Text Messages Love Quotes

I flipped open my phone and sent Daniel a text: I love you. As I crawled into bed, my phone beeped with a message back from him: Always.

I didn’t care at this point and busied myself texting a message to Sydney on the Love Phone, letting her know that my art was a paltry thing compared to the brilliance of her beauty. She texted back: This is me rolling my eyes. To which I replied: I love you too.

Your salary is not love and your word is not love. Your clothes are not love and holding hands is not love. Sex is not love and a kiss is not love. Long letters are not love and a text is not love. Flowers are not love and a box of chocolates is not love. Sunsets are not love and photographs are not love. The stars are not love and a beach under the moonlight is not love. The smell of someone else on your pillow is not love and the feeling of their skin touching your skin is not love. Heart-shaped candy is not love and an overseas holiday is not love. The truth is not love and winning an argument is not love. Warm coffee isn't love and cheap cards bought from stores are not love. Tears are not love and laughter is not love. A head on a shoulder is not love and messages written at the front of books given as gifts are not love. Apathy is not love and numbness is not love. A pain in your chest is not love and clenching your fist is not love. Rain is not love. Only you. Only you, are love.

A frequent exchange of text messages is not a relationship. It's not even a pen-pal.

At lunch I turned my phone on to check my messages. Georgia always sent me a few inane texts during the day, and sure enough there were two messages from her: one complaining about her physics teacher and a second, also obviously sent from her phone: I love you, baby. V. I wrote her back: I thought I told you to buzz off last night, you creep-o French stalker guy. Her response came back immediately: As if! Your beet-red cheeks this morning suggest otherwise ... liar! You're so into him. I groaned and was about to turn my phone off when I saw that there was a third text from UNKNOWN. Clicking on it, I read: Can I pick you up from school? Same place, same time? I texted back: How'd you get my number? Called myself from your phone while you were in the restaurant's bathroom last night. Warned you we were stalkers!

I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, “Kiss me harder,” and “You’re a good person,” and, “You brighten my day.” I live my life as straight-forward as possible.

I can't keep doing this to myself, getting my hopes up so high, only to have them come crashing down. I can't keep waiting for him to come to his senses, having my whole emotional state rest on what he decides. What if he never wakes up to how perfect we'd be together? What if I spend another year pining for him - or longer even? In a terrible flash, I see my future stretching out before me: waiting for his calls, rearranging my life around college visits, and decoding texts and instant messages like they could be something real, something true. This isn't love; this is pure torment.

Thomas Merton said it was actually dangerous to put the Scriptures in the hands of people whose inner self is not yet sufficiently awakened to encounter the Spirit, because they will try to use God for their own egocentric purposes. (This is why religion is so subject to corruption!) Now, if we are going to talk about conversion and penance, let me apply that to the two major groups that have occupied Western Christianity—Catholics and Protestants. Neither one has really let the Word of God guide their lives. Catholics need to be converted to giving the Scriptures some actual authority in their lives. Luther wasn’t wrong when he said that most Catholics did not read the Bible. Most Catholics are still not that interested in the Bible. (Historically they did not have the printing press, nor could most people read, so you can’t blame them entirely.) I have been a priest for 42 years now, and I would sadly say that most Catholics would rather hear quotes from saints, Popes, and bishops, the current news, or funny stories, if they are to pay attention. If I quote strongly from the Sermon on the Mount, they are almost throwaway lines. I can see Catholics glaze over because they have never read the New Testament, much less studied it, or been guided by it. I am very sad to have to admit this. It is the Achilles heel of much of the Catholic world, priests included. (The only good thing about it is that they never fight you like Protestants do about Scripture. They are easily duped, and the hierarchy has been able to take advantage of this.) If Catholics need to be converted, Protestants need to do penance. Their shout of “sola Scriptura” (only Scripture) has left them at the mercy of their own cultures, their own limited education, their own prejudices, and their own selective reading of some texts while avoiding others. Partly as a result, slavery, racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, and homophobia have lasted authoritatively into our time—by people who claim to love Jesus! I think they need to do penance for what they have often done with the Bible! They largely interpreted the Bible in a very individualistic and otherworldly way. It was “an evacuation plan for the next world” to use Brian McLaren’s phrase—and just for their group. Most of Evangelical Protestantism has no cosmic message, no social message, and little sense of social justice or care for the outsider. Both Catholics and Protestants (Orthodox too!) found a way to do our own thing while posturing friendship with Jesus.

Sometimes the lines in a song are lines you wish you could text-message somebody in real life.

A soul mate would be great, but at some point I'd settle for someone who gets back to text messages.

Don't send me a text message. I seldom respond to them. Use poetry.

Just say after Wednesday we never see each-" "Don't" he says, angry. "Jonah, you live six hundred kilometres away from me," I argue. "Between now and when we graduate next year there are at least ten weeks' holiday and five random public holidays. There's email and if you manage to get down to the town, there's text messaging and mobile phone calls. If not, the five minutes you get to speak to me on your communal phone is better than nothing. There are the chess nerds who want to invite you to our school for the chess comp next March and there's this town in the middle, planned by Walter Burley Griffin, where we can meet up and protest against our government's refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty.

I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, Kiss me harder, and You’re a good person, and, You brighten my day. I live my life as straight-forward as possible. Because one day, I might get hit by a bus. Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them, feel like, in this very moment, you will die if you do not see them, hold them, touch them in some way whether its your feet on their thighs on the couch or your tongue in their mouth or your heart in their hands. But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate. And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care. We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans. We never know when the bus is coming.

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise.

Once all the blocks were on the quad, Rowena grew obsessed with arranging them perfectly. I didn’t care at this point and busied myself texting a message to Sydney on the Love Phone, letting her know that my art was a paltry thing compared to the brilliance of her beauty. She texted back: This is me rolling my eyes. To which I replied: I love you too.

There’s a moment in [Anne of Green Gables] where Anne Shirley (great character) […] is in the same classroom as Gilbert Blythe and she hit’s him over the head with a slate, which is their kind of writing tool, and I always say that moment for me was just, I was just absolutely mesmerised. I thought it was so romantic, though she hated his guts. I would always say that in every one of my novels there is a moment where my characters metaphorically hit their potential love interests over the head with a slate. It could be that winning an argument or getting the upper hand, an example in say The Piper’s Son could be here’s Tom thinking it will be easy, text messaging Tara saying ‘How’s it going, babe’ and her response, that for me is the hitting someone over the head with a slate. It happens in Saving Francesca when she kind of meets Will and Will’s such a bastard to her. So they’re moments I kind of adopted and I loved that particular one, so I would say [L.M. Montgomery] was a major influence.

Love didn’t cure all, not in terms of missed communication and hurt feelings during an otherwise uneventful dinner conversation. Love couldn’t change the misread tone of a text message or a quick temper.

People earnestly say to me here, 'Mr Knight, we have cellphones now, and you're going to really enjoy them.' That's their enticement for me to rejoin society. 'You're going to love it,' they say. I have no desire. And what about a text message? Isn't that just using a telephone as a telegraph? We're going backwards.

I made it three days before the text messages started one afternoon while I was trying to finish warming up before our afternoon session. I had gotten to the LC later than usual and had gone straight to the training room, praising Jesus that I’d decided to change my clothes before leaving the diner once I’d seen what time it was and had remembered lunchtime traffic was a real thing. I was in the middle of stretching my hips when my phone beeped from where I’d left it on top of my bag. I took it out and snickered immediately at the message after taking my time with it. Jojo: WHAT THE FUCK JASMINE I didn’t need to ask what my brother was what-the-fucking over. It had only been a matter of time. It was really hard to keep a secret in my family, and the only reason why my mom and Ben—who was the only person other than her who knew—had kept their mouths closed was because they had both agreed it would be more fun to piss off my siblings by not saying anything and letting them find out the hard way I was going to be competing again. Life was all about the little things. So, I’d slipped my phone back into my bag and kept stretching, not bothering to respond because it would just make him more mad. Twenty minutes later, while I was still busy stretching, I pulled my phone out and wasn’t surprised more messages appeared. Jojo: WHY WOULD YOU NOT TELL ME Jojo: HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME Jojo: DID THE REST OF YOU KEEP THIS FROM ME Tali: What happened? What did she not tell you? Tali: OH MY GOD, Jasmine, did you get knocked up? Tali: I swear, if you got knocked up, I’m going to beat the hell out of you. We talked about contraception when you hit puberty. Sebastian: Jasmine’s pregnant? Rubes: She’s not pregnant. Rubes: What happened, Jojo? Jojo: MOM DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS Tali: Would you just tell us what you’re talking about? Jojo: JASMINE IS SKATING WITH IVAN LUKOV Jojo: And I found out by going on Picturegram. Someone at the rink posted a picture of them in one of the training rooms. They were doing lifts. Jojo: JASMINE I SWEAR TO GOD YOU BETTER EXPLAIN EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW Tali: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IS THIS TRUE? Tali: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: I’m going on Lukov’s website right now to confirm this Rubes: I just called Mom but she isn’t answering the phone Tali: She knew about this. WHO ELSE KNEW? Sebastian: I didn’t. And quit texting Jas’s name over and over again. It’s annoying. She’s skating again. Good job, Jas. Happy for you. Jojo: ^^ You’re such a vibe kill Sebastian: No, I’m just not flipping my shit because she got a new partner. Jojo: SHE DIDN’T TELL US FIRST THO. What is the point of being related if we didn’t get the scoop before everybody else? Jojo: I FOUND OUT ON PICTUREGRAM Sebastian: She doesn’t like you. I wouldn’t tell you either. Tali: I can’t find anything about it online. Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Jojo: JASMINE Tali: JASMINE Tali: Tell us everything or I’m coming over to Mom’s today. Sebastian: You’re annoying. Muting this until I get out of work. Jojo: Party pooper Tali: Party pooper Jojo: Jinx Tali: Jinx Sebastian: Annoying ... I typed out a reply, because knowing them, if I didn’t, the next time I looked at my phone, I’d have an endless column of JASMINE on there until they heard from me. That didn’t mean my response had to be what they wanted. Me: Who is Ivan Lukov?

When I asked her yesterday evening by text message, she only told me very briefly that she’s “quite low-maintenance” when it comes to food. However, I did remember that she had told me she eats mostly vegetarian but isn’t very dogmatic about it. I’m glad to know that, because this way I was able to refrain from roasting a goose. Or cooking a suckling pig. Or half a cow.

The store was empty, without a single customer or employee. It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.

She texted me 'I love you.' I texted back 'I love you too.' She then texted me 'I love you more.' And I smiled reading her message and texted in reply 'No, I love you more.' Then she texted me 'I love you infinity power infinity power infinity into infinity.' I had no words to reply and smiled looking at her text!

When a man loves you, you will know. You will know it not by the expensive gifts he buys you or thousand times he articulates those three magical words. You will know by the sense of certain knowing, a sense that makes your bones tickle at the mere thought of him. You will know when you don't need to check on him after every another hour through calls or text messages. You will know when you don't have to stalk him on Facebook or last seen status on whats app. You will know when you can feel his laughter seeping through your soul as he hears your voice. You will know when he does not make loud promises but is there to hold your hand when things go wrong. You will know he loves you when either of you don't know what the future holds but still somehow you know you are always together. You will know when a man loves you..by the way he looks at you when you are shabbily dressed or when he discovers that first or second streak of grey hair. You will know..by the way he treats you on special days and ordinary ones...you will know when a man loves you. It is different from your rosy teenage dreams or romantic tales of SRK movies...when a man loves you, you may not hear any bells ringing in your heart, you may not get to pluck the rose buds to know if he is into you or not..when a man loves you, you will know by the way he says your name.

in terms of missed communication and hurt feelings during an otherwise uneventful dinner conversation. Love couldn’t change the misread tone of a text message or a quick temper.

He hadn't remotely imagined that one morning he'd check his text messages and find love to have been lost, with approximately the degree of remorse one would feel over the loss of a pair of sunglasses.

messages he texted, Jett knew instinctively none reached her because if they had, she would feel his agony. She would feel just how important it was that she listen to what he had to say. It wasn’t about his

Hmm, if only there were a place where one could go for information... a place that had free books on every topic you could think of... (book stack emoji) Smiling, I typed back the interwebs? just to be a shit.

I don't know how the average person survives the period of limerence, that chemical insanity of early love, in the age of text messaging. How we avoid crashing our cars, walking into walls or out of open windows.

Love you. A stranger accidentally text messaged me the other day. I didn't delete it. I look at it before I go to bed at night and sometimes during the day. I know it wasn't meant for me... but it's nice to pretend it was.

of a family: Everyone could mean well and it could still be a disaster. Love didn’t cure all, not in terms of missed communication and hurt feelings during an otherwise uneventful dinner conversation. Love couldn’t change the misread tone of a text message or a quick temper.

The end of this short story could be a rather disturbing thing, if it came true. I hope you like it, and if you do, be sure to COMMENT and SHARE. Paradoxes of Destiny? Dani! My boy! Are you all right? Where are you? Have you hurt yourself? Are you all right? Daniiii! Why won’t you answer? It’s so cold and dark here. I can’t see a thing… It’s so silent. Dani? Can you hear me? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving… I shouldn’t have done it! I'm so stupid sometimes! Son, are you all right?... We really wrecked the car when we rolled it! I can’t see or hear a thing… Am I in hospital? Am I dead…? Dani? Your silence is killing me… Are you all right?! I can see a glimmer of light. I feel trapped. Dani, are you there? I can’t move. It’s like I’m wrapped in this mossy green translucent plastic. I have to get out of here. The light is getting more and more intense. I think I can tear the wrapping that’s holding me in. I'm almost out. The light is blinding me. What a strange place. I've never seen anything like it. It doesn’t look like Earth. Am I dead? On another planet? Oh God, look at those hideous monsters! They’re so creepy and disgusting! They look like extraterrestrials. They’re aliens! I'm on another planet! I can’t believe it. I need to get the hell out here. Those monsters are going to devour me. I have to get away. I’m so scared. Am I floating? Am I flying? I’m going to go higher to try to escape. I can’t see the aliens anymore and the landscape looks less terrifying. I think I've made it. It’s very windy. Is that a highway? I think I can see some vehicles down there. Could they be the extraterrestrials’ transport? I’m going to go down a bit. I see people! Am I on Earth? Could this be a parallel universe? Where could Dani be? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving. I shouldn’t… That tower down there looks a lot like the water tank in my town… It’s identical. But the water tank in my town doesn’t have that huge tower block next to it. It all looks very similar to my neighborhood, but it isn’t exactly the same: there are a lot of tower blocks here. There’s the river… and the factory. It’s definitely my neighborhood, but it looks kind of different. I must be in a parallel universe… It’s amazing that I can float. People don’t seem to notice my presence. Am I a ghost? I have to get back home and see if Dani’s there. God, I hope he’s safe and sound. Gabriela must be out of her mind with the crash. There’s my house! Home sweet home. And whose are those cars? The front of the house has been painted a different color… This is all so strange! There’s someone in the garden… Those trees I planted in the spring have really grown. Is… is that… Dani? Yes, yes! It’s Dani. But he looks so different… He looks older, he looks… like a big boy! What’s important is that he’s OK. I need to hug him tight and tell him how much I love him. Can he see me if I’m a ghost? I'll go up to him slowly so I don’t scare him. I need to hold him tight. He can’t see me, I won’t get any closer. He moved his head, I think he’s started to realize I’m here… Wow I’m so hungry all of a sudden! I can’t stop! How are you doing, son?! It’s me! Your dad! My dear boy? I can’t stop! I'm too hungry! Ahhhh, so delicious! What a pleasure! Nooo Daniii! Nooooo!.... I’m your daaaad!... Splat!... “Mum, bring the insect repellent, the garden’s full of mosquitoes,” grunted Daniel as he wiped the blood from the palm of his hand on his trousers. Gabriela was just coming out. She did an about turn and went back into her house, and shouted “Darling, bring the insect repellent, it’s on the fireplace…” Absolute cold and silence… THE END (1) This note is for those who have read EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY. This story is a spin-off of the novel EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY and revolves around Letus’s curious theories about the possibility of animal reincarnation.

FRIEND: Any advice for being single on Valentines day? ☹ ME: Whenever you see a couple laughing or kissing, start crying and scream at the guy saying…. ME: “HOW COULD YOU??!! YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME! I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING AND NOW THIS?!?!?! IT’S OVER” Then slap him and walk away, that would be interesting. FRIEND: This is why we are best friends

It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They'd probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.

It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.

He called me. In the beginning, every day. Multiple times. Although I would not answer. And he texted. At first often, and then every few days or so. It went on for months. These little messages that would paralyze me. And to which I resisted responding. Because I had made a choice. I miss you. I’m thinking of you. I still love you. And then one day, they stopped. Long, long before I had stopped loving him.

People truly have no idea what is really going on, what the days are actually like. I get the feeling people think it is an excuse or that I am weak by the way they react. They do not realize how much intense effort it takes just to get through the day, often hiding everything. I have been called selfish because of canceling plans and/or not following through with things. To me, the best things people can do are the small things likes texts or messages that remind me I'm not the horrible monster that I feel like. Small, thoughtful words. And be there when it's over! It's nice to be together with people after and know that they still love you. That's important to me, to know that when I'm back to myself people still want to be with me and haven't given up. This is what will keep me going through the next one, knowing people will still be there.

We hurt one another. We go through life dressing up in new clothes and covering up our true motives. We meet up lightly, we drink rosé wine, and then we give each other pain. We don't want to! What we want to do, what one really wants to do is put out one's hands—like some dancer, in a trance, just put out one's hands—and touch all the people and tell them: I'm sorry. I love you. Thank you for your e-mail. Thank you for coming to see me. Thank you. But we can't. We can't. On the little life raft of Mark only one other person could fit. Just one! And so, thwarted, we inflict pain. That’s what we do. We do not keep each other company. We do not send each other cute text messages. Or, rather, when we do these things, we do them merely to postpone the moment when we'll push these people off, and beat forward, beat forward on our little raft, alone.

Courtship, to me, was about text messages. It was about sending someone a good-morning and a good-night message. It was ending every text with an x, or three x's, or a long line of them when you were really pleased. It was about withholding x's when you were moody, and then they would notice, and ask you what was wrong. These were the rules of love I had learned from my all-girls school, and it confused me when someone didn't play.

With 21 million people following her on Facebook and 18 million on Twitter, pop singer Ariana Grande can’t personally chat with each of her loves, as she affectionately calls her fans. So she and others are spreading their messages through new-style social networks, via mobile apps that are more associated with private, intimate conversation, hoping that marketing in a cozier digital setting adds a breath of warmth and a dash of personality. It’s the Internet’s equivalent of mailing postcards rather than plastering a billboard. Grande could have shared on Twitter that her most embarrassing moment on stage was losing a shoe. The 21-year-old instead revealed the fact during a half-hour live text chat on Line, an app built for close friends to exchange instant messages. It’s expensive to advertise on Facebook and Twitter, and the volume of information being posted creates uncertainty over what people actually notice. Chat apps including Line, Kik, Snapchat, WeChat and Viber place marketing messages front and center. Most-used apps The apps threaten to siphon advertising dollars from the social media leaders, which are already starting to see chat apps overtake them as the most-used apps on smartphones, according to Forrester Research. Chat apps “demand attention,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at consulting firm Altimeter Group.

Just before she was about to hit send she deleted the kisses. In case the therapist thought she was leading him on. Then she thought of all the actual kissing they'd done last night. Ridiculous. She may just as well kiss him in a text message. She made it three kisses and went to hit send, but then she wondered if it would seem overly romantic, and changed it back to one kiss, but that seemed stingy, compared to his two, as if he was trying to make a point She made a 'tch' sounded, added back in the second kiss and hit send.

YOU NEVER THANKED ME FOR THE BURGER. INGRATE. He checked his work e-mail and fired off a few quick replies. About ten minutes later, he got a text message from Brooke. SOMEBODY WOULD’VE BEEN THANKED IN PERSON, IF HE HADN’T STORMED OUT OF MY OFFICE AS PART OF SOME CRANKY-MAN TIRADE. He smiled while replying. OUT OF THE KINDNESS OF MY HEART, I’LL LET YOU THANK ME IN PERSON OVER DINNER TONIGHT. GOT GOOD NEWS TODAY, NEED TO CELEBRATE. JUST HOW GOOD IS THIS GOOD NEWS? she wrote back. Cade thought about that. ON A SCALE OF MEH TO HOLY-SHIT-I-JUST-WON-THE-ROSE-BOWL, I’D SAY THIS COMES IN AT REALLY DAMN COOL.

Letter Six To The One Who Left Too Soon Do you regret it? Does it hurt when you see my pictures? Does it hurt when you read my words? Do you wonder if my poems are about you? Do you sometimes write a long message to apologize, then delete it? Was it me? Was it you? Was it timing? Was I too hard to love? Were you too scared of loving again? It’s hard for me to believe that you’re a bad person because you were so kind to me. It’s hard for me to believe that it was all fake because it felt genuine. It’s hard for me to believe that you had that connection with everyone because I didn’t feel like you were pretending. I didn’t feel like you were acting. Was it so hard to ask me on a few more dates? Was it so hard to ask me a few more personal questions? Was it so hard to text me back to keep the conversation going? Was it so hard to like me? Why am I always the one who’s ready? The one who’s willing to stay, the one who’s willing to try against all odds and the only one who’s willing to fight? Why am I always the one dreaming and you’re the one waking me up? Why does it begin with smiles and end with tears? Why does it always have to be you against me? Why can’t it be us against the world? I hope one day you tell me why you left too soon. I hope one day you tell me the real reason. I hope one day you tell me the truth. Sometimes I wonder about you. What you’re doing, who you’re with, why you picked her and if you ever think about me. Sometimes I wonder if you will ever reach out, just to say you miss me, say sorry or just to hear my voice. And sometimes I wish you had stayed. I hope you learn how to stay. I hope you stop leaving. I hope you learn that staying is the only way to open your heart and stop running. I hope you learn that some people—like me—would’ve done anything for you to stay. I hope you learn that there’s so much more value in staying than leaving. I hope you learn that staying doesn’t always hurt.

THE HANDS FREE PLEDGE I’m becoming Hands Free. I want to make memories, not to-do lists. I want to feel the squeeze of my child’s arms, not the pressure of overcommitment. I want to get lost in conversation with the people I love, not consumed by a sea of unimportant emails. I want to be overwhelmed by sunsets that give me hope, not by overloaded agendas that steal my joy. I want the noise of my life to be a mixture of laughter and gratitude, not the intrusive buzz of cell phones and text messages. I’m letting go of distraction, disconnection, and perfection to live a life that simply, so very simply, consists of what really matters. I’m becoming Hands Free.

Lord, with love and mercy you protect us from the dangers of the world. When I spend too much time looking into my smartphone, paying little attention to the beautiful faces of the people around me, I know I am in danger of forgetting who I am. When I text and tweet all sorts of messages to people I hardly know, making no time to have a meaningful conversation with a stranger or even a loved one, I know I am in danger of losing sight of God in others. When I indulge myself by buying things instantly and mindlessly, I am in danger of becoming indifferent to the needs of others. Lord, save me from my selfish ways and addictive attachment to the things of this world. Fill me with love, mercy and inner peace, that I may long to truly be present to those who cry for help. Amen. Read

This meant that I went from being the person who responded to everyone all the time, to being a person who doesn’t respond to hardly anyone, at all. At first, it was hard. My text inbox went from typically ten unread messages to over four hundred. I would read letters from readers, and instead of responding with a novel-length letter, I began saving them to a folder and sending out energetic blessings instead. If an email landed in my inbox, I would let it sit sometimes for up to seven days before even opening it. I got to things when I got to things. At first, some people were super annoyed, but after a few years of this practice, people came to understand I don’t respond to things immediately, and sometimes I don’t respond at all. To me, this is the only sane way to live. I’m not chained to my phone or to other people’s expectations of responsiveness. I don’t prove my love by texting back in two minutes.

Two seconds went by before I got a response. Lenny: The offer stands, bish. Lenny: You’re the best person I know, fyi. I smiled down at my phone. Me: I love you too Lenny: [eye rolling emoji] Lenny: I was texting you because Grandpa G is making margaritas and he was asking where you were. Me: Tell him I love him. Lenny: I will. You find Rip? Me: I’m watching him. Lenny: Stalker Me: He’s standing in front of me, I can’t help it. Lenny: Pretty sure that’s what every stalker thinks. I chanced another glance at the man and held back a sigh. Me: Sometimes I don’t understand why him. Lenny: Because he looks like he’s been in jail and that’s about as far away from what every jackass you’ve ever dated looks like? Lenny: Grandpa G says he loves you too and to come over and bring the girl with you if she’s around. I didn’t tell him you’re at the bar, otherwise he’d want to invite himself. You know how that man gets in public. I almost laughed at the first comment and definitely laughed at the second one. Rip did look like he’d done time. That was unfair, but it was the truth. For all I knew, he probably had. Then again, I was probably judging him by a face he had no say in. For all I knew, he had a marshmallow heart and rescued and rehabilitated small animals when he wasn’t at work. Deep down, he might have a caring and loving disposition that he only shared around very few people—people who had won his trust. You never knew. The idea of that put a small smile on my face and kept it there as I typed a message back, leaving the first comment alone. Me: I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but if I leave soon, I’ll drop by. Tell Grandpa G that the girl is working tonight. You’re all coming for the graduation, right? Lenny: Yes. I’m legit ready to cry this Saturday. Lenny: I’ve got the blow horn ready by the way. TOOT TOOT, bish. She wasn’t the only one preparing herself to cry this weekend, and that made me happy for some reason.

A text comes from Wallace. An actual text too, not a message through the forum app. I gave him my number awhile back, before Halloween, but not because I wanted him to call me or anything. I wrote it on the edge of our conversation paper in homeroom and slid it over to him because sometimes I see something and think, Wallace would laugh at that, I should send him a picture of it, but the messaging app is terrible with pictures and texting is way better. So he texts me now, and it’s a picture. A regular sweet potato pie. Beneath the picture, he says, I really like sweet potato pie. I text back, Yeah, so do I. Then he sends me a picture of his face, frowning, and says, No, you don’t understand. Then another picture, closer, just his eyes. I REALLY like sweet potato pie. A series of pictures comes in several-second intervals. The first is a triangular slice of pie in Wallace’s hand. Then Wallace holding that slice up to his face—it’s soft enough to start collapsing between his fingers. The next one has him stuffing the slice into his mouth, and in the final one it’s all the way in, his cheeks are puffed out like a chipmunk’s, and he’s letting his eyes roll back like it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. I purse my lips to keep my laugh in, but my parents are fine-tuned to the slightest hint of amusement from me, and they both look up. “What’s so funny, Eggs?” Dad says. “Nothing,” I reply. Nothing makes a joke less funny than someone wanting in on it, especially parents. Wow, I say to Wallace. You really like sweet potato pie. He sends one more picture, this one with him embracing the pie pan, gazing lovingly at it. We’re to be married in the spring. An actual laugh escapes me. I really hope Wallace is having a better Thanksgiving than I am. It seems like he is. I take a picture of myself pouting and send it to him, saying, Aw, the cutest of cute couples. ... Another picture from Wallace waits for me. In this one, an empty pie pan littered withcrumbs sits on the floor beside a large knife. Wallace kneels next to it with morecrumbs on his sweater, expression horrified. NOOOO WHAT HAVE I DONE MY LOVE OUR MARRIAGE ’TIS ALL FOR NAUGHT I text back: Oh no!! Not sweet potato bride! Another picture comes: Wallace sprawled on the floor beside the pie pan, one arm thrown over his eyes. Let me only be accused of loving her too much. Wallace is definitely having a better Thanksgiving than me.

You say that men are utterly incapable of renouncing violence, and, in this fact, that Christ is not involved in this violence, you see the proof of his divinity. I find that to be very true. But the question remains: how are men able to renounce violence? The answer is: the Spirit slowly transforms the hearts of men and renders them capable of this renunciation. By the Spirit we are able to understand that we have transferred our violence onto Christ when we were still blind (and we continue to do this to the extent that we remain blind). Therefore the cross is the source of life in a double sense. (1) Christ remained faithful to the message of the Father, even when the whole of humanity projected its violence onto him. He bore this violence and did not react against it with counterviolence. (2) The Father reacted against the violence by sending the Spirit. Here I add another theme that I don’t find in your text: prayer. This is a very important theme in all the NT writings. In the final analysis, prayer is always a prayer about the coming of the Spirit. And the Spirit is the Spirit of liberty, love and peace, as Paul very often tells us. Peace between men finally becomes possible through the gift of the Spirit.

Finally, some people tell me that they avoid science fiction because it’s depressing. This is quite understandable if they happened to hit a streak of post-holocaust cautionary tales or a bunch of trendies trying to outwhine each other, or overdosed on sleaze-metal-punk-virtual-noir Capitalist Realism. But the accusation often, I think, reflects some timidity or gloom in the reader’s own mind: a distrust of change, a distrust of the imagination. A lot of people really do get scared and depressed if they have to think about anything they’re not perfectly familiar with; they’re afraid of losing control. If it isn’t about things they know all about already they won’t read it, if it’s a different color they hate it, if it isn’t McDonald’s they won’t eat at it. They don’t want to know that the world existed before they were, is bigger than they are, and will go on without them. They do not like history. They do not like science fiction. May they eat at McDonald’s and be happy in Heaven." Pro: "But what I like in and about science fiction includes these particular virtues: vitality, largeness, and exactness of imagination; playfulness, variety, and strength of metaphor; freedom from conventional literary expectations and mannerism; moral seriousness; wit; pizzazz; and beauty. Let me ride a moment on that last word. The beauty of a story may be intellectual, like the beauty of a mathematical proof or a crystalline structure; it may be aesthetic, the beauty of a well-made work; it may be human, emotional, moral; it is likely to be all three. Yet science fiction critics and reviewers still often treat the story as if it were a mere exposition of ideas, as if the intellectual “message” were all. This reductionism does a serious disservice to the sophisticated and powerful techniques and experiments of much contemporary science fiction. The writers are using language as postmodernists; the critics are decades behind, not even discussing the language, deaf to the implications of sounds, rhythms, recurrences, patterns—as if text were a mere vehicle for ideas, a kind of gelatin coating for the medicine. This is naive. And it totally misses what I love best in the best science fiction, its beauty." "I am certainly not going to talk about the beauty of my own stories. How about if I leave that to the critics and reviewers, and I talk about the ideas? Not the messages, though. There are no messages in these stories. They are not fortune cookies. They are stories.

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Then Obama walked into frame and I, along with the rest of the world, heard him say the words we’d all been waiting ten years to hear. “Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children.” I couldn’t believe it. I felt joy, shock, excitement, and an overwhelming pride about being an American. The news cut to scenes of other Americans cheering in the streets. This was an awesome, fist-pump, proud-to-be-an-American moment. My phone pinged with a text message from an old friend, Mandy Goff. She thanked me for my sacrifice, for all that I and all of the other veterans and soldiers had done that led to this moment. She told me that she loved and appreciated me. That text hit me hard. I think up to this point I still had a pretty high wall up around my emotions toward the war, including the reasons I was there and the reasons why I came home less whole than when I left. But Mandy’s text tore a hole in that wall, and I completely broke down. I was sitting alone on the couch, nothing but the light of the television illuminating the room, and I was sobbing. Every emotion I felt that day and every day since just washed over me.

He had a rough idea where he was going, since Rylann had previously mentioned that she lived in Roscoe Village. At the stoplight at Belmont Avenue, he pulled out his cell phone and scrolled through his contacts. The beauty of text messaging, he realized, was in its simplicity. He didn’t have to try to explain things, nor did he have to attempt to parse through all the banter in an attempt to figure out what she might be thinking. Instead, he could keep things short and sweet. I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU. He hit send. To kill time while he waited for her response, he drove in the direction of his sister’s wine shop, figuring he could always drop in and harass Jordan about something. This time, however, she beat him to the punch. “So who’s the brunette bombshell?” Jordan asked as soon as he walked into the shop and took a seat at the main bar. Damn. He’d forgotten about the stupid Scene and Heard column. Kyle helped himself to a cracker and some Brie cheese sitting on the bar. “I’m going to say…Angelina Jolie. Actually, no—Megan Fox.” “Megan Fox is, like, twenty-five.” “And this is a problem why, exactly?” Jordan slapped his hand as he reached for more crackers. “Those are for customers.” She put her hand on her hip. “You know, after reading the Scene and Heard column, I’d kind of hoped it was Rylann they were talking about. And that maybe, just maybe, my ne’er-do-well twin had decided to stop playing around and finally pursue a woman of quality.” He stole another cracker. “Now, that would be something.” She shook her head. “Why do I bother? You know, one day you’re going to wake up and…” Kyle’s cell phone buzzed, and he tuned out the rest of Jordan’s lecture—he could probably repeat the whole thing word for word by now—as he checked the incoming message. It was from Rylann, her response as short and sweet as his original text. 3418 CORNELIA, #3. He had her address. With a smile, he looked up and interrupted his sister. “That’s great, Jordo. Hey, by any chance do you have any bottles of that India Ink cabernet lying around?” She stopped midrant and stared at him. “I’m sure I do. Why, what made you think of that?” Then her face broke into a wide grin. “Wait a second…that was the wine Rylann talked about when she was here. She said it was one of her favorites.” “Did she? Funny coincidence.” Jordan put her hand over her heart. “Oh my God, you’re trying to impress her. That is so cute.” “Don’t be ridiculous,” Kyle scoffed. “I just thought, since I’ve heard such good things about the wine, that I would give it a shot.” Jordan gave him a look, cutting through all the bullshit. “Kyle. She’s going to love it.” Okay, whatever. Maybe he was trying to impress Rylann a little. “You don’t think it’s too much? Like I’m trying too hard?” Jordan put her hand over her heart again. “Oh. It’s like watching Bambi take his first steps.” “Jordo…” he growled warningly. With a smile, she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed affectionately. “It’s perfect. Trust me.

An upbeat song played over the loudspeaker, and everyone's attention focused on the Jumbotron above the basketball court. "It's time for the Bulls' Kiss Cam. So, pucker up for your sweetie and kiss them." The camera found an older couple in their fifties. The man pulled his wife, I assumed, in for a quick peck on the lips. "Aww. That is so sweet," Trina said. She proceeded to yank poor Owen to his seat in case the spotlight landed on them. She'd do just about anything to get on television, even if it meant not kissing Owen tonight to do so. "That is so staged," I said and sneaked a quick peek at my phone, seeing if he messaged me back. He didn’t. "Really?" she countered and slapped my arm. Once I glanced her way, she pointed towards the large screen looming above. On the screen was Sebastian and me as the camera had just so happened to find us. It stayed there zooming closer. And closer. And closer. "Come on," the announcer called out, prodding us. "Just one kiss won't hurt." He had no idea what he was asking. A kiss would initiate feelings I couldn't avoid any longer. I momentarily forgot how to breathe as the song, “Kiss the Girl” from the Little Mermaid hummed at my lips. Not the best choice, but still. Everything became much worse once my giant moved into view, smiling my favorite smile. Sebastian inched closer; eyebrow cocked to dare me."No pressure or anything." I was quiet for a moment before whispering, "Game on, buddy." My eyes closed a few heartbeats shy of Sebastian's lips meeting mine. His hands rose, cupping my cheeks to keep me from pulling away. Like that was going to happen. Sebastian’s mouth moved against mine, and I conceded, kissing him in return. He tasted sweet and minty, like the home I’d been missing. The kiss turned from soft and tame to fierce and wantingas if neither of us could get enough. And already, I considered myself a goner. Everything became a haze. My heart thumped so wildly against my chest, I swore Sebastian could hear. The crowd surrounding us was whistling and cheering us on, and it only kept gaining momentum as the moments passed. The noise quickly faded until it was as if we were the only two people in the room. We could have been the only two people on earth. "Okay, guys." Trina tapped my shoulder, garnering my attention. "Camera has moved on now." That was our cue to separate, and I slowly drew away from Sebastian. He, in turn, slipped his hand to the back of my neck, holding me here. "Don't," he sighed against my lips. I didn't budge another inch. I didn't want to. Sebastian rewarded me by deepening the kiss. Dear God. There were sparks. My stomach flipped. My toes curled. My body warmed. Every single inch of me only wanted one thing and one thing only. If this continued for too much longer, it was easy to guess my new favorite hobby: Kissing Sebastian Freaking Birch. Needing some air, I pressed my palm flat against his chest. This time he released me as we both were breathless. Sebastian's eyes carefully studied me. He kept staring as if he could read my heart, my mind. And for those brief few seconds, I honestly didn't believe there were any secrets between us. His gaze shifted as he gauged what to do next, and I had no freaking idea where we went from here. We'd done it now. We crossed that line, and there was no way of ever going back.

The brevity of text messages, for example, and the fact that we are able to communicate with less than 140 characters at a time work because people

The brevity of text messages, for example, and the fact that we are able to communicate with less than 140 characters at a time work because people maintain mental models of each other.

What the heck, Shakespeare? Why couldn’t you just talk in normal English instead of Shakespeare-speak?” Well, in his time and place, Shakespeare was speaking in normal English. His plays were written to be understood by the Queen and the peasants alike. So, he made sure that the jokes were common ones and that the language was totally normal for everyone at that time. He didn’t make it hard; our language just evolved. Think about it: if you sent Shakespeare a text message, like “OMG! R&J = so L. J/K loved it. g2g,” he would be beyond confused. He’d have to work pretty hard to make each piece of that text as obvious as “Eggs.

This is getting weird,” Lip said, flipping through some of the others.  “Do you think these are code?” “Could be.  Don’t know.  Not our speed, though.  We’re going to need to call in some favors to get them run.” Lip nodded.  “That shouldn’t be a problem.  We’ll use our go-to boy.” “Lawrence?” “He owes us.” Lawrence Simpson.  He still worked at the NSA.  Man was a lifer.  And he owed them big. “They’ve got the Black Widow now,” Lip said.  “I’d love to work with that baby.” The Black Widow.  The NSA’s colossal Cray supercomputer.  Thing could scan through millions of emails, phone calls, you name it, in seconds.  It could find patterns, search for key words, and do it on a scale that was unfathomable. “Keep dreaming,” Marks said. Lip could get carried away.  Like the NSA was going to let ‘em use that.  Thing was needed for its job.  Like spying on the world. First time on the job Marks was pretty blown away.  Didn’t faze him in the least now, knowing that the NSA captured every bit of correspondence every day and every second from around the world.  Phone calls, cell or land lines.  Domestic and international.  Emails.  Text messages.  Fuckin’ everything. It was all captured, scanned and stored.  And Lip and he had a hand in helping with that.  Still were helping.  Information in motion.  There were always new pipes that needed to be tapped, more splitters to put in place somewhere around the world.  Dubai, Chóngqing, Bangalore…  Marks and Lip, just two of your friendly cable box installers.  No job too small or too far away. Marks eyed the walls again.  In a micro sense this was almost like a snapshot of the soup.  Random and nonsensical.  Just a bunch of non-related groups lumped together. He examined some of the newspaper clippings.  It was weird to see the paper content. 

Hey, it’s nice of you to show up!” That was a decent start. “What has it been—a year since you flattened my heart by leaving without a word and ignoring all of my texts, messages, and voicemails?

Though Crystal has never caught Sean’s dick in the other women’s vagina, there has always been text messages, weird phone numbers, and times when Sean has tip-toed into the house at five o’clock in the morning. “What

It was Tricey this time, so I was about to turn the damn thing off just as a text message from Taij came through. It read: Come here. I am in the dressing room on the second floor. Immediately

Jelani hasn’t stopped calling and text messaging me since Thursday. Every day there has been more than twenty calls, a dozen voicemails, damn near hundreds of text messages, and only God knows how many times he IM’d me because I haven’t logged in out of fear.             “He’s

by best of luck, I mean I hope that one day you’ll meet someone amazing, text them a thoughtful message, take them to a monster truck rally, and then hopefully at some point, after a bowl of delicious ramen, make love to them in a Jurassic Park–themed love hotel in Tokyo.

The end of this short story could be a rather disturbing thing, if it came true. I hope you like it, and if you do, be sure to COMMENT and SHARE. Paradoxes of Destiny? Dani! My boy! Are you all right? Where are you? Have you hurt yourself? Are you all right? Daniiii! Why won’t you answer? It’s so cold and dark here. I can’t see a thing… It’s so silent. Dani? Can you hear me? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving… I shouldn’t have done it! I'm so stupid sometimes! Son, are you all right?... We really wrecked the car when we rolled it! I can’t see or hear a thing… Am I in hospital? Am I dead…? Dani? Your silence is killing me… Are you all right?! I can see a glimmer of light. I feel trapped. Dani, are you there? I can’t move. It’s like I’m wrapped in this mossy green translucent plastic. I have to get out of here. The light is getting more and more intense. I think I can tear the wrapping that’s holding me in. I'm almost out. The light is blinding me. What a strange place. I've never seen anything like it. It doesn’t look like Earth. Am I dead? On another planet? Oh God, look at those hideous monsters! They’re so creepy and disgusting! They look like extraterrestrials. They’re aliens! I'm on another planet! I can’t believe it. I need to get the hell out here. Those monsters are going to devour me. I have to get away. I’m so scared. Am I floating? Am I flying? I’m going to go higher to try to escape. I can’t see the aliens anymore and the landscape looks less terrifying. I think I've made it. It’s very windy. Is that a highway? I think I can see some vehicles down there. Could they be the extraterrestrials’ transport? I’m going to go down a bit. I see people! Am I on Earth? Could this be a parallel universe? Where could Dani be? I shouldn’t have looked at that text message while I was driving. I shouldn’t… That tower down there looks a lot like the water tank in my town… It’s identical. But the water tank in my town doesn’t have that huge tower block next to it. It all looks very similar to my neighborhood, but it isn’t exactly the same: there are a lot of tower blocks here. There’s the river… and the factory. It’s definitely my neighborhood, but it looks kind of different. I must be in a parallel universe… It’s amazing that I can float. People don’t seem to notice my presence. Am I a ghost? I have to get back home and see if Dani’s there. God, I hope he’s safe and sound. Gabriela must be out of her mind with the crash. There’s my house! Home sweet home. And whose are those cars? The front of the house has been painted a different color… This is all so strange! There’s someone in the garden… Those trees I planted in the spring have really grown. Is… is that… Dani? Yes, yes! It’s Dani. But he looks so different… He looks older, he looks… like a big boy! What’s important is that he’s OK. I need to hug him tight and tell him how much I love him. Can he see me if I’m a ghost? I'll go up to him slowly so I don’t scare him. I need to hold him tight. He can’t see me, I won’t get any closer. He moved his head, I think he’s started to realize I’m here… Wow I’m so hungry all of a sudden! I can’t stop! How are you doing, son?! It’s me! Your dad! My dear boy? I can’t stop! I'm too hungry! Ahhhh, so delicious! What a pleasure! Nooo Daniii! Nooooo!.... I’m your daaaad!... Splat!... “Mum, bring the insect repellent, the garden’s full of mosquitoes,” grunted Daniel as he wiped the blood from the palm of his hand on his trousers. Gabriela was just coming out. She did an about turn and went back into her house, and shouted “Darling, bring the insect repellent, it’s on the fireplace…” Absolute cold and silence… THE END (1) This note is for those who have read EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY. This story is a spin-off of the novel EQUINOX—WHISPERS OF DESTINY and revolves around Letus’s curious theories about the possibility of animal reincarnation

It was because I knew. I've known all this time about Troy fucking with Kayla. I saw the text message she sent him. I was just waiting on him to tell me.

I was over at Kayla's house when she called. I had to make her stop with all the calls and texts messages because if Camilla found out, it wasn't going to end well for either of us.

When I see my phone light up, I always hope that it's a text message from you

cooking with mud was rolling around in it until only our eyes weren’t caked with brown sludge. I loved him on our hour-long bike rides when we played Would You Rather until we had to pull off to the side of the road because we were laughing so hard. I loved him through high school when he was the obsession of almost every girl at our school, but he always put me first. I loved him when he became my first boyfriend and showed me what it felt like to be cherished. I loved him over our long-distance relationship when receiving his text messages would make my day. And I love him now as he gets ready to commit his life to another woman. I will love him forever, and no amount of time or varying circumstances are going to change that. Jax is my best friend. He will always hold the other half of my heart in the figurative BFF necklace that we share. He will be my friend forever. I hop onto my bed and lie back as I click my phone screen, pulling up my Favorites list. My thumb hovers over his name. I take a deep breath and touch his name. My heart thrums wildly as his phone rings twice on the other end. His voice comes through my earpiece, and I almost cry from happiness. I can move to New York tomorrow with no regrets because the world is right as long as Jax and I are friends again. “Little Love.” His voice sounds anxious, hesitant. “Hey, mister.” Another rogue tear escapes, but this tear is full of happiness.

You’re going to what?” It wasn’t anything Sean hadn’t asked himself every five minutes or so since getting sucked into Emma’s plan, but it sounded different when his cousin said it. Or maybe it was Kevin’s subsequent pointing and laughing his ass off that changed the tone. “It’s only a month,” Sean said, maybe a little defensively. The shorter, dark-haired waitress—Darcy, he thought her name was—put a beer in front of him and he took a long pull. He’d been looking forward to it all day. Kevin looked skeptical. “A month of living with a total stranger, pretending you’re so madly in love with her you’re going to marry her? For real?” “No, not for real, moron. For pretend. That’s the point.” His cousin laughed some more, then pulled out his cell phone and started texting. Sean craned his neck, but couldn’t see the screen. “What the hell are you doing?” Kevin chuckled. “Telling my wife.” “You could have waited until I went upstairs.” “No, I really couldn’t.” Kevin shut his phone, but it was only a few seconds before it chimed. He looked at the screen, chuckled, then was texting again. Sean pulled out his phone and opened a new message to Kevin. I’m still here, asshole. Send. A couple minutes later, Kevin grinned and slid his phone back in his pocket. “Beth wants to know the sleeping arrangements since there’s no way even a grandmother will buy a separate-bedrooms story.” “Beth wants to know, huh?” “Trust me, by now the whole family wants to know.” Sean was tempted to bang his head against the bar, but he wouldn’t be able to knock himself out, so he didn’t waste the effort. “There’s a sofa in the bedroom. She’ll sleep on it and I get the bed.” “Chivalrous.” “I’m too tall for a sofa.” “I don’t know Emma well, but I seem to recall she’s not exactly short.” Kevin gave him a knowing look. “Not exactly hard on the eyes, either.” That she wasn’t.

In her book Alone Together, Sherry Turkle, professor at MIT, suggests that, in the last fifteen years, our tools have begun to shape us and our connection with others, so that we now “expect more from technology and less from each other.” Turkle analyzes detailed interviews with technology users and conducts formal studies on the impact of robots on them. Her studies examine a moving target. A 2010 Nielsen survey reported that the average teen sends more than three thousand text messages a month, and this surely will increase.

[The message of listening to and wrestling with God] is conveyed in a series of passages whose meaning does not lie on the surface of the text, but discloses itself only to those who listen to what is going on beneath the words: the unspoken cry, the implicit appeal, the unheard tears, the unarticulated pain. Those who wish to learn to listen to God must learn to listen to other people – to the kol demama daka, “the still, small voice” of those who need our love.

I love sending text messages. They are a useful and inexpensive method of ensuring that I remain in the forefront of the thoughts of the relevant recipient. I do this to show how much I care about that person even when they are not with me.

MOM: “ What does IDK, LY & TTYL mean?” ME: I don’t know, love you, talk to you later. MOM: OK, I will ask your sister.

You asked me who I’d been seeing? The mystery guy?” “Ohhhhhh.” Emily’s eyes lit up at the promise of early morning gossip. “Why, yes. I do remember that.” Emily rested her chin on her hands, settling in for my story. “I don’t think you need me for this.” Simon threw up defensive hands and went into the kitchen in search of coffee. I gave him a thin smile of appreciation that he didn’t see, then I turned back to Emily and, for the first time, spilled the whole story. Of being so lonely I couldn’t handle it anymore. Of drinking one glass of wine too many and sending that first message to Dex. His response. Our emails. Texts. And realizing last night that it had all been a lie. “So . . .” While I’d been talking Emily refilled our coffee mugs, and now she sat down again, staring hard at my laptop. “All this time you thought it was Dex, but it was Daniel writing to you instead?” “Exactly.” I nodded emphatically. “Are you kidding me?” I jumped at Simon’s voice, harsher, angrier than I was used to hearing him. He was back, leaning against the archway again, his own mug of coffee in his hands. “What kind of Cyrano de Bergerac bullshit is that?” Emily clucked her tongue and turned in her chair. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “Of course it is!” He gestured to my laptop. “Look, I’ve known the Dueling Kilts for years. They’ve played the Faire since . . . well, I think since the first year we started hiring outside acts. And they’re great guys. But there’s no way that Dex MacLean could string together a coherent sentence, much less an elaborate email.” “Hey.” I felt a lick of defensive anger for the hottie I’d hooked up with. But then I thought about it and, well, Simon wasn’t wrong. Hadn’t I thought something similar when I’d first started hearing from Dex? Daniel? Who-the-hell-ever? “Okay, yeah,” I said. “That’s fair.” Simon’s smile wasn’t unkind as he finished his point. “Which means he got Daniel to write those emails for him. And that’s classic Cyrano.” “Yeah, but what about the texts?” Emily picked up my phone and waved it at him. “Daniel was using his own phone number. You think Dex was standing over his shoulder, telling him what to say?” “He could have been.” “I don’t think so. Besides, in the original play, Cyrano and Christian were both in love with Roxane, but Cyrano sacrificed his chance to be with her because he thought she loved Christian more. But we don’t know if that’s the case here. Maybe Daniel . . .” “What the hell is wrong with you two?” I closed my laptop with a snap and took my phone back from Emily. “You’re both nerds, you know that? In this century we don’t go straight for a Cyrano reference. We call it catfishing.” Simon snorted, and Emily bit down on her bottom lip, but amusement danced in her eyes. “Well, yeah. That’s true. But Simon does have a point.” “Of course I do.” He blew across the top of his mug before taking a sip. I narrowed my eyes at him. “Don’t you have sets to finish painting?

I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.” “I don’t like crumbs in my bed,” she said. “Or people who don’t pay rent here.” “You want rent?” He smiled as he finished the toast. “How much?” She went to the kitchen, grabbed his big arm, and tried to pull him out. He leaned back and wouldn’t budge. “Get out of here,” she said. “You’re banging into everything with your crutches.” “I’m not going,” he said. “Go sit on the couch. I’ll make you some eggs.” “Nope,” he said. “I might be a jerk, and I might make mistakes, but I don’t make the same one twice.” She was still pulling on his arm when he let go of the counter. He fell against her, wrapping his arms around her. “Oops,” he said. “Clumsy me.” “What are you doing?” Her voice was muffled from having his shoulder against her mouth. She felt the rumble of his voice in his chest as he spoke. “You’re not pulling me or pushing me out of your life again. I shouldn’t have left you that night.” “I want you to go.” “If you really want me to go, I will, but I don’t think you do. Look at yourself. You’re hugging me.” “If I let you go, you’ll fall down and break everything in my kitchen. Again.” She squeezed her eyes shut and tensed her body, rejecting his hug while still being in it. “When did I break everything in your kitchen?” She didn’t answer. “You mean I broke your heart when I left,” he said. “You did.” “What about you? You didn’t come to my grand opening. You sent me those boring funeral flowers and a generic card. You might as well have stuck an ice pick in my chest.” “That was different.” “You broke my heart,” he said. “I barely made it through the night. I’ve been barely making it through a lot of nights.” Tina relaxed into the hug. There was a lump in her throat. She managed to choke out, “I don’t understand what happened with us.” He reached up and stroked her upper back. “We had our first fight,” he said. “That’s what happened. And I didn’t know how to apologize. My bookkeeper quit helping me with my text messages, and I couldn’t go see my favorite florist for advice.” She pulled away and poked him in the stomach with two fingers. “Don’t make jokes, Luca. Don’t make me laugh.” “I shouldn’t have left you here that night,” he said, gazing down into her eyes. “But I was stubborn, and I thought I was right and you were wrong. Or maybe I was scared.” “Why would you be scared?” “My wrist hurts.” He kept looking into her eyes. “I know I only broke my foot last night, but when I fell, I reached out to break my fall. I’ve been thinking about this all morning, and the same thing must have happened with us.” “Are you saying I hurt your wrist?” “I think I realized I was falling, and I freaked out. I tried to stop my fall, but I only made it worse.” He leaned down and gently kissed her. “I tried to stop my fall, but then I broke both of us.” She pulled away, slipped out of his arms, and took three steps back, until she was against the back of the sofa, with nowhere to go. Luca said, “Don’t you dare run. I’ve got crutches, and I’m not afraid to use them.” “Where would I go?” He grinned. “I knew there was a reason I loved this house.

Mom won’t like Megan.” “That’s a bonus,” Alan said. “I love it when Mom has to pretend she likes someone she doesn’t. Remember when I was dating that dancer, and I told Mom she was a stripper? Priceless. You can’t buy entertainment like that." Drew pulled out his phone and spoke the words of his text message as he composed it. “Having a good Saturday? I’m helping my brother get ready for tonight’s seven-course gala dinner. Don’t worry, you can still wear your Beijing T-shirt. If things get too stuffy, you can liven things up by throwing a drink in someone’s face.” “She’d better not throw a drink in anyone’s face,” Alan said. “We’re serving red wine, and I have a new carpet in the dining room.” “It’s just one of our little in-jokes,” Drew said. “Based on what?” “She threw some water in my face once.” “Were you outside having a water balloon fight with a bunch of children?” “No.” “Were you washing cars for a fundraiser?” “No.” “Then I have to ask, big brother. Where were you, and what were you doing when this Megan girl threw a drink in your face?” “We were talking, in a pub.” Alan grinned. “I will pay for your entire wedding if you propose to her in front of Mom.

LOVE BEING CALLED DADDY! Carley:    Hey, Jake, Dad’s out for the night, so if you want to come over feel free. Just don’t forget the lube. ;) Dad:   alright, baby. I’ll see you then. Carley:    did I mention that I love it when you call me baby? Dad:   did I mention that I loved being called “Daddy”? check the name, son. Carley: shit. Dad:   That’s alright. Have fun. P.S. I knew you were gay.

Someone should politely explain to antifa [that] the most violent Americans, the most violent and willing Americans, haven’t even left the couch yet. The most violent and ready to go, the most tactically trained, haven’t even got off the couch yet. So you better pray to God, and I mean this literally—or whoever the fuck it is you pray to—that Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, and Attorney General Barr clean this up lawfully. If for any reason the president of the United States feels that it’s not getting done the way it should and decides to put out the tweet that says, ‘My fellow Americans, my fellow 2A-loving Americans, it’s time to take up arms against these assholes,’ you are all fucked in under an hour,” he continued. “[We’re] waiting for that one tweet, that one emergency text message from the fucking president of the United States that gives us the green light to finish this entire thing in under an hour. It will not be law enforcement. It will not be one of these slow, bureaucratic, justice system wheels of justice turning. It’ll be a group of people you didn’t even know fucking existed because we were at our houses, we got off work, we were with our families, but we were ready for that call. And if that call ever does come, you will be fucked seven ways from Sunday. So I suggest you back down.

Thursday, January 12, 2006 It’s been a long day. I’m in a hospital lobby, waiting for a friend whose loved one is hovering between life and death. Sitting here is giving me some time to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned today, and they aren’t pretty. What I want to do is speak to every parent with an adolescent or pre-adolescent child and say to those parents: WAKE UP!!! If your child has a computer, check it out. Find out what chat rooms he or she visits, and find out what’s going on there. Find out who’s on your child’s buddy list. Who sends e-mails to your child’s address and what do those e-mails say? And what does your child say back? Does this sound like an invasion of your precious offspring’s privacy? You bet it is. It’s also called parenting. The same rules apply to your child’s cell phone. What comes and goes on your son or daughter’s text messages is private. It’s also possibly deadly. Today I’ve caught glimpses of some of the people out there, evil people—who are trolling the cyber-ether for innocent children to victimize—your children. And yes, you should be very afraid for your children. And if looking over your son or daughter’s shoulder when they’re online annoys them? Fine. You can tell them from me that being a parent is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Babe, posted 6: 07 P.M. January 12, 2006

Maybe you thought you were simply coming to the end of a book. What if I told you this was actually an intervention and all the people you know have been calling and asking me to break some news to you: You can no longer continue to be the person you’ve been? What are you going to let go of? Who is it you don’t get? Who don’t you understand? Who have you been playing it safe with, while politely keeping your distance? Who has been mean or rude or flat wrong or creeps you out? Don’t tell them all your opinions; give them all your love. I know it’s hard for you. It’s hard for me too. But I’m learning I have to follow Jesus’ example and follow His lead if I’m going to follow in His steps. Even when we feel like we can’t muster the strength and humility to love our enemies, the truth is we can. If you do this, I can promise two things will happen. First, it will be messy. Sometimes ugly messy. You’ll also be misunderstood— you might not even understand yourself anymore. The second thing is just as true: you’ll grow. And people who are growing fall forward and bump into Jesus all over again. Obeying Jesus when it comes to loving difficult people is hard. I’m still working on it. I’m sure it will take the rest of my life. The heavy lifting is worth it, though. Difficulties and setbacks will give us the chance to go back or lean forward once again. I’m convinced heaven is watching us, knowing full well all that will be left standing in the end is our love. I bet our spouses, kids, and friends are watching too. If you want to become love, stop just agreeing with Jesus. Go call someone right now. Lift them up in ways they can’t lift themselves. Send them a text message and say you’re sorry. I know they don’t deserve it. You didn’t either. Don’t put a toe in the water with your love; grab your knees and do a cannonball. Move from the bleachers to the field and you won’t ever be the same. Don’t just love the people who are easy to love; go love the difficult ones. If you do this, Jesus said you’d move forward on your journey toward being more like Him. Equally important, as you practice loving everybody, always, what will happen along the way is you’ll no longer be who you used to be. God will turn you into love.

As much fun as you can have online, always value a real friendship over something virtual. Do yourself a favor and phone, text, or message someone you haven’t seen in six months and ask if they are available for coffee or something. Challenge yourself to do this every month. Turn it into a habit and do it for the rest of your life.

Great moments are ephemeral, like a lovely text message or viral twitter moment, but when lived, it's like looking through the eyes of humanity.

I picked up my phone from my nightstand, skin prickling all over with hurt, eyes stinging a little too brightly at the words he’d written down on the paper…until I saw the text message waiting for my on the screen. At some point, Sully had changed his name in my contacts from ‘Hottest Guy In The World’ to ‘Lamest Guy In The World’. The lone message he’d sent to me contained few words, but they hit hard. Sully: Don’t do it, Lang. Don’t go. I sat up in bed, staring at the note, re-reading it over and over again, knowing now what he was really telling me. He did love. He would miss me. He didn’t want me to go.

I scrolled up through the history of our text messages. Only a few bubbles above, she’d written ‘I love you, my only. Come back soon.’ She must still love me, I thought. The human heart can’t have a shorter memory than a phone.

Husband Sends the Following Message to His Wife My Love, If you’re Sleeping, Send Me Your Dreams. If you’re Smiling, Send Me Your Smile. If you’re Crying, Send Me Your Tears. I Love You. Wife Texted Back: I'm In the Toilet, What Should I Send You?

No one ever tells you ‘this is the last time you’ll see this person in your life.’ There’s never a warning, never a clue. You just drift slowly apart, until one day the visits become phone calls and the phone calls become text messages and then texts become so infrequent, you forget about those too.

So our lives became source material for a novel that unfolded in real time, text message by text message. It was like that Joni Mitchell line—“Love is a story told to a friend; it’s secondhand.

I read it and it is looking oddly former, yet I’m not one- hundred percent sure, I do receive and send out over six hundred texts a day, yet this almost seems like a copy of the same infect to one that I vaguely remember getting, what would be in my mind two days ago- ‘Don’t forget b*tches, it's love-o-grams day!’ Too- strange… this should be Sunday… right? I wanted to text back and say- this already happened, yet before I got a new message started, another one from Jenny popped up on the screen waiting to be opened. I look at the date and it’s the same too, I thought for sure my phone was broken, it has been dropped many times. Yet how could it be wrong? I have to be mistaken. Maybe the whole thing was a messed-up dream? I open it, and it’s not the same, so I thought maybe I am not crazy? It said- ‘B- there in 5 min.’ I knew by the way it was written she was driving fast.

It’s Jenny- my daddy’s let her in. I walk into my room undressed, holding my wet towel in my right hand. Jenny looked at me and said- ‘I see we are going for the earthy look today; god you could have shaved a little.’ Jenny is lying bullied down on my bed, looking through my phone, with her legs up in the air, letting one fall and bounce on the Serta every once in a while. She looked up at me, she got that pissed-off look, eyebrows bent, I knew she saw I forwarded the message. I pay it off, acting like I was happy to see her, and in a way, I was, I would never want to see one of my girlfriends die- or be dead. Oh, Jenny- She looks so typical, so acquainted with everyone, yet on the inside is falling apart. Jenny is Bipolar and has Social Anxiety Disorder mixed with Bulimia, like every time she feels not wanted by a boy or feel overweight or something is not going her way, she has a hard time keeping her food down, she has even up-cucked on me and the girls at lunch, not meaning too. I am far from being a psychologist, yet those are my diagnosis, yet everyone just seems to ignore her faults. I know she saw the text because she ran down the hall to throw up, running my little butt over. If she asks why- I’ll just say- ‘Butt dialing!’ Jenny walks back into my room; she flops bully fist on the bed. I asked uneasily with curiosity- ‘So what transpired last night?’ She mopes for a second. ‘Yeah, sorry about that. I couldn’t call back. I didn’t get off the home phone with Ken until, like four am. And because my mom is a b*tch she took my cell away last night before staying out too late on a school night.

Garrett’s in love with you.” “Arjun’s in love with you.” I told them both I didn’t have time for this bullshit, and if anybody wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it via text message like a normal person.

So, you needn’t feel obliged to return phone calls or respond to text messages or meet with a toxic person for dinner. You shouldn’t be impelled to explain yourself. You are not obligated to maintain a tie with anyone. Friendship, companionship, and love are a privilege, not a right, and if someone has squandered that privilege, you aren’t required to stick around. The toxic person is entitled to nothing.

Once the distance between a text message and 'Send' grows from minutes to months, it hardly gets reversed.

There’s something you need to know,” Arjun hissed as I was walking out of the HR debrief. “There’s something you need to know,” Garrett whispered as I was preparing for the Proprioception handoff. “Garrett’s in love with you.” “Arjun’s in love with you.” I told them both I didn’t have time for this bullshit, and if anybody wanted to ask a lady out, he could do it via text message like a normal person.

The longest distance ever is that between 'a text message' and 'Send'.

The longest distance ever is the one between 'that text message' and 'Send'.

Simple Fast Funnels may be the new kid on the block when it comes to a complete bumper to bumper CRM system, but it’s a force to be reckoned with! Business owners are switching over right and left and I’m going to outline 10 of the best features of Simple Fast Funnels so you can see what all the buzz is about! Funnel builder: Simple Fast Funnels has easy intuitive software so you can build your own landing pages, funnels, websites, sales pages etc. No developer needed, everything included and simple to use Email Software: Instead of paying hundreds or thousands per month to send emails, this software does it for you! You can have your entire email list automated or send emails on the fly, whatever fits the bill for you, they’ve got you covered and it’s so easy to track your email results so you can modify and make improvements as you go. Online Membership Area: Now, for no additional fees that lot’s of CRM software likes to charge, you can build glorious membership areas for your clients. You can control timing on video releases, give access for certain time periods upset packages… whatever your business looks like, if you can dream it, you can build it in the membership area. Survey and quiz generator: Ramp up your lead capture game to grow your customer list! One of the best ways to get leads is to get your customers talking about themselves. Not only do people love to take surveys and quizzes, but it can help you gather information about your clients to serve them better and grow your sales! SMS Marketing Software: If you’re not messaging your customers, you’re missing out, and if you are messaging your customers you’re probably over paying. Amazing automated intuitive SMS marketing can make your life much easier and allow you to reach your customers in more ways. Being where your customers are more present is always good for business. Simple Fast Funnels helps you get the cheapest SMS rates around and it automatically integrates into the system for your unified messages. Appointment booking: Another expensive thing you used to have to pay for and try to get to work properly with your website AND look decent is also built right in. Now, without leaving Simple Fast Funnels, you’re able to capture the lead, follow up with the lead all over the place, engage with them, build trust, book appointments, schedule calls and even send them automated text reminders. E com Purchases: Directly on your website, you’ll be able to take payments. No more invoices sent from other platforms, everything buttoned up nice and clean. Unified messaging: From now on, whether a client emails, texts, calls etc, it all shows up in one place at your end. This might not seem like a big deal, but it’s a HUGE pain to have to follow customers about and keep track of conversations. Now you see all your communication with customers in a neat little area. Blogs: Blogs these days can really help your marketing efforts across the board, and of course your blogs will be a perfect fit in your simple fast funnel account. Analytics: Data tracking when you’re dealing with features on various platforms is a nightmare. If you capture a lead on a Word press landing page, send it an email software like Keep, mail chimp or whatever, send them to a new website to schedule calls and another to make purchases… How could you possibly expect to get good customer data? Hosting all of your “business” in one location makes tracking flawless. The more customers you have the more data you need to be efficient. Cheers to making it easy. All that software and that’s just the top 10, guys there’s more. Simplefastfunnels.com also lets you have a 2 week free trial. Don’t take anyone word for anything. Go try it for yourself.

Simple Fast Funnels VS Hubspot There are 2 primary factors to consider when exploring Simple Fast Funnels VS Hubspot… Available Features. Price. Hubspot is a powerful platform, there’s no denying that, but they lack a few features that Simple Fast Funnels offers: 2 way SMS so you can send one way messages to your clients OR interactive messages. You can automate answers or have your customers reach you or customer service directly. Unified messaging. Housing all messages for particular customers in one place lets you simplify customer service. They can text, email, schedule calls or FB message you and you’ll see it all in one location. Simple Fast Funnels customer service has 24/7 chat support and guides you through any hiccups you may experience as you build your funnel. Simplified funnel building. No tech knowledge required. The biggest factor comparing these two platforms however is price: Hubspot charges a small fortune for their good features. Their price is over 10X the cost of Simple Fast Funnels. Simple Fast Funnels saves you thousands, or even tens of thousands yearly and you don’t get less features, you get MORE… We believe you should be able to run your business without paying rates like these. Call us old fashioned if you like. For Hubspot’s premium service, you’ll pay $3,600/month. That’s a lot of revenue to come up with each month just to pay for your operating platform. For Simple Fast Funnel’s premium service, you’ll get the same features and more for $297/month. If you haven’t tried Simple Fast Funnels out yet, we offer a 14 day free trial, that’s how sure we are you’re going to love this service.

The call for the emancipation of man indeed runs through the Gospel story from end to end, but it collides with the ancient idea of a heavenly father seated atop his throne far above the world awaiting the final judgement and, in the end, founders against the imperative of the resurrection of the body, brought on both by the rejection of death and the denial of the murder committed. Fear and guilt combine to recreate a god of flesh with a human face at precisely the moment when Christ might have been perceived, like a new Prometheus, as the mythical figure struggling to abolish all forms of divine terror. Despite its message of love—at its strongest in Paul—the New Testament reinvigorates the fear of God. That Jesus was a misunderstood—and disturbed—figure are part and parcel of what the texts report about him, of that much we should have no doubt. That in their ambiguity the Scriptures surreptitiously narrate the death of God and yet recoil from the thought need not be seen as unthinkable. For in all myth, what counts is the unthinkable: that which myth, its narrators notwithstanding, allows us to think.

The thirty-day no-contact rule Recovering from a breakup on a more practical basis can be likened to getting over an addiction. You go through periods of major withdrawal where you become overwhelmed by a cocktail of emotions, including guilt, fear, randomly missing him, and suddenly feeling like what he did to you ‘wasn’t that bad’. You start to play the mental showreel of all your good times (even if you only had a few), and suddenly you can’t remember why you left. Feeling this cluster of imbalanced emotions can be very confusing and irritating, but all hope is not lost. Contrary to popular belief, breakups don’t actually have to be hard. We assign so much spiritual and emotional value to these men, that by the time we finally distance ourselves from them, we feel distant from ourselves. And that’s really heartbreaking, because no man is worth losing yourself over. Ever. They say it takes about thirty days to break a habit. Texting your ex, stalking his profile from your second account, deliberately asking your mutual friends certain questions to get updates on his life and his new girl – it all needs to stop. So right now, go cold turkey, block his number on whatever messaging app you use, remove him from all your social media. Maintaining little corridors of access to him means he’s still on a pedestal. It also means your value system when it comes to men is warped, because naturally you’re going to keep comparing new guys to him as long as he holds this much space in your head. You want to evict him from that space so that someone new can blow you away when the time is right! This guy is not the be-all and end-all of your experiences with men, and the outcome of your situation with him really doesn’t have to define your future relationships. This thirty-day period of making yourself the centre of your world has a 100 per cent success rate, because by the time you get to day thirty, if it’s done honestly and correctly, you will have either a) met a new guy or b) found a whole heap of new reasons to love your healing self. But the thirty-day no-contact rule must be adhered to strictly, and if you break the pact with yourself, you must start all the way from the beginning – which might feel like torture.

Kristen never came home last night. Fuck, I shouldn’t have let her run off. I was just so shocked. It felt like she’d handed me a bomb and it detonated in my face, pelting me with emotional shrapnel. My ears had literally started to ring after what she’d said, and she’d bolted and jumped into the car of some girl she’d met during trivia, and she was gone in an instant. It happened so fast. I’d stayed up, waiting for her in her living room. Calling her cell phone, sending her text messages, begging her to come home and talk to me. She sent me a text around midnight saying only that she was okay, she wasn’t coming back, and to please walk the dog. Everything was finally clear. It all made sense. It was so obvious to me now I wondered how I couldn’t have known. The severe cramps, the spotting. Her history of anemia. The long periods. The walls she put between us. And all the fucked-up things I’ve said to her. That I wouldn’t adopt. That I wanted a huge family. That I’d left Celeste because she didn’t want children. Karaoke night suddenly looked totally different to me, the weeks after it where she’d gone cold—I’d told her that if Tyler didn’t want kids, she shouldn’t be with him. That the kid thing was too important. I’d actually told her that shit. I’d been talking Kristen out of dating me almost daily since the day I met her. Fuck, if only I’d known. I’d had all night to think about what it meant, and it didn’t change anything. I loved her. I couldn’t not be with her. That’s what it kept coming back to. I couldn’t walk away from her—I wasn’t even capable of it. The situation was fucked up and star-crossed, and I didn’t give a shit. She was the woman I loved, so we’d just have to deal with it.

You're such a sweet catastrophe you dance disastrously on my mind, distracting me with beautiful texts to crash into each other's lives.