The Best Scenario Quotes

The best-case scenario here is that you make friends with a boy who's going to die." "Ah," said Calla, in a very, very knowing way. "Now I see." "Don't psychoanalyse me," her mother said. "I already have. And I say again, 'ah'.

The future is unwritten. there are best case scenarios. There are worst-case scenarios. both of them are great fun to write about if you' re a science fiction novelist, but neither of them ever happens in the real world. What happens in the real world is always a sideways-case scenario. World-changing marvels to us, are only wallpaper to our children.

i am best prepared for the worst case scenario. the best case scenario scares me. flight response. my mother tells me i am a bird. when she says i am a bird, she means the whole world is my cage.

You might be an intelligent person, but once you let someone else filter the world for you, you have no way to critically analyze what you’re hearing. At best, absolute best case scenario, if they blatantly contradict themselves, you can spot that. But if they take basic care to maintain an internal logical consistency, which they all do, you’ve got nothing. You’ve delegated the ability to make up your mind.

Early moralists who believed that taking too much pleasure at the table led inexorably to bad character-or worse, to sex-were (in the best-case scenario, anyway) absolutely right.

You know as well as I do that fortune never sends the best-case scenario our way You have way too much bad karma.

I want you to think of two different situations. First, remember times when you've felt your best, at the top of your game, alive and vibrant. Pay attention to your posture, the muscles in your face, your breathing. Then, I want you to think of occasions where you've felt sick or anxious. Don't just think of people. Think of activities. This will help us reveal what makes you happy. Pay attention to how your body responds to these scenarios - it will serve as your biggest indicator in the future when you're actually doing things." This woman was damn brilliant. "And remember, it's okay to feel sad, but just try to limit your bouts with it to an hour a day. Let it all out, give yourself that time to heal, nurture and comfort yourself. You won't heal unless you grieve. Grieving is good." "Good grief?" "Yes. It takes courage to grieve.

He wanted to warn these children that time was not their friend; that though today might seem special, there would be a tomorrow, and a day after that; that the best-case scenario of a well-spent life was the slow and steady unraveling of the heart’s knot.

When I realized that I was an introvert and what that meant, I actually became more outgoing, more confident in social situations, and began to enjoy scenarios I used to find unbearable. Why? Because, in understanding what I needed with respect to replenishing my energy, I was able to set limits and boundaries that freed me to be more engaged.

Reassurance can actually exacerbate anxiety: when you reassure your friend that the worst-case scenario he fears probably won't occur, you inadvertently reinforce his belief that it would be catastrophic if it did. You are tightening the coil of his anxiety, not loosening it. All to often, the Stoics point out, things will not turn out for the best.

Happy you’re living your life, ipo. But I’m fuckin’ thrilled you’re choosing to live it with me. I love you.

Pity the poor novice Dominant who attempts to “break” or “discipline” a Warrior Princess Submissive without her explicit consent. The best case result in that scenario is likely to involve a great deal of frustration and humiliation for him. The worst-case outcome is a little too gruesome to contemplate.

Stability. The best-case scenario is stability. Not happiness, not passion, not joy. Best-case scenario: a flaccid fucking life of stability. A living flatline.

The room is off limits if Signor Larosa is not home. You are never to go in there.” My eyes widen. This is starting to sound like Beauty and the Beast. Oh my God, am I Belle? Is he an Italian Beast? Did I just stumble into the best scenario ever? My inner nerd is having heart palpitations.

How sad is it that in my world a human killer would be the best-case scenario?

I know what it's like to be second-best to people you love. Hell, not even second-best. Third-best. Fifth best. In some scenarios, the worst.

The best scenario of all when it comes to air pollution has nothing to do with tailpipe filters or hybrid, electric, or zero emissions car technology. The way to reduce pollution is to reduce driving, plain and simple.

Here’s the truth of it: no one wants you to follow your dream. Best-case scenario, they’ll want you to follow their dream for you.

You bring out the best in people when you trust them with a higher-vision of themselves. You keep them at lower-levels when you treat them like you see them with your physical eyes.

the best possible scenario I could come up with was that you had some angry-as-fuck make up sex with Eli and that ohmygod-he-probably-went-beastie-on-you-that’s-so-goddamn-nasty.” It all comes out in a rush. “And yeah. He shredded shit up—and you in the process.” I

Get Comfortable Not Knowing There once was a village that had among its people a very wise old man. The villagers trusted this man to provide them answers to their questions and concerns. One day, a farmer from the village went to the wise man and said in a frantic tone, “Wise man, help me. A horrible thing has happened. My ox has died and I have no animal to help me plow my field! Isn’t this the worst thing that could have possibly happened?” The wise old man replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.” The man hurried back to the village and reported to his neighbors that the wise man had gone mad. Surely this was the worst thing that could have happened. Why couldn’t he see this? The very next day, however, a strong, young horse was seen near the man’s farm. Because the man had no ox to rely on, he had the idea to catch the horse to replace his ox—and he did. How joyful the farmer was. Plowing the field had never been easier. He went back to the wise man to apologize. “You were right, wise man. Losing my ox wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. It was a blessing in disguise! I never would have captured my new horse had that not happened. You must agree that this is the best thing that could have happened.” The wise man replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Not again, thought the farmer. Surely the wise man had gone mad now. But, once again, the farmer did not know what was to happen. A few days later the farmer’s son was riding the horse and was thrown off. He broke his leg and would not be able to help with the crop. Oh no, thought the man. Now we will starve to death. Once again, the farmer went to the wise man. This time he said, “How did you know that capturing my horse was not a good thing? You were right again. My son is injured and won’t be able to help with the crop. This time I’m sure that this is the worst thing that could have possibly happened. You must agree this time.” But, just as he had done before, the wise man calmly looked at the farmer and in a compassionate tone replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Enraged that the wise man could be so ignorant, the farmer stormed back to the village. The next day troops arrived to take every able-bodied man to the war that had just broken out. The farmer’s son was the only young man in the village who didn’t have to go. He would live, while the others would surely die. The moral of this story provides a powerful lesson. The truth is, we don’t know what’s going to happen—we just think we do. Often we make a big deal out of something. We blow up scenarios in our minds about all the terrible things that are going to happen. Most of the time we are wrong. If we keep our cool and stay open to possibilities, we can be reasonably certain that, eventually, all will be well. Remember: maybe so, maybe not.

When I wake, I have a brief, delicious feeling of happiness that is somehow connected with Peeta. Happiness, of course, is a complete absurdity at this point, since at the rate things are going, I'll be dead in a day. And that's the best-case scenario, if I'm able to eliminate the rest of the field, including myself, and get Peeta crowned as the winner of the Quarter Quell. Still, the sensation's so unexpected and sweet I cling to it, if only for a few moments. Before the gritty sand, the hot sun, and my itching skin demand a return to reality.

reality usually delivers results a little worse than the 'worst-case scenario'. It's called the planning fallacy, and the best way to fix it is to ask how long things took the last time you tried them. That's called using the outside view instead of the inside view. But when you're doing something new and can't do that, you just have to be really, really, really pessimistic. Like, so pessimistic that reality actually comes out better than you expected around as often and as much as it comes out worse. It's actually really hard to be so pessimistic that you stand a decent chance of undershooting real life.

No crime is confounding and punitive the way rape is. No other violent offense comes with a built-in alibi that can instantly exonerate the criminal and place responsibility on the victim. There is no glorified interpersonal behavior that can be used to explain robbery or murder the way that sex can be used to explain rape. The best-case scenario for a rape victim in terms of adjudication is the worst-case scenario in terms of experience: for people to believe you deserve justice, you have to be destroyed. The fact that feminism is ascendant and accepted does not change this. The world that we believe in, that we're attempting to make real and tangible, is still not the world that exists.

I’ve always believed I am at my best when the scenario around me is at its worst.

i am best prepared for the worst case scenario. the best case scenario scares me.

Worry robs you of happiness, it does not bring solutions only fear. When worry shows do the 180` and look for the best case scenario, focus on that instead and invite that into reality.

With the rising emotional barometer, Marco began to consider whether there was any possible scenario for survival within the mall. Each new malevolent customer made escape seem the best option. But was it even possible?

Hockey is just a silly little game. We devote year after year after year to it without ever really hoping to get anything in return. We burn and bleed and cry, fully aware that the most the sport can give us, in the very best scenario, is incomprehensibly meager and worthless: just a few isolated moments of transcendence. That’s all.

I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn't budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he's waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he's got all day. I hear people passing on the boardwalk and imagine them staring. Best-case scenario, they think I know this guy, that we're hugging. Worst-case scenario, they saw me totter like an intoxicated walrus into this complete stranger because I was looking down for a place to park our beach stuff. Either way, he knows what happened. He knows why my cheek is plastered to his bare chest. And there is definite humiliation waiting when I get around to looking up at him. Options skim through my head like a flip book. Option One: Run away as fast as my dollar-store flip flops can take me. Thing is, tripping over them is partly responsible for my current dilemma. In fact, one of them is missing, probably caught in a crack of the boardwalk. I'm getting Cinderella didn't feel this foolish, but then again, Cinderella wasn't as clumsy as an intoxicated walrus. Option two: Pretend I've fainted. Go limp and everything. Drool, even. But I know this won't work because my eyes flutter too much to fake it, and besides, people don't blush while unconscious. Option Three: Pray for a lightning bolt. A deadly one that you feel in advance because the air gets all atingle and your skin crawls-or so the science books say. It might kill us both, but really, he should have been paying more attention to me when he saw that I wasn't paying attention at all. For a shaved second, I think my prayers are answered because I go get tingly all over; goose bumps sprout everywhere, and my pulse feels like electricity. Then I realize, it's coming from my shoulders. From his hands. Option Last: For the love of God, peel my cheek off his chest and apologize for the casual assault. Then hobble away on my one flip-flop before I faint. With my luck, the lightning would only maim me, and he would feel obligated to carry me somewhere anyway. Also, do it now. I ease away from him and peer up. The fire on my cheeks has nothing to do with the fact that it's sweaty-eight degrees in the Florida sun and everything to do with the fact that I just tripped into the most attractive guy on the planet. Fan-flipping-tastic. "Are-are you all right?" he says, incredulous. I think I can see the shape of my cheek indented on his chest. I nod. "I'm fine. I'm used to it. Sorry." I shrug off his hands when he doesn't let go. The tingling stays behind, as if he left some of himself on me. "Jeez, Emma, are you okay?" Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend's sandals suggests she's not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she's grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand. "I'm fine. Everybody's fine," I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. "You're fine, right? No broken bones or anything?" He blinks, gives a slight nod. Chloe setts her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. "I'm Chloe and this is Emma," she says. "We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.

This should not come as a surprise: overly optimistic forecasts of the outcome of projects are found everywhere. Amos and I coined the term planning fallacy to describe plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios could be improved by consulting the statistics of similar cases Examples of the planning fallacy abound in the experiences of individuals, governments, and businesses.

Though some of the scenarios you’re about to read would be impossible to live out, and some might be unlikely, all of them offer women who are willing to go toward what might seem scary or new or uncertain, whether that means an old flame, a sexy stranger or a childhood crush. I

Her old introverted instincts told her to fold in on herself and, in lieu of actually speaking to other humans, dream up scenarios in the shower where she and some chick would accidentally grab each other’s orders at a cute smoothie spot, and POOF: instant best friend origin story.

At least he explains himself instead of just telling you to stay like you’re a dog,” Piper said, giving Jake the side eye. Her smile turned mischievous. “Of course, once I started barking at him in return, he stopped doing it. So progress all around, I guess.” I laughed. “You didn’t!

How about from now on, anytime I feel my ego getting out of control, I come see you?” He lowered his voice. “Let you take me down a few notches.” Fighting the trance I was sure he was trying to put me in, I licked my suddenly dry lips. His gaze flicked down to watch. “I, uhh, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, my voice breathy. His eyes locked back with mine. “Why not?” “I don’t have the availability for that kind of time commitment.

-- it's rapidly turning into an us versus them scenario. And it's all but assured that someone is going to fall into the mass graves that corporate America is digging.

Plans are best-case scenarios. Let’s avoid anchoring on plans when we forecast actual outcomes. Thinking about ways the plan could go wrong is one way to do it.

Basically, you need to play to your strengths, instead of to the best-case scenarios you have in your head.

Most anxiety and worry comes from imagining a worst case scenario. For one current fear, practice visualizing a best-case scenario instead.

Instead of imagining worst case scenarios, I visualize best case scenarios. Instead of avoiding my fears, I find a reason to be excited despite my fear.

And to answer your question about the best-case scenario for a love story, yes. If I were hit by a meteor while in the car with you, I would still think I went out on a high note.

To judge God solely by the present world would be a tragic mistake. At one time, it may have been “the best of all possible worlds,” but surely it is not now. The Bible communicates no message with more certainty than God’s displeasure with the state of creation and the state of humanity. Imagine this scenario: vandals break into a museum displaying works from Picasso’s Blue Period. Motivated by sheer destructiveness, they splash red paint all over the paintings and slash them with knives. It would be the height of unfairness to display these works—a mere sampling of Picasso’s creative genius, and spoiled at that—as representative of the artist. The same applies to God’s creation. God has already hung a “Condemned” sign above the earth, and has promised judgment and restoration. That this world spoiled by evil and suffering still exists at all is an example of God’s mercy, not his cruelty.

It is the best way, Sarai. To learn from your mistakes is to make them. Authentically. No amount of training, no rehearsed scenario is going to teach you better than the real thing.

How’s this for a display of human kin selection: Subjects were given a scenario of a bus hurtling toward a human and a nondescript dog, and they could only save one. Whom would they pick? It depended on degree of relatedness, as one progressed from sibling (1 percent chose the dog over the sibling) to grandparent (2 percent) to distant cousin (16 percent) to foreigner (26 percent).55

Amos and I coined the term planning fallacy to describe plans and forecasts that are unrealistically close to best-case scenarios could be improved by consulting the statistics of similar cases

don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” she began. “Are you mad? I had you last year at Lord Addington’s spring formal! We went behind his pagoda and I took you from the rear. You said I was the best you’d ever had!” The color drained from her face—clearly she didn’t find my scenario entirely implausible. Stammering an explanation she hurried off, leaving me to watch the celebration solo.

Trust me, at the time nine hundred years seemed frighteningly short - it still does. I really don't know how you cope with your eighty-something life spans, and that's a best-case scenario, isn't it?

Luckily, literature—and by “literature” I mean comic books—provides us a way to discuss issues like these without having to experience them. We don’t have to trick people into standing in front of a runaway trolley, and we don’t have to have a real-life Batman and Joker. That’s what thought experiments are for—they let us play through an imaginary scenario and imagine what we should or shouldn’t do.

Paranoia is acceptable in the new friendship paradigm. Worrying that your best employees or customers might leave is ok, as long as you put in place an active strategy to offset any possibility of that scenario.

I’ll never take for granted all the good I have in my life because I know how fast that can change. Seen the bad, the dirty, the fuckin’ ugly, which means I can really, truly appreciate the beauty for what it is.

That’s what’s happening if you’re getting all your news from one place. If you stop listening to someone the second you hear a word or phrase you’ve been taught belongs to the enemy, like “environment” or “job creators,” that’s what you’re doing. You might be an intelligent person, but once you let someone else filter the world for you, you have no way to critically analyze what you’re hearing. At best, absolute best case scenario, if they blatantly contradict themselves, you can spot that. But if they take basic care to maintain an internal logical consistency, which they all do, you’ve got nothing. You’ve delegated the ability to make up your mind.

So how are things at the Hot Dude Garage?” He glanced at me, his dark brow raised. “Jake change the name?” “He really should. I think your business would skyrocket. Maybe have a gift shop with shirtless picture calendars, keychains, life-size cardboard cutouts. Oh, and mugs.” “Also with us shirtless?” “No, of course not. They’d be the heat activated ones. You’d start out in shirts, then when someone poured their morning coffee, bam! Shirtless.

I was terrified of opening my marriage to outside influence. Because it was the center of my life and meant more than anything. But as I thought through my fears, I realized something: Testing that bond was a win-win scenario. Best case, we would weather the challenges, and I would have a wealth of experiences and emotional bonds with others that could complement my life. Worst case, I was wrong about the strength of what we I had together, and it would tear us apart. But if what we had were that easily ruined, was it really all that great in the first place? And wouldn’t I want to know now, 4 years into the marriage, rather than another 20 or 30 years down the road?

Still, there will come a day when the Trump era is over. In the best-case scenario, it is ended by the voters at the ballot box. In the worst-case scenario, it lasts more than four years. In either case, the first three years have shown that an autocratic attempt in the United States has a credible chance of succeeding. Worse than that, they have shown that an autocratic attempt builds logically on the structures and norms of American government: on the concentration of power in the executive branch, and on the marriage of money and politics. Recovery from Trumpism—a process that will be necessary whenever Trumpism ends—will not be a process of returning to government as it used to be, a fictional state of pre-Trump normalcy. Recovery will be possible only as reinvention: of institutions, of what politics means to us, and of what it means to be a democracy, if that is indeed what we choose to be.

In other words, while evidence of corporate social responsibility (scenario C) boosts sales a bit, it’s far more effective when the individual and the business share social responsibility and the individual determines the amount of money donated.

Reading is not a project of moral improvement, but by broadening our perspective, it can make us less susceptible to the immediate seductions offered by our environment; and in the best-case scenarios, it can enlarge the scope of humane understanding, and of empathy.

THE DELAYED MATURATION of the frontal cortex suggests an obvious scenario, namely that early in adolescence the frontal cortex has fewer neurons, dendritic branches, and synapses than in adulthood, and that levels increase into the midtwenties. Instead, levels decrease.

Please tell him that my words will make no difference when his balls are in his stomach from being so cold. Men don’t get many chances to show their grit! You need to pray for bad weather! Pray for the coldest water! Pray for a broken fucking body! You should want the worst-case scenario for everything you do in Hell Week! Pray for it to be so hard that only your fucking boat crew makes it all the way through! They succeed because you lead those motherfuckers through the worst Hell Week ever! You have to become the devil to get through Hell! This shit is about your fucking mindset! If you are hoping for the fucking best-case scenario in Hell Week, you are not ready! Know that no motherfucker can endure what you can. Not because you believe in yourself. But because you have trained harder than any motherfucker alive!

Maybe life is like a walking safari. If you venture out expecting lions and leopards all the time you’ll almost always never find them. Maybe the best things are the ones you never knew you wanted to see. The ones that, scary as they may seem, were just the things you needed to unleash reality. I’d selfishly written my story before even reaching Africa. I’d romanticized scenarios, fabricated settings, invented fantastical dialogue, and almost overlooked the lesson I’d been sent to learn – to live life on foot and not in my head, with fearlessness, presence, without expectation, and above all, with gratitude.

This unintended consequence of performing unity exemplifies the ways in which people can mean well and still do absolutely wrong. Best-case scenario, the black square shows your network that you at least care about black people enough to post a photo, which I should note is free and easy. Unfortunately, worst-case scenario, this insignificant action can set forth a tidal wave of trouble for the grassroots activists on the ground doing the work. Performing solidarity is inherently selfish. Its very point is to virtue-signal that you are a good person, because it matters to you that people know you are a good person.

Nick and I, we sometimes laugh, laugh out loud, at the horrible things women make their husbands do to prove their love. The pointless tasks, the myriad sacrifices, the endless small surrenders. We call these men the dancing monkeys. Nick will come home, sweaty and salty and beer-loose from a day at the ballpark,and I’ll curl up in his lap, ask him about the game, ask him if his friend Jack had a good time, and he’ll say, ‘Oh, he came down with a case of the dancing monkeys – poor Jennifer was having a “real stressful week” and really needed him at home.’ Or his buddy at work, who can’t go out for drinks because his girlfriend really needs him to stop by some bistro where she is having dinner with a friend from out of town. So they can finally meet. And so she can show how obedient her monkey is: He comes when I call, and look how well groomed! Wear this, don’t wear that. Do this chore now and do this chore when you get a chance and by that I mean now. And definitely, definitely, give up the things you love for me, so I will have proof that you love me best. It’s the female pissing contest – as we swan around our book clubs and our cocktail hours, there are few things women love more than being able to detail the sacrifices our men make for us. A call-and-response, the response being: ‘Ohhh, that’s so sweet.’ I am happy not to be in that club. I don’t partake, I don’t get off on emotional coercion, on forcing Nick to play some happy-hubby role – the shrugging, cheerful, dutiful taking out the trash, honey! role. Every wife’s dream man, the counterpoint to every man’s fantasy of the sweet, hot, laid-back woman who loves sex and a stiff drink. I like to think I am confident and secure and mature enough to know Nick loves me without him constantly proving it. I don’t need pathetic dancing-monkey scenarios to repeat to my friends, I am content with letting him be himself. I don’t know why women find that so hard.

Over the years I have read many, many books about the future, my ‘we’re all doomed’ books, as Connie liked to call them. ‘All the books you read are either about how grim the past was or how gruesome the future will be. It might not be that way, Douglas. Things might turn out all right.’ But these were well-researched, plausible studies, their conclusions highly persuasive, and I could become quite voluble on the subject. Take, for instance, the fate of the middle-class, into which Albie and I were born and to which Connie now belongs, albeit with some protest. In book after book I read that the middle-class are doomed. Globalisation and technology have already cut a swathe through previously secure professions, and 3D printing technology will soon wipe out the last of the manufacturing industries. The internet won’t replace those jobs, and what place for the middle-classes if twelve people can run a giant corporation? I’m no communist firebrand, but even the most rabid free-marketeer would concede that market-forces capitalism, instead of spreading wealth and security throughout the population, has grotesquely magnified the gulf between rich and poor, forcing a global workforce into dangerous, unregulated, insecure low-paid labour while rewarding only a tiny elite of businessmen and technocrats. So-called ‘secure’ professions seem less and less so; first it was the miners and the ship- and steel-workers, soon it will be the bank clerks, the librarians, the teachers, the shop-owners, the supermarket check-out staff. The scientists might survive if it’s the right type of science, but where do all the taxi-drivers in the world go when the taxis drive themselves? How do they feed their children or heat their homes and what happens when frustration turns to anger? Throw in terrorism, the seemingly insoluble problem of religious fundamentalism, the rise of the extreme right-wing, under-employed youth and the under-pensioned elderly, fragile and corrupt banking systems, the inadequacy of the health and care systems to cope with vast numbers of the sick and old, the environmental repercussions of unprecedented factory-farming, the battle for finite resources of food, water, gas and oil, the changing course of the Gulf Stream, destruction of the biosphere and the statistical probability of a global pandemic, and there really is no reason why anyone should sleep soundly ever again. By the time Albie is my age I will be long gone, or, best-case scenario, barricaded into my living module with enough rations to see out my days. But outside, I imagine vast, unregulated factories where workers count themselves lucky to toil through eighteen-hour days for less than a living wage before pulling on their gas masks to fight their way through the unemployed masses who are bartering with the mutated chickens and old tin-cans that they use for currency, those lucky workers returning to tiny, overcrowded shacks in a vast megalopolis where a tree is never seen, the air is thick with police drones, where car-bomb explosions, typhoons and freak hailstorms are so commonplace as to barely be remarked upon. Meanwhile, in literally gilded towers miles above the carcinogenic smog, the privileged 1 per cent of businessmen, celebrities and entrepreneurs look down through bullet-proof windows, accept cocktails in strange glasses from the robot waiters hovering nearby and laugh their tinkling laughs and somewhere, down there in that hellish, stewing mess of violence, poverty and desperation, is my son, Albie Petersen, a wandering minstrel with his guitar and his keen interest in photography, still refusing to wear a decent coat.

Are you sure you want to do this?” She holds her palm against my chest. “I don’t want to take advantage.” I throw back my head and laugh. “Babe. There isn’t a scenario I can ever imagine where that would happen. Feel free to take advantage whenever you get the urge.” I wink, and she narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Sweetheart.” I lean in, planting a hungry kiss on her lips. “I need to lose myself in you.” I run circles on her stomach with the tip of my finger, mentally fist-pumping the air when she trembles underneath my touch. “This is the best thing you can do to help me right now.” “Well.” She grins seductively, reaching down to grab me. “When you put it like that, I can hardly refuse, now can I?

At first glance, this seems an improbable scenario due to both the Martians’ and Emily Dickinson’s dispositions. Dickinson was a recluse who didn’t meet anybody, preferring to hide upstairs when neighbors came to call and to float notes down on them.14 Various theories have been advanced for her self-imposed hermitude, including Bright’s Disease, an unhappy love affair, eye trouble, and bad skin. T. L. Mensa suggests the simpler theory that all the rest of the Amherstonians were morons.15 None of these explanations would have made it likely that she would like Martians any better than Amherstates, and there is the added difficulty that, having died in 1886, she would also have been badly decomposed.

LOST is often lauded as one of the best fantasy dramas in television history, as well as one of the most cryptic and - occasionally – maddening. But confirmation of just how important it is came with an almost unbelievable communiqué from the White House last week. President Obama’s office reassured Lost fans that the commander in chief wouldn’t move his yearly state of the union address from late January to a date that would coincide with the premiere episode of the show’s sixth and final season. That’s right. Obama might have had vital information to impart upon the American people about health care, the war in Afghanistan, the financial crisis – things that, you know, might affect real lives. But the most important thing was that his address didn’t clash with a series in which a polar bear appears on a tropical island. After extensive lobbying by the ABC network, the White House surrendered. Obama’s press secretary promised: “I don’t foresee a scenario in which millions of people who hope to finally get some conclusion with Lost are pre-empted by the president.

When facing Me-versus-Us moral dilemmas of resisting selfishness, our rapid intuitions are good, honed by evolutionary selection for cooperation in a sea of green-beard markers.35 And in such settings, regulating and formalizing the prosociality (i.e., moving it from the realm of intuition to that of cogitation) can even be counterproductive, a point emphasized by Samuel Bowles.* In contrast, when doing moral decision making during Us-versus-Them scenarios, keep intuitions as far away as possible. Instead, think, reason, and question; be deeply pragmatic and strategically utilitarian; take their perspective, try to think what they think, try to feel what they feel. Take a deep breath, and then do it all again.*

Hockey is just a silly little game. We devote year after year after year to it without ever really hoping to get anything in return. We burn and bled and cry, fully aware that the most the sport can give us, in the very best scenario. is incomprehensibly meager and worthless: just a few isolated moments of transcendence. That’s all. But what the hell else is life made of?

If you are elected, what actions will you take to lessen the risks of nuclear war? What actions will you take to lessen the risks of climate change? What actions will you take to regulate disruptive technologies such as AI and bioengineering? And finally, how do you see the world of 2040? What is your worst-case scenario, and what is your vision for the best-case scenario?

ask these politicians four questions: If you are elected, what actions will you take to lessen the risks of nuclear war? What actions will you take to lessen the risks of climate change? What actions will you take to regulate disruptive technologies such as AI and bioengineering? And finally, how do you see the world of 2040? What is your worst-case scenario, and what is your vision for the best-case scenario?

The label “jack-of-all-trades but master of none” is normally meant to be derogatory, implying that the labelee lacks the focus to really dive into a subject and master it. But, when your online shopping application is on the fritz and you’re losing orders by the hundreds as each hour passes, it’s the jack-of-all-trades who not only knows how the application’s code works but can also do low-level UNIX debugging of your web server processes, analyze your RDBMS’s configuration for potential performance bottlenecks, and check your network’s router configuration for hard-to-find problems. And, more important, after finding the problem, the jack-of-all-trades can quickly make architecture and design decisions, implement code fixes, and deploy a new fixed system to production. In this scenario, the manufacturing scenario seems quaint at best and critically flawed at worst.

What’s top of mind for you right now? What priorities are you thinking about this week? What’s the best use of our time today? Understand: Once you’ve identified a topic to discuss, these next questions get at the root of the problem and what can be done about it. What does your ideal outcome look like? What’s hard for you in getting to that outcome? What do you really care about? What do you think is the best course of action? What’s the worst-case scenario you’re worried about?

A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which Iskate with buttered soles over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child’s blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I no longer wish to be part. That I must in the final analysis remain part of the world that is external to and other from Lenore Beadsman is to me a source of profound grief. That others may dwell deep, deep within the ones they love, drink from the soft cup at the creamy lake at the center of the Object of Passion, while I am fated forever only to intuit the presence of deep recesses while I poke my nose, as it were, merely into the foyer of the Great House of Love, agitate briefly, and make a small mess onthe doormat, pisses me off to no small degree. But that Lenore finds such tiny frenzies, such conversations just inside the Screen Door of Union, to be not only pleasant and briefly diverting but somehow apparently right, fulfilling, significant, in some sense wonderful, quite simply and not at all surprisingly makes me feel the same way, enlarges my sense of it and me, sends me hurrying up the walk to that Screen Door in my best sportjacket and flower in lapel as excited as any schoolboy, time after time, brings me charging to the cave entrance in leopardskin shirt, avec club, bellowing for admittance and promising general kickings of ass if I am impeded in any way.

No crime is confounding and punitive the way rape is. No other violent offense comes with a built-in alibi that can instantly exonerate the criminal and place responsibility on the victim. There is no glorified interpersonal behavior that can be used to explain robbery or murder the way that sex can be used to explain rape. The best-case scenario for a rape victim in terms of adjudication is the worst-case scenario in terms of experience: for people to believe you deserve justice, you have to be destroyed.

Better to be a cliché than to be a failure. Incidentally, I’ve played this scenario out a dozen times with clients. They want something simple, suggestive, symbolic. I tell them to choose something obvious. A powerful, beautiful picture that hits all the right genre buttons. They insist, we finish the cover, six months later they decide they are frustrated with their low sales and they give me permission to redo the cover and make the design that will sell the best. Are my book covers clichés? Probably. They also sell a lot of copies.

But love doesn’t make a mean drunk not a mean drunk or a narcissist not a narcissist or a jackass not a jackass. At your wedding, your father will most likely behave the way he has behaved for all the years you’ve known him. Even if he doesn’t, what’s the best-case scenario? That you spend your wedding day worrying that your father is going to make an ass of himself and humiliate you and enrage your mom and alienate your in-laws, but he doesn’t? Does that sound like fun? Is that what you hoped for? Is that what you want? Of course not.

If we have learned nothing else from myths, folklore and fairy tales, we should at least know this. If an old woman approaches you and asks for anything, or suggests anything, you always, always say yes, and thank you very much for asking. There is an almost zero chance that she is an actual old lady and not a goddess, a witch or an enchantress in disguise. You either change your offending behaviour immediately or – and this is the best-case scenario – you find yourself stuck in a castle full of singing furniture, with one erratic houseplant your only hope of salvation.

The trauma of the Soviet collapse was economic, cultural, political, strategic—and demographic. Between 1986 and 1994, the birth rate halved while the death rate nearly doubled. Russia today is deindustrializing at the same time its population is collapsing. Dark? Yes, but Russia is probably one of the best-case scenarios for much of the industrialized world. Russia, after all, at least has ample capacity at home to feed and fuel itself in addition to sufficient nuclear weapons to make any would-be aggressor stop and think (a few dozen times) before launching an assault.

It is the punisher’s mind-set where everything must be changed. The difficulty of this is explored in the superb book The Punisher’s Brain: The Evolution of Judge and Jury (2014) by Morris Hoffman, a practicing judge and legal scholar.31 He reviews the reasons for punishment: As we see from game theory studies, because punishment fosters cooperation. Because it is in the fabric of the evolution of sociality. And most important, because it can feel good to punish, to be part of a righteous and self-righteous crowd at a public hanging, knowing that justice is being served. This is a deep, atavistic pleasure. Put people in brain scanners, give them scenarios of norm violations. Decision making about culpability for the violation correlates with activity in the cognitive dlPFC. But decision making about appropriate punishment activates the emotional vmPFC, along with the amygdala and insula; the more activation, the more punishment.32 The decision to punish, the passionate motivation to do so, is a frothy limbic state. As are the consequences of punishing—when subjects punish someone for making a lousy offer in an economic game, there’s activation of dopaminergic reward systems. Punishment that feels just feels good.

If there is something you take away from these pages, let it be that God is passionately, personally concerned with every small hurt or inconvenience in your life, and you should talk to him about whatever you want, whether it is a real estate deal or a broken washing machine. What happens, though—what certainly happened to me—is that in thinking about how God cares about the humdrum business of your day, you start to fall more in love with him and less in love with the thing you started praying about in the first place. That’s the best possible scenario, if for no other reason than you are a little less stressed out.

When the next elections come along, and politicians implore you to vote for them, ask these politicians four questions: If you are elected, what actions will you take to lessen the risks of nuclear war? What actions will you take to lessen the risks of climate change? What actions will you take to regulate disruptive technologies such as AI and bioengineering? And finally, how do you see the world of 2040? What is your worst-case scenario, and what is your vision for the best-case scenario? If some politicians don’t understand these questions, or if they constantly talk about the past without being able to formulate a meaningful vision for the future, don’t vote for them.

The next time you are filled with worry, try Carrier’s strategy: 1. Define the worst case. Ask yourself honestly, What’s the worst thing that can happen? Once you do that, you’ll find that your imagination is getting the best of you. The reality is usually not that bad, once you clearly define it. It has the most power when it remains a mystery. 2. Accept it as survivable. Act as if the situation were a foregone conclusion, and let it go as a lesson to be learned. At the very least, admit that there will be some negative repercussions, regardless of your best efforts. 3. Make a goal out of beating the worst-case scenario. Develop a set of responses that can help you trim your losses and mitigate damages.

After a while, however, the desire to write begins to mount. I can feel my material building up within me, like spring melt pressing against a dam. Then one day (in a best-case scenario), when I can’t take that pressure anymore, I sit down at my desk and start to write. Worry about journal editors impatiently awaiting a promised manuscript never enters the picture. I don’t make promises, so I don’t have deadlines. As a result, writer’s block and I are strangers to each other. As you might expect, that makes my life much happier. It must be terribly stressful for a writer to be put in the position of having to write when he doesn’t feel like it. (Could I be wrong? Do most writers actually thrive on that kind of stress?)

A kiss with Lenore is a scenario in which I skate with buttered soles over the moist rink of lower lip, sheltered from weathers by the wet warm overhang of upper, finally to crawl between lip and gum and pull the lip to me like a child’s blanket and stare over it with beady, unfriendly eyes out at the world external to Lenore, of which I no longer wish to be part. That I must in the final analysis remain part of the world that is external to and other from Lenore Beadsman is to me a source of profound grief. That others may dwell deep, deep within the ones they love, drink from the soft cup at the creamy lake at the center of the Object of Passion, while I am fated forever only to intuit the presence of deep recesses while I poke my nose, as it were, merely into the foyer of the Great House of Love, agitate briefly, and make a small mess on the doormat, pisses me off to no small degree. But that Lenore finds such tiny frenzies, such conversations just inside the Screen Door of Union, to be not only pleasant and briefly diverting but somehow apparently right, fulfilling, significant, in some sense wonderful, quite simply and not at all surprisingly makes me feel the same way, enlarges my sense of it and me, sends me hurrying up the walk to that Screen Door in my best sportjacket and flower in lapel as excited as any schoolboy, time after time, brings me charging to the cave entrance in leopardskin shirt, avec club, bellowing for admittance and promising general kickings of ass if I am impeded in any way.

This embarrassing episode remains one of the most instructive experiences of my professional life. I eventually learned three lessons from it. The first was immediately apparent: I had stumbled onto a distinction between two profoundly different approaches to forecasting, which Amos and I later labeled the inside view and the outside view. The second lesson was that our initial forecasts of about two years for the completion of the project exhibited a planning fallacy. Our estimates were closer to a best-case scenario than to a realistic assessment. I was slower to accept the third lesson, which I call irrational perseverance: the folly we displayed that day in failing to abandon the project. Facing a choice, we gave up rationality rather than give up the enterprise.

THE BUTT A woman’s posterior is the most grabbable part of her body, but first you must learn to find the right type of ass to grab. There’s a great variety of asses out there, but unfortunately many of them aren’t worth touching even in a clinical setting. The ideal type of woman for groping is a woman blessed with a thick ass. Don’t confuse a “thick” ass for a fat ass (Figure 2). A fat ass is a sad ass. You don’t want anything to do with a fat ass, other than to loathe it. A thick ass, on the other hand, is plump and beautiful; it should make you feel hungry like when you see a glazed ham that you can’t afford in a Christmas catalogue (Figure 3). This is the best-case scenario for ass connoisseurs. You won’t find a butt riper for the picking, so don’t pass that ass.

I daydreamed about BEING Anne. Traipsing through nineteenth-century meadows, reciting Romantic poetry (Keats was my fave, because he died with such gruesome panache.) One day, I started creating my own original scenarios of Anne doing her plucky orphan thing. But I didn’t want to deal with the annoying stuff from old-timey days, like sexism and polio, so I moved up the timeline and transported her into modern life as a free-spirited teen heiress. I’d imagine Anne flying to Hong Kong on her private jet, or spying on Communists while she performed gymnastics for the US Olympic Team. Or simple things, like attending a new high school where she’d enter a classroom wearing designer jeans and everyone would gasp at how pretty she was. “Her hair is so long and red. Can I be her best friend immediately?

Sometimes we posit a scenario in which we were both young when we met, and we imagine that we would have had kids, if only because I would have wanted them. And we would have raised them with all our best efforts and unflagging commitment. But we also would have become different people, made different choices, and had a different relationship with each other; more distant and harried, more responsible, more grown-up. Instead, we have this life, and we are these people. We get to go to bed every night together, alone, and wake up together, alone. Our shared passions thrill and satisfy us, and our abundant freedoms—to daydream; to cook exactly the food we want when we want it; to drink wine and watch a movie without worrying about who’s not yet asleep upstairs; to pick up and go anywhere we want, anytime; to do our work uninterrupted; to shape our own days to our own liking; and to stay connected to each other without feeling fractured—are not things we’d choose to give up for anyone, ever.

Wait in the car." He opened the door and started to climb out. "Hold on! How long should I give you? What if you don't come back in a certain number of minutes? Should I call the cops?" "Don't do anything. Don't call anyone. I'll be fine." "But what if you're not?" "Then go home." And with that, he got out and jogged down the street, like if I heard screams or gunshots or whatever I would just drive on home like nothing happened. Well, good for you, I thought, watching him climb a short cement staircase and put a key in the door. You don't need anyone. Fine. I watched the clock. Three minutes went by, four. I thought about knocking on the door, having of course no idea what I would actually do once I got there. Maybe I'd have to break the door down, wrestle Cameron away from the bad men, and then carry him out the way you hear people when they get a huge burst of adrenaline. Except the person I pictured rescuing was little Cameron, in shorts and a striped T-shirt, his arms wrapped around my neck. Then there he was, bursting out of the apartment door and bounding down the steps, a big garbage bag in hand. He ran to the car, fast. I reached over and opened the passenger door and he jumped in. "Go." You can't exactly peel out in a '94 Escort, but I did my best. Cameron breathed hard, clutching the garbage bag to his chest. "What happened?" I drove a good fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit, convinced we were being chased by angry roommates with guns. "Nothing. You can slow down." I didn't. "Nothing? Nothing happened?" "They weren't even there." Then I did slow down. "No one was there? At all?" "Right." His breathing had returned to almost normal. "Then what's the deal with freaking me out like that?" My voice came out high and hysterical and I realized how nervous I'd been, imagining some dangerous scenario from which Cameron had barely escaped, an echo of that day at his house. "I don't know. I started to picture one of them pulling up and finding me there and...I panicked.

He and Blake had been busy, and I’d been busy talking to customers about random stuff while they waited. I was surprised by how nice everyone had been—with the exception of Dex's dumb face. There hadn't been a single biker in the shop either. Weird. All of this assured me that I’d avoided having to interact much with my boss. The owner. The bleeding mouth sore. The snot-faced ass**le that I only kind-of, sort-of hoped came down with an infectious illness in his private parts. But you know, something he could get medicine for. I tried my best to keep from replaying the scenario in the office but it was impossible. It wasn't his tone but the words that had seared me. And each time, it made me want to cry. It didn’t get any easier or any less painful. How the hell could someone be so rude? I didn't understand and I couldn't get over it. Every cycle had me coming up with different things to call him. A dick. A slimy bastard. A slimy, small-dicked bastard. Right? Maybe he wouldn't be so mad at the world if his pubic hair wasn’t longer than his full-blown erection. God, I felt awkward thinking about what he had under his clothes but it was the best insult I could come up with.

See? If you would have gotten a dog like I told you to, you'd be one of the cool kids around here." "And I told I work too much to have a dog. If you want a dog, you get a dog." "I did suggest that at one point, but you said no." "As I recall, your plan was to get a dog and keep it at my house. That would still be me getting a dog except in that scenario you would get to pick the dog. For some strange reason, that seems lose/lose to me." "Well, obviously I'd come over whenever it needed to go out." "How is that going to work? The club is almost an hour's drive from my house even at the best of times." He sighed, leading the way into the great room. "You'd need to let me live in your pool house, of course." "I don't have a pool house, or even a pool, dipshit." He followed her inside, enjoying this conversation far too much to leave now. "Obviously, the first part of the plan would be for you to get a pool installed, and then build a pool house for me to live in." She frowned at him and punched him in the chest. "Your imaginary dog is already costing me an imaginary fortune." "The upside is that imaginary dogs aren't big eaters. You're already saving a fortune on dog food.

Chang came in five minutes later, in the same jeans but a fresh T-shirt, her hair still inky with water from the shower. Her own jacket was pulled down on one side, by her own Smith. Like any ex-cop she looked around, the full 360, seven or eight separate snapshots, and then she moved through the room with plenty of energy, powered by what looked like enthusiasm, or maybe some kind of shared euphoria at their mutual survival through the night. She slid in alongside him. He said, “Did you sleep?” She said, “I must have. I didn’t think I was going to.” “You didn’t go meet the train.” “He’s a prisoner, according to you. And that’s the best-case scenario.” “I’m only guessing.” “It’s a reasonable assumption.” “Did you see the woman in 203?” “I thought she was hard to explain. Dressed in black, she could have been an investor or a fund manager or something else deserving of the junior executive routine. Her face and hair were right. And she has a key to the company gym. That’s for sure. But dressed in white? She looked like she was going to a garden party in Monte Carlo. At seven o’clock in the morning. Who does that?” “Is it a fashion thing? Someone’s idea of summer clothes?” “I sincerely hope not.

Wait!" Brittany calls out as I'm walking away. I turn around and she's right in front of me. "What?" She smiles seductively as if she's wanting something more than a truce. Way more. Shit, is she gonna kiss me? I'm taken off guard here, which usually doesn't happen. She bites her bottom lip, as if she's contemplating her next move. I'm totally game to making out with her. As my brain goes through every scenario, she steps closer to me. And snatches my keys out of my hand. "What do you think you're doin'?" I ask her. "Getting you back for kidnapping me." She steps back and with all her might whips my keys into the woods. "You did not just do that." She backs up, facing me the entire time, as she moves toward her car. "No hard feelings. Payback's a bitch, ain't it, Alex?" she says, trying to keep a straight face. I watch in shock as my chem partner gets into her Beemer. The car drives out of the lot without a jolt, jerk, or hitch. Flawless start. I'm pissed off because I'm going to have to either crawl around in the dark woods trying to find my keys or call Enrique to pick me up. I'm also amused. Brittany Ellis bested me at my own game. "Yeah," I say to her even though she's probably a mile away and can't hear me. "Payback is a bitch.

Southern violence was explored in one of the all-time coolest psychology studies, involving the use of a word rare in science journals, conducted by Nisbett and Cohen. Undergraduate male subjects had a blood sample taken. They then filled out a questionnaire about something and were then supposed to drop it off down the hall. It was in the narrow hallway, filled with file cabinets, that the experiment happened. Half the subjects traversed the corridor uneventfully. But with half, a confederate (get it? ha-ha) of the psychologists, a big beefy guy, approached from the opposite direction. As the subject and the plant squeezed by each other, the latter would jostle the subject and, in an irritated voice, say the magic word—“asshole”—and march on. Subject would continue down the hall to drop off the questionnaire. What was the response to this insult? It depended. Subjects from the South, but not from elsewhere, showed massive increases in levels of testosterone and glucocorticoids—anger, rage, stress. Subjects were then told a scenario where a guy observes a male acquaintance making a pass at his fiancée—what happens next in the story? In control subjects, Southerners were a bit more likely than Northerners to imagine a violent outcome. And after being insulted? No change in Northerners and a massive boost in imagined violence among Southerners.

August 21st DON’T BE MISERABLE IN ADVANCE “It’s ruinous for the soul to be anxious about the future and miserable in advance of misery, engulfed by anxiety that the things it desires might remain its own until the very end. For such a soul will never be at rest—by longing for things to come it will lose the ability to enjoy present things.” —SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 98.5b–6a The way we nervously worry about some looming bad news is strange if you think about it. By definition, the waiting means it hasn’t happened yet, so that feeling bad in advance is totally voluntary. But that’s what we do: chewing our nails, feeling sick to our stomachs, rudely brushing aside the people around us. Why? Because something bad might occur soon. The pragmatist, the person of action, is too busy to waste time on such silliness. The pragmatist can’t worry about every possible outcome in advance. Think about it. Best case scenario—if the news turns out to be better than expected, all this time was wasted with needless fear. Worst case scenario—we were miserable for extra time, by choice. And what better use could you make of that time? A day that could be your last—you want to spend it in worry? In what other area could you make some progress while others might be sitting on the edges of their seat, passively awaiting some fate? Let the news come when it does. Be too busy working to care.

10. A wounded person might be saved but a wounded person wouldn't heal that easily. ch 173 Pg 1999 11. s. I could hear a slight creaking sound from Yoo Joonghyuk's body. His body was already at the limit. Even so, Yoo Joonghyuk didn't give up. PG 2059 12. There is no magic that will heal all wounds just because someone else has a deep wound as well. PG 2089 13. I will pull all of you down from that fucking heaven. PG 2192 CH 190 14. In a place they couldn't see, the story that was going to destroy them had just begun PG2226 15. The most dangerous enemy is always the closest ally PG 2265 16. "Don't regard past failures as scriptures. There will be no change if you don't do anything. PG 2299 17. Fight, fight and fight again PG2365 18.Fight, fight again and keep moving forward. It was the best mourning possible for this guy's past. PG 2623 19. If that happens, I will destroy all the worlds that caused that Fate. PG 2676 20. "The scenario is a small destruction to prevent a greater destruction." PG 2802 21. This was Yoo Joonghyuk. He didn't give up on his goal even if he gave up his life. 22. "I felt it while living… life is supposed to be like this. There are times when nothing can be done and times when things don't work out. PG 2824 23. "I know that things don't work out well. Not everything will flow as you wish. Even so, don't dwell on it too much and let your heart lead you." PG 2827 24. In order to hold that spear, Yoo Joonghyuk trained with a single focus for decades.PG 3470 25.Don't be fooled by what you see! Believe in yourself, not the myths already recorded! Pg 3685 26.there is no good or evil. There is only our desire to see the story pg 3690 27. Are all failed stories meaningless? Even if you know you will fail, isn't the story of those who have fought to the end worth it? PG3706 28. It was a dependable tone. I really wanted a father like this. 3719 29. Then I looked around and saw Han Sooyoung dangling her legs while sucking candy. I scolded Han Sooyoung, "Is it delicious?" "Strangely, I've been craving something sweet lately. Do you want to eat?" Han Sooyoung didn't wait for my answer and shoved the candy she was holding into my mouth. It had a lemon flavour. I ate the candy and Han Sooyoung looked at me quietly. "By the way, that's what I was eating." "So?" "…You are really no fun." Pg 3734 30. 'Yoo Joonghyuk' of the other rounds were watching us. Some looked envious while others had gloomy expressions. Finally, there was one with an expression of intrigue. Pg 3747 31. Sometimes the thing that looks like a road isn't a road pg3767 32. "Kim Dokja, you know you aren't a godlike person." I smelt lemon candy from the grumbling voice. Han Sooyoung took the brush from my hand in a frustrated manner. "There are some things in the world you don't know about, you idiot. pg3792 33. [I think it will be hard to just send you away.] [What bullshit is that?] [If you are a demon king, you should be worthy. Isn't that right? pg 3844

Let’s see what “multifactorial” means in a practical sense. Consider someone with frequent depression who is visiting a friend today, pouring her heart out about her problems. How much could you have predicted the global depression and today’s behavior by knowing about her biology? Suppose “knowing about her biology” consisted only of knowing what version of the serotonin transporter gene she has. How much predictive power does that give you? As we saw in chapter 8, not much—say, 10 percent. What if “knowing about her biology” consists of knowing the status of that gene plus knowing if one of her parents died when she was a child? More, maybe 25 percent. How knowing her serotonin transporter gene status + childhood adversity status + whether she is living alone in poverty? Maybe up to 40 percent. Add knowledge of the average level of glucocorticoids in her bloodstream today. Maybe a bit more. Toss in knowing if she’s living in an individualist or a collectivist culture. Some more predictability.fn11 Know if she is menstruating (which typically exacerbates symptoms in seriously depressed women, making it more likely that they’ll be socially withdrawn rather than reaching out to someone). Some more predictability. Maybe even above the 50 percent mark by now. Add enough factors, many of which, possibly most of which, have not yet been discovered, and eventually your multifactorial biological knowledge will give you the same predictive power as in the fractured-bone scenario. Not different amounts of biological causation; different types of causation.

Spot Rumination Triggered by Emails Email is a common trigger for rumination. Text messages, Facebook comments, and tweets can be too. All the nonverbal cues, and many of the context cues, are stripped out of this type of communication. The asynchronized nature of email often adds to the issue. For example, does a slow reply to an email mean the person is disinterested? Or might it mean something else? Is the person busy? A habitual slow replier? Waiting on some information before coming back to you with a reply? Still thinking about what you’ve said? Is the person disorganized and got distracted? Not checking messages? Did your message go to spam? If you get caught in email-induced rumination, recognize if you’re jumping to any negative conclusions about why the person hasn’t responded and try coming up with alternative explanations that are plausible. Use the next experiment as a guide. Remember that slowing your breathing will always help you think more clearly and flexibly, so do this too. Experiment: Can you recall a time when a nontimely response to an email set off rumination for you? What was (1) your worst-case scenario prediction for the person’s lack of response, (2) the best-case scenario, and (3) the most likely scenario? If you struggle to think of an answer for “most likely,” pick something that falls in the middle, between your answers for the best- and worst-case scenarios. In the email incident you just recalled, did you ever find out what the reason for the slow response was? Often you won’t find out the reasons for other people’s actions, which is part of why this type of rumination tends to be so futile.

I use the following scenario in my classes to illustrate the nature of the moral circle. Imagine, I ask my students, that your best friend just got a job waiting tables at a restaurant. To celebrate with her you arrange with friends to go to the restaurant to eat dinner on her first night. You ask to be seated in her section and look forward to surprising her and, later, leaving her a big tip. Soon your friend arrives at your table, sweating and stressed out. She is having a terrible night. Things are going badly and she is behind getting food and drinks out. So, I ask my students, what do you do? Easily and naturally the students respond, “We’d say, ‘Don’t worry about us. Take care of everyone else first.’” I point out to the students that this response is no great moral struggle. It’s a simple and easy response. Like breathing. It is just natural to extend grace to a suffering friend. Why? Because she is inside our moral circle. But imagine, I continue with the students, that you go out to eat tonight with some friends. And your server, whom you vaguely notice seems stressed out, performs poorly. You don’t get good service. What do you do in that situation? Well, since this stranger is not a part of our moral circle, we get frustrated and angry. The server is a tool and she is not performing properly. She is inconveniencing us. So, we complain to the manager and refuse to tip. In the end, we fail to treat another human being with mercy and dignity. Why? Because in a deep psychological sense, this server wasn’t really “human” to us. She was a part of the “backdrop” of our lives, part of the teeming anonymous masses toward which I feel indifference, fear, or frustration. The server is on the “outside” of my moral circle.

A few days after that dinner, I catch up with my new friend Paul over coffee. He is telling me about a time when he cycled from the Netherlands to Spain – a many-months-long endeavour that he completed solo. I try to imagine myself in this scenario. ‘Were you lonely?’ I ask. Paul pauses, taken aback by the question. And this is the problem with Deep Talk. Not only do you have to be a bit vulnerable and a bit ballsy to ask the questions in the first place, but you’re also asking whoever you’re speaking with to be the same: open up, take your hand and embrace the depths. Paul furrows his brow. After a beat, he nods. ‘Yeah, I was,’ he says. ‘What did you do to combat it?’ ‘I wrote in my journal a lot,’ he tells me. ‘I went for walks. But I was still really lonely.’ He tells me that he’s good at talking to people but that in most of the places where he stopped along the way people were pretty guarded. When I play back this conversation in my head, I wonder how differently pre-sauna Jess would have handled it. Given that I don’t know Paul well, I would have probably asked about logistics, or how many miles he covered per day, or what kind of bike he rode. Maybe, at best, I’d have launched into a story about a bike seat I’d used in Beijing that was such a literal arse ache that I could barely walk for two weeks, followed by a monologue about the realities of life with thigh chaffing. I am so impressed by how open Paul is with me. He could have lied and told me, nah, he doesn’t get lonely, that he relished the time alone on the road, he was a lone wolf, a cowboy striking out into the sunset with nothing but his trusty metallic steed. One of the most vital parts of Deep Talk is that it has to be a two-way process – both parties have to be willing to share, to disclose, to be vulnerable. If you initiate it with someone but don’t give back, you’re likely just harassing innocent people to share extremely personal information. I realise I probably shouldn’t go around asking men about their loneliness and not share my own experience of it. Since we’re all in this together, I’ll tell you, too.

What about you? I know you’re not married. Are you seeing anyone or anything?” An image of Brooke sleeping in his bed popped into Cade’s head. Then a second image came to mind, of her giving him the “text me” speech at his front door. “Nothing serious.” “Really? ’Cuz you paused there.” If one more person commented on these damn alleged pauses . . . “Just eat your lunch,” Cade said. With a grin, Zach threw Cade’s words back at him. “If you’re having trouble talking to some girl, maybe you need to find another way to tell her how you feel.” “I know how to talk to her just fine.” “Maybe you’re not saying the right things, then.” “Can we change the subject?” Cade ran his hand through his hair. “You’re sixteen years old. Trust me, relationships get a lot more complicated when you’re an adult.” “Is this a friends-with-benefits situation?” “Aren’t you a little young to know about friends-with-benefits situations?” “I didn’t say I was partaking in them myself,” Zach said. “But shockingly, yes, I have heard of scenarios in which adults engage in intercourse without riding off into the sunset together.” Cade tried to decide how best to sum up the situation with Brooke. “There is a woman. We are friendly. There have been benefits.” “Do you like her?” Cade gestured with his burger. “Of course I like her. She’s, like, the smartest, wittiest, woman I’ve ever met. And hot, too.” “Yeah, I can see why you’d be confused about that,” Zach said. “Smart, witty, and hot. Sounds like a real complicated situation to me.” Okay, fine. To youthful, unjaded ears, it probably did sound odd. Cade tried a different way to explain. “She and I are on the same page. We’re just keeping it casual.” “Hey, you’re an intelligent guy, you obviously know what you’re doing,” Zach said. “But casual or not, if this girl’s that great you probably need to follow your own advice.” “What advice is that?” “Up your game.” That said, Zach took a big bite of his cheeseburger. Cade thought about that. Up his game? Pfft. If he had been thinking he might want to try to change Brooke’s mind about their just-having-fun situation—which obviously he did not, since no man of sound mind and body ever messed with a just-having-fun situation—maybe then he’d worry about upping his game. He scoffed. “You’re a teenager. What do you know?” “I’m wise beyond my years,” Zach said, his mouth full of burger