Run Your Own Race Quotes

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. But trust me on the sunscreen.

I don't understand women that call themselves a "bitch". It doesn't empower a woman. Rather, it reveals to everyone that you were deeply hurt at one time. Because of the pain your still carrying, you will continue to hurt anyone that reminds you of those moments when you let your guard down and were fooled. Sadly, it sends a clear message to the observant that you are still hurt. If only women would realize that "we all" have moments of stupidity then they would stop comparing themselves to the masses.

You will be bitter in life, when you compare yourself with others.Run the race of life at your own pace.

...there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you've got, being patient and forgiving and... undemanding...maybe we shouldn't be surprised that getting better at one could make you better at the other.

Stop comparing yourself to others. You have your own race to run. Finish well.<3

If you want to improve your life and live with all that you deserve, you must run your own race. It doesn’t matter what other people say about you. What is important is what you say to yourself, being comfortable in your own skin. Be true to you. That’s a key source of happiness.

Theres no competition in DESTINY. Run your own RACE and wish others WELL!!!

I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life: I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today.

Each person walks a journey unique to himself or herself. Live your own journey and run your own race.

It is never wise to run any race but your own.

For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people,are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

What happens when I touch you, Kiera?" His tone, almost a growl, was getting as suggestive as his words [...] He ran a hand down his shirt, as he answered his own question. "Your pulse races, your breath quickens." He bit his lip and started simulating heavy breathing [...] "Your body trembles, your lips part, your eyes burn." He closed his eyes and exhaled with a soft groan, then reopened his eyes and suggestively inhaled through his teeth. [...] "Your body aches...everywhere." He closed his eyes again and exactly mimicked a low moan that I had made with him on several occasions. He tangled a hand back through his own hair, in a way that I had done time and again, and ran his other hand back up his chest, in a way that was only too familiar with me. [...] He swallowed and made a horribly enticing noise as he let his mouth fall open in a pant. "Oh...God...please..." He mimicked in a low groan, as his hands started running down his body, towards his jeans...

Vigil couldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love running. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding.

Run the race of life at your own pace.

There will be always be people stronger and not as strong, smarter, and not quite as smart. It's best not to get into the race at all: Just run your own.

Whether you’re an elite or a first-timer, that’s the magic of marathoning, the recognition of your own potential that had been there all along.

To live a richer, more rewarding life, it is essential that you run your own race. Stop bending to the demands of social pressure at the expense of your uniqueness.

Run your own race.

[He] coluldn't quite put his finger on it, but his gut kept telling him that there was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the capacity to love *running*. The engineering was certainly the same: both depended on loosening your grip on your own desires, putting aside what you wanted and appreciating what you got, being patient and forgiving and undemanding.

From today onwards, take complete control of your life. Decide, once and for all, to be the master of your fate. Run your own race. Discover your calling and you will start to experience the ecstasy of an inspired life.

Real arms races are run by highly intelligent, bespectacled engineers in glass offices thoughtfully designing shiny weapons on modern computers. But there's no thinking in the mud and cold of nature's trenches. At best, weapons thrown together amidst the explosions and confusion of smoky battlefields are tiny variations on old ones, held together by chewing gum. If they don't work, then something else is thrown at the enemy, including the kitchen sink - there's nothing "progressive" about that. At its usual worst, trench warfare is fought by attrition. If the enemy can be stopped or slowed by burning your own bridges and bombing your own radio towers and oil refineries, then away they go. Darwinian trench warfare does not lead to progress - it leads back to the Stone Age.

Some of the people who are showing off their speed are headed in the wrong direction.

The debt between a child and her mother could never be repaid, like running a foot race against someone fifteen miles ahead of you. What hope did you have of catching up? It didn't matter how many Mother's Day cards you drew, how many cliches and vows of devotions you put inside them. You could tell her she was your favorite parent, wink like you were co-conspirators, fill her in on every trivial detail of your life. None of it was enough. It had taken me years to figure this out: you would never love your mother as much as she loved you. She had formed memories of you since you were a poppy seed in her belly. You didn't begin making your own memories until three, four, five years old? She'd had a running start. She had known you before you even existed. How could we compete with that? We couldn't. We accepted that our mothers held their love over us, let them parade it around like a flashy trinket, because their love was superior to ours.

The point is, you never know what you can do until you really put yourself out there and try. Do it. Whatever it is. Challenge yourself. If you can’t imagine the finish line, the first step is to just show up. And don’t worry about what everyone else is doing. Run your own race.

Respect the man of noble races other than your own, who carries out, in a different place, a combat parallel to yours -- to ours. He is your ally. He is our ally, be he at the other end of the world. Love all living things whose humble task is not opposed in any way to yours, to ours: men with simple hearts, honest, without vanity and malice, and all the animals, because they are beautiful, without exception and without exception indifferent to whatever "idea" there may be. Love them, and you will see the eternal in the glance of their eyes of jet, amber, or emerald. Love also the trees, the plants, the water that runs though the meadow and on to the sea without knowing where it goes; love the mountain, the desert, the forest, the immense sky, full of light or full of clouds; because all these exceed man and reveal the eternal to you.

How fast can you run? When you really have to? In heels and a work skirt, with your bag banging against your side: how fast? When you’re late for your train and you have to get home, and you race down the platform with seconds to spare: how fast can you run? What if it isn’t a train you’re running for, but your life? If you’re late home from work, and there’s no one in sight. If you haven’t charged your phone and no one knows where you are. If the footsteps behind you are getting closer, and you know, because you do it every day, that you’re on your own; that between the platform and the exit you won’t see another soul. If there’s breath on your neck, and the panic is rising, and it’s dark, and cold, and wet. If it’s just the two of you. Just you, and whoever’s behind you. Whoever is chasing you. How fast could you run then? It doesn’t matter how fast. Because there’s always someone who can run faster.

You know you are on the right path when you don't agree with everything the masses say.

Run your own race of life, with a single minded vision of purpose.

Run your own race. Fear creeps in when we compare ourselves too much with others.

So, when a person of color comes to you and says “this is different for me because I’m not white,” when you run the situation through your own lived experience, it often won’t compute.

Good life is not a sprint. It’s an exerting marathon of purpose, passion, patience and perseverance. It’s the road where faith and hard work meet. It is an unusual love adventure between success and failure. It is where truth is a belt and integrity a shield. It is knowing your lane, staying on your lane and running your own race. It’s a road loathed and less traveled by most men.

You have stood at this junction before You will stand at this junction again And if you pause you can ask yourself Which way to turn You can turn away from your own sadness And run the race named revenge You will run that tired track again and again Or you can admit your own pain And walk the path that ends In this direction lies freedom, my friend I can show you where hope and wholeness make their homes But you can’t push past your anguish on your way there To find the path to peace You will have to meet your pain And speak its name

My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey and Grandma Lynn and Samuel and Hal, but my father kept him stepping lightly, son gingerly monitoring father every morning and every evening as if, without such vigilance, he would lose him. We stood- the dead child and the living- on either side of my father, both wanting the same thing. To have him to ourselves forver. To please us both was an impossibility. ... 'Please don't let Daddy die, Susie,' he whispered. 'I need him.' When I left my brother, I walked out past the gazebo and under the lights hanging down like berries, and I saw the brick paths branching out as I advanced. I walked until the bricks turned to flat stones and then to small, sharp rocks and then to nothing but churned earth for miles adn miles around me. I stood there. I had been in heaven long enough to know that something would be revealed. And as the light began to fade and the sky to turn a dark, sweet blue as it had on the night of my death, I saw something walking into view, so far away I could not at first make out if it was man or woman, child or adult. But as moonlight reached this figure I could make out a man and, frightened now, my breathing shallow, I raced just far enough to see. Was it my father? Was it what I had wanted all this time so deperately? 'Susie,' the man said as I approached and then stopped a few feet from where he stood. He raised his arms up toward me. 'Remember?' he said. I found myself small again, age six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and in a living room in Illinois. Now, as I had done then, I placed my feet on top of his feet. 'Granddaddy,' I said. And because we were all alone and both in heaven, I was light enough to move as I had moved when I was six and he was fifty-six and my father had taken us to visit. We danced so slowly to a song that on Earth had always made my grandfather cry. 'Do you remember?' he asked. 'Barber!' 'Adagio for Strings,' he said. But as we danced and spun- none of the herky-jerky awkwardness of Earth- what I remembered was how I'd found him crying to this music and asked him why. 'Sometimes you cry,' Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.' He had held me against him then, just briefly, and then I had run outside to play again with Lindsey in what seemed like my grandfather's huge backyard. We didn't speak any more that night, but we danced for hours in that timeless blue light. I knew as we danced that something was happening on Earth and in heaven. A shifting. The sort of slow-to-sudden movement that we'd read about in science class one year. Seismic, impossible, a rending and tearing of time and space. I pressed myself into my grandfather's chest and smelled the old-man smell of him, the mothball version of my own father, the blood on Earth, the sky in heaven. The kumquat, skunk, grade-A tobacco. When the music stopped, it cold have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfateher took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.

I think it can be dangerous to spend too long watching the lives of others; you might run out of time to live your own. Technology is devolving the human race. Eating up our emotional intelligence, spitting out any remnants of privacy it can’t quite swallow. The world will keep on spinning and the stars will always shine, regardless of whether anyone is looking.

Successful people are so focused on their own goals that they don’t have time to look around to see what everybody else is doing.” Run your race, and when somebody passes you by, don’t be intimidated. Be inspired. If God did it for them, He can do it for you.

... this ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn't. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations...

Most people have stop playing the game (living their dreams) and instead cheering with the crowd (following the masses). Just because they missed a penalty, a chance, an opportunity). Let nothing stop you! It’s time to start playing again, it’s your dream, it’s your baby, make it happen

Her grandmother laughed. “Oh, hon,” she said, “it’s never wise to look over your shoulder.” “Huh?” “Just run the race on your own, I say. Don’t fret about the others.” This didn’t make sense, for a moment, but then it did. Candle felt as if she’d had some burden lifted from her, and she gave Mercy a grateful smile and Mercy smiled back.

Do you know the first thing Jesus did with that meager offering? He looked up to heaven and gave thanks to God for the little he was given by the boy. I wonder what it was like for that boy to see his meager meal held up to the heavens by the hands of a grateful Jesus. Jesus, of course, knew it wasn’t going to remain little, that it was about to be multiplied into great abundance. But let’s not miss this moment. The Son of God, holding our offering up to Almighty God and blessing it with his thanks! Remember Kalli, unable to imagine what she could possibly do to help but volunteering anyway? We need to be like her. We don’t need to know how God is going to use our meager offering. We only need to know that he wants to use it. Always remember that God celebrates our gifts to him and blesses them. Next, Jesus broke the bread and the fish. When he blessed it, there were five and two. But when he broke it, we lose count. The more Jesus broke the bread and fish, the more there was to feed and nourish. The disciples started distributing the food, and soon what was broken was feeding thousands. The miracle is in the breaking. It is in the breaking that God multiplies not enough into more than enough. Are there broken places in your life so painful that you fear the breaking will destroy you? Do you come from a broken home? Did you have a broken marriage? Did you have a broken past? Have you experienced brokenness in your body? Have your finances been broken? You may think your brokenness has disqualified you from being able to run in the divine relay, but as with my own life and Kalli’s, when we give God our brokenness, it qualifies us to be used by God to carry a baton of hope, restoration, and grace to others on the sidelines who are broken.

Running your own race is doing the best you can every chance you get with what you have for a purpose that outlives you.

Keep growing, keep glowing, keep going and keep soaring!

Most of the people who are striving to be great often compare the demands of their goal with those of that of people who are striving to remain average.

Run you own race of life with patient.

Oh, hon,” she said, “it’s never wise to look over your shoulder.” “Huh?” “Just run the race on your own, I say. Don’t fret about the others.

Advice" I must do as you do? Your way I own Is a very good way, and still, There are sometimes two straight roads to a town, One over, one under the hill. You are treading the safe and the well-worn way, That the prudent choose each time; And you think me reckless and rash to-day Because I prefer to climb. Your path is the right one, and so is mine. We are not like peas in a pod, Compelled to lie in a certain line, Or else be scattered abroad. 'T were a dull old world, methinks, my friend, If we all just went one way; Yet our paths will meet no doubt at the end, Though they lead apart today. You like the shade, and I like the sun; You like an even pace, I like to mix with the crowd and run, And then rest after the race. I like danger, and storm, and strife, You like a peaceful time; I like the passion and surge of life, You like its gentle rhyme. You like buttercups, dewy sweet, And crocuses, framed in snow; I like roses, born of the heat, And the red carnation's glow. I must live my life, not yours, my friend, For so it was written down; We must follow our given paths to the end, But I trust we shall meet--in town.

You struggle because you’re locating all of the magic in your life outside of yourself. When you are loved, then you are lovable. When you are left behind, you are unlovable. When you “arrive” at some point of success and fame as a writer, you will be worthy. Until then, you are worthless. As long as you imagine that the outside world will one day deliver to you the external rewards you need to feel happy, you will always perceive your survival as exhausting and perceive your life as a long slog to nowhere. Instead, you have to savor the tiny struggles of the day: The cold glass of water after a long run. The hot bath after hours of digging through the dirt. The satisfaction of writing a good sentence, a good paragraph. You MUST feel these things, because these aren’t small rewards on the path to some big reward; these tiny things are everything. Savoring these things requires tuning in to your feelings, and it requires loving yourself instead of shoving your nose into your own question marks hour after hour, day after day. You are not lost. You are here. Stop abandoning yourself. Stop repeating this myth about love and success that will land in your lap or evade you forever. Build a humble, flawed life from the rubble, and cherish that. There is nothing more glorious on the face of the earth than someone who refuses to give up, who refuses to give in to their most self-hating, discouraged, disillusioned self, and instead learns, slowly and painfully, how to relish the feeling of building a hut in the middle of the suffocating dust. If you can learn to be where you are, without fear, then sooner than you know it, your life will quite naturally be filled with more love and more wonder than you can possibly handle. When that happens, you’ll look back and see that this was the most romantic time of your whole life. These are those terrible days, those gorgeous days, when you first learned to breathe and stand alone without fear, to believe not in finish lines but in the race itself. Your legs are aching and your heart is pounding and the world is electric. You will have 30 years or 50 years, or maybe you’ll be gone tomorrow. All that matters is this moment, right now. This is the moment you learn to be here, to feel your limbs, to feel your full heart, to realize, for the first time, just how lucky you are.

I am still vaguely haunted by our hitchhiker’s remark about how he’d “never rode in a convertible before.” Here’s this poor geek living in a world of convertibles zipping past him on the highways all the time, and he’s never even ridden in one. It made me feel like King Farouk. I was tempted to have my attorney pull into the next airport and arrange some kind of simple, common-law contract whereby we could just give the car to this unfortunate bastard. Just say: “Here, sign this and the car’s yours.” Give him the keys and then use the credit card to zap off on a jet to some place like Miami and rent another huge fireapple-red convertible for a drug-addled, top-speed run across the water all the way out to the last stop in Key West … and then trade the car off for a boat. Keep moving. But this manic notion passed quickly. There was no point in getting this harmless kid locked up—and, besides, I had plans for this car. I was looking forward to flashing around Las Vegas in the bugger. Maybe do a bit of serious drag-racing on the Strip: Pull up to that big stoplight in front of the Flamingo and start screaming at the traffic: “Alright, you chickenshit wimps! You pansies! When this goddamn light flips green, I’m gonna stomp down on this thing and blow every one of you gutless punks off the road!” Right. Challenge the bastards on their own turf. Come screeching up to the crosswalk, bucking and skidding with a bottle of rum in one hand and jamming the horn to drown out the music … glazed eyes insanely dilated behind tiny black, gold-rimmed greaser shades, screaming gibberish … a genuinely dangerous drunk, reeking of ether and terminal psychosis. Revving the engine up to a terrible high-pitched chattering whine, waiting for the light to change … How often does a chance like that come around? To jangle the bastards right down to the core of their spleens. Old elephants limp off to the hills to die; old Americans go out to the highway and drive themselves to death with huge cars.

...this, this life, this "everything" you know is a mere paper construction. You, my TV dinner-sucking, glazed-eyed friends, are living in ... the matrix ... and all you have to do to see the real world, God and Satan's glorious kingdom on Earth, all you have to do to taste real life is to risk being your true self... to dare... to watch... to listen... to all the late-night staticky-voiced deejays playing "race" records blowing in under the radar, shouting their tinny AM radio manifesto, their stations filled with poets, geniuses, rockers, bluesmen, preachers, philosopher kings, speaking to you from deep in the heart of your own soul. Their voices sing, "Listen... listen to what this world is telling you, for it is calling for your love, your rage, your beauty, your sex, your energy, your rebellion... because it needs you in order to remake itself. In order to be reborn into something else, something maybe better, more godly, more wonderful, it needs us. This new world is a world of black and white. A place of freedom where the two most culturally powerful tribes in American society find common ground, pleasure and joy in each other's presence. Where they use a common language to speak with... to be with one another.

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater. "No, mama." "Excuse me?" "No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat." "What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater." She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less. The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how to recognize and appreciate this kind of beauty in a woman. I have to show them, over and over again, mile after mile, until they feel the power of their own legs beneath them and catch the rhythm of their own strides. Which is why my parents wake my kids early on race-day mornings. It matters to me that my children see me out there, slogging through difficult miles. I want my girls to grow up recognizing the beauty of strength, the exuberance of endurance, and the core confidence residing in a well-tended body and spirit. I want them to be more interested in what they are doing than how they look doing it. I want them to enjoy food that is delicious, feed their bodies with wisdom and intent, and give themselves the freedom to indulge. I want them to compete in healthy ways that honor the cultivation of skill, the expenditure of effort, and the courage of the attempt. Grace and Bella, will you have any idea how lovely you are when you try? Recently we ran the Chuy's Hot to Trot Kids K together as a family in Austin, and I ran the 5-K immediately afterward. Post?race, my kids asked me where my medal was. I explained that not everyone gets a medal, so they must have run really well (all kids got a medal, shhh!). As I picked up Grace, she said, "You are so sweaty Mommy, all wet." Luke smiled and said, "Mommy's sweaty 'cause she's fast. And she looks pretty. All clean." My PRs will never garner attention or generate awards. But when I run, I am 100 percent me--my strengths and weaknesses play out like a cracked-open diary, my emotions often as raw as the chafing from my jog bra. In my ultimate moments of vulnerability, I am twice the woman I was when I thought I was meant to look pretty on the sidelines. Sweaty and smiling, breathless and beautiful: Running helps us all shine. A lesson worth passing along.

Imagine that a career is like a marathon—a long, grueling, and ultimately rewarding endeavor. Now imagine a marathon where both men and women arrive at the starting line equally fit and trained. The gun goes off. The men and women run side by side. The male marathoners are routinely cheered on: “Lookin’ strong! On your way!” But the female runners hear a different message. “You know you don’t have to do this!” the crowd shouts. Or “Good start—but you probably won’t want to finish.” The farther the marathoners run, the louder the cries grow for the men: “Keep going! You’ve got this!” But the women hear more and more doubts about their efforts. External voices, and often their own internal voice, repeatedly question their decision to keep running. The voices can even grow hostile. As the women struggle to endure the rigors of the race, spectators shout, “Why are you running when your children need you at home?

The Audacity of Despair "You can stand your ground if you're white, and you can use a gun to do it. But if you stand your ground with your fists and you're black, you're dead. "In the state of Florida, the season on African-Americans now runs year round. Come one, come all. And bring a handgun. The legislators are fine with this blood on their hands. The governor, too. One man accosted another and when it became a fist fight, one man — and one man only — had a firearm. The rest is racial rationalization and dishonorable commentary. "If I were a person of color in Florida, I would pick up a brick and start walking toward that courthouse in Sanford. Those that do not, those that hold the pain and betrayal inside and somehow manage to resist violence — these citizens are testament to a stoic tolerance that is more than the rest of us deserve. I confess, their patience and patriotism is well beyond my own. "Behold, the lewd, pornographic embrace of two great American pathologies: Race and guns, both of which have conspired not only to take the life of a teenager, but to make that killing entirely permissible. I can't look an African-American parent in the eye for thinking about what they must tell their sons about what can happen to them on the streets of their country. Tonight, anyone who truly understands what justice is and what it requires of a society is ashamed to call himself an American.

Of those few fools, who with ill stars are curst, Sure scribbling fools, called poets, fare the worst: For they're a sort of fools which fortune makes, And, after she has made them fools, forsakes. With Nature's oafs 'tis quite a different case, For Fortune favours all her idiot race. In her own nest the cuckoo eggs we find, Over which she broods to hatch the changeling kind: No portion for her own she has to spare, So much she dotes on her adopted care. Poets are bubbles, by the town drawn in, Suffered at first some trifling stakes to win: But what unequal hazards do they run! Each time they write they venture all they've won: The Squire that's buttered still, is sure to be undone. This author, heretofore, has found your favour, But pleads no merit from his past behaviour. To build on that might prove a vain presumption, Should grant to poets made admit resumption, And in Parnassus he must lose his seat, If that be found a forfeited estate.

You must be your own advocate... You can't rely solely on your doctors or you family or anyone else; you have to stay on top of your own care, no matter how sick or exhausted you feel. Learn everything you can about your disease and your diagnosis, locate the very best doctors, find out exactly what drugs and treatments your doctors are giving you and what they're supposed to do, never stop researching and asking questions, and check, check, check what the doctors tell you-get second and third opinions. All of this is up to you because ultimately no one else-not your family members who love you, or your doctors, who want you to survive-is responsible for your health. You need a support team, of course, but in the end, you run this race on your own.

 It’s weird being alone in the museum. It’s dark and eerily quiet: Only the after-hours lights are on—just enough to illuminate the hallways and stop you from tripping over your own feet—and the background music that normally plays all the time is shut off. I quickly organize the flashlights and check their batteries, and when I don’t hear Porter walking around, I stare at the phone sitting at the information desk. How many chances come along like this? I pick up the receiver, press the little red button next to the word ALL, and speak into the phone in a low voice. “Paging Porter Roth to the information desk,” I say formally, my voice crackling through the entire lobby and echoing down the corridors. Then I press the button again and add, “While you’re at it, check your shoes to make sure they’re a match, you bastard. By the way, I still haven’t quite forgiven you for humiliating me. It’s going to take a lot more than a kiss and a cookie to make me forget both that and the time you provoked me in the Hotbox.” I’m only teasing, which I hope he knows. I feel a little drunk on all my megaphone power, so I page one more thing: “PS—You look totally hot in those tight-fitting security guard pants tonight, and I plan to get very handsy with you at the movies, so we better sit in the back row.” I hang up the phone and cover my mouth, silently laughing at myself. Two seconds later, Porter’s footfalls pound down Jay’s corridor—Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! He sounds like a T. rex running from Godzilla. He races into the lobby and slides in front of the information desk, grabbing onto the edge to stop himself, wild curls flying everywhere. His grin is enormous. “Whadidya say ’bout where you want to be puttin’ your hands on me?” he asks breathlessly. “I think you have me confused with someone else,” I tease. His head sags against the desk. I push his hair away from one of his eyes. He looks up at me and asks, “You really still haven’t forgiven me?” “Maybe if you put your hands onme, I might.” “Don’t go getting my hopes up like that.” “Oh, your hopes should be up. Way up.” “Dear God, woman,” he murmurs. “And here I was, thinking you were a classy dame.” “Pfft. You don’t know me at all.” “I aim to find out. What are we still doing here? Let’s blow this place and get to the theater, fast.

this ninety-five-year-old man came hiking twenty-five miles over the mountain. Know why he could do it? Because no one ever told him he couldn’t. No one ever told him he oughta be off dying somewhere in an old age home. You live up to your own expectations, man.

The miracle is in the breaking. It is in the breaking that God multiplies not enough into more than enough. Are there broken places in your life so painful that you fear the breaking will destroy you? Do you come from a broken home? Did you have a broken marriage? Did you have a broken past? Have you experienced brokenness in your body? Have your finances been broken? You may think your brokenness has disqualified you from being able to run in the divine relay, but as with my own life and Kalli’s, when we give God our brokenness, it qualifies us to be used by God to carry a baton of hope, restoration, and grace to others on the sidelines who are broken. What should have disqualified Kalli from the race was the very thing that qualified her for it. Put your broken pieces into God’s hands and watch him use them to work his wonders.

Will you just tell me, Brian.I need you to tell me you love me." "I'm getting to it." He turned back. "I never thought I wanted family.I want to make children with you,Keeley.I want ours. Please don't cry." "I'm trying not to.Hurry up." "I can't be rushed at such a time.Sniffle those back or I'll blunder it.That's the way." He moved to her. "I don't want to own horses, but I can make an exception for the gift you gave me today.As a kind of symbol of things. I didn't have faith in him, not pure faith, that he'd run to win.I didn't have faith in you, either.Give me your hand." She held it out, clasping his. "Tell me." "I've never said the words to another woman. You'll be my first, and you'll be my last.I loved you from the first instant, in a kind of blinding flash. Over time the love I have for you has strengthened, and deepened until it's like something alive inside me." "That's everything I needed to hear." She brought his hand to her cheek. "Marry me, Brian." "Bloody hell.Will you let me do the asking?" She had to bite her lip to hold off the watery chuckle. "Sorry." With a laugh, he plucked her off her feet. "Well, what the hell.Sure, I'll marry you." "Right away." "Right away." He brushed his lips over her temple. "I love you,Keeley, and since you're birdbrain enough to want to marry a hardheaded Irish horse's ass, I believe it was, I'll go up now and ask your father." "As my-Brian, really." "I'll do this proper. But maybe I'll take you with me,in case he's found that shotgun." She laughed, rubbed her cheek against his. "I'll protect you." He set her on her feet.They began to walk together past the sharply colored fall flowers, the white fences and fields where horses raced their shadows. When he reached to take her hand, Keeley gripped his firmly.And had everything.

Everyone's here except for St. Clair." Meredith cranes her neck around the cafeteria. "He's usually running late." "Always," Josh corrects. "Always running late." I clear my throat. "I think I met him last night. In the hallway." "Good hair and an English accent?" Meredith asks. "Um.Yeah.I guess." I try to keep my voice casual. Josh smirks. "Everyone's in luuurve with St. Clair." "Oh,shut up," Meredith says. "I'm not." Rashmi looks at me for the first time, calculating whether or not I might fall in love with her own boyfriend. He lets go of her hand and gives an exaggerated sigh. "Well,I am. I'm asking him to prom. This is our year, I just know it." "This school has a prom?" I ask. "God no," Rashmi says. "Yeah,Josh. You and St. Clair would look really cute in matching tuxes." "Tails." The English accent makes Meredith and me jump in our seats. Hallway boy. Beautiful boy. His hair is damp from the rain. "I insist the tuxes have tails, or I'm giving your corsage to Steve Carver instead." "St. Clair!" Josh springs from his seat, and they give each other the classic two-thumps-on-the-back guy hug. "No kiss? I'm crushed,mate." "Thought it might miff the ol' ball and chain. She doesn't know about us yet." "Whatever," Rashi says,but she's smiling now. It's a good look for her. She should utilize the corners of her mouth more often. Beautiful Hallway Boy (Am I supposed to call him Etienne or St. Clair?) drops his bag and slides into the remaining seat between Rashmi and me. "Anna." He's surprised to see me,and I'm startled,too. He remembers me. "Nice umbrella.Could've used that this morning." He shakes a hand through his hair, and a drop lands on my bare arm. Words fail me. Unfortunately, my stomach speaks for itself. His eyes pop at the rumble,and I'm alarmed by how big and brown they are. As if he needed any further weapons against the female race. Josh must be right. Every girl in school must be in love with him. "Sounds terrible.You ought to feed that thing. Unless..." He pretends to examine me, then comes in close with a whisper. "Unless you're one of those girls who never eats. Can't tolerate that, I'm afraid. Have to give you a lifetime table ban." I'm determined to speak rationally in his presence. "I'm not sure how to order." "Easy," Josh says. "Stand in line. Tell them what you want.Accept delicious goodies. And then give them your meal card and two pints of blood." "I heard they raised it to three pints this year," Rashmi says. "Bone marrow," Beautiful Hallway Boy says. "Or your left earlobe." "I meant the menu,thank you very much." I gesture to the chalkboard above one of the chefs. An exquisite cursive hand has written out the morning's menu in pink and yellow and white.In French. "Not exactly my first language." "You don't speak French?" Meredith asks. "I've taken Spanish for three years. It's not like I ever thought I'd be moving to Paris." "It's okay," Meredith says quickly. "A lot of people here don't speak French." "But most of them do," Josh adds. "But most of them not very well." Rashmi looks pointedly at him. "You'll learn the lanaguage of food first. The language of love." Josh rubs his belly like a shiny Buddha. "Oeuf. Egg. Pomme. Apple. Lapin. Rabbit." "Not funny." Rashmi punches him in the arm. "No wonder Isis bites you. Jerk." I glance at the chalkboard again. It's still in French. "And, um, until then?" "Right." Beautiful Hallway Boy pushes back his chair. "Come along, then. I haven't eaten either." I can't help but notice several girls gaping at him as we wind our way through the crowd.

There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.’ All I’m really getting at is that if you want to improve your life and live with all that you deserve, you must run your own race. It doesn’t matter what other people say about you. What is important is what you say to yourself. Do not be concerned with the judgment of others as long as you know what you are doing is right. You can do whatever you want to do as long as it is correct according to your conscience and your heart. Never be ashamed of doing that which is right; decide on what you think is good and then stick to it. And for God’s sake, never get into the petty habit of measuring your self-worth against other people’s net worth. As Yogi Raman preached: ‘Every second you spend thinking about someone else’s dreams, you take time away from your own.’” It

Mother," said little Pearl, "the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!" "Nor ever will, my child, I hope," said Hester. "And why not, Mother?" asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. "Will it not come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?

Let’s each take a Sailfish and have a race,” George cried, running over to a pretty light-blue boat, with a yellow sail wrapped neatly around the mast. The mast and rudder had been placed carefully next to the hull. “That sounds like fun,” Nancy said enthusiastically. “Which boat would you like, Bess?” Nancy was eying a dark-green one with a red stripe around it. Its white sail, mast, and rudder were placed exactly like the others. “Someone keeps things shipshape around here,” she thought admiringly. “These boats look like painted wooden soldiers all lined up.” “I’ll stick to the rowboat, thanks,” Bess said. “I’d rather be under my own steam. If I took a sailboat, the wind might blow me somewhere I didn’t want to go,” she added, glancing at a breakwater of rocks not far away. “Don’t worry, Bess,” said Nancy. “Why don’t you come with me? We can always tack back when you say the word. It’s a light offshore wind,” she added, looking up at the pennant on the boathouse. “And I promise to head up into the wind, whenever you’re scared, although I don’t relish getting in irons. Oh well, if we do, you can jump out and push!” Nancy laughed.

Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!” “Nor ever will, my child, I hope,” said Hester. “And why not, mother?” asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. “Will not it come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?” “Run away, child,” answered her mother, “and catch the sunshine! It will soon be gone.

I run my finger along the textured silk. “It’s so beautiful.” “Salishen silk,” Mage Florel says reverently. “From the Salishen Isles. They’re master weavers, the Salish. True artists. And all of their embroidery is as exquisite as this.” I glance up at her. “Do you think you could use this?” “Of course, Mage Gardner,” she replies, obviously thrilled by my choice. Fallon’s hand comes down on the fabric. “You can’t use this,” she says, her tone hard. I blink up at her in resentful surprise. “Why?” “Because,” she replies, her voice syrupy with condescension, “this is what my dress is being made of.” “Ah, what a pity,” Mage Florel sighs. She pats my shoulder sympathetically. “I’ve others, Mage Gardner, don’t you fret. We’ll find something just as lovely for you...” Heart racing, I put my own hand down firmly on the fabric sample, right next to Fallon’s. I meet Fallon’s stare and hold it. “No. I want this one.” Everyone gapes at me. Fallon leans in a fraction and bares her teeth. “You can’t have it.” I try to ignore the slight trembling of my hand. “Oh, come now, Fallon,” I say as I gesture at the fabric around us, mimicking her sneering tone. “It’s all black. And I’m sure the cut will be different.” I look over at Mage Florel, whose eyes are as wide as everyone else’s. “Can you make sure it’s very different from hers?” Fallon spits out a sound of contempt. “My dress isn’t being made here. I have my own dressmaker.” “Well, then,” I tell her. “That simplifies things.” I turn to Mage Florel. “Can you make it for me in time? With this fabric?” Mage Florel gives me an appraising look, her eyes darting toward Fallon as if weighing the options. She lifts her chin. “Why, yes, Mage Gardner. I think I can.” She smiles coldly at Fallon. “Why don’t you tell me what your dress is like, dear? I’ll make sure it’s quite different.

Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that. When an animal wants to obtain something either of a man or of another animal, it has no other means of persuasion but to gain the favour of those whose service it requires. A puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours by a thousand attractions to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. In civilised society he stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well-disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old clothes which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other old clothes which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, clothes, or lodging, as he has occasion.

His booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath him as he raced into the cavern across from Baba Yaga’s den at a dead sprint. Pieces of dragon dung flew off him and hit the ground behind him in miniature chunks. He didn’t dare look behind him to see if the dragon had risen from the ground yet, but the deafening hiss that assaulted his ears meant she’d woken up. Icy claws of fear squeezed his heart with every breath as he ran, relying on the night vision goggles, the glimpse he’d gotten of the map, and his own instincts to figure out where to go. Jack raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of dung, crashing hard on his right side. He gasped as it knocked the wind out of him and gritted his teeth, his mind screaming at him to get up and run, run, run. He pushed onto his knees, nursing what felt like bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm he’d used to push himself up. Impact tremors. Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom. Baba Yaga was coming. Baba Yaga was hunting him. Jack forced himself up onto his feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the tracker. He got it switched on to see an ominous blob approaching from the right. He’d gotten a good lead on her—maybe a few hundred yards—but he had no way of knowing if he’d eventually run into a dead end. He couldn’t hide down here forever. He needed to get topside to join the others so they could take her down. Jack blocked out the rising crescendo of Baba Yaga’s hissing and pictured the map again. A mile up to the right had a man-made exit that spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long passage. If Baba Yaga followed, there was a good chance she could catch up and roast him like a marshmallow. He could try to lose her in the twists and turns of the cave system, but there was a good chance he’d get lost, and Baba Yaga’s superior senses meant it would only be a matter of time before she found him. It came back to the most basic survival tactics: run or hide. Jack switched off the tracker and stuck it in his pocket, his voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this forest, Jackson. Move your ass.” He barreled forward into the passageway to the right in the wake of Baba Yaga’s ominous, bubbling warning, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through his chest from his bruised ribs. The adrenaline would only hold for so long. He could make it about halfway there before it ran out. Cold sweat plastered the mask to his face and ran down into his eyes. The tunnel stretched onward forever before him. No sunlight in sight. Had he been wrong? Jack ripped off the hood and cold air slapped his face, making his eyes water. He held his hands out to make sure he wouldn’t bounce off one of the cavern walls and squinted up ahead as he turned the corner into the straightaway. There, faintly, he could see the pale glow of the exit. Gasping for air, he collapsed against one wall and tried to catch his breath before the final marathon. He had to have put some amount of distance between himself and the dragon by now. “Who knows?” Jack panted. “Maybe she got annoyed and turned around.” An earth-shattering roar rocked the very walls of the cavern. Jack paled. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom, boomboomboomboom— Mother of God. The dragon had broken into a run. Jack shoved himself away from the wall, lowered his head, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

We like to filter new information through our own experiences to see if it computes. If it matches up with what we have experienced, it’s valid. If it doesn’t match up, it’s not. But race is not a universal experience. If you are white, there is a good chance you may have been poor at some point in your life, you may have been sick, you may have been discriminated against for being fat or being disabled or being short or being conventionally unattractive, you may have been many things—but you have not been a person of color. So, when a person of color comes to you and says “this is different for me because I’m not white,” when you run the situation through your own lived experience, it often won’t compute.

I’ve realized, though, we can either choose to be vulnerable or have moments of vulnerability sneak up on us. Like when you’re happily alone, strutting around your house naked, but then hear a sound. Suddenly, the comfort and confidence you felt in your own skin evaporates. You run to the nearest room, hurrying to shut the door. Then you wait, and listen quietly for an opportunity to make an escape. Your mind races trying to think of an excuse for your current nude state. You’re embarrassed. But, if you live your life listening for the Lord, obeying when He asks you to be vulnerable, you never have to worry about being walked in on. Your soul is ready to be seen. And, He won’t allow your life to be marked by shame or embarrassment.

A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work in itself is good in itself—for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob. The mob (the thought runs) are such low animals that they would be dangerous if they had leisure; it is safer to keep them too busy to think. A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this: "We know that poverty is unpleasant; in fact, since it is so remote, we rather enjoy harrowing ourselves with the thought of its unpleasantness. But don’t expect us to do anything about it. We are sorry fort you lower classes, just as we are sorry for a cat with the mange, of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are. The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.” This is particularly the attitude of intelligent, cultivated people; one can read the substance if it in a hundred essays. Very few cultivated people have less than (say) four hundred pounds a year, and naturally they side with the rich, because they imagine that any liberty conceded to the poor is a threat to their own liberty. foreseeing some dismal Marxian Utopia as the alternative, the educated man prefers to keep things as they are. Possibly he does not like his fellow-rich very much, but he supposes that even the vulgarest of them are less inimical to his pleasures, more his kind of people, than the poor, and that he had better stand by them. It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions. Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothings else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? In my copy of Villon’s poems the editor has actually thought it necessary to explain the line “Ne pain ne voyent qu'aux fenestres” by a footnote; so remote is even hunger from the educated man’s experience. From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day’s liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. “Anything,” he thinks, “any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.

A very big problem we have, as a human race, is our repeated failure to identify and to acknowledge all of the parts within us and we collectively and individually spend time and energy on denying so many inner natures, in a hot pursuit of moral codes and annoying virtues, that we have shrunken away within ourselves and left on top merely a malnourished container which feeds on static energy (knee jerk emotions, responses to stimuli, etc.). We are afraid of the creatures that roam the woodlands within us and we are afraid of the abandoned castles, eerie lakes, old songs, forgotten gazebos, all of which are established on the inside of the mind. There is maybe an old chair in a corner of a diner inside of your mind and you push it away and away and further away instead of going back to it, to sit down on it, to have a milkshake at that table. We have forged a worldwide culture wherein we are constantly struggling towards a moral good and it is supposed to be a daily attainment, and yet, nobody ever is good enough at the end of the day. And so we have cut off pieces of ourselves–arms and legs–because everything is nothing, or is wrong, in our bids to be worthy. No wonder we are all so lonely. We have amputated ourselves, and one another, in a bid to run away from the souls which take residence inside of us. Then we blame this loneliness on the world, or on other people's cowardice, or on the stupidity of the human race... we have failed to embrace the monsters within us long enough to give them chances to sprout silky wings and we have failed to embrace the laughs that we wish to free from our chests, if they do not fall into the norms of the standards for our own acceptance. No wonder we are so lonely. We are not lonely because we don't have one another; we are lonely because we do not have our own selves!

Imagine that a career is like a marathon—a long, grueling, and ultimately rewarding endeavor. Now imagine a marathon where both men and women arrive at the starting line equally fit and trained. The gun goes off. The men and women run side by side. The male marathoners are routinely cheered on: “Lookin’ strong! On your way!” But the female runners hear a different message. “You know you don’t have to do this!” the crowd shouts. Or “Good start—but you probably won’t want to finish.” The farther the marathoners run, the louder the cries grow for the men: “Keep going! You’ve got this!” But the women hear more and more doubts about their efforts. External voices, and often their own internal voice, repeatedly question their decision to keep running. The voices can even grow hostile. As the women struggle to endure the rigors of the race, spectators shout, “Why are you running when your children need you at home?” Back in 1997, Debi Hemmeter was a rising

After the plates are removed by the silent and swift waiting staff, General Çiller leans forward and says across the table to Güney, ‘What’s this I’m reading in Hürriyet about Strasbourg breaking up the nation?’ ‘It’s not breaking up the nation. It’s a French motion to implement European Regional Directive 8182 which calls for a Kurdish Regional Parliament.’ ‘And that’s not breaking up the nation?’ General Çiller throws up his hands in exasperation. He’s a big, square man, the model of the military, but he moves freely and lightly ‘The French prancing all over the legacy of Atatürk? What do you think, Mr Sarioğlu?’ The trap could not be any more obvious but Ayşe sees Adnan straighten his tie, the code for, Trust me, I know what I’m doing, ‘What I think about the legacy of Atatürk, General? Let it go. I don’t care. The age of Atatürk is over.’ Guests stiffen around the table, breath subtly indrawn; social gasps. This is heresy. People have been shot down in the streets of Istanbul for less. Adnan commands every eye. ‘Atatürk was father of the nation, unquestionably. No Atatürk, no Turkey. But, at some point every child has to leave his father. You have to stand on your own two feet and find out if you’re a man. We’re like kids that go on about how great their dads are; my dad’s the strongest, the best wrestler, the fastest driver, the biggest moustache. And when someone squares up to us, or calls us a name or even looks at us squinty, we run back shouting ‘I’ll get my dad, I’ll get my dad!’ At some point; we have to grow up. If you’ll pardon the expression, the balls have to drop. We talk the talk mighty fine: great nation, proud people, global union of the noble Turkic races, all that stuff. There’s no one like us for talking ourselves up. And then the EU says, All right, prove it. The door’s open, in you come; sit down, be one of us. Move out of the family home; move in with the other guys. Step out from the shadow of the Father of the Nation. ‘And do you know what the European Union shows us about ourselves? We’re all those things we say we are. They weren’t lies, they weren’t boasts. We’re good. We’re big. We’re a powerhouse. We’ve got an economy that goes all the way to the South China Sea. We’ve got energy and ideas and talent - look at the stuff that’s coming out of those tin-shed business parks in the nano sector and the synthetic biology start-ups. Turkish. All Turkish. That’s the legacy of Atatürk. It doesn’t matter if the Kurds have their own Parliament or the French make everyone stand in Taksim Square and apologize to the Armenians. We’re the legacy of Atatürk. Turkey is the people. Atatürk’s done his job. He can crumble into dust now. The kid’s come right. The kid’s come very right. That’s why I believe the EU’s the best thing that’s ever happened to us because it’s finally taught us how to be Turks.’ General Çiller beats a fist on the table, sending the cutlery leaping. ‘By God, by God; that’s a bold thing to say but you’re exactly right.

Get it out of your head and onto paper. When I had to explain to my board that, since we were a public company, I thought that it would be best if we sold all of our customers and all of our revenue and changed business, it was messing with my mind. In order to finalize that decision, I wrote down a detailed explanation of my logic. The process of writing that document separated me from my own psychology and enabled me to make the decision swiftly. Focus on the road, not the wall. When someone learns to drive a race car, one of the first lessons taught is that when you are going around a curve at 200 mph, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. If you focus on the wall, you will drive right into it. If you focus on the road, you will follow the road. Running a company is like that. There are always a thousand things that can go wrong and sink the ship. If you focus too much on them, you will drive yourself nuts and likely crash your company. Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

The Garden" How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays, And their uncessant labours see Crown’d from some single herb or tree, Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow’rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. Fair Quiet, have I found thee here, And Innocence, thy sister dear! Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men; Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow. Society is all but rude, To this delicious solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So am’rous as this lovely green. Fond lovers, cruel as their flame, Cut in these trees their mistress’ name; Little, alas, they know or heed How far these beauties hers exceed! Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound, No name shall but your own be found. When we have run our passion’s heat, Love hither makes his best retreat. The gods, that mortal beauty chase, Still in a tree did end their race: Apollo hunted Daphne so, Only that she might laurel grow; And Pan did after Syrinx speed, Not as a nymph, but for a reed. What wond’rous life in this I lead! Ripe apples drop about my head; The luscious clusters of the vine Upon my mouth do crush their wine; The nectarine and curious peach Into my hands themselves do reach; Stumbling on melons as I pass, Ensnar’d with flow’rs, I fall on grass. Meanwhile the mind, from pleasure less, Withdraws into its happiness; The mind, that ocean where each kind Does straight its own resemblance find, Yet it creates, transcending these, Far other worlds, and other seas; Annihilating all that’s made To a green thought in a green shade. Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide; There like a bird it sits and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepar’d for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light. Such was that happy garden-state, While man there walk’d without a mate; After a place so pure and sweet, What other help could yet be meet! But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share To wander solitary there: Two paradises ’twere in one To live in paradise alone. How well the skillful gard’ner drew Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, Where from above the milder sun Does through a fragrant zodiac run; And as it works, th’ industrious bee Computes its time as well as we. How could such sweet and wholesome hours Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!

Soviets had their own atomic bomb, Kennan argued that it made no sense for the United States to get into a spiraling nuclear arms race. Like Oppenheimer, he believed that the bomb was ultimately a suicidal weapon and therefore both militarily useless and dangerous. Besides, Kennan was confident that the Soviet Union was politically and economically the weaker of the two adversaries, and that in the long run America could wear down the Soviet system by means of diplomacy and the “judicious exploitation of our strength as a deterrent to world conflict. . . .” Kennan’s eighty-page “personal document” might well have been coauthored with Oppenheimer, reflecting as it did so many of Robert’s views. Indeed, both he and Kennan took its reception as a plunging barometer, indicating the approach of violent political storms. Circulated within the State Department, Kennan’s memo was quietly and firmly rejected by all who read it. Acheson called Kennan into his office one day and said, “George, if you persist in your view on this matter, you should resign from the Foreign Service, assume a monk’s habit, carry a tin cup and stand on the street corner and say, ‘The end of the world is nigh.’ ” Acheson didn’t even bother to show the document to President Truman.

The Book I am thinking about would not be religious in the usual sense, but it would have to discuss many things with which religions have been concerned—the universe and man’s place in it, the mysterious center of experience which we call “I myself,” the problems of life and love, pain and death, and the whole question of whether existence has meaning in any sense of the word. For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile. Indeed, it seems extremely odd.

Fresh Prints We're inundated with the news That all is at unrest. We've not a clue What this world's coming to, Just thank the Lord we're blessed. Beloved, this very day You thought you'd never live to see Is just the one God preordained And chose for you and me. We're not called to shake our heads And utter “what a pity.” We're called as candles on a hill And towers in the city. We can draw far more to Christ than tracts Or fancy steeples We are proof in breathing flesh— God moves among His people! Please understand, this race you run Is not just for your prize. Grab young hands, courageous band, Run for their very lives! For us, we must live for today, For them, live for tomorrow. Redeem the time for many blind For there is none to borrow! The prints of history's heroes Will soon fade into the dust, If there will be fresh prints, my friend, It is up to us. Footprints that walk the talk that says, “I'll go where You will lead!” Kneeprints that bridge the gap And make the hedge to intercede. God, kick us off our cushioned seats Don't let us turn our heads! Let's cease to hide behind the cross And carry it instead! You beckon us, “My warriors, The time has come, ARISE! Draw your swords, fight the fight, Sound the battle cry.” “Where are My few who dare to say, ‘Come follow Him with me?’ Would you lay down your own dear life So that My Son they'll see?” “Consider, Child, carefully— Am I quite worth the cost? To surrender hearts to holiness And count all gains but loss?” “I call you from your comfort zone, Dare you be one of few? If you'll not leave fresh prints, My child, Then I must ask you, who?” If you'll not lead the way, My child, Then look around you, Who?

Knock, knock. Who's there? A: Lettuce Q: Lettuce who? A: Lettuce in, it's freezing out here.. . 2. Q: What do elves learn in school? A: The elf-abet . 3. Q: Why was 6 afraid of 7? A: Because: 7 8 9 . . 4. Q. how do you make seven an even number? A. Take out the s! . 5. Q: Which dog can jump higher than a building? A: Anydog – Buildings can’t jump! . 6. Q: Why do bananas have to put on sunscreen before they go to the beach? A: Because they might peel! . 7. Q. How do you make a tissue dance? A. You put a little boogie in it. . 8. Q: Which flower talks the most? A: Tulips, of course, 'cause they have two lips! . 9. Q: Where do pencils go for vacation? A: Pencil-vania . 10. Q: What did the mushroom say to the fungus? A: You're a fun guy [fungi]. . 11. Q: Why did the girl smear peanut butter on the road? A: To go with the traffic jam! . 11. Q: What do you call cheese that’s not yours? A: Nacho cheese! . 12. Q: Why are ghosts bad liars? A: Because you can see right through them. . 13. Q: Why did the boy bring a ladder to school? A: He wanted to go to high school. . 14. Q: How do you catch a unique animal? A: You neak up on it. Q: How do you catch a tame one? A: Tame way. . 15. Q: Why is the math book always mad? A: Because it has so many problems. . 16. Q. What animal would you not want to pay cards with? A. Cheetah . 17. Q: What was the broom late for school? A: Because it over swept. . 18. Q: What music do balloons hate? A: Pop music. . 19. Q: Why did the baseball player take his bat to the library? A: Because his teacher told him to hit the books. . 20. Q: What did the judge say when the skunk walked in the court room? A: Odor in the court! . 21. Q: Why are fish so smart? A: Because they live in schools. . 22. Q: What happened when the lion ate the comedian? A: He felt funny! . 23. Q: What animal has more lives than a cat? A: Frogs, they croak every night! . 24. Q: What do you get when you cross a snake and a pie? A: A pie-thon! . 25. Q: Why is a fish easy to weigh? A: Because it has its own scales! . 26. Q: Why aren’t elephants allowed on beaches? A:They can’t keep their trunks up! . 27. Q: How did the barber win the race? A: He knew a shortcut! . 28. Q: Why was the man running around his bed? A: He wanted to catch up on his sleep. . 29. Q: Why is 6 afraid of 7? A: Because 7 8 9! . 30. Q: What is a butterfly's favorite subject at school? A: Mothematics. Jokes by Categories 20 Mixed Animal Jokes Animal jokes are some of the funniest jokes around. Here are a few jokes about different animals. Specific groups will have a fun fact that be shared before going into the jokes. 1. Q: What do you call a sleeping bull? A: A bull-dozer. . 2. Q: What to polar bears eat for lunch? A: Ice berg-ers! . 3. Q: What do you get from a pampered cow? A: Spoiled milk.

The Robot With Human Hair Pt2" Said it's the coming of man And I forget when you went away Like a kick to the face Not winning the race (Lion, I've seen you from afar) I've seen her in the car Knowing that you deserve such more Deserved to know you're free Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Leave, I'm the director Agree to the role of the pilot inspector Breathe, pilot inspector Feed off the role of the radar detector Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you from all of those bruised, bruised and battered wounds (Wave right with a gun in his hand wave right) Can you taste this blood Dripping sweeter than...? And over your eyes And I, and I fall to both knees Not to beg for your forgiveness But to hate the word And you speak Take a right off these cliffs The ground is staring at your wounded weapons Wounded weapons (And I can't believe that you're right) You can bank the night on this its round And glaring at your well I get hyphy Tell 'em I get hyphy And this is where it ends Well, then, you said you could do this on your own I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you (And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go) You... Well, now it's up to god to save you Save you, save you Save you, save you I can't believe these long words Come from many national absurd This is a line cut across Hope, defeat, the line, the loss I can never be this lone wolf You can never see me across this earth This will be a light that I run from You thought you were so strong You pleaded to never be wrong (Brace yourself, fasten belts) Well, now that you go (Close the hatch, flip the latch) I sit here and wonder (They're not dead, speed ahead) Times have changed It's like we've been trashing silos (Well, now that you go) In the time bomb aisle (I sit here and wonder) Maybe they'll dodge the spill Oil kills, sure it will And I can't breathe the air (Hide your daughter 'cause I'm coming over) To reach for this light (You know I'm not lying about) (Trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) And you can't breathe the air (About trashing silos in the time bomb aisle) Not leaving her to reach The line, the work, the rope, the love And I have seen such worse for you It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back It's a no, I'm not coming back And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone And now you see the sky has turned black Why do think everyone has turned back? It's cause he's gone

Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of '99: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh never mind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4:00 pm on some idle Tuesday. Do one thing everyday that scares you. Sing. Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. Floss. Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead; sometimes you’re behind; the race is long, and in the end it’s only with yourself. Remember compliments you receive; forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements. Stretch. Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t. Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees; you’ll miss them when they’re gone. Maybe you’ll marry -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children -- maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40 -- maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either -- your choices are half chance; so are everybody else’s. Enjoy your body; use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own. Dance. even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. Do not read beauty magazines; they will only make you feel ugly. Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings; they're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography, in lifestyle, because the older you get the more you need the people you knew when you were young. Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel. Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise; politicians will philander; you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders. Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund; maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85. Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia: dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts, and recycling it for more than it’s worth. But trust me on the sunscreen. Baz Luhrmannk, William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet (1996)

His eyes flickered with amusement, reflecting sunlight and shade. The rough beard on his chin gave him a wild, dangerous look. Stiffly, she lifted herself onto her toes, bracing a hand against his shoulders. He was steel beneath her grasp. Did he have to watch her so intently? She closed her eyes. It was the only way she would have the courage to do this. Still he waited. It would be a brief meeting of lips. Nothing to be afraid of. If only her heart would remember to keep beating. Holding her breath, she let her lips brush over his. It was the first time she’d ever kissed a man and her mind raced with it. She hardly had a sense of his mouth at all, though the shock of the single touch rushed like liquid fire to her toes. Her part of the bargain was fulfilled. It could be done and over right then. Recklessly, after a moment’s hesitation, she touched her lips once again to him. This time she lingered, exploring the feel of him little by little. His mouth was warm and smooth and wonderful, all of it new and unexpected. He still hadn’t moved, even though her knees threatened to crumble and her heart beat like a thunder drum. Finally he responded with the barest hint of pressure. The warmth of his breath mingled with hers. Without thinking, she let her fingers dig into the sleek muscle of his arms. A low, husky sound rumbled in his throat before he wrapped his arms around her. Heaven and earth. She hadn’t been kissing him at all. The thin ribbon of resistance uncoiled within her as he took control of the kiss. His stubble scraped against her mouth, raking a raw path of sensation through her. She could do nothing but melt against him, clutching the front of his tunic to stay on her feet. A delicious heat radiated from him. His hands sank low against the small of her back to draw her close as he teased her mouth open. His breath mingled with hers for one anguished second before his tongue slipped past her lips to taste her in a slow, indulgent caress. A sigh of surrender escaped from her lips, a sound she hadn’t imagined she was capable of uttering. His hands slipped from her abruptly and she opened her eyes to see his gaze fixed on her. ‘Well,’ he breathed, ‘you do honour your bets.’ Though he no longer touched her, it was as if the kiss hadn’t ended. He was still so close, filling every sense and thought. She stumbled as she tried to step away and he caught her, a knowing smile playing over his mouth. Her balance was impeccable. She never lost her footing like that, just standing there. His grip tightened briefly before he let her go. Even that tiny, innocent touch filled her with renewed longing. In a daze, she bent to pick up her fallen swords. Her pulse throbbed as if she had run a li without stopping. In her head she was still running, flying fast. ‘Now that our bargain is settled…’ she began hoarsely ‘…we should be going.’ To her horror her hands would not stop shaking. Brushing past him, she gathered up her knapsack and slung it over her shoulder. ‘You said the next town was hours from here?’ He collected his sword while a slow grin spread over his face. She couldn’t look at him without conjuring the feel and the taste of him. Head down, she ploughed through the tall grass. ‘A good match,’ she attempted. He caught up to her easily with his long stride. ‘Yes, quite good,’ he replied, the tone rife with meaning. Her cheeks burned hot as she forced her gaze on the road ahead. She could barely tell day from night, couldn’t give her own name if asked. She had to get home and denounce Li Tao. Warn her father. She had thought of nothing else since her escape, until this blue-eyed barbarian had appeared. It was fortunate they were parting when they reached town. When he wasn’t looking she pressed her fingers over her lips, which were still swollen from that first kiss. She was outmatched, much more outmatched than when they had crossed swords.

If the human race ever wishes to master time travel then the answer is through chemical and not mechanical means. Speed is time travel. It will pilfer away at the space-time around you without your consent, propelling you forward through time. The human body is a vehicle of flux. It is exhilarating to move rhythmically, pulsing, stepping through pockets of your existence in fluid motions. The time that speed steals from you, it gives back with interest, cold and hard on a Monday morning. It brings with it a terrifying despair that creeps upon you. It is a black, slow-motion suicide. The ceiling begins to drip and ooze grey-brown sludge. Aural hallucinations, the demons of psychosis, speak wordless words of pure dread... Sometimes I would laugh and giggle hysterically at inane nonsensical stories that would play out in my mind. I would watch them unfold, like a lucid dream, weird images, Boschian forms, twisted nightmares... And I would weep. I would weep for nothing with salty tears, rivers of anguish and existential pain running down my face, dripping quietly onto the carpet. Day after day, I would unravel myself, dissect, and analyse my life over and over until I was exhausted and insane. Speed is not an insightful drug. It will not delude you into a false sense of spirituality like hallucinogens. It is the aftermath and the come down from speed that will rip open your ego and show you the bare, horrible bones of yourself. It will open the beautiful black doorway inside you and it will show you nothing. Through the darkness of internal isolation, the amphetamine comedown will show you no god, no spirituality, no soul, just your own perishable flesh, and your own animal self-preservation. It will show you clearly just how ugly you really are inside. In the emptiness of yourself, there is only the knowledge of your eventual death. When you have truly faced yourself and recognised yourself as purely animal then you become liberated from the societal pretence that you are above or better than any other creature. You are a human animal. You are naturally motivated to be selfish. Everything you do, every act you partake of, is in its essence an act of survival. No act of the human-animal happens without the satisfaction of the ego’s position in existence…

Does the place you’re called to labor Seem too small and little known? It is great if God is in it, And He’ll not forget His own. Are you laid aside from service, Body worn from toil and care? You can still be in the battle, In the sacred place of prayer. When the conflict here is ended And our race on earth is run, He will say, if we are faithful, “Welcome home, My child – well done!

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord.… —Jeremiah 17:7 (NRSV) You’re sure you know where you’re going?” My wife’s voice made it obvious she had her own answer to that question. And she was right. I was lost. We were in Cambridge, Massachusetts, staying with friends before Kate ran the Boston Marathon. The last time she’d run it, five years before, we’d stayed in Boston and spent a morning wandering around Cambridge. I thought it might be fun to find the café where we’d had lunch that day. Actually I had another reason for this search. A freak heat wave was forecast for marathon day; officials were warning runners susceptible to heat to drop out. Kate was determined to run. I didn’t try to dissuade her. Instead, I channeled my nervousness into seeking something familiar. “Maybe it’s down this street,” I suggested. Kate frowned. She was supposed to be taking it easy today, not trudging all over town. Suddenly, a few blocks away, I spotted it. “There it is!” We stood outside, peering in at the rickety old tables and racks of pastries. We smiled at each other. “Wasn’t it great when we found this last time?” Kate said. I thought back to that rainy day and how God had cared for us, bringing us to this warm, dry place, guarding Kate through the cold, wet race. God had been with us then; He’d be with us now. “Shall we go in?” said Kate. “Definitely,” I said. Help me to trust You in all things, Lord. —Jim Hinch Digging Deeper: Ps 56:3; Na 1:7

I’ll serve first, shall I?” Caroline called across the net as she plucked a ball out of her pocket, stepped up to the line, and tossed it into the air, leaving Millie, who was supposed to be the recipient of the serve, barely any time to get ready. All the breath seemed to leave him as the ball traveled rather slowly over the net. But then Millie drew back her racquet and . . . slammed the ball back Caroline’s way, the force of her swing completely unexpected given her small size. Before Caroline even moved, the ball shot past her. “Was that out?” Caroline demanded, swinging around. “It was in,” called a lady from the stands. Caroline spun to face Millie as Nora flashed a cheeky grin. “Love-fifteen,” Nora called. “I know how to keep score,” Caroline snapped back. Unfortunately, the game did not get better for Caroline after that. Millie had obviously not been exaggerating when she’d claimed she’d played tennis before, but it was clear that she hadn’t been playing with young boys. She was all over the court, hitting anything Caroline or Gertrude managed to get over the net, while Nora simply strolled back and forth, swinging her racquet, and at one point, whistling a jaunty tune. When it was Millie’s turn to serve, matters turned downright concerning. Gertrude was the first to try and return Millie’s serve, but when the ball came rushing at her, she screamed, dropped her racquet, and ran the other way, earning a screech from Caroline until she seemed to recall that her turn was next. “Give her a fast one, Miss Longfellow,” Thaddeus called. Millie lowered her racquet to send Thaddeus another wave. “Miss Longfellow, we are in the middle of a match here,” Caroline yelled across the net. “Forgive me, Miss Dixon. You’re quite right.” As if the world had suddenly slowed down, Everett watched as Millie threw the ball up, and then the racquet connected squarely with it, the thud of the connection reaching his ears. It began to move, and then the world sped up as the ball hurled at Caroline, and . . . smacked her right in the middle of the forehead, the impact knocking Caroline off her feet. Her skirt fluttered up, showing a bit of leg. Millie immediately began running across the court. Darting around the net, she raced to Caroline’s side, and yanked Caroline’s skirt back over her legs. Before Everett had a chance to see what Millie would do next, Abigail was tugging on his arm, and he realized he needed to act . . . the sooner the better. By the time he got to Caroline, made certain she wasn’t seriously hurt, and on her feet, he knew he had to get Millie as far away as possible from her. Caroline was shaking with rage and muttering threats under her breath. Telling Caroline he’d be right back, he nodded to Millie, who was still trying to apologize to Caroline, even though Caroline was not acknowledging the apologies and was resolutely looking the opposite way from Millie. “I really am so very, very sorry,” Millie said one last time before Abigail suddenly appeared right by her side and the crowd that had gathered around them fell silent. “Good heavens, Millie, it’s not as if you hit Miss Dixon on purpose—something Caroline knows all too well.” Abigail leveled a cool look on Caroline. “Why, your forehead is just a little pink. Granted the pink is perfectly circular, but . . . I’m sure it’ll fade soon, so no harm done.” Abigail

Run your own race of life, with a single minded vision of purpos

Now here is the fascinating thing, it is actually your own race! And just as a horse in a race, you do not look over to see what the next horse is doing. You are focused and you run your own race. That is how to create NAPS, create it for you and listen to yourself express those words with meaning and conviction.

Running your own race means embracing your dreams and shifting towards them and not letting anyone discourage you from your goals or dreams. Create your NAPS with this in mind!

If the key to inclusion means seeing someone for who they are even if they come in a color or gender that you’re not used to, then it follows that hiring people on the basis of color or gender will actually defeat your inclusion program. You won’t see the person, you will just see the package. This seems obvious enough, but it’s actually trickier to understand than it would seem, because if you are hiring your own race or gender then you can see them just fine. If a woman hires a woman, there will probably be no problem later. If a man does it, then he runs a strong chance that he’ll only see that she’s a woman and not who she really is. Because most advisors on inclusion come from the groups being included, they often miss this point. And this is why hiring women and minorities into senior positions usually accelerates your inclusion efforts.

To create the rest of your script, you must use what I call Reverse Goal Setting. This method of goal setting focuses on working backwards to plan your days. You start at the finish line and run your race in reverse.

Run your own race—this minute, this second. Be you unapologetically. Only do what’s yours to do, and watch how you, your family, and even the world are changed because of

And what if we hear the scream but cannot see the screamer? Of all questions about silent witnesses, to me this is the most important. Suppose the screamer is not downstairs but around the corner. Surely somebody else is closer, so we don't have to run out, do we? What is the accepted distance for hearing but not moving—two flights down, five, one block, two blocks, three? Suppose you know people are screaming under persecution—not discrimination but persecution, as in imprisonment, torture, genocide, forced starvation—for their race or their religion. You have seen the pictures of African children with their bellies distended: our own government, even this government, defines this as a genocide. You know they scream, but they are not within sight and you cannot reach out and touch them, nor are you allowed to visit them. But the screams are piercing. How far away do you have to be to forgive yourself for not doing whatever is in your power to do: stop doing business with the torturer, or just speak up for them, write a letter, join a human rights group, go to shul and pray for the rescue of the persecuted and the damnation of the persecutors, give money, do something. Three stories up, a thousand miles, ten thousand miles, from here to Queens, or from here to Sudan and Chad for victims of genocide anywhere? How far is silence from a place of safety acceptable without detesting yourself as we detest the thirty-eight? Tell me, is there any question more important than this?

The beautiful thing about running barefoot or in minimal footwear is that you are working with your body’s natural proprioception, the ability to sense your own position in space. With nothing between you and the ground, you get immediate sensory feedback with every step, which encourages you to stay light on your feet and run with proper form. Some people who are recovering from injuries or who have structural anomalies or who just like their shoes will keep lacing up. But whether you wear shoes or go barefoot, what’s important is that you pay attention to your form. If running barefoot helps with that, it’s beneficial. You want to try barefoot running? Before you toss the shoes and enter a 10K, remember: slow and easy. When runners do too much too soon, injuries often result. First, find an area of grass or sand and take easy 5- to 10-minute runs once or twice a week. Remember, easy. Don’t worry about speed at all. You’re working on your running form. As long as it feels good, increase the length of one of the runs until you’re up to a 20- to 45-minute barefoot run once a week. I like to do 2 to 3 miles on the infield of a track or in a park after an easy run day or for a cooldown run after a track workout. Two important things to remember—other than starting slow and easy—are that you don’t need to run barefoot all the time to get the benefits. And you don’t need to run completely barefoot. Lighter weight, minimal running shoes and racing flats will give you a similar type of feel as running barefoot. It will all help you with form. I have been running most of my long training runs and ultra races in Brooks racing flats for almost a decade, even Badwater and Spartathlon. Racing flats and minimal shoes provide the best of both worlds: comfort and performance.

If a small green caterpillar drops from a tree on the sleeve of an Irishman he will two days later assure you that he was attacked by a dragon of four heads, one blue, one red, one black and one invisible, that the dragon was a furlong in length and that he escaped from it only after a battle in which he was left with but a pint of blood in his veins.” “They are an engaging race, without a doubt,” said Abbot Almin. “Yes,” said Sir Roger, “but as I say, they don’t know the real from the fanciful. That is why it is so important for us to rule their country. You can’t have a collection of poets, mystics and outright liars running an island next door to your own nation. Much too dangerous and disorderly.

Run with persist endurance the race that is set before you but at your own pace.

We can overcome our fears if we remember that life does not demand more than what it gives. We can't waste time and energy comparing what we've been given, because we must reserve that energy for unloading to our God- given potential. The gifts may not be the on the same dimension or degree but that's okay. It may not be on the same level as everyone else's, and that's okay because we are not called to compete. We are called to maximize the fullness of what God has uniquely entrusted to us. Run your own race, there are victories to be won

Do you want to marry him?" Peter stopped in front of her, pressing close. "You know I don't." "Do I? Do we know each other anymore? It's been a long time. I'm not the same person I was." "You are," she insisted. "I know who you are." She knew it was ridiculous, to feel so strong so fast...but she did. It just felt like they belonged together. She took his hand and held it tight. His face softened. "All right, then. There may be one way,,,." he said out to the faint silver hue of the moors on the horizon. Valerie looked at him blankly, her mind racing off on its own. "We could run away," he said, speaking her mind before she's quite reached the thought. He came even closer, almost touching his forehead to hers. "Run away with me," he repeated the words, smiling a real smile, full and dark, in that terrifying way he had, as though his actions were self-contained, as though there were no consequences. She wanted to be a part of his ripple-less world. "Where would we go?" His lips brushed her ear. "Anywhere you want," he said. "The sea, the city, the mountains..." Anywhere. With him. He pulled back to look at her. "You're afraid." "No, I'm not." "You'd leave your home? Your family? Your whole life?" "I-I think I would. Anything to be with you." She heard herself saying it and realized it was true. "Anything?" Valerie pretended to think a moment, for show, to be able to tell herself she had. Then, almost meekly, "Yes." "Yes?" "Yes.

Know that the “Best Possible You” may not be as successful as your neighbor, but that’s okay. The best you may not be as thin as your sister, but that’s fine. The best you may not be as talented, as dynamic, or as outgoing as your co-worker, but that’s all right, too. Be comfortable with the person God made you to be. You can’t get distracted and lose your focus by comparing yourself to others. Run your own race.

Be content with who you are, run your own race to the best of your abilities, God will take you to the finish line.

My heart jumped. “Yes. Yes I do. Chris, go on to the Mayo Clinic without me. I’ll make out fine, and I swear not to marry anyone until you are back and give your approval. Worry about finding someone yourself. After all, I’m not the only woman who resembles our mother.” He flared. “Why the hell do you put it like that? It’s you, not her! It’s everything about you that’s not like her that makes me need and want you so! “Chris, I want a man I can sleep with, who will hold me when I feel afraid, and kiss me, and make me believe I am not evil or unworthy.” My voice broke as tears came. “I wanted to show Momma what I could do, and be the best prima ballerina, but now that Julian’s gone all I want to do is cry when I hear ballet music. I miss him so, Chris.” I put my head on his chest and sobbed. “I could have been nicer to him—then he wouldn’t have struck out in anger. He needed me and I failed him. You don’t need me. You’re stronger than he was. Paul doesn’t really need me either, or he would insist on marrying me right away. . . .” “We could live together, and, and . . .” And here he faltered as his face turned red. I finished for him, “No! Can’t you see it just wouldn’t work?” “No, I guess it wouldn’t work for you,” he said stiffly. “But I’m a fool; I’ve always been a fool, wanting the impossible. I’m even fool enough to want us locked up again, the way we were—with me the only male available to you!” “You don’t mean that!” He seized me in his arms. “Don’t I? God help me but I do mean it! You belonged to me then, and in its own peculiar way our life together made me better than I would have been . . . and you made me want you, Cathy. You could have made me hate you, instead you made me love you.” I shook my head, denying this; I’d only done what came naturally from watching my mother with men. I stared at him, trembling as he released me. I stumbled as I turned to run toward the house. Before me Paul loomed up! Startled I faltered guiltily and stared at him as he turned abruptly and strode in the opposite direction. Oh! He’d been watching and listening! I pivoted about, then raced back to where Chris had his head resting against the trunk of the oldest oak. “See what you’ve done!” I cried out. “Forget me, Chris! I’m not the one and only woman alive!” He appeared blind as he turned his head and he said, “You are for me the only woman alive.

There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self All I’m really.’ getting at is that if you want to improve your life and live with all that you deserve you must run your own race. It doesn’t matter what other people say about you. What is important is what you say to yourself. Do not be concerned with the judgment of others as long as you know what you are doing is right. You can do whatever you want to do as long as it is correct according to your conscience and your heart. Never be ashamed of doing that which is right; decide on what you think is good and then stick to it. And for God’s sake, never get into the petty habit of measuring your self-worth against other people’s net worth.