Relationships Lasted Longer Quotes

A relationship is likely to last way longer, if each partner convinces or has convinced themselves that they do not deserve their partner, even if that is not true.

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling.

It is not lies or a lack of loyalty that ends a relationship. It is the agonizing truth that one person feels in their heart on a daily basis. It is realizing that you are coping and not living. It is the false belief that there is a verse, quote, phrase or talk that will magically make you feel content, complete or not care. However, it doesn’t last longer than a few days, before your mind and heart goes back to what it wants. It is the moment you realize that you left without ever leaving. It is the moment you realize that fear, shame or guilt is the only thing standing in the way of the life God meant for you to live.

Closing The Cycle One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment." Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

She realized, when relationships failed to last, it was not because love was no longer present, but because people had stopped believing in themselves and in their partners.

A pair of great heels was much more satisfying than a man. They lasted longer, and better yet, they didn’t leave me for someone prettier.

Being in love is an emotional and obsessive experience. However, emotions change and obsessions fade. Research indicates that the average life span of the "in love" obsession is two years. For some it may last a bit longer; for some, a bit less. But the average is two years. Then we come down off the emotional high and those aspects of life that we disregarded in our euphoria begin to become important. Our differences begin to emerge and we often find ourselves arguing with the person whom we once though to be perfect. We have now discovered for ourselves that being in love is not the foundation for a happy marriage.

An incomplete list: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take pictures of concert states. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one's hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position – but no, this wasn't true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.

...friends were more important than lovers - not least for the fact that friendships generally lasted longer than relationships.

I wonder why I miss her and Dex does not. Perhaps it is because I've known her so much longer. Or maybe it's the very nature of a friendship versus an intimate relationship. When you are in a relationship, you are aware that it might end. You grow apart, find someone else, simply fall out of love. But a friendship isn't a zero-sum game, and as such, you assume it will last forever, especially an old friendship. You take its permanence for granted, which might be the very thing so dear about it.

Significantly, romantic friendships can coexist with the fact of partners' marrying because their reason for being is not to replace marriage but to open the possibility of sustained, committed true love existing among friends, and not just same-sex friends. No matter that our chosen relationship commitments change. Those of us who have long-term romantic friendships, some that have lasted longer than any of our marriages or partnerships, do not fear that these commitments will falter if we create primary bonds.

I think timing is better left up to God to decide then religious leaders. I once met a man that brought his wife flowers in the hospital. They held hands, kissed and were as affectionate as any cute couple could be. They were both in their eighties. I asked them how long they were married. I expected them to tell me fifty years or longer. To my surprise, they said only five years. He then began to explain to me that he was married thirty years to someone that didn’t love him, and then he remarried a second time only to have his second wife die of cancer, two years later. I looked at my patient (his wife) sitting in the wheelchair next to him smiling. She added that she had been widowed two times. Both of her marriages lasted fifteen years. I was curious, so I asked them why they would even bother pursuing love again at their age. He looked at me with astonishment and said, “Do you really think that you stop looking for a soulmate at our age? Do you honestly believe that God would stop caring about how much I needed it still, just because I am nearing the end of my life? No, he left the best for last. I have lived through hell, but if I only get five years of happiness with this woman then it was worth the years of struggle I have been through.

...I don't need any explanation about what you do with your life. You and I...we grew up together,and that's it. Yeah, we shared a lot of stuff back then, and we were there for each other when it mattered. But neither one of us can fit into the clothes we used to wear , and this relationship between us is just the same. It doesn't fit in our lives any longer. We don't...fit anymore. And listen., I didn't mean to get pissy in the truck, but I think you need to be clear on this. You and I? We have a past. That's it. That's ...all we'll ever have" (Blay to Qhuinn)...

I've had orgasms lasting longer than our relationship.

My dad once said if you want to last longer in your relationship you have to marry someone who loves you, not someone you love

When we come from an authentic, genuine place in ourselves, our efforts to connect with people work to their fullest. Our relationships develop more easily and last longer, and we feel better about the people

How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap. To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…

The only person that should wear your ring is the one person that would never… 1. Ask you to remain silent and look the other way while they hurt another. 2. Jeopardize your future by taking risks that could potentially ruin your finances or reputation. 3. Teach your children that hurting others is okay because God loves them more. God didn’t ask you to keep your family together at the expense of doing evil to others. 4. Uses religious guilt to control you, while they are doing unreligious things. 5. Doesn't believe their actions have long lasting repercussions that could affect other people negatively. 6. Reminds you of your faults, but justifies their own. 7. Uses the kids to manipulate you into believing you are nothing. As if to suggest, you couldn’t leave the relationship and establish a better Christian marriage with someone that doesn’t do these things. Thus, making you believe God hates all the divorced people and will abandon you by not bringing someone better to your life, after you decide to leave. As if! 8. They humiliate you online and in their inner circle. They let their friends, family and world know your transgressions. 9. They tell you no marriage is perfect and you are not trying, yet they are the one that has stirred up more drama through their insecurities. 10. They say they are sorry, but they don’t show proof through restoring what they have done. 11. They don’t make you a better person because you are miserable. They have only made you a victim or a bitter survivor because of their need for control over you. 12. Their version of success comes at the cost of stepping on others. 13. They make your marriage a public event, in order for you to prove your love online for them. 14. They lie, but their lies are often justified. 15. You constantly have to start over and over and over with them, as if a connection could be grown and love restored through a honeymoon phase, or constant parental supervision of one another’s down falls. 16. They tell you that they don’t care about anyone other than who they love. However, their actions don’t show they love you, rather their love has become bitter insecurity disguised in statements such as, “Look what I did for us. This is how much I care.” 17. They tell you who you can interact with and who you can’t. 18. They believe the outside world is to blame for their unhappiness. 19. They brought you to a point of improvement, but no longer have your respect. 20. They don't make you feel anything, but regret. You know in your heart you settled.

You have soul ties with the people you sleep with and even when you are no longer in bed with them, they remain in your head. Your thoughts are consumed by their absence in your life. We feel disconnected from something when we give away our most prized bodily asset to a person that can’t even spell our last name correctly

I’ve had cartons of milk that have lasted longer than most of my relationships.

If a relationship lasts longer than 7 years, you are no longer girlfriend-boyfriend. You are family.

There were emotions she wanted to hold in the palm of her hand that were simply no longer there.

I am at the point in my life where I no longer know another person in my shoes. I could count on my friend Colleen for a long time, but then she had to go and get a pseudo-boyfriend last year. I couldn’t believe that. It was almost like she wasn’t thinking about how her relationship would affect me.

When you stop avoiding and resisting that truth, you can finally acknowledge and heal it. Life becomes so much calmer. It is no longer a manic search for meaning, filled with shaky declarations of personality and passions. Your identity is no longer a never-ending quest to prove “I am,” but rather an exploration into your suffering so that you can let go of what you “are not.” Once you do that, your true self comes rushing back in at last.

Despite everything I still thank the universe For blessing me with you As my first If I could love you this much For this long — And on my first try — Then surely, I could love someone else more Far better, Far longer.

When our conversations become constrained, when we avoid topics that might cause upset, when we accept comments or behavior that are hurtful, we no longer aim for harmony but rather toward a sort of deafness that allows us to stay in a relationship longer than we should.  Our senses have become dulled and we end up settling, even when we are anguished. 

I’m not sure about all the particulars that led to this moment. Do I believe life is a series of dots to be connected…or that no one can outrun destiny…or that all roads lead to truth and coincidence is a lie to distract us? The reason I was in this place no longer mattered. The harsh reality stared me in the face and demanded an immediate decision. Walk away and blame it on my age. Or stay and try to help a woman who had slowly become my friend over the last few weeks.

My mother was obviously never there to take the blame she deserved. She left me to absorb it all in her place. She was far too busy in her own world, that incidentally revolved around herself. I'm pretty sure she dated a new guy every few months for most of my childhood. Some would last longer and show up again later after disappearing for a while, like the last day of a cold or flu before you start feeling better.

Most people come into your life temporarily simply to teach you something. They come and they go and they make a difference. And it’s OK that they’re not in your life anymore. Not all relationships last, but the lessons these relationships bring to you do. If you learn to open your heart and mind, anyone, including the folks who eventually drive you mad, can teach you something worthwhile. Sometimes it will feel weird when you realize you spent so much time with someone you are no longer connected to, but that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. We all are.

Understanding another person isn’t possible until we have practiced looking deeply at ourselves. Then, when we look at the other person, we’ll begin to understand their suffering, because we’ve already seen and transformed our own. Once we can understand our loved one’s suffering, we can help him or her. We will no longer reproach or blame the other person, because we’ll have understanding in our hearts. Our way of looking at the other person will contain compassion. And the other person will be able to tell. Even if we haven’t done or said anything, our way of looking already begins the process of healing.

At the point where he, today's Ivan Ilyich, began to emerge, all the pleasures that had seemed so real melted away now before his eyes and turned into something trivial and often disgusting. And the further he was from childhood, the nearer he got to the present day, the more trivial and dubious his pleasures appeared. It started with law school. That had retained a little something that was really good: there was fun, there was friendship, there was hope. But in the last years the good times had become more exceptional. Then, at the beginning of his service with the governor, some good times came again: memories of making love to a woman. Then it became all confused, and the good times were not so many. After that there were fewer still; the further he went the fewer there were. Marriage. . .an accident and such a disappointment, and his wife's bad breath, and all that sensuality and hypocrisy! And the deadlines of his working life, and those money worries, going on for a year, two years, ten, twenty - always the same old story. And the longer it went on the deadlier it became. 'It's as if I had been going downhill when I thought I was going uphill. That's how it was. In society's opinion I was heading uphill, but in equal measure life was slipping away from me...And now it's all over. Nothing left but to die!

These days, relationships don't last longer because all job interview questions have been implemented in our daily life.

Friendships never grow old; they only last longer and gets newer and fresher everyday.

As all these barriers to single living and personal autonomy gradually eroded, society’s ability to pressure people into marrying, or keep them in a marriage against their wishes, was drastically curtailed. People no longer needed to marry in order to construct successful lives or long-lasting sexual relationships. With that, thousands of years of tradition came to an end.

Proven professionals know that by focusing on quality, you can’t lose with the classics and your clothes will last longer. It’s not about having expensive clothing, it is about having style.

Getting in touch with our frozen grief can be a sacred act. Grief work is healing. Grieving allows us to make peace with the past and the present. Grieving helps us to come out of hiding and unravels our masks and false self. We grow stronger and wiser when we get in touch with our original pain. We are no longer chained to our traumatic buried feelings and memories—we are liberated.

Your assumptions about the lives of others are in direct relation to your naïve pomposity. Many people you believe to be rich are not rich. Many people you think have it easy worked hard for what they got. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. Many people who appear to you to be old and stupidly saddled down with kids and cars and houses were once every bit as hip and pompous as you. When you meet a man in the doorway of a Mexican restaurant who later kisses you while explaining that this kiss doesn’t ‘mean anything’ because, much as he likes you, he is not interested in having a relationship with you or anyone right now, just laugh and kiss him back. Your daughter will have his sense of humor. Your son will have his eyes. The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming. One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

Alone Again" I think of each of them living somewhere else sitting somewhere else standing somewhere else sleeping somewhere else or maybe feeding a child or reading a newspaper or screaming at their new man… but thankfully my female past (for me) has concluded peacefully. yet most others seem to believe that a new relationship will certainly work. that the last one was simply the error of choosing a bad mate. just bad taste bad luck bad fate. and then there are some who believe that old relationships can be revived and made new again. but please if you feel that way don’t phone don’t write don’t arrive and meanwhile, don’t feel bruised because this poem will last much longer than we did. it deserves to: you see its strength is that it seeks no mate at all.

These are some good questions to ask till one decides on the song, one’s true song: What has happened to my soul-voice? What are the buried bones of my life? In what condition is my relationship to the instinctual Self? When was the last time I ran free? How do I make life come alive again? Where has La Loba gone to? The old woman sings over the bones, and as she sings, the bones flesh out. We too “become” as we pour soul over the bones we have found. As we pour our yearning and our heartbreaks over the bones of what we used to be when we were young, of what we used to know in the centuries past, and over the quickening we sense in the future, we stand on all fours, four-square. As we pour soul, we are revivified. We are no longer a thin solution, a dissolving frail thing. No, we are in the “becoming” stage of transformation.

Are you falling asleep before midnight?" Cassie leaned over the edge of the couch to look at Jack. He was stretched out on the floor, his head resting against a pillow near the center of the couch, his eyes closed. She was now wide awake and headache free. He wasn't in so good a shape. "The new year is eighteen minutes away." "Come kiss me awake in seventeen minutes." She blinked at that lazy suggestion, gave a quick grin, and dropped Benji on his chest. He opened one eye to look up at her as he settled his hand lightly on the kitten. "That's a no?" She smiled. She was looking forward to dating him, but she was smart enough to know he'd value more what he had to work at. He sighed. "That was a no. How much longer am I going to be on the fence with you?" "Is that a rhetorical question or do you want an answer?" If this was the right relationship God had for her future, time taken now would improve it, not hurt it. She was ready to admit she was tired of being alone. He scratched Benji under the chin and the kitten curled up on his chest and batted a paw at his hand. "Rhetorical. I'd hate to get my hopes up." She leaned her chin against her hand, looking down at him. "I like you, Jack." "You just figured that out?" "I'll like you more when you catch my mouse." "The only way we are going to catch T.J. is to turn this place into a cheese factory and help her get so fat and slow that she can no longer run and hide." Or you could move your left hand about three inches to the right right and catch her." Jack opened one eye and glanced toward his left. The white mouse was sitting motionless beside the plate he had set down earlier. "Let her have the cheeseburger. You put mustard on it." "You're horrible." He smiled. "I'm serious." "So am I." Jack leaned over, caught Cassie's foot, and tumbled her to the floor. "Oops." "That wasn't fair. You scared my mouse." Jack set the kitten on the floor. "Benji, go get her mouse." The kitten took off after it. "You're teaching her to be a mouser." "Working on it. Come here. You owe me a kiss for the new year." "Do I?" She reached over to the bowl of chocolates on the table and unwrapped a kiss. She popped the chocolate kiss into his mouth. "I called your bluff." He smiled and rubbed his hand across her forearm braced against his chest. "That will last me until next year." She glanced at the muted television. "That's two minutes away." "Two minutes to put this year behind us." He slid one arm behind his head, adjusting the pillow. She patted his chest with her hand. "That shouldn't take long." She felt him laugh. "It ended up being a very good year," she offered. "Next year will be even better." "Really? Promise?" "Absolutely." He reached behind her ear and a gold coin reappeared. "What do you think? Heads you say yes when I ask you out, tails you say no?" She grinned at the idea. "Are you cheating again?" She took the coin. "This one isn't edible," she realized, disappointed. And then she turned it over. "A real two-headed coin?" "A rare find." He smiled. "Like you." "That sounds like a bit of honey." "I'm good at being mushy." "Oh, really?" He glanced over her shoulder. "Turn up the TV. There's the countdown." She grabbed for the remote and hit the wrong button. The TV came on full volume just as the fireworks went off. Benji went racing past them spooked by the noise to dive under the collar of the jacket Jack had tossed on the floor. The white mouse scurried to run into the jacket sleeve. "Tell me I didn't see what I think I just did." "I won't tell you," Jack agreed, amused. He watched the jacket move and raised an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to rescue the kitten or the mouse?

Most people nowadays would not consider love as related in any way to truth. Love is seen as an experience associated with the world of fleeting emotions, no longer with truth. But is this an adequate description of love? Love cannot be reduced to an ephemeral emotion. True, it engages our affectivity, but in order to open it to the beloved and thus to blaze a trail leading away from self-centredness and towards another person, in order to build a lasting relationship; love aims at union with the beloved. Here we begin to see how love requires truth. Only to the extent that love is grounded in truth can it endure over time, can it transcend the passing moment and be sufficiently solid to sustain a shared journey. If love is not tied to truth, it falls prey to fickle emotions and cannot stand the test of time. True love, on the other hand, unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light pointing the way to a great and fulfilled life. Without truth, love is incapable of establishing a firm bond; it cannot liberate our isolated ego or redeem it from the fleeting moment in order to create life and bear fruit.

If we want to be happy and joyful, then we must be determined to let go of attachment. Free from attachment, we are no longer caught in the circle of samsara—not burdened by anxiety nor restlessly searching for what is unwholesome. The absence of attachment leads to true peace and joy.

There's not much to say about loneliness, for it's not a broad subject. Any child, alone in her room, can journey across its entire breadth, from border to border, in an hour. Though not broad, our subject is deep. Loneliness is deeper than the ocean. But here, too, there is no mystery. Our intrepid child is liable to fall quickly to the very bottom without even trying. And since the depths of loneliness cannot sustain human life, the child will swim to the surface again in short order, no worse for wear. Some of us, though, can bring breathing aids down with us for longer stays: imaginary friends, drugs and alcohol, mind-numbing entertainment, hobbies, ironclad routine, and pets. (Pets are some of the best enablers of loneliness, your own cuddlesome Murphy notwithstanding.) With the help of these aids, a poor sap can survive the airless depths of loneliness long enough to experience its true horror -- duration. Did you know, Myren Vole, that when presented with the same odor (even my own) for a duration of only several minutes, the olfactory nerves become habituated -- as my daughter used to say -- to it and cease transmitting its signal to the brain? Likewise, most pain loses its edge in time. Time heals all -- as they say. Even the loss of a loved one, perhaps life's most wrenching pain, is blunted in time. It recedes into the background where it can be borne with lesser pains. Not so our friend loneliness, which grows only more keen and insistent with each passing hour. Loneliness is as needle sharp now as it was an hour ago, or last week. But if loneliness is the wound, what's so secret about it? I submit to you, Myren Vole, that the most painful death of all is suffocation by loneliness. And by the time I started on my portrait of Jean, I was ten years into it (with another five to go). It is from that vantage point that I tell you that loneliness itself is the secret. It's a secret you cannot tell anyone. Why? Because to confess your loneliness is to confess your failure as a human being. To confess would only cause others to pity and avoid you, afraid that what you have is catching. Your condition is caused by a lack of human relationship, and yet to admit to it only drives your possible rescuers farther away (while attracting cats). So you attempt to hide your loneliness in public, to behave, in fact, as though you have too many friends already, and thus you hope to attract people who will unwittingly save you. But it never works that way. Your condition is written all over your face, in the hunch of your shoulders, in the hollowness of your laugh. You fool no one. Believe me in this; I've tried all the tricks of the lonely man.

Sympathy and guilt, they note, operate within a circle of communal relationships.40 They are less likely to be felt in exchange or equality-matching relationships, the kind we have with acquaintances, neighbors, colleagues, associates, clients, and service providers. Exchange relationships are regulated by norms of fairness and are accompanied by emotions that are cordial rather than genuinely sympathetic. When we harm them or they harm us, we can explicitly negotiate the fines, refunds, and other forms of compensation that rectify the harm. When that is not possible, we reduce our distress by distancing ourselves from them or derogating them. The businesslike quid pro quo negotiations that can repair an exchange relationship are, we shall see, generally taboo in our communal relationships, and the option of severing a communal relationship comes with a high cost.41 So we repair our communal relationships with the messier but longer-lasting emotional glue of sympathy, guilt, and forgiveness.

This false solution is last for a reason. Doing without is the final resting place of many who have tried the first six false solutions. It is where people go who have given up hoping for relationship. It is a place of quiet despair. When doing the same, the opposite, too much, nothing, for others, and to yourself fall through, you are left looking at yourself, alone, in a mirror. The very isolation of the dilemma is a judgment on you. It judges in several ways, telling you things like: You aren’t meant for safe people. You don’t qualify. You’ve been asking for too much. You can’t get it right. You are too damaged to have relationships. You aren’t spiritual enough. Typically, people who are trying this last false solution don’t make a big fuss about things. They get their lives in order. They bury themselves in work, service, or other worthwhile venues. And they try not to think about what they’re doing without. The disconnected part of the soul isn’t a very rude or demanding entity. It tends to die quietly, gradually withering away like a starving infant. After a period of time, you may no longer even be able to feel the pain of isolation. At that point, less pain but more damage is occurring. If you are in this position, part of you is still alive. You’re reading this book—even if you’re weary, cynical, and with no hope. But you are taking a step.

Cultural criticism always attacks the mass media. I don't think that makes sense. We should look more closely at the work of deformation that starts deeper down, especially because it involves so much demoralization. Something gets destroyed there that should not be destroyed under any circumstances - THE AWARENESS THAT KNOWLEDGE IS BORN OUT OF EUPHORIA AND THAT INTELLIGENCE IS A RELATIONSHIP OF THE HAPPY CONSCIOUSNESS WITH ITSELF. And that intelligence partly consists in the ability to find our own ways of overcoming the boredom that develops in an under-used brain. Across society as a whole, the most disturbing symptom is that people are no longer ambitious enough to plumb the limits of understanding within themselves. INTELLIGENCE IS THE LAST UTOPIAN POTENTIAL. THE ONLY TERRA INCOGNITA HUMANKIND STILL OWNS ARE THE GALAXIES OF THE BRAIN, THE MILKY WAYS OF INTELLIGENCE. And there is hardly any any convincing space travel in them. Incidentally, this internal astronautics is the only alternative to a consumerist perspective. It is the only thing that could explain to people in the future that their intelligence space is so immense that they can experiment with themselves for millennia without becoming exhausted. The really good news is that there is something breathtakingly great that is called intelligence and is uncharted. ARE YOU WILLING TO VOLUNTEER ?

Just as we judge death as a failure, we feel relationships have failed if they do not last. The same way we say the only complete and successful life is one that lasted ninety-five years, we feel that the only successful and complete relationships are those that last forever. The reality is that relationships are successful and heal us even if they only last six months. They do what they are supposed to. When they are no longer needed, they are complete and successful. Unfortunately, we don't always know that relationships are complete and successful.

JANUARY 25 Loving Yourself I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself…. In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world. —MARTIN BUBER In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning. Yet, how do we love ourselves? It is as difficult at times as seeing the back of your head. It can be as elusive as it is necessary. I have tried and tripped many times. And I can only say that loving yourself is like feeding a clear bird that no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten, and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted. Others will think you crazed to wait on something no one sees. But the clear bird only wants to feed and fly and sing. She only wants light in her belly. And once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear. In this way, I've learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world—our own self-worth. All the great moments of conception—the birth of mountains, of trees, of fish, of prophets, and the truth of relationships that last—all begin where no one can see, and it is our job not to extinguish what is so beautifully begun. For once full of light, everything is safely on its way—not pain-free, but unencumbered—and the air beneath your wings is the same air that trills in my throat, and the empty benches in snow are as much a part of us as the empty figures who slouch on them in spring. When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other. And all moments of living, no matter how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once. And once there, I realize—make real before me—that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.

Homophobia and the closet are allies. Like an unhealthy co-dependent relationship they need each other to survive. One plays the victim living in fear and shame while the other plays the persecutor policing what is ‘normal’. The only way to dismantle homophobia is for every gay man and lesbian in the world to come out and live authentic lives. Once they realise how normal we are and see themselves in us….the controversy is over. It is interesting to think what would happen though....on a particularly pre-determined day that every single gay man and lesbian came out. Imagine the impact when, on that day, people all around the world suddenly discovered their bosses, mums, dads, daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, cousins, teachers, doctors, neighbours, colleagues, politicians, their favourite actors, celebrities and sports heroes, the people they loved and respected......were indeed gay. All stereotypes would immediately be broken.....just by the same single act of millions of people…..and at last there would no longer be need for secrecy. The closet would become the lounge room. How much healthier would we be emotionally and psychologically when we could all be ourselves doing life without the internal and societal negatives that have been attached to our sexual orientation.

Letting go of the friendship can feel like you’re letting go of a piece of your own history—and many friendships last far longer than they should for that very reason. There’s a psychological fallacy that likely plays in here: the Sunk Cost Fallacy. It describes our tendency to stick with a task, job, or relationship because we have already invested time, effort, or money in it, regardless of how well (or not well) it’s working for us now. It’s a big part of why we continue to hold on to long-standing friendships, even if the other person is no longer a good friend. “We have history. We’ve been through a lot together! I can’t just throw that all away!” Can’t you, though?

Obviously, in those situations, we lose the sale. But we’re not trying to maximize each and every transaction. Instead, we’re trying to build a lifelong relationship with each customer, one phone call at a time. A lot of people may think it’s strange that an Internet company is so focused on the telephone, when only about 5 percent of our sales happen through the telephone. In fact, most of our phone calls don’t even result in sales. But what we’ve found is that on average, every customer contacts us at least once sometime during his or her lifetime, and we just need to make sure that we use that opportunity to create a lasting memory. The majority of phone calls don’t result in an immediate order. Sometimes a customer may be calling because it’s her first time returning an item, and she just wants a little help stepping through the process. Other times, a customer may call because there’s a wedding coming up this weekend and he wants a little fashion advice. And sometimes, we get customers who call simply because they’re a little lonely and want someone to talk to. I’m reminded of a time when I was in Santa Monica, California, a few years ago at a Skechers sales conference. After a long night of bar-hopping, a small group of us headed up to someone’s hotel room to order some food. My friend from Skechers tried to order a pepperoni pizza from the room-service menu, but was disappointed to learn that the hotel we were staying at did not deliver hot food after 11:00 PM. We had missed the deadline by several hours. In our inebriated state, a few of us cajoled her into calling Zappos to try to order a pizza. She took us up on our dare, turned on the speakerphone, and explained to the (very) patient Zappos rep that she was staying in a Santa Monica hotel and really craving a pepperoni pizza, that room service was no longer delivering hot food, and that she wanted to know if there was anything Zappos could do to help. The Zappos rep was initially a bit confused by the request, but she quickly recovered and put us on hold. She returned two minutes later, listing the five closest places in the Santa Monica area that were still open and delivering pizzas at that time. Now, truth be told, I was a little hesitant to include this story because I don’t actually want everyone who reads this book to start calling Zappos and ordering pizza. But I just think it’s a fun story to illustrate the power of not having scripts in your call center and empowering your employees to do what’s right for your brand, no matter how unusual or bizarre the situation. As for my friend from Skechers? After that phone call, she’s now a customer for life. Top 10 Ways to Instill Customer Service into Your Company   1. Make customer service a priority for the whole company, not just a department. A customer service attitude needs to come from the top.   2. Make WOW a verb that is part of your company’s everyday vocabulary.   3. Empower and trust your customer service reps. Trust that they want to provide great service… because they actually do. Escalations to a supervisor should be rare.   4. Realize that it’s okay to fire customers who are insatiable or abuse your employees.   5. Don’t measure call times, don’t force employees to upsell, and don’t use scripts.   6. Don’t hide your 1-800 number. It’s a message not just to your customers, but to your employees as well.   7. View each call as an investment in building a customer service brand, not as an expense you’re seeking to minimize.   8. Have the entire company celebrate great service. Tell stories of WOW experiences to everyone in the company.   9. Find and hire people who are already passionate about customer service. 10. Give great service to everyone: customers, employees, and vendors.

AN INCOMPLETE LIST: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take photographs of concert stages. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one’s hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position—but no, this wasn’t true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.

Likewise, in many relationships there is a period of ripeness during which we connect and uplift each other’s lives. When that phase is complete, it is time to move on. Attempting to hold on will only create frustration and delay the next golden intersection. As much as we would like to hold on to sweet situations forever, we must let go when they have run their course. This is the way of the Tao. Lest you grow wistful because golden intersections do not last forever, take comfort in knowing that (1) you can still love and appreciate the person and the time you shared even if you are no longer together; (2) there is always another (often better) golden intersection coming to replace the one that ended; and (3) some golden relationships do last a lifetime and perhaps many lifetimes. The Great Way, Lao Tse would assure us, is never devoid of gold.

Carolina Maria de Jesus wrote in her diary: 'Everyone has an ideal in life. Mine is to be able to read.' She is ambitious, but it is a strange ambition for a woman. She wants learning. She wants the pleasure of reading and writing. Men ask her to marry but she suspects that they will interfere with her reading and writing. They will resent the time she takes alone. They will resent the focus of her attention elsewhere. They will resent her concentration and they will resent her self-respect. They will resent her pride in herself and her pride in her unmediated relationship to a larger world of ideas, descriptions, facts. Her neighbors see her poring over books, or with pen and paper in hand, amidst the garbage and hunger of the favela. Her ideal makes her a pariah: her desire to read makes her more an outcast than if she sat in the street putting fistfuls of nails into her mouth. Where did she get her ideal? No one offered it to her. Two thirds of the world’s illiterates are women. To be fucked, to birth children, one need not know how to read. Women are for sex and reproduction, not for literature. But women have stories to tell. Women want to know. Women have questions, ideas, arguments, answers. Women have dreams of being in the world, not merely passing blood and heaving wet infants out of laboring wombs. 'Women dream,' Florence Nightingale wrote in Cassandra, 'till they have no longer the strength to dream; those dreams against which they so struggle, so honestly, vigorously, and conscientiously, and so in vain, yet which are their life, without which they could not have lived; those dreams go at last. . . . Later in life, they neither desire nor dream, neither of activity, nor of love, nor of intellect.

On this particular afternoon, they all started teasing me. “You should go out to the lobby, Jo. There’s a hot guy out there. Go talk to him!” they said. “No,” I said. “Stop it! I’m not doing that.” I was all of twenty-three, and I wasn’t exactly outgoing. She was a bit awkward--no doubt about that. I hadn’t dated all that much, and I’d never had a serious relationship--nothing that lasted longer than a month or two. I’d always been an introvert and still am (believe it or not). I was also very picky, and I just wasn’t the type of girl who struck up conversations with guys I didn’t know. I was honestly comfortable being single; I didn’t think that much of it. “Who is this guy, anyway?” I asked, since they all seemed to know him for some reason. “Oh, they call him Hot John,” someone said, laughing. Hot John? There was no way I was going out in that lobby to strike up a conversation with some guy called Hot John.

―The thing about memory is that you can feel it eroding slowly, being stolen away from you by time. It starts with the way you stop hearing his voice in your head. Then it's the color of the shirt he wore last Christmas. Before you know it, your memories have become fragmented, as if the small details were grains of sand blown away by the wind. I should be grateful that I'm starting to remember you less. Instead, I felt lonely. Pieces of you that I once held dear are being ripped apart into tiny shreds of information my brain thinks I can afford to forget. I can feel my heart fighting. It loves the feel of you though for the most part, you hurt. I looked for you in places where I knew I would never find you, in faces I knew I would never recognize. I looked for you hoping that through the sheer force of my will I would find your eyes staring back. But that's the thing about memory - you can feel it eroding slowly, being stolen away from you by time. I want to remember you. But I'm no longer entirely sure I really remember you. It kills me. Have you started remembering me less too?

I’ve always hated dating,” I said instead. “In fact, if I could bypass all that might I bestow upon you a kiss business, I would. Why can’t we all just skip to the comfortable part of relationships? Go straight to the bit where you can walk around in your undies, let farts go and blame them on the dog, and leave the door open when you’re taking a piss?” “First of all, there is no part of a relationship that should involve that last bit, and second of all, dating is the best part. All those butterflies and excitement, the sexual tension. Wanting to skip to the comfortable bit is laziness. It means you don’t have to put in any effort to woo someone. Also, if memory serves, you’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than six months.” “Thanks for the reminder, oh Sarah of Ye Old Wet Blanket,” I groused, but she was right. I hadn’t dated anyone for longer than six months; and even then it hadn’t really been a relationship with any meaningful or lasting impact. “Ye Old Wet Blanket was my grandmother’s name, I’ll have you know...You’re thirty years old, practically a baby. You’ve just burned yourself out. You need to find the excitement in life again, the thrill to be had from simple things.” “I do get a thrill from simple things,” I countered. “Didn’t I mention I fixed my tap this weekend? And I had Earl Grey tea with breakfast.” “Oh. Stop. Too much excitement. I can’t handle it.

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

To this day, I am still not sure what it was about Chip Gaines that made me give him a second chance--because, basically, our first date was over before it even started. I was working at my father’s Firestone automotive shop the day we first met. I’d worked as my dad’s office manager through my years at Baylor University and was perfectly happy working there afterward while I tried to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. The smell of tires, metal, and grease--that place was like a second home to me, and the guys in the shop were all like my big brothers. On this particular afternoon, they all started teasing me. “You should go out to the lobby, Jo. There’s a hot guy out there. Go talk to him!” they said. “No,” I said. “Stop it! I’m not doing that.” I was all of twenty-three, and I wasn’t exactly outgoing. She was a bit awkward--no doubt about that. I hadn’t dated all that much, and I’d never had a serious relationship--nothing that lasted longer than a month or two. I’d always been an introvert and still am (believe it or not). I was also very picky, and I just wasn’t the type of girl who struck up conversations with guys I didn’t know. I was honestly comfortable being single; I didn’t think that much of it. “Who is this guy, anyway?” I asked, since they all seemed to know him for some reason. “Oh, they call him Hot John,” someone said, laughing. Hot John? There was no way I was going out in that lobby to strike up a conversation with some guy called Hot John. But the guys wouldn’t let up, so I finally said, “Fine.” I gathered up a few things from my desk (in case I needed a backup plan) and rounded the corner into the lobby. I quickly realized that Hot John was pretty good-looking. He’d obviously just finished a workout--he was dressed head-to-toe in cycling gear and was just standing there, innocently waiting on someone from the back. I tried to think about what I might say to strike up a conversation when I got close enough and quickly settled on the obvious topic: cycling. But just as that thought raced through my head, he looked up from his magazine and smiled right at me. Crap, I thought. I completely lost my nerve. I kept on walking right past him and out the lobby’s front door. When I reached the safety of my dad’s outdoor waiting area, I realized just how bad I’d needed the fresh air. I sat on a chair a few down from another customer and immediately started laughing at myself. Did I really just do that?

Luce closed her eyes,trying to remember exactly what he'd looked like. There were no words for it.It was just an incredible, joyous connection. "I saw him." "Who,Daniel? Yeah,I saw him,too. He was the guy who dropped the ax when it was his turn to do the chopping. Big mistake. Huge." "No,I really saw him. As he truly is." Her voice shook. "He was so beautiful." "Oh,that." Bill tossed his head, annoyed. "I recognized him.I think I've seen him before." "Doubt it." Bill coughed. "That was the first and last time you'll be able to see him like that.You saw him, and then you died.That's what happens when mortal flesh looks upon an angel's unbridled glory. Instant death. Burned away by the angel's beauty." "No,it wasn't like that." "You saw what happened to everyone else. Poof. Gone." Bill plopped down beside her and patted her knee. "Why do you think the Mayans started doing sacrifices by fire after that? A neighboring tribe discovered the charred remains and had to explain it somehow." "Yes,they burst into flames right away. But I lasted longer-" "A couple of extra seconds? When you were turned away? Congratulations." "You're wrong.And I know I've seen that before." "You've seen his wings before, maybe.But Daniel shedding his human guise and showing you his true form as an angel? Kills you every time." "No." Luce shook her head. "You're saying he can never show me who he really is?" Bill shrugged. "Not without vaporizing you and everyone around you.Why do you think Daniel's so cautious about kissing you all the time? His glory shines pretty damn bright when you two get hot and heavy." Luce felt like she could barely hold herself up. "That's why I sometimes die when we kiss?" "How 'bout a round of applause for the girl, folks?" Bill said snarkily. "But what about all those other times, when I die before we kiss, before-" "Before you even have a chance to see how toxic your relationship might become?" "Shut up." "Honestly,how many times do you have to see the same story line before you realize nothing is ever going to change?" "Something has changed," Luce said. "That's why I'm on this journey, that's why I'm still alive. If I could just see him again-all of him-I know I could handle it." "You don't get it." Bill's voice was rising. "You're talking about this whole thing in very mortal times." As he grew more agitated,spit flew from his lips. "This is the big time,and you clearly cannot handle it." "Why are you so angry all of a sudden?" "Because! Because." He paced the ledge, gnashing his teeth. "Listen to me: Daniel slipped up this once, he showed himself,but he never does that again.Never.He learned his lesson. Now you've learned one,too: Mortal flesh cannot gaze upon an angel's true form without dying.

To see how we separate, we first have to examine how we get together. Friendships begin with interest. We talk to someone. They say something interesting and we have a conversation about it. However, common interests don’t create lasting bonds. Otherwise, we would become friends with everyone with whom we had a good conversation. Similar interests as a basis for friendship doesn’t explain why we become friends with people who have completely different interests than we do. In time, we discover common values and ideals. However, friendship through common values and ideals doesn’t explain why atheists and those devout in their faith become friends. Vegans wouldn’t have non-vegan friends. In the real world, we see examples of friendships between people with diametrically opposed views. At the same time, we see cliques form in churches and small organizations dedicated to a particular cause, and it’s not uncommon to have cliques inside a particular belief system dislike each other. So how do people bond if common interests and common values don’t seem to be the catalyst for lasting friendships? I find that people build lasting connections through common problems and people grow apart when their problems no longer coincide. This is why couples especially those with children tend to lose their single friends. Their primary problems have become vastly different. The married person’s problems revolve around family and children. The single person’s problem revolves around relationships with others and themselves. When the single person talks about their latest dating disaster, the married person is thinking I’ve already solved this problem. When the married person talks about finding good daycare, the single person is thinking how boring the problems of married life can be. Eventually marrieds and singles lose their connection because they don’t have common problems. I look back at friends I had in junior high and high school. We didn’t become friends because of long nights playing D&D. That came later. We were all loners and outcasts in our own way. We had one shared problem that bound us together: how to make friends and relate to others while feeling so “different”. That was the problem that made us friends. Over the years as we found our own answers and went to different problems, we grew apart. Stick two people with completely different values and belief systems on a deserted island where they have to cooperate to survive. Then stick two people with the same values and interests together at a party. Which pair do you think will form the stronger bond? When I was 20, I was living on my own. I didn’t have many friends who were in college because I couldn’t relate to them. I was worrying about how to pay rent and trying to stretch my last few dollars for food at the end of the month. They were worried about term papers. In my life now, the people I spend the most time with have kids, have careers, are thinking about retirement and are figuring out their changing roles and values as they get older. These are problems that I relate to. We solve them in different ways because our values though compatible aren’t similar. I feel connected hearing about how they’ve chosen to solve those issues in a way that works for them.

Being Sarah’s sidekick was normal for me. I didn’t have trouble with finding decent men to talk to for the evening but my issue was making any sort of connection that would last longer than just one night. The men in New York were more finicky than the women. Not many of them wanted a real relationship and instead were typically looking to get laid as quickly as possible and then drop the girl. I’d seen it so many times that I totally understood Sarah’s outlook on casual dating, I just wasn’t sure I could manage that much longer. I really did want to find someone who I could have more with and was willing to wait it out and find them somewhere down the road.

Along with data from other research studies, these findings make it clear that when we’re trying to solicit cooperation from other people—be they coworkers, clients, students, or acquaintances—we should offer help to them in a way that’s unconditional and no-strings-attached. Approaching the potentially cooperative relationship in this way should not only increase the likelihood that you’ll secure their cooperation in the first place, but also ensure that the cooperation you do receive is built on a solid foundation of trust and mutual appreciation, rather than on a much weaker incentive system. You’ll also find this approach to be much longer lasting. Otherwise, the moment the incentive you’ve been promising or awarding can no longer be offered or is no longer desired by the other person, the brittle foundation of the relationship may crack, and the cooperative bridge you’ve built up may come crashing down.

The computer agntold scale. It also paved the way for increasing reclusive conduct at work and at home. It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to foster lasting professional relationships when the world clips along at megabyte speed and coworkers occupy a private office or separate cubicle. Prior forms of face-to-face communication are rapidly becoming obsolete. The computer age allows people to participate in a vast network of electronic communication and our escalating dependence upon electronic communications will foster rapid e opened doors to mass communication at depersonalization in the workplace. Some people will be frozen out of regular social interactions and no longer enjoy an uplifting one-on-one working relationship that people instinctively crave.

Touch her and I’ll kill you,” he snarled. West stared at him in appalled disbelief. “I knew it. Sweet Mother of God! You want her.” Devon’s visceral fury appeared to fade a few degrees as he realized he had just been outmaneuvered. He released West abruptly. “You took Theo’s title and his home,” West continued in appalled disbelief, “and now you want his wife.” “His widow,” Devon muttered. “Have you seduced her?” “Not yet.” West clapped his hand to his forehead. “Christ. Don’t you think she’s suffered enough? Oh, go on and glare. Snap me in pieces like that blasted pencil. It will only confirm that you’re no better than Theo.” Reading the outrage in his brother’s expression, he said, “Your relationships typically last no longer than the contents of the meat larder. You have a devil of a temper, and if the way you just handled her is an example of how you’ll deal with disagreements--” “That’s enough,” Devon said with dangerous softness. Rubbing his forehead, West sighed and continued wearily. “Devon, you and I have always overlooked each other’s faults, but that doesn’t mean we’re oblivious to them. This is nothing but blind, stupid lust. Have the decency to leave her alone. Kathleen is a sensitive and compassionate woman who dserves to be loved…and if you have any capacity for that, I’ve never witnessed it. I’ve seen what happens to women who care about you. Nothing cools your lust faster than affection.” Devon gave him a cold stare. “Are you going to say anything to her?” “No, I’ll hold my tongue and hope that you’ll come to your senses.” “There’s no need to worry,” Devon said darkly. “At this point I’ve made her so ill-disposed toward me that it would be a miracle if I ever manage to lure her to my bed.

...how could he explain how long ago he had given up the idea of thought, the point at which he first understood the way things were and knew that any sense we had of existence was merely a reminder of the incomprehensible futility of existence, a futility that would repeat itself ad infinitum, to the end of time and that, no, it wasn't a matter of chance and its extraordinary, inexhaustible, triumphant, unconquerable power working to bring matters to birth or annihilation, but rather the matter of a shadowy demonic purpose, something embedded deep in the heart of things, in the texture of the relationship between things, the stench of whose purpose filled every atom, that it was a curse, a form of damnation, that the world was the product of scorn, and God help the sanity of those who called themselves thinkers, which was why he no longer thought, had learned not to think any more, not that this led anywhere, of course, because wherever he looked, whichever way he turned, there was that all-pervasive stench, the stench that was there because the last word, the word that comprehended the knowledge that futility and scorn, replete with purpose, was coextensive with the world, was the world, was something of which he had to be conscious, an eternity of futility and scorn that obtained in each and every second of life for those who had set out as thinkers, futility because as soon as you abandoned thought and tried simply to look at things, thought cropped up again in a new form, a form from which, in other words, there was no escape whatever man thought or did not think, because he remained the prisoner of thought either way, and his nose was deeply pained by the stench of it, so what could he do except console himself with the thought that events simply followed their own natural course...

Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.64 Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few). THE

Relations be it personal or with customers are very sensitive in nature, If you only remember people in time of your need, they will surely not return the favor, instead their favor will benefit someone who often keeps in touch without any visible benefits. The relationship will last longer if we start earning it & not take it for granted.

And like all relationships that last longer than they should, I let my anger boil over. I still couldn’t connect with your main character, and, on top of that, I was pissed about the other books I could have been reading. I had the urge to douse you with water and see if you evaporated before me like the old witch. So this is it. I’m putting you in a Little Free Library.

I felt a niggle of guilt that Nash and I no longer had each other’s backs. But it was just another example of how relationships didn’t last forever.

How to Apply for the Best divorce Advocate in Chennai? When a marriage does not last for an extended period of time, couples frequently search online for information on how to apply for divorce Lawyers in Chennai. Many couples must endure the difficult process of separation that eventually results in the best divorce advocate in Chennai at some point in their lives. It is a serious truth that provides us with a second chance to start over. The lack of legal complexities and the emotional turmoil each spouse experiences while deciding to end their partnership amicably are the reasons why the proceedings are simple. This article will teach you how to file for divorce, especially if you're Indian. Frequently Mentioned Events that Ultimately Lead to Divorce As we have closely analyzed, it has been conceivable over time to list a few typical legal justifications that are adequate for one spouse to petition the family court for a divorce from the other. These factors include: The petitioner has learned that their partner is having an extra - marital or sexual relationship with someone else. when the petitioner's spouse has avoided them for a period longer than two years beginning on the date the divorce petition was filed. when the petitioner's partner repeatedly mistreats him or her, either physically or mentally, in a way that seems so grave that it could be death. Another cause for filing a divorce petition could be inability or rejection of sexual activity. Divorce proceedings may start when one partner or better half has had a terminal illness for a long time. If there is evidence of mental illness, the other party may choose to divorce lawfully. List of Paperwork Required for Divorce Filing If a married couple in India wants to end their marriage by mutual consent, they must present the following paperwork to the court: the partners' biographical information and family information. The previous two years' income tax or IT returns statement for the spouses. Types of Divorce in Chennai In Chennai, a divorce typically occurs using one of the two processes listed below: Divorce by mutual consent Contested divorce In the first scenario, the spouse's consent to divorcing one another. These divorces' maintenance obligations can be any amount of money or nothing at all. Any parent whose obligation is shared is solely responsible for child custody. Again, this depends on the cooperation and respect between the two people. The husband and wife must execute a "no-fault divorce," as permitted by Section B of the Hindu Marriage Law, under this consensual arrangement. The first motion is done on the date set by the family court, and the relevant couple's statements are electronically recorded and preserved for later use. Both parties agree to maintain the jury as a witness throughout the remaining processes. The judge gives the couple six months to reevaluate their next motion or second motion. Many couples change their minds during this time, thus the court is using this as an opportunity to prevent a negative event like divorce. Even after these six months, if there is still no change of heart, the court moves forward with its decision and issues a divorce decree, officially recognising the previously married couple's permanent separation.

Generosity is so important in all of the world’s religions because it no doubt expresses a fundamental aspect of our interdependence and our need for one another. Generosity was so important for our survival that the reward centers of our brain light up as strongly when we give as when we receive, sometimes even more so. As mentioned earlier, Richard Davidson and his colleagues have identified that generosity is one of the four fundamental brain circuits that map with long-term well-being. In the 2015 World Happiness Report, Davidson and Brianna Schuyler explained that one of the strongest predictors of well-being worldwide is the quality of our relationships. Generous, pro-social behavior seems to strengthen these relationships across cultures. Generosity is even associated with better health and longer life expectancy. Generosity seems to be so powerful that, according to researchers David McClelland and Carol Kirshnit, just thinking about

Imagine sitting in a cabin on a cold, snowy night. You decide to build a fire to keep yourself warm. You have a choice of using newspapers for the fire, or logs. If you know anything about fire, you know the answer to this puzzle—the newspaper would create a big blaze quickly but would die out just as quickly. The logs would take longer to catch, but would burn slowly and steadily for a very long time. I’ve seen so many people, including myself, make the mistake of looking for that instant blaze at the beginning of a relationship rather than looking for a partner with whom they can build a solid and lasting relationship. I’m not saying you can’t have both, just as you can use newspaper and logs to build a strong fire. But if you have found yourself choosing inappropriate partners over and over again, perhaps you’d be better off looking for Mr. (or Ms.) Log instead of Ms. or Mr. Flammable!

I ordered a third pint, skillfully avoiding eye contact with the barman when Ange arrived. It had been four months since I last saw her. Four months since she'd got the phone call from the police. I'd been gone a week, and had ended up under Waterloo Bridge, apparently trying to find a building site I thought I was managing. I'd been out of work for a year. Without a word she drove me to a cheap hotel in Worthing, a few miles from home. She'd already dumped my clothes inside. In the Green Man, Ange's blonde hair was longer than I remembered. I wanted to tell her she looked pretty but she curled her lip when she saw me, as if I smelt bad, and she didn't look pretty anymore.

Understanding another person isn’t possible until we have practiced looking deeply at ourselves. Then, when we look at the other person, we’ll begin to understand their suffering, because we’ve already seen and transformed our own. Once we can understand our loved one’s suffering, we can help him or her. We will no longer reproach or blame the other person, because we’ll have understanding in our hearts. Our way of looking at the other person will contain compassion.

Research shows us that giving brings much longer-lasting happiness than receiving does. Once we trade in the Great Lie of superiority and inferiority, we can step into the humility of knowing we are not above but a part of our marriages, our families, our society, our planet.

In today's world, a strong pair of hands is no longer enough for men to succeed just as a beautiful face doesn't guarantee lasting love for women. Times have changed. People now look for values everywhere. From their government to their lovers. From their phones to even the websites they visit. The 21st century game is played around value. It is slightly shifting from the package-era of the 20th century. This is one of the reason for the huge instability that has affected the modern society. From instability in relationships to quick changes in government. Value, in today's world is the difference maker between the things that will stay and the ones that won't.

Sometimes I wish I'd never left Newburyport, or at least that I'd stayed a little longer. Certainly it was the last time I'd feel at home in the way I'd first known, where every familiar teacup and chair triggered the ongoing conversation that had been my relationship with my mother, which would soon fade to a whisper and then threaten to vanish outright. The literary critic in me resents her role in this book the way I would a sentimental plot twist in a movie. We all have had mothers; few among us want to lose them. I wish my experience had transcended such an obvious bid for your sympathy, and I could have become a different writer. But I can't erase the fact that the first day of my adult life was that morning in May my mother took her last breath.

Come inside and we’ll talk,” she says, opening my car door. “I’m freezing my butt off here. Oh, why don’t the Chicago summers last longer?” Inside, I take off my shoes so I won’t wake up her parents. “Don’t worry, they left for the health club an hour ago.” “Then why was Doug escaping out your window?” Sierra winks. “You know, to keep the relationship exciting. Guys love adventure.

Relatively speaking, the tigers’ appetite for us pales before our appetite for them. Humans have haunted tigers by various means for millennia, but not long ago there was a strange and heated moment in our venerable relationship with these animals that has been echoed repeatedly in our relations with other species. It bears some resemblance to what wolves do when they get into a sheep pen: they slaughter simply because they can and, in the case of humans, until a profit can no longer be turned. For the sea otter, this moment occurred between 1790 and 1830; for the American bison, it happened between 1850 and 1880; for the Atlantic cod, it lasted for centuries, ending only in 1990. These mass slaughters have their analogue in the financial markets to which they are often tied, and they end the same way every time. The Canadian poet Eric Miller summed up the mind-set driving these binges better than just about anyone: A cornucopia! / Bliss of killing without ever seeming to subtract from the tasty sum of infinity!

Humans have hunted tigers by various means for millennia, but not long ago there was a strange and heated moment in our venerable relationship with these animals that has been echoed repeatedly in our relations with other species. It bears some resemblance to what wolves do when they get into a sheep pen: they slaughter simply because they can and, in the case of humans, until a profit can no longer be turned. For the sea otter, this moment occurred between 1790 and 1830; for the American bison, it happened between 1850 and 1880; for the Atlantic cod, it lasted for centuries, ending only in 1990. These mass slaughters have their analogue in the financial markets to which they are often tied, and they end the same way every time. The Canadian poet Eric Miller summed up the mind-set driving these binges better than just about anyone: A cornucopia! Bliss of killing without ever seeming to subtract from the tasty sum of infinity!

It was very hard for him to admit it to himself, but having her around had brought him a strange comfort, and he had no idea why. Looking out for her made him feel better somehow. Making sure she was fed and protected against danger—that seemed to work for him, too. It was a lot of trouble, actually. If she hadn’t been around, he wouldn’t go to as much bother with meals. Three out of four nights he’d just open a can of something, but because she’d been sick and needed a hot meal he’d put his best foot forward. Plus, she needed to put on another few pounds. He had spent a lot of time wondering if searching for him, sleeping in her car and probably skipping meals had made her thin and weak. Knowing she was going to be there when he got home, pestering and bothering him, made him hurry a little bit through his work, his chores. He couldn’t figure out why—he was damn sure not going to go over all that old business about the war, about Bobby. Just thinking about that stuff put a boulder in his gut and made his head ache. And yet, he had a ridiculous fear that this phone call to her sister would result in her saying, “I have to go home now.” But there was no use worrying about it—she’s going to leave soon no matter what the sister says. It’s not as though she’d camp out in his cabin through the holidays—she had people at home. Never mind her grousing about her sister, at least she had a sister who loved her, cared about her. And what had she said when she asked for a ride to town? Just a little while longer… It was the first relationship he’d had in about four years. Old Raleigh didn’t count—that had been pure servitude. If the man hadn’t left him part of a mountain, Ian would never have suspected Raleigh was even slightly grateful for the caretaking in the last months. Ian saw people regularly—he worked for the moving company when the weather was good, had his firewood route, went places like the library, had a meal out now and then. People were nice to him, and he was cordial in return. But he never got close; there had been no relationships. No one poked at him like she did, making him smile in spite of himself. That business with the puma—her opening the outhouse door and yelling at him like that—he knew what that was about. She was afraid he’d get hurt by the cat and risked her own skin to warn him. Been a long damn time since he felt anyone really cared about him at all. Maybe that was it, he thought. Marcie thinks she cares, and it’s because I was important to Bobby. If we’d just met somehow, it wouldn’t be like this. But that didn’t matter to him right now. He liked the feeling, alien though it was. He’d be back for her in two and a half hours and while he was delivering a half a cord to some dentist in Fortuna he’d watch the time so he wouldn’t be late getting back to pick her up. And with every split log he stacked, he’d be hoping her family wouldn’t find a way to get her home right away. *

Darren McGrady Darren McGrady was personal chef to Princess Diana until her tragic accident. He is now a private chef in Dallas, Texas, and a board member of the Pink Ribbons Crusade: A Date with Diana. His cookbook, titled Eating Royally: Recipes and Remembrances from a Palace Kitchen, will be released in August 2007 by Rutledge Hill Press. His website is located at theroyalchef. I knew Princess Diana for fifteen years, but it was those last four years after I became a part of her everyday life that I really got to know her. For me, one of the benefits of being a Buckingham Palace chef was the chance to speak to “Lady Di.” I had seen her in the newspapers; who hadn’t? She was beautiful. The whole world was in love with her and fascinated by this “breath of fresh air” member of the Royal Family. The first time I met her, I just stood and stared. As she chatted away with the pastry chef in the Balmoral kitchen, I thought she was even more beautiful in real life than her pictures in the daily news. Over the years, I’ve read account after account of how the Princess could light up a room, how people would become mesmerized by her natural beauty, her charm, and her poise. I couldn’t agree more. In time, I became a friendly face to the Princess and was someone she would seek out when she headed to the kitchens. At the beginning, she would pop in “just for a glass of orange juice.” Slowly, her visits became more frequent and lasted longer. We would talk about the theater, hunting, or television; she loved Phantom of the Opera and played the CD in her car. After she and Prince Charles separated, I became her private chef at Kensington Palace, and our relationship deepened as her trust in me grew. It was one of the Princess’s key traits; if she trusted you, then you were privy to everything on her mind. If she had been watching Brookside--a UK television soap opera--then we chatted about that. If the Duchess of York had just called her with some gossip about “the family,” she wanted to share that, too. “You’ll never believe what Fergie has just told me,” she would announce, bursting into the kitchen with excitement. She loved to tell jokes, even crude ones, and would laugh at the shock on my face--not so much because of the joke, but because it was the Princess telling it. Her laughter was infectious.

Anyway, I pushed past Dirk the Jerk, and rushed toward the library. I needed to find an ultimate Minecraft guide with tips and tricks, shortcuts and secrets. My plan was simple. I’d buy the game, study the book, and start playing. It couldn’t be that hard, right? I was determined to beat Dirk the Jerk at something, even if it killed me!   I headed to the library’s computer books section.  I quickly scanned for game guides. They had books on popular games such as Candy Crusher, Angry Birdbrains, and Minion Marathon. But none about Minecraft?   Then, I spotted a thin book crammed way at the back of the shelf. It was covered with a thick layer of dust and spiderwebs. (Yuck! I hate spiders!) I yanked it out: Minecraft: Surviving the First Night: An Insider’s Guide.   It was more like a journal. Not exactly what I was looking for but it was better than nothing. I looked closer at the book and noticed that there wasn’t a library sticker on it. The best I could figure was that it must be someone’s personal copy. Maybe he was hiding it from his mom who didn’t approve of computer games. (I knew all about that.)   At that point, I was really desperate. And since there wasn’t any way for me to check it out, I decided to take it. I was sure the owner wouldn’t miss it because it hadn’t been touched in forever. Maybe he’d forgotten all about it. And anyway, I’d return it after I crushed Dirk the Jerk in the survival challenge.   When I got home, I was faced with the hardest part of my whole plan, convincing Mom to buy Minecraft. She thinks computer and video games are a waste of time, except for educational ones. (She grew up back when Pac Man was hi-tech.)   I knew I’d need help coming up with reasons to convince Mom. So I checked with my good friend, Google, and I found a ton of information on why Minecraft was considered educational.     Once I explained to Mom that Minecraft taught everything from spatial relationships to electrical circuitry to complex machines, she caved in, and bought it. Now that the hard part was over, all I needed to do was learn the game.   I sat down in front of the computer in my room, and launched the game. I opened the Minecraft journal, and there was a bright flash of light!   That’s the last thing I remember.   The next thing I knew, I was sitting in the middle of a strange library. It took me a minute to figure out what the heck was going on. I looked around. Everything was made of blocks.   I looked down at my arms... rectangles. I looked down at my legs... Rectangles! I looked down at my body... a RECTANGLE!   Then it hit me... I was literally a blockhead IN Minecraft! *gulp*     That’s when I flipped out a little bit. For about ten minutes straight. I probably would have freaked out for longer, but it’s exhausting screaming, flapping my arms, and running in circles on stumpy little legs.   After I calmed down a bit and caught my breath, I thought of

Relationships would last longer if both people put in the sametime and effort in one another as much as they do there phones. If you payed as much attention to your loved one as you do your device life would be so much simpliar. It's not that complicated people. Think about it? If you took the time to work things out with your partner instead of fighting and actually showing them that you care enough to listen. Females wouldn't feel the need to yell at you. Just spending one day with the one you love can change everything all bullshit aside just you two. Enjoying each others presence and time with one another being completely honest and just reassuring them that you love them or just make there day.

Since her separation she had slowly, cautiously--perhaps even unconsciously--performed a kind of striptease, unpeeling the veils of convention which had surrounded her. During the 1980s she had been defined only by her fashions, seen merely as a glamorous clothes horse, a royal adjunct, a wife and mother. Since the separation, however, her regal wardrobe, which defined her royal mystique, had been left in the closet. Indeed, her decision, inspired by Prince William, to hold an auction of her royal wardrobe for Aids charities in New York in the summer of 1997 was a very public farewell to that old life. She no longer wanted to be seen as just a beautiful model for expensive clothes. Moreover, during her days as a semi-detached royal she had deliberately stripped away other trappings of monarchy, her servants, her ladies-in-waiting, her limousines and, most controversially, her bodyguards. The casting off of her royal title was one giant step on that journey. She had spent much time grieving a failed relationship, lost hopes and broken ambitions. She had once said: ‘I had so many dreams as a young girl. I hoped for a husband to look after me, he would be a father figure to me, he would support me, encourage me, say “Well done” or “That wasn’t good enough”. I didn’t get any of that. I couldn’t believe it.’ The days of betrayal, anguish and hurt lay in the past. Now it was time to move on, to make the most of her position and her personality. Opportunity beckoned. As the Princess admitted: ‘I have learned much over the last years. From now on I am going to own myself and be true to myself. I no longer want to live someone else’s idea of what and who I should be.’ ‘I am going to be me.

March 3 Vexation … Her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her.—1 Samuel 1:6b We don’t use the word rival much in referring to relationships in the office, neighborhood or family. It’s a word used in game-playing or competitive sports. Yet, there is probably one person who loves to push your buttons, who manipulates the conversation, who drinks the last cup of coffee and never makes another pot—you know who I’m talking about. Why, just thinking about the last little trick they pulled makes your face blush a bit with anger or embarrassment. Their daily digs or sick sarcasm is a constant wear on your attempts to be at peace while you do your job. At times you’ve thought of strangling them, but more often you simply try to avoid them. If you are a Christian, you are going to be targeted by the enemy of peace. Satan will send a few darts your way: a bossy co-worker, a meddling aunt, a gossipy neighbor and your most-of-the-time adoring husband to name a few. Don’t be surprised when it happens, because it will happen. Your peace is too good to be true in the world’s eyes. The world doesn’t understand it, the world can’t have it, and therefore the world doesn’t want you to have it either. Hannah’s story in 1 Samuel is an example of the woman who faces daily vexation from someone who is bent on robbing her of her peace and joy in the Lord. When she could take the ridicule no longer, she turned to the Lord. In bitterness of soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord (1 Samuel 1:10). She called to God for release of the heaviness in her soul. Is your soul heavy because of conflict in relationships? I encourage you to pray for the person who is casting the darts. Forgive their trespasses against you, and ask for strength from the Lord. Ask boldly; He will hear your request. The Lord gives strength to his people; the Lord blesses His people with peace (Psalm 29:11).

Aren’t we waiting for Lori?” Jonah asked. Toby didn’t turn around as he answered. “Nah, she isn’t coming. We’ll meet up with her later today.” Great. Lori was too pissed to see him and Toby was like Antarctica. Jonah still wasn’t completely sure why they were so angry, given the fact that Zev hadn’t told anyone back home about their relationship. Well, there was one option; his old friends weren’t comfortable with him being gay. Tough shit. Jonah figured the best way to deal with the situation was to face it head-on. But as soon as they got into Jonah’s car, Toby started fiddling with the radio. Jonah decided to bide his time and wait for Toby to finish what he was doing so they could talk. He almost lost his composure when the other man landed on a Barry Manilow song and kept it there. Toby had to be the only Fanilow under the age of fifty. “So I’m guessing Lori told you about that guy in my apartment last night.” Toby’s posture immediately stiffened. Several long moments passed before he answered. “Yeah, she did.” “Anything you want to ask me about it, Toby? Might as well get it out there. No reason to walk on eggshells around each other.” “Ooookay,” Toby responded, drawing out the word. He took a deep breath and turned to face Jonah. “Did you stumble across a clearance sale on jackass cream or something? Maybe they were running a special on lobotomies?” Well, that was an unexpected response. “Huh? Whatta you mean?” “What I mean, Jonah…,” Toby said in a louder voice, “is that I know we’re all just a couple of bad decisions away from being one of those weirdos who buys fake nuts and hangs them on the back of his pickup truck, but you really managed to win the stupid cake last night.” Okay, this conversation wasn’t going exactly how Jonah had planned, but he still felt the need to defend himself. “Stupid? Why? Because I’m gay? That’s not a bad decision, Toby. It’s not a decision at all.” Jonah pulled into a parking lot of a decent diner, turned off the car, and turned to face Toby. The conversation was tense and awkward, but at least Toby’s atrocious music was no longer making Jonah’s ears bleed. Jonah would have preferred hearing his car engine drop out and drag across the asphalt than another cheesy ballad. “No shit, Sherlock. But cheating on Zev is a decision. A really bad decision.” Jonah’s mouth dropped open, and he snapped his eyes toward Toby in shock. Holy crap. Toby knew about his relationship with Zev. That meant Lori knew. As much as he hated being hidden from Zev’s family and life back in Etzgadol, Jonah didn’t want the man to be forced out against his will. “You know?” “Know what?” “About, um, me and Zev?” Toby rolled his eyes. “Of course I know. Just because I was blessed in the looks department doesn’t mean I was shorted anything upstairs. I’m not an idiot, Jonah.

Gay men and lesbians aren’t the only people who can generally get the kinds of sexual relationships they want. Extremely, unfeasibly attractive people can usually do so as well. These annoying individuals tend not to have to compromise with prospective partners, even if they’re straight, just because they’re such prized commodities. And their romantic histories again back up the claim that men are keener on casual sex than women. Several studies indicate that ridiculously handsome men are more likely than run-of-the-mill men to rack up large numbers of sexual partners. Beautiful women, on the other hand, are not. This isn’t because the latter have trouble attracting partners; it’s because they more often opt for fewer partners and longer-lasting relationships.

Should she be worried about you right now?” I shook my head. “No. Right now, I’m good.” “Happy?” she asked. “Right now? Yes. But I don’t strive for happiness. It’s a temporary, fleeting thing.” “What do you strive for?” “Contentment,” I replied. “It’s a longer-term state of satisfaction. Happiness is fleeting. Contentment is stable and solid throughout life.” “I thought I was content in my last relationship.” “Oh.” I shook my head. “That’s different. One should never be content in love.” “Why’s that?” “I don’t know. I just feel as if love deserves a word, a feeling bigger than that.” “And what word is that?” “Don’t know yet. But once I figure it out, I’ll be the first to inform you.

Economically as well as geopolitically, China is withdrawing from the informal pact that has governed its relationship with the world over the last 40 years. It is now evident that the experiment in Western capitalism that commenced in 1979 was a transitory phase, an acknowledgment that state capitalism could be deployed for a time in order to amass capital but that the new ways of doing things could also be discarded when no longer useful to the Party. Just as China opened up in 1979, so now is it closing.

Writing serves to restore unity to the consciousness of the human race that is fragmented by the ceaseless interruptions of death, so that the thoughts arising in an ancestor can be completed in a distant descendent: it rectifies the disintegration of the human race and its consciousness into countless ephemeral individuals and defies the inexorable passage of time with its attendant forgetfulness. All this is accomplished not only by written memor- ials but by stone ones as well, some of which are older than written ones. Who would believe that those people who, at immeasurable expense, set in motion the manpower of many thousands of people over many years in order to construct the pyramids, monoliths, rock tombs, obelisks, temples and palaces that have endured for millennia – who would believe that they had only themselves in view, the short span of their lives which did not last to see the end of the construction, or even to see the ostensible goal that the crude masses demanded as a pretext? – Clearly their real goal was to speak to the most distant posterity, to enter into a relationship with it, and in this way to bring unity to the consciousness of humanity. The buildings of the Hindus, Egyptians and even the Greeks and Romans were calculated to last for many millennia, because their range of vision, brought about by culture, was broader; while the buildings of the Middle Ages and modern times were intended for a couple of centuries at most, which was also due to the fact that people were more reliant on writing once it came into more general use, and even more once it gave birth to the printing press. Yet we still see in the buildings of more recent ages the impulse to speak to posterity, and it is therefore shameful when they are destroyed or rebuilt to serve lower, utilitar- ian functions. Written monuments have less to fear from the elements than stone monuments, but more to fear from barbarism: they accomplish much more. The Egyptians wanted to unite both types of monuments by covering the stone monuments with hieroglyphics; in fact they added paintings in case the hieroglyphics could no longer be understood.

Writing serves to restore unity to the consciousness of the human race that is fragmented by the ceaseless interruptions of death, so that the thoughts arising in an ancestor can be completed in a distant descendent: it rectifies the disintegration of the human race and its consciousness into countless ephemeral individuals and defies the inexorable passage of time with its attendant forgetfulness. All this is accomplished not only by written memorials but by stone ones as well, some of which are older than written ones. Who would believe that those people who, at immeasurable expense, set in motion the manpower of many thousands of people over many years in order to construct the pyramids, monoliths, rock tombs, obelisks, temples and palaces that have endured for millennia – who would believe that they had only themselves in view, the short span of their lives which did not last to see the end of the construction, or even to see the ostensible goal that the crude masses demanded as a pretext? – Clearly their real goal was to speak to the most distant posterity, to enter into a relationship with it, and in this way to bring unity to the consciousness of humanity. The buildings of the Hindus, Egyptians and even the Greeks and Romans were calculated to last for many millennia, because their range of vision, brought about by culture, was broader; while the buildings of the Middle Ages and modern times were intended for a couple of centuries at most, which was also due to the fact that people were more reliant on writing once it came into more general use, and even more once it gave birth to the printing press. Yet we still see in the buildings of more recent ages the impulse to speak to posterity, and it is therefore shameful when they are destroyed or rebuilt to serve lower, utilitarian functions. Written monuments have less to fear from the elements than stone monuments, but more to fear from barbarism: they accomplish much more. The Egyptians wanted to unite both types of monuments by covering the stone monuments with hieroglyphics; in fact they added paintings in case the hieroglyphics could no longer be understood.

Was it possible to taste or sense the medicine of a place? I wondered. What would it take to be able to do so? The priests and shamans in Hedangna also have the ability to see charawa, which is an essence in grain imbued by the ancestors that makes the grain last much longer than the physical substance otherwise should. Charawa echoes what Lizzie describes as the medicine of place, that unseen web that when enlivened through prayer translates into the material world. Like the laral value of an object, this unseen quality is strengthened by the offerings we make, offerings expressed in our care and attention. This first requires that we deem this web of relationships, from mycorrhizal networks to Hildegard’s viriditas, worthy and recognize that it needs our care. Not seeing this invisible dimension, the priests and shamans say, makes humans selfish. Because we cannot see this web of reciprocity on which our life depends, we do not understand our role in that web and our responsibility for the part we play. As Jeff said, we begin to believe we are in charge.

This strange moment in history, when time feels so unmoored, might in fact provide the ideal opportunity to reconsider our relationship with it. Older thinkers have faced these challenges before us, and when their wisdom is applied to the present day, certain truths grow more clearly apparent. Productivity is a trap. Becoming more efficient just makes you more rushed, and trying to clear the decks simply makes them fill up again faster. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved “work-life balance,” whatever that might be, and you certainly won’t get there by copying the “six things successful people do before 7:00 a.m.” The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control — when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about.

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To love, in the true sense of the word, is to feel no discrimination. We should have the element of equanimity, so that we can love without boundaries. Equanimity is the absence of the three complexes—better, worse, and equal. We no longer discriminate. We are able to embrace everything and we no longer suffer. When there is love without discrimination, there is also an absence of suffering.

For anger, you can ask yourself what is its use? It may help to think of the Dalai Lama’s story of his driver, who was so angry about banging his head into the fender of the car that he banged his head into the fender of the car. Anger often involves some disappointment or frustrated expectation. Ask yourself, “What was my expectation? Can I release it and accept what is or how others are rather than how I think they should be? Can I also acknowledge my part in the conflict? Can I see my part in contributing to the situation I am angry about? If I am angry about what has been said, can I see that these are just words that no longer exist, that, like all things, they are impermanent? Will my anger benefit anyone, including me?” You could also reflect on how, if not contained, anger can lead to destructive action—from saying hurtful things to outright violence—that we later regret. Contemplate how anger can destroy relationships, alienate others, and rob you of your peace of mind.

Generous, pro-social behavior seems to strengthen these relationships across cultures. Generosity is even associated with better health and longer life expectancy. Generosity seems to be so powerful that, according to researchers David McClelland and Carol Kirshnit, just thinking about it “significantly increases the protective antibody salivary immunoglobulin A, a protein used by the immune system.