush the impulse to do it non-verbally.

The liberal element of Whites are those who have perfected the art of selling themselves to the Negro as a friend of the Negro, getting the sympathy of the Negro, getting the allegiance of the Negro, getting the mind of the Negro, and then the Negro sides with the White liberal and the White liberal uses the Negro against the White conservative so that anything that the Negro does is never for his own good, never for his own advancement, never for his own progress, he’s only a pawn in the hands of the White liberal. The worst enemy the Negro has is this White man who runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negroes and calling himself a liberal and it is following these White liberals that has perpetuated the problems that Negroes in America have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, trapped, tricked, deceived by the White liberal then Negroes would get together and solve our own problems. It was the White liberals that come up with the Civil War, supposedly they say, to solve the Negro, the slave question. Lincoln was supposedly a White liberal. When you read the true history of Lincoln, he wasn’t trying to free any slaves, he was trying to save the union. He was trying to save his own party. He was trying to conserve his own power and it was only after he found he couldn’t do it without freeing the slaves that he came up with the Emancipation Proclamation. So, right there you have deceit of White liberals making Negroes think that the Civil War was fought to free them, you have the deceit of White liberals making Negroes think that the Emancipation Proclamation actually freed the Negroes and then when the Negroes got the Civil War and found out they weren’t free, got the Emancipation Proclamation and they found out they still weren’t free, they begin to get dissatisfied and unrest, they come up with the...the same White liberal came up with the 14th Amendment supposedly to solve the problem. This came about, the problem still wasn’t solved, ‘cause to the White liberal it’s only a political trick. Civil War, political trick, Emancipation Proclamation, political trick, 14th Amendment to this raggedy Constitution, a political trick. Then when Negroes begin to develop intellectually again, and realize that their problem still wasn’t solved, and unrest began to increase, the Supreme Court...another so-called political trick...came up with what they call a Supreme Court Desegregation Decision, and they purposely put it in a language...now you know, sir, that these men on the Supreme Court are masters of the King’s English, masters of legal phraseology, and if they wanted a decision that no one could get around, they would have given one but they gave their Supreme Court Desegregation Decision in 1954 purposely in a language, phraseology that enabled all of the crooks in this country to find loopholes in it that would keep them from having to enforce the Supreme Court Desegregation Decision. So that even after the decision was handed down, our problem has still not been solved. And I only cite these things to show you that in America, the history of the White liberal has been nothing but a series of trickery designed to make Negroes think that the White liberals was going to solve our problem and it is only now that the honorable Elijah Muhammad has come on the scene and is beginning to teach the Black man that our problem will never be solved by the White man that the only way our problem will be solved is when the Black man wakes up, cleans himself up, stands on his own feet, stops begging the White man and takes immediate steps to try and do for ourselves the things that we’ve been waiting for the White man to do for us. Once we do them for ourselves, once we think for ourselves, once we see for ourselves then we’ll be able to solve our own problems and we’ll be recognized as human beings all over this earth.

Be a Listener When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise. —PROVERBS 10:19     I’ve heard it said that God gave us two ears and only one mouth because He wants us to listen twice as much as we speak. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had to apologize for something I haven’t said. It’s much easier and really more natural for us to speak rather than listen. We have to learn to listen. It takes discipline to keep from talking. As a parent, spouse, sibling, or friend, we need to be known as good listeners. And while listening, we’d do well to remember that there are always two sides to every story. Postpone any judgment until you’ve heard all the evidence—then wait some more. Eleanor Roosevelt, in one of her many speeches, stated, “A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.” Our Scripture verse talks to us about being more of a listener than a talker. Too many words can lead to putting one’s foot in one’s mouth. The more we speak, the greater the chance of being offensive. The wise person will restrain her speech. Listening seldom gets us into trouble, but our mouths certainly cause transgressions. When others realize that you are a true listener, they will tell you important matters. They will open up about their lives and their dreams. They will entrust you with a bit of themselves and their hearts. Never violate that trust. You have the best model possible in your relationship with God. Without fail, He listens to your every need and hope. Prayer: Father God, thank You for giving me two good ears to hear. Hold my tongue when I want to lash out. I want to be a better hearer. Amen.  

True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: “You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.” And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art—and this art called “life” is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend? I had a dream many years ago that sums up this thought in a different way, one that has become a sustaining metaphor for me. I am on a train going home to God. (Bear with me!) It’s a long journey, and everything that happens in my life is scenery along the way. Some of it is beautiful; I want to linger over it awhile, perhaps hold on to it or even try to take it with me. Other parts of the journey are spent grinding through a barren, ugly countryside. Either way the train moves on. And pain comes whenever I cling to the scenery, beautiful or ugly, rather than accept that all the scenery is grist for the mill, containing, as Marcus Aurelius counseled us, some hidden purpose and a hidden blessing. My family, of course, is on board with me. Beyond our families, we choose who is on the train with us, who we share our journey with. The people we invite on the train are those with whom we are prepared to be vulnerable and real, with whom there is no room for masks and games. They strengthen us when we falter and remind us of the journey’s purpose when we become distracted by the scenery. And we do the same for them. Never let life’s Iagos—flatterers, dissemblers—onto your train. We always get warnings from our heart and our intuition when they appear, but we are often too busy to notice. When you realize they’ve made it on board, make sure you usher them off the train; and as soon as you can, forgive them and forget them. There is nothing more draining than holding grudges.

He sighed. Morrie had counseled so many unhappy lovers in his years as a professor. “It’s sad, because a loved one is so important. You realize that, especially when you’re in a time like I am, when you’re not doing so well. Friends are great, but friends are not going to be here on a night when you’re coughing and can’t sleep and someone has to sit up all night with you, comfort you, try to be helpful.” Charlotte and Morrie, who met as students, had been married forty-four years. I watched them together now, when she would remind him of his medication, or come in and stroke his neck, or talk about one of their sons. They worked as a team, often needing no more than a silent glance to understand what the other was thinking. Charlotte was a private person, different from Morrie, but I knew how much he respected her, because sometimes when we spoke, he would say, “Charlotte might be uncomfortable with me revealing that,” and he would end the conversation. It was the only time Morrie held anything back.“I’ve learned this much about marriage,” he said now. “You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how you accommodate or don’t.” Is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going to work? Morrie smiled. “Things are not that simple, Mitch.” I know. “Still,” he said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike. “And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?” Yes? “Your belief in the importance of your marriage.” He sniffed, then closed his eyes for a moment. “Personally,” he sighed, his eyes still closed, “I think marriage is a very important thing to do, and you’re missing a hell of a lot if you don’t try it.” He ended the subject by quoting the poem he believed in like a prayer: “Love each other or perish.

Now I’m not trying to sound big-headed or anything but my sensuality has benefited a lot of people in more ways than I can quantify. It has served people not only in romantic relationships but in businesses, organizations and professional lives as well. (People got big promotions at work and major business deals). This was brought to my attention recently by a very close friend of mine in a conversation we had while we were sitting in a coffee shop. She said, “Lebo, have you noticed how so many people who got close to you either through work or relationship have had major transformations in their personal lives within the shortest space of time, that includes myself?” I paused for a moment and remembered the same words being said by one ex of mine, another lady I helped on her project not so long ago echoed the same notion. To some of you this might seem like... c’mon Lebo, anything could have led to any of those transformations. To even associate it with my sensuality seems utterly absurd, it’s like I’m trying to bolster my significance, but I know better now. I know the value I’m bringing into people’s lives whether they acknowledge it or not. Our conversation also made me recall how I had been exploited by others who saw value in me which I, at the time, was still oblivious of. The thing about human beings is that, usually they won’t show you your true value from which they’re secretly benefiting because they know that once you wake up and start realizing it, you won’t supply it for free anymore. So after I had woken up to my true value I decided to start making my sensuality EXCLUSIVE. Now when you make your sensuality exclusive it automatically makes your company highly priced. Consequently, it makes you highly sought after BY PEOPLE WHO SEEK TRUE VALUE AND KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. When you make your sensuality exclusive, it increases your value exponentially as well as your desirability, not to everyone, but only TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE. You become the catch. Now I’m saying this to show you the hidden power of the world of sensuality that most people aren’t aware of. Almost every successful luxury industry in the world essentially thrives on sensual principles whether they’re aware of it or not.

Quanta. On Yom Kippur Eve, the quanta went to ask Einstein for his forgiveness. “I'm not home,” Einstein yelled at them from behind his locked door. On their way back, people swore loudly at them through the windows, and someone even threw a can. The quanta pretended not to care, but deep in their hearts they were really hurt. Nobody understands the quanta, everybody hates them. “You parasites,” people would shout at them as they walked down the road. “Go serve in the army.” “We wanted to, actually,” the quanta would try to explain, “but the army wouldn't take us because we're so tiny.” Not that anyone listened. Nobody listens to the quanta when they try to defend themselves, but when they say something that can be interpreted negatively, well, then everyone's all ears. The quanta can make the most innocent statement, like “Look, there's a cat!” and right away they're saying on the news how the quanta were stirring up trouble and they rush off to interview Schrödinger. All in all, the media hated the quanta worse than anybody, because once the quanta had spoken at an IBM press conference about how the very act of viewing had an effect on an event, and all the journalists thought the quanta were lobbying to keep them from covering the Intifada. The quanta could insist as much as they wanted that this wasn't at all what they meant and that they had no political agenda whatsoever, but nobody would believe them anyway. Everyone knew they were friends of the government's Chief Scientist. Loads of people think the quanta are indifferent, that they have no feelings, but it simply isn't true. On Friday, after the program about the bombing of Hiroshima, they were interviewed in the studio in Jerusalem. They could barely talk. They just sat there facing the open mike and sniffling, and all the viewers at home, who didn't know the quanta very well, thought they were avoiding the question and didn't realize the quanta were crying What's sad is that even if the quanta were to write dozens of letters to the editors of all the scientific journals in the world and prove beyond a doubt that people had taken advantage of their naiveté, and that they'd never ever imagined it would end that way, it wouldn't do them any good, because nobody understands the quanta. The physicists least of all.

true—helping a hurting person is a bit scary. We want to do the right thing, not the wrong thing—say what will help, not what will hurt. To add to our confusion, our friend is “not quite herself.” She’s different. We want our friend fixed and back to normal. All you have to do is care. Harold Ivan Smith described the process so well: Grief sharers always look for an opportunity to actively care. You can never “fix” an individual’s grief, but you can wash the sink full of dishes, listen to him or her talk, take his or her kids to the park. You can never “fix” an individual’s grief but you can visit the cemetery with him or her. Grief sharing is not about fixing—it’s about showing up. Coming alongside. Being interruptible. “Hanging out” with the bereaving. In the words of World War II veterans, “present and reporting for duty.” The grief path is not a brief path. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.[1] What can you expect from a friend who is hurting? Actually, not very much. And the more her experience moves beyond a loss and closer to a crisis or trauma, the more this is true. Sometimes you’ll see a friend experiencing a case of the “crazies.” Her response seems irrational. She’s not herself. Her behavior is different from or even abnormal compared to the person not going through a major loss. Just remember, she’s reacting to an out-of-the-ordinary event. What she experienced is abnormal, so her response is actually quite normal. If what the person has experienced is traumatic she may even seem to exhibit some of the symptoms of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). And because your friend is this way, she is not to be avoided. Others are needed at this time in her life. These are responses you can expect. Your friend is no longer functioning as she once did—and probably won’t for a while. You Are Needed You are needed when a person experiences a sudden intrusion or disruption in her life. If you (or another friend) aren’t available, the only person she has to talk with for guidance, support, and direction is herself. And who wants support from someone struggling with a case of the “crazies”? But a problem may arise when your friend doesn’t realize that she needs you, at least at that particular time. Your sensitivity is needed at this point. Remember, when your friend is hurting and facing a loss, you are dealing with a loss as well, because the relationship you had with your friend has changed. It’s not the same.

Nothing happens while you live. The scenery changes, people come in and go out, that’s all. There are no beginnings. Days are tacked on to days without rhyme or reason, an interminable, monotonous addition. From time to time you make a semi-total: you say: I’ve been travelling for three years, I’ve been in Bouville for three years. Neither is there any end: you never leave a woman, a friend, a city in one go. And then everything looks alike: Shanghai, Moscow, Algiers, everything is the same after two weeks. There are moments—rarely—when you make a landmark, you realize that you’re going with a woman, in some messy business. The time of a flash. After that, the procession starts again, you begin to add up hours and days: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. April, May, June. 1924, 1925, 1926. That’s living. But everything changes when you tell about life; it’s a change no one notices: the proof is that people talk about true stories. As if there could possibly be true stories; things happen one way and we tell about them in the opposite sense. [...] “I was out walking, I had left the town without realizing it, I was thinking about my money troubles.” This sentence, taken simply for what it is, means that the man was absorbed, morose, a hundred leagues from an adventure, exactly in the mood to let things happen without noticing them. But the end is there, transforming everything. For us, the man is already the hero of the story. His moroseness, his money troubles are much more precious than ours, they are all gilded by the light of future passions. And the story goes on in the reverse: instants have stopped piling themselves in a lighthearted way one on top of the other, they are snapped up by the end of the story which draws them and each one of them in turn, draws out the preceding instant: “It was night, the street was deserted.” The phrase is cast out negligently, it seems superfluous; but we do not let ourselves be caught and we put it aside: this is a piece of information whose value we shall subsequently appreciate. And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in a night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice. I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

children from pain and loss and tragedy and illness. You cannot be sure that you will always be married, let alone happily married. You cannot be sure you will always be employed, or healthy, or relatively sane. All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. Humility does not mean self-abnegation, lassitude, detachment; it’s more like a calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, ridiculous, crazy by the measure of most of our culture; you must trust that you being a very good you matters somehow. That trying to be an honest and tender parent will echo for centuries through your tribe. That doing your chosen work with creativity and diligence will shiver people far beyond your ken. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will somehow matter in the social fabric, save a thread or two from unraveling. And you must do all of this with the sure and certain knowledge that you will never get proper credit for it, at all, one bit, and in fact the vast majority of the things you do right will go utterly unremarked; except, perhaps, in ways we will never know or understand, by the Arab Jew who once shouted about his cloak, and may have been somehow also the One who invented and infuses this universe and probably a million others—not to put a hard number on it or anything. Humility, the final frontier, as my late brother Kevin used to say. When we are young we build a self, a persona, a story in which to reside, or several selves in succession, or several at once, sometimes; when we are older we take on other roles and personas, other masks and duties; and you and I both know men and women who become trapped in the selves they worked so hard to build, so desperately imprisoned that sometimes they smash their lives simply to escape who they no longer wish to be; but finally, I think, if we are lucky, if we read the book of pain and loss with humility, we realize that we are all broken and small and brief, that none among us is actually rich or famous or more beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true finally about humility. This is what I know: that the small is huge, that the tiny is vast, that pain is part and parcel of the gift of joy, and that there is love, and then there is everything else. You either walk toward love or away from it with every breath you draw. Humility is the road to love. Humility, maybe, is love. That could be. I wouldn’t know; I am a muddle and a conundrum, shuffling slowly along the road, gaping in wonder, trying to just see and say what is, trying to leave shreds and shards of ego along the road like wisps of litter and chaff.

The temple was in a field of graves suddenly a pitiful-looking skeleton appeared and said: A melancholy autumn wind Blows through the world; the pampas grass waves As we drift to the moor, Drift to the sea. What can be done With the mind of a man That should be clear But though he is dressed up in a monk's robe, Just lets life pass him by? Such deep musings Made me uneasy, I could not sleep. Towards dawn I dozed off... I found myself surrounded by a group of skeletons, acting as they had when they were still alive. One skeleton came over to me and said: Memories Flee and Are no more. All are empty dreams Devoid of meaning. Violate the reality of things And babble about 'God' and 'the Buddha' And you will never find the true Way. Still breathing, You feel animated, So a corpse in a field Seems to be something Apart from you. If chunks of rock Can serve as a memento To the dead A better headstone Would be a simple tea-mortar. Humans are indeed frightful things. A single moon Bright and clear In an unclouded sky; Yet we still stumble In the world's darkness. This world Is but A fleeting dream So why be alarmed At its evanescence? The vagaries of life, Though painful, Teach us Not to cling To this floating world. Why do people Lavish decoration On this set of bones, Destined to disappear Without a trace? The original body Must return to Its original place. Do not search For what cannot be found. No one really knows The nature of birth Nor the true dwelling place. We return to the source And turn to dust. Many paths lead from The foot of the mountain, But at the peak We all gaze at the Single bright moon. If at the end of our journey There is no final Resting place, Then we need not fear Losing our Way. No beginning. No end. Our mind Is born and dies; The emptiness of emptiness! Relax, And the mind Runs wild; Control the world And you can cast it aside. Rain, hail, snow, and ice: All are different But when they fall They become to same water As the valley stream. The ways of proclaiming The Mind all vary, But the same heavenly truth Can be seen In each and every one. Cover your path With fallen pine needles So no one will be able To locate your True dwelling place. How vain, The endless funderals at the Cremation grounds of Mount Toribe! Don't the mourner realize That they will be next? 'Life is fleeeting!' We think at the sight Of smoke drifting from Mount Toribe, But when will we realize That we are in the same boat? All is in vain! This morning, A healthy friend; This evening, A wisp of cremation smoke. What a pity! Evening smoke from Mount Toribe Blown violently To and fro By the wind. When burned We become ashes, and earth when buried. Is it only our sins That remain behind? All the sins Committed In the Three Worlds Will fade away Together with me.

If YOUR free READ it calmly. This to all my FOLKS and MYSELF our expectations, our needs, our dreams, our destiny, our life style, Our likes and dislikes. we always RUN around so many things without even THINKING. Have a look on our SATISFACTION list # new gadget or a mobile for example fun for 2 months? # New bike fun for "2 months" . # New car for "3"? # Getting into a relationship wantedly as we are alone max 3/4 months? # Revenge ? A weak? Month? # flirting ? 2/3 months # sex ? Few mins # boozing, joint or a fag? Few hours? # addicting to something leaving behind everything? One year? # your example of anything repeatedly done for satisfaction? Max? Get a number yourself! ¦¦¦ Even though we satisfy our soul by all the above. Passing day by day. Years passed. Yet left with the same IRRITATING feeling to satisfy our needs. ONE after ANOTHER . ¦¦¦ ¦¦¦ Some day we realize it was " pure SELFISH satisfaction " and left with a "GUILT " and EMPTINESS . questioning LIFE ! ¦¦¦ "In the RAMPAGE of getting everything we wished. We might not realize what we MISSED . Being CARELESS of our surrounding." "Feelings left hurt and hearts broken. Family friends and people we cares and who cares us. PRIORITIES made by ourself to be satisfied even here." If LIFE was just to satisfy what ever we WISHED for. Was it A life worth lived? May be! Yes. But it's SURE you end up questioning life with BLACKNESS ! # So many questions unanswered. Our EXISTENCE ? Our DESTINY ? To question the existence of God and HEAVEN .? At Last questioning the existence of UNIVERSE itself? The whole system CRACKS a nerve! Why spoil our LIFE when we are the creators of our LIFE ! When we are capable of finding an answer to does questions by our self Finding that true meaning of LIFE beyond all the mess we live by daily. which is Going to satisfy us. We need to realize by now our Every action should lead to Happiness and satisfaction of the people around us. It's the real paradise feeling we all wish for. The real deal. We disrupt our LIFE in the rampage of getting everything we need which can automatically be provided by LIFE . When we start sacrificing our LIFE in a positive way being busy fulfilling the needs of our dears ones. They indeed be busy trying to fulfill our needs and wishes. It's giving some things and getting something back. With less expectations. Rather than grabbing. A SECRET for a PERFECT LIFE which we FAIL to live by. Starting from FORGIVING everyone who tumbles in our path trying to steal away our positive life and happiness. Because as we all are tamed to do MISTAKE at some point. There is not much TIME left to waste by hating and cursing LIFE when we can start LIVING right now. "A REMINDER just to make sure we try to be SELFLESS and find that UNMATCHED HAPPINESS and SATISFACTION ." ~~¦¦ LIFE is complex to understand yet so SIMPLE ¦¦ ¶¶ Never be in a hurry on GETTING on to something you might be left with NOTHING ¶¶ << Being SELFISH makes us a HEALTHY human but being SELFLESS makes you A HUMAN >> «« LIFE is meaningful when we forget about our THIRST and QUENCH the thirst of OTHERS .»» RETHINK AND REDEFINE LIFE ¶¶ ~ Sharath kumar G .

In the entire endless evening his serenity received a jolt only a few times. The first was when someone who didn’t know who he was confided that only two months ago Lady Elizabeth’s uncle had sent out invitations to all her former suitors offering her hand in marriage. Suppressing his shock and loathing for her uncle, Ian had pinned an amused smile on his face and confided, “I’m acquainted with the lady’s uncle, and I regret to say he’s a little mad. As you know, that sort of thing runs,” Ian had finished smoothly, “in our finest families.” The reference to England’s hopeless King George was unmistakable, and the man had laughed uproariously at the joke. “True,” he agreed. “Lamentably true.” Then he went off to spread the word that Elizabeth’s uncle was a confirmed loose screw. Ian’s method of dealing with Sir Francis Belhaven-who, his grandfather had discovered, was boasting that Elizabeth had spent several days with him-was less subtle and even more effective. “Belhaven,” Ian said after spending a half hour searching for the repulsive knight. The stout man had whirled around in surprise, leaving his acquaintances straining to hear Ian’s low conversation with him. “I find your presence repugnant,” Ian had said in a dangerously quiet voice. “I dislike your coat, I dislike your shirt, and I dislike the knot in your neckcloth. In fact, I dislike you. Have I offended you enough yet, or shall I continue?” Belhaven’s mouth dropped open, his pasty face turning a deathly gray. “Are-are you trying to force a-duel?” “Normally one doesn’t bother shooting a repulsive toad, but in this instance I’m prepared to make an exception, since this toad doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut!” “A duel, with you?” he gasped. “Why, it would be no contest-none at all. Everyone knows what sort of marksman you are. It would be murder.” Ian leaned close, speaking between his clenched teeth. “It’s going to be murder, you miserable little opium-eater, unless you suddenly remember very vocally that you’ve been joking about Elizabeth Cameron’s visit.” At the mention of opium the glass slid from his fingers and crashed to the floor. “I have just realized I was joking.” “Good,” Ian said, restraining the urge to strangle him. “Now start remembering it all over this ballroom!” “Now that, Thornton,” said an amused voice from Ian’s shoulder as Belhaven scurried off to begin doing as bidden, “makes me hesitate to say that he is not lying.” Still angry with Belhaven, Ian turned in surprise to see John Marchman standing there. “She was with me as well,” Marchman sad. “All aboveboard, for God’s sake, so don’t look at me like I’m Belhaven. Her aunt Berta was there every moment.” “Her what?” Ian said, caught between fury and amusement. “Her Aunt Berta. Stout little woman who doesn’t say much.” “See that you follow her example,” Ian warned darkly. John Marchman, who had been privileged to fish at Ian’s marvelous stream in Scotland, gave his friend an offended look. “I daresay you’ve no business challenging my honor. I was considering marrying Elizabeth to keep her out of Belhaven’s clutches; you were only going to shoot him. It seems to me that my sacrifice was-“ “You were what?” Ian said, feeling as if he’d walked in on a play in the middle of the second act and couldn’t seem to hold onto the thread of the plot or the identity of the players. “Her uncle turned me down. Got a better offer.” “Your life will be more peaceful, believe me,” Ian said dryly, and he left to find a footman with a tray of drinks.

Lily understood this feeling too; she knew it all too well, it is just one more thing that just keeps things building up and building up, until the end. I never realized at the time how bad the situation would become until I went through it myself. There is no meaning behind it, which is what gets me. Am I the only one or are there more girls in this hellhole like me, which I do not know about, maybe there is? The bullies harass, it is like they smell their victims or maybe they can smell and taste the blood dripping down from the gash, which they have caused from before, and then it is like you are a wounded animal on Serengeti they come in packs. Until you have nothing- nothing left… they lick up what is left of your body time and time over, afterward you have to get up and go on with the day, knowing that you have a decision to make. What decision would you make? I know what decision I will make! Like most people my age, I do not drink and drug my brain cells away. I am not senseless or slutty, ‘I feel that being romantic is not dead, and it does exist. You just need to be with the right people, which can show you what real expressions of love are!’ So, are you like me by believing that nothing will ever destroy hope or dreams? On the other hand, are you someone like the clan? Are you going to be praised in the eyes of the fire, or the eyes of the clouds? Just like fallen angels, the ones that have fear of not standing up for what is righteous. Why, because it is more fashionable to live a life of turpitude. If someone has the light of hope, someone is going to want to dampen the affection. Just like me- when you are single for too long people start thinking, that you are either committed to yourself or that you are a little bit crazy or gay etcetera. I know this… I am not crazy or gay or whatever is said; I just have someone that blocks me out constantly while destroying my reputation. Just think about it. All of you have grown up with the roomers, your parents believed those parents, I do not have parents to fight for me, and the rest is history. So, what she and her clan said becomes known, and that is what was implied to my image. Is it true? Hell no, start thinking for yourself people. Just because someone says, something about someone else does not mean that it is factual. Oh, I have tried to fix it… However, it is out of my control, little do you all know that the tower is what prevents everything from happening. It is not my choice; she knew that I was going to be the empress; instead, she made me out to be the fool. She knew that I was one of the brightest stars in the land, and she had to bring that to an end, that was the beginning of the end of holding anyone's hands anymore within the land. The friends and romances were in the retrograde I was dubbed unreachable, she made me a forbidden selection. I had no choice but to become the hermit in the dwelling of lost and lonely dreams. To look on the bright side, all this has made me a stronger, better, more creative productive person. You cannot stop me now; I will forever shine, and guide others so that they can shine as well. Remember you are the ones listening to slandering voices. My question is why do you listen? Get to know me, and then make your judgments. Yes, it is hard for me to even get things going because the eyes are always watching, and no I am not being paranoid this is part of my true reality. Sure, the opportunity might come knocking down my door, but can you trust them, is it a setup?

Isn’t this the weekend of Xander Eckhart’s party?” “Yes.” Jordan held her breath in a silent plea. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. Don’t ask if I’m bringing anyone. “So are you bringing anyone?” Melinda asked. Foiled. Having realized there was a distinct possibility the subject would come up, Jordan had spent some time running through potential answers to this very question. She had decided that being casual was the best approach. “Oh, there’s this guy I met a few days ago, and I was thinking about asking him.” She shrugged. “Or maybe I’ll just go by myself, who knows.” Melinda put down her forkful of gnocchi, zoning in on this like a heat-seeking missile to its target. “What guy you met a few days ago? And why is this the first we’re hearing of him?” “Because I just met him a few days ago.” Corinne rubbed her hands together, eager for the details. “So? Tell us. How’d you meet him?” “What does he do?” Melinda asked. “Nice, Melinda. You’re so shallow.” Corinne turned back to Jordan. “Is he hot?” Of course, Jordan had known there would be questions. The three of them had been friends since college and still saw each other regularly despite busy schedules, and this was what they did. Before Corinne had gotten married, they talked about her now-husband, Charles. The same was true of Melinda and her soon-to-be-fiancé, Pete. So Jordan knew that she, in turn, was expected to give up the goods in similar circumstances. But she also knew that she really didn’t want to lie to her friends. With that in mind, she’d come up with a backup plan in the event the conversation went this way. Having no choice, she resorted to the strategy she had used in sticky situations ever since she was five years old, when she’d set her Western Barbie’s hair on fire while trying to give her a suntan on the family-room lamp. Blame it on Kyle. I’d like to thank the Academy . . . “Sure, I’ll tell you all about this new guy. We met the other day and he’s . . . um . . .” She paused, then ran her hands through her hair and exhaled dramatically. “Sorry. Do you mind if we talk about this later? After seeing Kyle today with the bruise on his face, I feel guilty rattling on about Xander’s party. Like I’m not taking my brother’s incarceration seriously enough.” She bit her lip, feeling guilty about the lie. So sorry, girls. But this has to stay my secret for now. Her diversion worked like a charm. Perhaps one of the few benefits of having a convicted felon of a brother known as the Twitter Terrorist was that she would never lack for non sequiturs in extracting herself from unwanted conversation. Corinne reached out and squeezed her hand. “No one has stood by Kyle’s side more than you, Jordan. But we understand. We can talk about this some other time. And try not to worry—Kyle can handle himself. He’s a big boy.” “Oh, he definitely is that,” Melinda said with a gleam in her eye. Jordan smiled. “Thanks, Corinne.” She turned to Melinda, thoroughly skeeved out. “And, eww—Kyle?” Melinda shrugged matter-of-factly. “To you, he’s your brother. But to the rest of the female population, he has a certain appeal. I’ll leave it at that.” “He used to fart in our Mr. Turtle pool and call it a ‘Jacuzzi.’ How’s that for appeal?” “Ah . . . the lifestyles of the rich and famous,” Corinne said with a grin. “And on that note, my secret fantasies about Kyle Rhodes now thoroughly destroyed, I move that we put a temporary hold on any further discussions related to the less fair of the sexes,” Melinda said. “I second that,” Jordan said, and the three women clinked their glasses in agreement

You are my friend, Prairie Flower. If I tell you what is in my heart, will you promise never to tell?" Prairie Flower laid a hand on Jesse's shoulder, pulling it away quickly when her friend flinched in pain. "I will not betray my friend." Taking a deep breath, Jesse lifted her head. "When Rides the Wing comes near to me, my heart sings.But I do not believe that he cares for me.I am clumsy in all of the things a Lakota woman must know.I cannot speak his language without many childish mistakes. And..." Jesse reached up to lay her hand on her short hair, "I am nothing to look at.I am not..." Prairie Flower grew angry. "I have told you he cares for you.Can you not see it?" Jesse shook her head. Prairie Flower spoke the unspeakable. "Then,if you cannot see that he cares for you in what he does,you must see it in what he has not done. You have been in his tepee. Dancing Waters has been gone many moons." "Stop!" Jesse demanded. "Stop it! I..just don't say any more!" She leaped up and ran out of the tepee-and into Rides the Wind, who was returning from the river where he had gone to draw water. Jesse knocked the water skins from both of his hands. Water spilled out and she fumbled an apology then bent stiffly to pick up the skins, wincing with the effort. "I will do it, Walks the Fire." His voice was tender as he bent and took the skins from her. Jesse protested, "It is the wife's job." She blushed, realizing that she had used a wrong word-the word for wife, instead of the word for woman. Rides the Wind interrupted before she could correct herself. "Walks the Fire is not the wife of Rides the Wind." Jesse blushed and remained quiet. A hand reached for hers and Rides the Wind said, "Come, sit." He helped her sit down just outside the door of the tepee. The village women took note as he went inside and brought out a buffalo robe. Sitting by Jesse,he placed the robe on the ground and began to talk. "I will tell you how it is with the Lakota. When a man wishes to take a wife..." he described Lakota courtship. As he talked, Jesse realiced that all that Prairie Flower had said seemed to be true.He had,indeed, done nearly everything involved in the courtship ritual. Still, she told herself, there is a perfectly good explanation for everything he has done. Rides the Wind continued describing the wedding feast. Jesse continued to reason with herself as he spoke. Then she realized the voice had stopped and he had repeated a question. "How is it among the whites?How does a man gain a wife?" Embarrassed,Jesse described the sparsest of courtships, the simplest wedding.Rides the Wind listened attentively. When she had finished, he said, "There is one thing the Lakota brave who wishes a wife does that I have not described." Pulling Jesse to her feet, he continued, "One evening, as he walks with his woman..." He reached out to pick up the buffalo robe.He was aware that the village women were watching carefully. "He spreads out his arms..." Rides the Wind spread his arms,opening the buffalo robe to its full length, "and wraps it about his woman," Rides the Wind turned toward Jesse and reached around her, "so that they are both inside the buffalo robe." He looked down at Jesse, trying to read her expression.When he saw nothing in the gray eyes, he abruptly dropped his arms. "But it is hot today and your wounds have not healed.I have said enough.You see how it is with the Lakota." When Jesse still said nothing, he continued, "You spoke of a celebration with a min-is-ter.It is a word I do not know.What is this min-is-ter?" "A man who belives in the Bible and teaches his people about God from the Bible." "What if there is no minister and a man and a woman wish to be married?" Jesse grew more uncomfortable. "I suppose they would wait until a minister came.

DAY FIVE: ESTHER 1:20-22 At the end of the week, remember that God is still present — but beyond His presence, He is active and working in your life! Trust Him with the details of your day today!   FRIEND TO FRIEND... In Daniel chapter 3, we have a wonderful history about three determined young men and an equally determined king. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were Jews in Babylon, serving under the heathen King Nebuchadnezzar. One day, Nebuchanezzar commissions a statue to be built and worshiped by the inhabitants of the city. He gives an order that everyone is to bow down and worship this statue at the sound of an orchestra, threatening death by fire for those who do not bow. The account of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego does not suggest that there was any conflict in these young men’s minds. In obeying Nebuchadnezzar, they would be disobeying their true King. They would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments: ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image...you shall not bow down to them nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4,5). This was unimaginable. They would refuse to bow, and in doing so, they would trust the Lord in whatever consequences would follow their obedience to His commandments. When Nebuchadnezzar is informed of their refusal to bow, he has the young men brought to him. The king reminds them of his order, and the consequence of not obeying the order: they will be burned alive in a fiery furnace. Even finding themselves faced with dire consequences, these three young men remain determined to serve God and fulfill His purposes. They are prepared with an answer for him: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego acknowledge that they are not bowing as Nebuchadnezzar wants them to, but they do not try to defend themselves. There was no need to get into an argument when their minds were already made up. My favorite part of this response, however, comes next: “But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:18). In other words, “Even if our God decides NOT to rescue us, we still will not serve your idol.” That’s determination! Truly, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had made their minds up long before Nebuchanzzar even had his idol commissioned. The true reason they were able to face such a threat with such tenacity was that they had long ago decided to follow the Lord with their whole heart. The decision of this day was not whether to begin serving the Lord and refusing to bow; these young people already knew what they stood for, and they remained steadfast in their faithfulness to the Lord. Whether the Lord came to their rescue on this day was of little matter to them. They intended to serve the Lord. In order for you to fulfill the call that God has placed on your life, you will have to find yourself DETERMINED and TENACIOUS in following that call. On terrific days, you must be faithful. On terrible days, you must be faithful. When you display this kind of determination, you can be confident that God will show up every day. In Daniel 3:19-25, the history continues. At the close of this conversation with Nebuchadnezzar, things did not seem to go in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s favor. As the king had threatened, these three were in fact thrown in the fire. What Nebuchadnezzar did not yet realize was that they would not go into the fire alone. Who was there in the midst of them? Three were thrown into the fire, but when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, he told his guards, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). The Son of God was in the furnace with them! Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were confident

When we took steps to simplify our lifestyle, we not only evaluated belongings and screen times, we also evaluated friendships. We identified and focused on those that brought positivity, happiness, and strength to our life and allowed the others to fade away. This streamlining exercise made us appreciate the quality of the true friends we had. What was the point of spending precious time tending digital acquaintances to the detriment of our real-world ones? I realized that life was too short to fret about unsatisfying, meaningless online relationships. Reinforcing the bonds that we cherish and living in the moment with the people we love have since become family priorities. I no longer feel pressured to belong to social networks; those that I really care about know how to get in touch with me.

I remembered the deep sense of satisfaction, the inspired joy I once felt, when I read about some gay kid who learned to accept himself, who opened himself up to a fuller life than he ever believed possible. But Uncle Martin was not a boy; he was not some just-sprung-from-the-closet queer finally coming to the electrifying realization that his life could get better. Uncle Martin was a grown man with an adult life he had constructed in the only way he could imagine it. He had segregated the disparate elements of his happiness, stashed them in different rooms in different buildings on different streets: a home, a church, a rented five-by-ten-storage space, different dimensions that were allowed to coexist so long as they remained blissfully ignorant of each other. He had a career, friends, a relationship with the God he believed in, and a wife he cared about. He had everything to lose. Still there’s immeasurable value in being true to yourself, even if your defining moment comes late in life, and at great cost, even if your life is the final price you pay for your honesty.

I started to realize how little I knew about myself or why I did the things I did (and still do). I didn't like not knowing who I was, so I decided to develop a friendly curiosity about myself. I watched myself for about nine months without judgment or self manipulation. I wasn't an ascetic, but I was intent on discovering my true self. My guiding principles at that time were unflinching honesty and acceptance. I thought that if I could garner enough self-knowledge, I could inch myself to happiness and whatever else it was I wanted in life, like a prisoner carving his way out of a concrete wall with a makeshift pick. At the end of nine months I had to to come to a few conclusions. First, I didn't really have a self at all. I was like an Etch A Sketch, constantly shaking myself up and starting over. And somewhere, somehow, in the last few years, I had come to believe certain things about myself that weren't really true. For instance, because I often am very charming and outwardly good-natured, I thought that I must be a warmhearted person. Pretending to conform to societal expectations had become so easy that I forgot I was pretending.

It was a Sunday at the end of November, which meant summertime in Australia. My water broke at night, and this time I knew what was coming. I remember thinking, There’s no turning back now. Immediately after my water broke, the contractions started. I had been sleeping in Bindi’s room because I was so awkward and uncomfortable that I kept waking everybody up. Plus, Bindi loved being able to snuggle down in bed with her daddy. I crept into their room quietly. As I stood beside the bed, I leaned in next to Steve’s ear. I could feel his breath. He smelled warm and sweet and familiar. He is going to be a daddy again, I thought, his favorite job in the world. When I whispered “Steve,” he opened his eyes without moving. Bindi slept on at his side. It was about midnight, and I told Steve that we didn’t have to leave for the hospital yet, but it would be soon. Once he was satisfied that I was okay, I headed back to Bindi’s bed to get some rest. Throughout our life together, I never knew what Steve was going to say next. True to form, he came to my bedside, not long after I lay down, and said, “I’m putting my foot down.” “What?” “The baby is going to be named Robert Clarence Irwin if it’s a boy,” he said. Robert after his dad, Bob, and Clarence after my dad. “You don’t need to put your foot down,” I whispered to him. “I think it’s a beautiful name.” When my contractions were four minutes apart, I knew it was time to head to the hospital. It was five o’clock in the morning. Steve got everything organized to take me. Of course, one of the things he grabbed was a camera. He was determined that we would capture everything on film. We called Trevor, our friend and cinematographer who had filmed Bindi’s birth, to meet us at the hospital, and Thelma, Bindi’s nanny, came over to get her off to school. As we drove in the car, Steve filmed me from the driver’s seat. As he shot, the Ute slowly edged toward the side of the road. He looked up, grabbed the wheel, and corrected the steering. Then he went back to filming and the whole thing happened again. After two or three veers, I had had enough. “Stop filming,” I yelled. He quickly put the camera down. I think he realized that this was no time to argue with mama bear.

Too many people base their worth and value on what other people think of them. They worry if others like them, approve of them, or think of them as important. Because of such insecurities, they are constantly playing up to others, trying to win their favor and to meet others’ every expectation. When you do that, you set yourself up to be controlled and manipulated. You allow others to put you in a box. Some people do not follow their dreams because they are so concerned about falling from the good grace of others. You may lose the approval of others if you follow your own dreams. But if your friends approve of you only when you meet their expectations, they aren’t true friends. They are manipulators. They are controllers. There is a real freedom when you realize you don’t need the approval of others. You have almighty God’s approval. Don’t try to keep everyone around you happy. Some people don’t even want to be happy. You’ve got to be secure enough to say, “I love you, but I won’t allow you to control me. You may not give me your blessing, but that’s okay. I have God’s blessing. And I’m not a people pleaser; I’m a God pleaser.” Take charge of your life. If you’re being manipulated and pressured into being someone you are not, it’s not the other person’s fault, it’s your own fault. You control your destiny. You can be nice. You can be respectful. But do not allow anyone to make you feel guilty for being your own person. Life is too short to spend it trying to keep others happy. You cannot please everyone. To fulfill your destiny, stay true to your heart. Do not let anyone squeeze you into a mold.

My good friend grows weary. Will we stop to rest soon?” “Yes.” “Your good friend is tired, too.” She glanced sideways at the stallion he rode, an almost exact replica of her own. “Can I ask something?” Hunter’s mouth lifted at one corner. “If I say no, you will be silent?” “Are you saying I talk too much?” Loretta hesitated, realizing it was true. Silence had been her prison for far too long. And while she had the chance, she hungered to learn all she could about him--to put her ghosts to rest. “I was just wondering, of these two horses, why did you choose that one as your good friend? Is he superior to this one in some way?” “Sup-ear-ee-or?” “Better.” “Not better. He has a crooked front hoof, like my good friend who is dead.” He paused and seemed to search for the right words. “He is his face on the water, no? How is it you say this?” Loretta leaned sideways to see the stallion’s tracks. His right front hoof left a notched-crescent print in the dust. “Reflection?” “Yes, he is his reflection.” “The spittin’ image of--What was your dead friend’s name?” “It is not to be spoken. He is dead, no? To say his name would not show respect. What is this to do with spit?” “It’s just a saying. When someone or something looks just like something else, it’s called a spittin’ image.

growing, like a storm on the horizon, gathering, the echo of thunder distant but present. For whatever reason, it doesn’t affect me. I am certain that there is something out there, waiting for us. We press on, into the darkness, barreling at maximum speed, the three nuclear warheads on our ship armed and ready. I feel like Ahab hunting the white whale. I am a man possessed. When I launched into space aboard the Pax, my life was empty. I didn’t know Emma. My brother was a stranger to me. I had no family, no friends. Only Oscar. Now I have something to lose. Something to live for. Something to fight for. My time in space has changed me. When I left Earth the first time, I was still the rebel scientist the world had cast out. I felt like an outsider, a renegade. Now I have become a leader. I’ve learned to read people, to try to understand them. That was my mistake before. I trudged ahead with my vision of the world, believing the world would follow me. But the truth is, true leadership requires understanding those you lead, making the best choices for them, and most of all, convincing them when they don’t realize what’s best for them. Leadership is about moments like this, when the people you’re charged with protecting have doubts, when the odds are against you. Every morning, the crew gathers on the bridge. Oscar and Emma strap in on each side of me and we sit around the table and everyone gives their departmental updates. The ship is operating at peak efficiency. So is the crew. Except for the elephant in the room. “As you know,” I begin, “we are still on course for Ceres. We have not ordered the other ships in the Spartan fleet to alter course. The fact that the survey drones have found nothing, changes nothing. Our enemy is advanced. Sufficiently advanced to alter our drones and hide itself. With that said, we should discuss the possibility that there is, in fact, nothing out there on Ceres. We need to prepare for that eventuality.” Heinrich surveys the rest of the crew before speaking. “It could be a trap.” He’s always to the point. I like that about him. “Yes,” I reply, “it could be. The entity, or harvester, or whatever is out there, could be manufacturing the solar cells elsewhere—deeper in the solar system, or from another asteroid in the belt. It could be sending the solar cells to Ceres and then toward the sun, making them look as though they were manufactured on Ceres. There could be a massive bomb or attack drones waiting for us at Ceres.” “We could split our fleet,

Despite our relatively poor investment performance, 1988 was a great year for Bridgewater, because by reflecting on and learning from our poor performance, we made systematic improvements. I have come to realize that bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons, and not just about business but also about relationships. One has many more supposed friends when one is up than when one is down, because most people like to be with winners and shun losers. True friends are the opposite. I got a lot out of my bad times, not just because they gave me mistakes to learn from but also because they helped me find out who my real friends were—the friends who would be with me through thick and thin.

shoulder. “If your young man is innocent he’ll be all right. British justice is deservedly respected all the world over.” “But the p’lice, they’re something chronic; they’ll worm anything out of you,” blubbered Nellie. “Don’t get any wrong ideas about our excellent police force into your head,” Mr. Slocomb admonished her. “They are the friends of the innocent. Of course this is very unfortunate for your young man, but surely——” “There ’e is, my poor Bob, in a nasty cell! Oh, sir, d’you think they’ll let me see ’im?” “Well, really——” began Mr. Slocomb; but the conversation was interrupted by a strident call. “Nellie! Nellie! What are you about? Pull yourself together, girl! We have to dine even if...” Mrs. Bliss, the proprietress of the Frampton, flowingly clothed in black satin, paused in the doorway. “Dear me, Mr. Slocomb; you must be wondering what’s come to me, shouting all over the house like this! But really, my poor nerves are so jangled I hardly know where I am! To think of dear Miss Pongleton, always so particular, poor soul, lying there on the stairs—dear, dear, dear!” Nellie had slipped past Mrs. Bliss and scuttled back to the kitchen. Mr. Slocomb noticed that Mrs. Bliss’s black satin was unrelieved by the usual loops of gold chain and pearls, and concluded that this restraint was in token of respect to the deceased. “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Bliss, you must be distraught. Indeed a terrible affair! And this poor girl is in great distress about young Bob Thurlow, but I would advise you to keep her mind on her work, Mrs. Bliss; work is a wonderful balm for harassed nerves. A dreadful business! I only know, of course, the sparse details which I have just read in the evening Press.” “You’ve heard nothing more, Mr. Slocomb? Nellie’s Bob is a good-for-nothing, we all know”—Mrs. Bliss’s tone held sinister meaning—“but I’m sure none of us thought him capable of this!” “We must not think him so now, Mrs. Bliss, until—and unless—we are reluctantly compelled to do so,” Mr. Slocomb told her in his most pompous manner. “And Bob was always so good to poor Miss Pongleton’s Tuppy. The little creature is very restless; mark my words, he’s beginning to pine! Now I wonder, Mr. Slocomb, what I ought to do with him? What would you advise? Perhaps poor Miss Pongleton’s nephew, young Mr. Basil, would take him—though in lodgings, of course, I hardly know. There’s many a landlady would think a dog nothing but a nuisance, and little return for it, but of course what I have done for the poor dear lady I did gladly——” “Indeed, Mrs. Bliss, we have always counted you as one of Tuppy’s best friends. And as you say, Bob Thurlow was good to him, too; he took him for walks, I believe?” “He always seemed so fond of the poor little fellow; who could believe ... Well! well! And they say dogs know! What was that saying Mr. Blend was so fond of at one time—before your day, I daresay it would be: True humanity shows itself first in kindness to dumb animals. Out of one of his scrap-books. Well, the truest sayings sometimes go astray! But I must see after that girl; and cook’s not much better, she’s so flustered she’s making Nellie ten times worse. She can’t keep her tongue still a moment!” Mrs. Bliss bustled away, and Mr. Slocomb, apparently rather exasperated by her chatter, made his escape as soon as she had removed herself from the doorway. As Mrs. Bliss returned to the kitchen she thought: “Well, I’m glad he’s here; that’s some comfort; always so helpful—but goodness knows what the dinner will be like!” CHAPTER TWO THE FRUMPS DINNER at the Frampton that evening was eaten to the accompaniment of livelier conversation than usual, and now and again from one of the little tables an excited voice would rise to a pitch that dominated the surrounding talk until the owner of the voice, realizing her unseemly assertiveness on this solemn evening, would fall into lowered tones or awkward silence. The boarders discussed the murder callously. One’s

You okay?” he asked quietly. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” “Brad. I know you were crushing on him, and now he’s packed it up and moved next door. I wanted to make sure you weren’t having trouble dealing with it.” “I can’t believe Allie told you about my crush.” “Give me a break, Kate. I’ve known since family weekend. When was the last time you wanted to take a picture of me? Document my freshman year? What? Do I have clueless tattooed across my forehead?” Narrowing my eyes, I leaned toward him. “Yeah, I think maybe you do.” Even in the shadows I could see him grin. This was so totally weird. Sitting out here, having an almost normal conversation with my brother. “He’s not your type, Kate.” I scoffed. “How do you know my type? I don’t even know my type.” “Trust me, when you do figure your type out, you’re gonna realize it’s not Brad. I mean, I like him, and he’s a great roommate, but what I want in a friend and what you need in a boyfriend aren’t the same. He’d just end up hurting you. Then I’d have to beat the crap out of him.” I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Would you really do that for me, Sam?” “You know I would.” His voice was totally serious. And I realized that he was so not joking. His revelation stunned me almost as much as Joe’s kiss. No, wait, nothing would ever throw me off balance as much as that kiss. “You do know that, don’t you, Kate?” Sam asked. “You’re my sister and I . . .” He waved his hand. “That L-word. You know.” “Love?” I asked. “Don’t make me say it, okay? Just know it’s true. I know I give you a hard time, but hey, that’s what brothers do. It’s part of our genetic makeup, a little chip inside our brains that gets activated when our parents shove a screaming baby sister in our face.” “Like you’d have a memory of that moment. You were only fifteen months old.” “Whatever. Look, I’m out here right now because I’ve been a little worried about you, and I haven’t really been able to get you alone to talk.” “You’ve been able to get Allie alone.” And for a lot more than conversation. He grimaced. “Yeah, she told me you know about us. Are you okay with that?” “What if I’m not?” “Then tough. Get over it.” “Some understanding brother you are.” “I’ve got my limits.” “So you really like her, huh?” “Yeah, I have for a long time, but geez, she’s my sister’s best friend. How weird is that?” “Totally weird. When she described the way you kiss—” “What?” Horror echoed his voice. His eyes were wide, his mouth open. “Payback for the snowball,” I said snidely. “I already paid you back for that.” “So? Maybe there’s a little chip inside a girl’s brain that gets activated when her brother is a jerk and erases paybacks as soon as they happen so we need a steady stream of them.” “You’re definitely not playing nice, Kate.” I heard him heave a sigh. “You know, that’s part of the reason I’ve steered clear of Allie. I don’t want her discussing my . . . moves with my sister.” “Yeah, like you’ve got moves.” He gave me a cocky look. “Hey, I’ve got moves.” I held up a hand. “Definitely don’t want to hear about them.” “Definitely don’t want you to hear about them.

When we dwell in willingness, in appreciation, in thankfulness, in trust, in true friendship with ourselves, gradually we come to realize that if whatever we are working toward, if whatever we are hoping for doesn’t happen, then God is working toward some greater beneficence through whatever does happen. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to be upset about. There is no reason to hold back from life. We move ahead freely, confidently, lovingly, befriending everybody around us, because we are befriending our own self. We never create an enemy outside, because we never live with the enemy inside. In that state of friendliness within, you are never a victim. There is no self-condemnation, there is no guilt, there is no question of blame, there is no depression. Your mind is more and more vibrant. It is buoyant.

When we dwell in willingness, in appreciation, in thankfulness, in trust, in true friendship with ourselves, gradually we come to realize that if whatever we are working toward, if whatever we are hoping for doesn’t happen, then God is working toward some greater beneficence through whatever does happen. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to be upset about. There is no reason to hold back from life. We move ahead freely, confidently, lovingly, befriending everybody around us, because we are befriending our own self. We never create an enemy outside, because we never live with the enemy inside. In that state of friendliness within, you are never a victim. There is no self-condemnation, there is no guilt, there is no question of blame, there is no depression. Your mind is more and more vibrant. It is buoyant. It moves naturally upward because it is light. It vibrates at a very high level. It attracts the ethereal vibrations of the holy saints and sages that are eternally available to all human beings throughout the ages.

Someone said: “I have neglected that true purpose.” Rumi replied: When this thought enters a person’s mind and they criticize them self, saying, “What am I about, and why do I do these things?” When this happens, it is a sure proof that God loves them and cares for them. “Love continues so long as reprimands continue,” said the poet. We may reprimand our friends, but we never reprimand a stranger. Now there are levels of reprimand. When a person is stung by it and sees the truth in it, that is a sign that God loves them and cares for them. But if the reprimand flies by that person without causing any pain at all, then this is no sign of love. When a carpet is beaten to get rid of the dust, intelligent people do not call that a reprimand. But if a woman beats her own darling child, then that is called a reprimand and is a proof of her love. Therefore, as long as you find pain and regret within yourself, that is a proof of God’s love and guidance. If you find fault in your brother or sister, the fault you see in them is within yourself. The true Sufi is like a mirror where you see your own image, for “The believer is a mirror of their fellow believers.” Get rid of those faults in yourself, because what bothers you in them bothers you in yourself. An elephant was led to a well to drink. Seeing itself in the water, it shied away. It thought it was shying away from another elephant. It did not realize it was shying away from its own self. All evil qualities—oppression, hatred, envy, greed, mercilessness, pride—when they are within yourself, they bring no pain. When you see them in another, then you shy away and feel the pain. We feel no disgust at our own scab and abscess. We will dip our infected hand into our food and lick our fingers without turning in the least bit squeamish. But if we see a tiny abscess or half a scratch on another’s hand, we shy away from that person’s food and have no stomach for it whatsoever. Evil qualities are just like scabs and abscesses; when they are within us they cause no pain, but when we see them even to a small degree in another, then we feel pain and disgust. Just as you shy away from your brother or sister, so you should excuse them for shying away from you. The pain you feel comes from those faults, and they see the same faults. The seeker of truth is a mirror for their neighbors. But those who cannot feel the sting of truth are not mirrors to anyone but themselves.

An organization once offered a bounty of five thousand dollars apiece for wolves that were captured alive. Enticed by the idea of such money, Sam and Jed eagerly set out through the forests and into the mountains in search of the animals that could secure their fortune. They fell asleep under the stars one night, exhausted after days of enthusiastic hunting. Sam awoke in the middle of the night and saw about fifty wolves surrounding him and Jed—hungry wolves, baring their teeth, with their eyes glistening at the thought of easy human prey. Realizing what was going on, Sam nudged his friend and said eagerly, “Jed, wake up! We’re rich!”1 A positive attitude enables you to make the best of every situation, and that gives you power over your circumstances instead of allowing your circumstances to have power over you. This was certainly true for Sam. While most people would be terrified when surrounded by a wolf pack, Sam saw the opportunity he’d been waiting for. Make a commitment today to be a positive person. The more positive you are, the more powerful you’ll be.

Some churches try so hard to be user-friendly and relational that the Bible is implicitly ignored or depreciated. In one evangelical church that I recently attended, the morning’s skit came in three secenes that devoured about fifteen minutes. The closing lines on true love and friendship emerged from a scene in which one woman was giving comfort and love to another who had just had a miscarriage. The latter thanked her for not quoting verses like Romans 8:28 at her, but just loving her. Now I realize that quoting verses “at” someone can be done in an insensitive and triumphalistic fashion. Yet the fact remains that no Christian who passes through deep waters draws much comfort from God until he or she realizes that God really is in control, God really does love his own people, God really is wise and good, God really can use pain in this fallen world in remarkable ways.77 To turn people away from such God-centered truths to appeal to purely human comfort I might have expected from a liberal church; it is crushingly disappointing in a church that nominally retains its evangelical statement of faith.

Determination isn’t always about succeeding. Sometimes determination means simply surviving, pressing on in the face of what feels like insurmountable obstacles. But as men, we need to realize that our friends and families depend on us to become all we are called to be.

The next leg of my pilgrimage was a carefully planned trip to Southeast Asia. I will always remember, during the first stop on my itinerary, walking and talking with a national believer along the streets of a major city in his country. As had already happened to me numerous times, I found myself so overwhelmed by the inspiring story that I was hearing that I simply zoned out as I tried to absorb it all. After a time, I realized that my companion was still talking and I had no idea what he was talking about. I apologized and confessed to my new friend that I hadn't been paying attention. He said, 'That's all right, Nik, I realized that. But I wasn't talking to you. I was talking with the Lord to see where we were, and what we should do today.' I decided then and there that I wanted to know Jesus that way. I decided then and there that I wanted to walk with Jesus that way.

I wonder what the future has in store for the two of them.” Lucetta’s mention of the future had Bram pausing for a moment, realizing that with all the insanity of the past week or so, they’d not had much time to talk about anything, let alone what either of them wanted for the future. “Even though I was disappointed with the explanation behind the supposed ghosts at Ravenwood, you have to admit that some of what Mrs. Macmillan told you would make good fodder for a new book,” Lucetta continued, pulling him from his thoughts. “Readers would especially like the part about a hidden treasure, although, in my humble opinion, the hero should get caught trying to find it and . . .” As Lucetta continued musing about different plot points, it suddenly hit him how absolutely wonderful life would be if he could spend it with the amazing lady standing right next to him. That she was beautiful, there could be no doubt, but her true beauty wasn’t physical in nature, it was soul-deep—seen in the way she treated her friends, animals, and even a mother who’d brushed her aside for a man who was less than worthy. She’d been through so much, and yet, here she was, contemplating his work and what could help him, and . . . he wanted to give her a spectacular gesture, something that would show her exactly how special he found her. She’d been on her own for far too long, and during that time, she’d decided she didn’t need anyone else, or rather, she wouldn’t need anyone because that could cause her pain—pain she’d experienced when her father had left her, and then when her mother had done the same thing by choosing Nigel. “. . . and I know that you seem to be keen on the whole pirate idea, but really, Bram, if you’d create a hero who is more on the intelligent side, less on the race to the rescue of the damsel in distress side, well, I mean, I’m no author, but . . .” As she stopped for just a second to gulp in a breath of air, and then immediately launched back into a conversation she didn’t seem to realize he wasn’t participating in, Bram got the most intriguing and romantic idea he’d ever imagined. Taking a single step closer to Lucetta, he leaned down and kissed her still-moving lips. When she finally stopped talking and let out the smallest of sighs, he deepened the kiss, reluctantly pulling away from her a moment later. “I know this is going to seem rather peculiar,” he began. “But I need to go to work right this very minute.” “Work?” she repeated faintly. “Indeed, and I do hope you won’t get too annoyed by this, but I need to get started straightaway, which means you might want to go back to the theater so that you don’t get bored.” “You want me gone from Ravenwood?” she asked in a voice that had gone from faint to irritated in less than a second. “I don’t know if I’d put it quite like that, but I might be able to work faster without you around.” He sent her a smile, kissed her again, but when he started getting too distracted with the softness of her lips, pulled back, kissed the tip of her nose, and then . . . after telling her he’d see her before too long, headed straight back into his dungeon.