Urgent Need Quotes

Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.

Heartache forces us to embrace God out of desparate, urgent need. God is never closer than when your heart is aching.

But if you think I'm going to let you give up on us now, you've got another think coming. Yes, you're a blind mutant freak, but you're my blind mutant freak, and you're coming with me, now, you're coming with us right now, or I swear I will kick your skinny white ass from here to the middle of next week. Iggy raised his head. Flashes of light told me that the cops were almost on top of us. Iggy, I need you," I said urgently. "I love you. I need all of you, all five of you, to fell whole myself. Now get up, before I kill you." Iggy stood. "Well, when you put it that way...

his examination revealed that he had no fever, no pain anywhere, and that his only concrete feeling was an urgent desire to die. All that was needed was shrewd questioning...to conclude once again that the symptoms of love were the same as those of cholera.

He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn't enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you're ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.

that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office.

The current ruling ontology denies any possibility of a social causation of mental illness. The chemico-biologization of mental illness is of course strictly commensurate with its depoliticization. Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital’s drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry). Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals (we can cure you with our SSRIs). It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.

I've been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It would have been easy to gut him then and there. Satisfying. But the need was too urgent. I felt pushed.

They felt a strange happiness, an urgent need to reveal their hearts to each other- the urgency of lovers, which is already a gift, the very first one, the gift of the soul before the body surrenders. 'Know me, look at me. This is who I am. This is how I have lived, this is what I have loved. And you? What about you, my darling?

We cannot afford to lose the Negro. We have urgent need of all and more. Let us therefore turn our efforts to making the best of him.

[T]he unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness.

We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts.

But, sometimes, especially late at night, when only the wind is awake with my thoughts, I feel an urgent need. I think of lacing up my tennis shoes and stepping out the door, already in a half run. I think of running and running forever, until I become part of the night sky. -The Art of Leaving

Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death. A man's horizon may become so completely dominated by the intense character of his hatred that there remains no creative residue in his mind and spirit to give to great ideas, to great concepts.

But if you have a book that needs urgent reading,' she said, 'then Hakim is your man.

What an irony it is that these living beings whose shade we sit in, whose fruit we eat, whose limbs we climb, whose roots we water, to whom most of us rarely give a second thought, are so poorly understood. We need to come, as soon as possible, to a profound understanding and appreciation for trees and forests and the vital role they play, for they are among our best allies in the uncertain future that is unfolding.

Food won't go down when you know your mother didn't want you, never liked to feed you, always hated you in her rooms. You were wrong to clutch and swallow and move your mouth. You must not be flushed, layered in fat or ripe from meat or she will despise your sight. Your skeleton cries, "I make no demands, I am ashamed of my needs, I am unworthy. I'm aware of those more deserving, those with prior and urgent claims to food." Skeleton says, "My safety is in slightness, my pride is denial. My victory is no gluttony, no guilt.

I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children’s souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies.

I know what the majority of you think about all this. All this sex and money and drugs. You think: people who live like that never end up happy. You need to think that in just the way men with small penises need to think size doesn't matter. It's understandable. The rich, the famous, the big-dicked, the slim-and-gorgeous - they can incite an envy so urgent that you can escape it only by translating it into pity. People who live like that never end up happy. Yes, you're right. But neither do you. And in the meantime, they've had all the sex and drugs and money.

The Fourth Sign of The Zodiac (Part 3) by Mary Oliver I know, you never intended to be in this world. But you’re in it all the same. So why not get started immediately. I mean, belonging to it. There is so much to admire, to weep over. And to write music or poems about. Bless the feet that take you to and fro. Bless the eyes and the listening ears. Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste. Bless touching. You could live a hundred years, it’s happened. Or not. I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years, none of which, I think, I ever wasted. Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going? Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats, so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime. Mary oliver

There is an urgent need for mankind to recognise its Creator as this is the only guarantor for the survival of humanity

As American Christians, we celebrate the idea that "all men are created equal." This statement from our Declaration of Indepenence is grounded in the biblical teaching that every person in the world has been formed in the image of God and therefore has instrinsic worth. it's a beautiful idea. Subtly, however, this equality of persons shifts into an equality of ideas. Just as every person is equally valued, so every idea is equally valid. Applied to faith, this means that in a world where different people have different religious views, all such views should be treated as fundamntally equal. In this system of thinking, faith is a matter of taste, not of truth....... Then I implore you to consider the urgent need before us to forsake the American dream now in favor of radical abandonment to the person and purpose of Christ.

Anyone who urgently needs us deserves, in the true book of love, to be our friend.

They felt a strange happiness, an urgent need to reveal their hearts to each other-the urgency of lovers, which is already a gift, the very first one, the gift of the soul before the body surrenders

To what faults do you feel most indulgent? To the ones that arise from urgent material needs.

An effective leader must step back, look at the big picture, and make sure the important things are not being pushed out of the way by the seemingly urgent needs of the moment.

Only the never-ending work of mourning can help us from lapsing into the illusion that we have found the parent we once urgently needed—empathic and open, understanding and understandable, honest and available, helpful and loving, feeling, transparent, clear, without unintelligible contradictions. Such a parent was never ours, for a mother can react empathically only to the extent that she has become free of her own childhood; when she denies the vicissitudes of her early life, she wears invisible chains.

Larsson was an active and lifelong feminist, partly for personal reasons but also because he saw that ending gender slavery was as crucial to next-stage evolution as ending race slavery was to the last stage. It's a noble fight, not least because the various fundamentalisms threatening Western democracy are united in their urgent need to re-cage women's sexuality.

We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other. We urgently need to bring the neighbor back into our hoods, not only in our inner cities but also in our suburbs, our gated communities, on Main Street and Wall Street, and on Ivy League campuses.

Her own body was such a familiar and unremarkable thing to her that she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from it, by the intense and amusing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, pinch it, rub it. She did not understand Yossarian's lust; but she was willing to take is word for it.

I am convinced that there is an urgent need in the church today for much greater understanding of Christian doctrine, or systematic theology. Not only pastors and teachers need to understand theology in greater depth -- the WHOLE CHURCH does as well. One day by God's grace we may have churches full of Christians who can discuss, apply and LIVE the doctrinal teachings of the Bible as readily as they can discuss the details of their own jobs or hobbies - or the fortunes of their favorite sports team or television program.

quotation from Maya Angelou emblazoned across the side of the building: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.

The annoying thing about disagreeing with libs is they tend to assume you’re either to their right, or misinformed and in urgent need of enlightenment.

I had to learn Mandarin. And I had the best teacher – necessity. You can study a language for years at school, but nothing helps you succeed like need, and mine was clear, and urgent.

Love is an actual need, an urgent requirement of the heart," he read aloud from an old essay on marriage that he found in his files. "Every properly constituted human being who entertains an appreciation of loneliness...and looks forward to happiness and content feels the necessity of loving. Without it, life is unfinished...

It seems astonishing that she is still walking forwards, one foot in front of the other; the people around her look real, and her feet underneath her look real, but she feels a powerful, urgent need to ask someone, Am I here? Are you sure? Is this me?

it is curious that each of Russia’s Times of Troubles – 1610–13, 1917–18 and 1991 –99 – ended with a new version of the old autocracy, eased by the habits and traditions of its fallen predecessor, and justified by the urgent need to restore order, radically modernize and regain Russia’s place as a great power.

Why does the social order feel the need to defend itself by evading the fact of real women, our faces and voices and bodies, and reducing the meaning of women to these formulaic and endlessly reproduced "beautiful" images? Though unconscious personal anxieties can be a powerful force in the creation of a vital lie, economic necessity practically guarantees it. An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that "justify" the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An idealogy that makes women feel "worth less" was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more. This does not require a conspiracy; merely an atmosphere. The contemporary economy depends right now on the representation of women within the beauty myth.

It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of repoliticizing mental illness is an urgent one if the left wants to challenge capitalist realism.

When a company experiences new kinds of competition, it needs to urgently become a new kind of competition.

I mean, what do you do, when you find that things are not what you were taught they’re supposed to be? What do you do with the desperation that boils up from your stomach when you know there’s a road out there with your destination at the end of it, but it’s too damned dark to even find the road? You turn and turn and turn around like a dog trying to escape. Shrieks in the cavity of your head that so urgently needs to be filled with facts and challenges.

Where is Galen?" She had many questions to ask the king, and it surprised her a little that this should be the first one to pop out of her mouth. Still, it was just as urgent as any of the others. "What have you done to him?" "Nothing." The king spread his weirdly elongated hands in an innocent gesture. "The gardener's boy is in perfect health. For the present." "And then he'll fall off a horse, or slip on the wet pavement? So that you don't need to get your hands dirty?" Rose sneered at him. He smiled his cold smile. "Keeping one's hands clean – maintaining one's innocence. Is that not the human way?

I believe in the song of the white dove. On the threshold of the new technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear warfare, human species are in new danger. There is an urgent need for superhuman compassion in machine.

To make that decision, we will have to avoid the trap of placing the burden of our national sins on the shoulders of Donald Trump. We need to look inward. Trump is us. Or better, Trump is you.

If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected—those, precisely, who need the law’s protection the most!—and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person—ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it.

In the artist of all kinds I think one can detect an inherent dilemma, which belongs to the co-existence of two trends, the urgent need to communicate and the still more urgent need not to be found....

America," he begged. I turned to Maxon. "They're fine. The rebels were slow, and everyone here knows what to do in an emergency." I nodded. We stood there quietly for a minute, and I could tell he was about to move on. "Maxon," I whispered. He turned back, a little surprised to be addressed so casually. "About last night. Let me explain. When they came to prep us, to get us ready to come here, there was a man who told me that I was never to turn you down. No matter what you asked for. Not ever." He was dumbfounded. "What?" "He made it sound like you might ask for certain things. And you said yourself that you hadn't been around many women. After eighteen years...and then you sent the cameras away. I just got scared when you got that close to me." Maxon shook his head, trying to process all this. Humiliation, rage, and disbelief all played across his typically even-tempered face. "Was everyone told this?" he asked, sounding appalled at the idea. "I don't know. I can't imagine many girls would need such a warning. They're probably waiting to pounce on you," I noted, nodding my head toward the rest of the room. He gave a dark chuckle. "But you're not, so you had absolutely no qualms about kneeing me in the groin, right?" "I hit your thigh!" "Oh, please. A man doesn't need that long to recover from a knee to the thigh," he replied, his voice full of skepticism. A laugh escaped me. Thankfully, Maxon join in. Just then another mass hit the windows, and we stopped in unison. For a moment I had forgotten where I was. "So how are you handling a roomful of crying women?" I asked. There was a comical bewilderment in his expression. "Nothing in the world is more confusing!" he whispered urgently. "I haven't the faintest clue how to stop it." This was the man who was going to lead our country: the guy rendered useless by tears. It was too funny.

We urgently need to do - and I mean actually do - something radical to avert a global catastrophe. But I don't think we will. I think we're fucked.

I love you,” he said, in a single, urgent breath. “I just—I need you to know that. I love you, Oraya.

You said you won’t let me fuck you because you love someone. And I need to fuck you urgently. So, naturally, I have to kill the man you love.

It isn't any particular person I want to lie down with and make my own. It isn't anybody at all. It is the feeling of being taken care of that I want to pin down and rock my hips against. Sling a leg across it and fall asleep. This longing for body comfort and security is familiar as my own face. The need is urgent. The need makes me stupid.

Fascism is able to attract masses because it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands. Fascism not only inflames prejudices that are deeply ingrained in the masses, but also plays on the better sentiments of the masses, on their sense of justice.

Love should feel urgent. A rush of emotion, an inescapable need. A spark and passion that consumed everything, that burned away caution and fear and left only desire.

When the company experiences new kinds of competition, it needs to urgently become a new kind of competition.

I was endeavouring to adjust the faculties, which were in urgent need of a bit of first-aid treatment.

The idea of a universal human nature brings us to a third theme, humanism. The thinkers of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment saw an urgent need for a secular foundation for morality, because they were haunted by a historical memory of centuries of religious carnage: the Crusades, the Inquisition, witch hunts, the European wars of religion. They laid that foundation in what we now call humanism, which privileges the well-being of individual men, women, and children over the glory of the tribe, race, nation, or religion. It is individuals, not groups, who are sentient—who feel pleasure and pain, fulfillment and anguish. Whether it is framed as the goal of providing the greatest happiness for the greatest number or as a categorical imperative to treat people as ends rather than means, it was the universal capacity of a person to suffer and flourish, they said, that called on our moral concern.

Debarred from public worship, David was heartsick. Ease he did not seek, honour he did not covet, but the enjoyment of communion with God was an urgent need of his soul; he viewed it not merely as the sweetest of all luxuries, but as an absolute necessity, like water to a stag. Like the parched traveler in the wilderness, whose skin bottle is empty, and who finds the wells dry, he must drink or die – he must have his God or faint. His soul, his very self, his deepest life, was insatiable for a sense of the divine presence. . . . Give him his God and he is as content as the poor deer which at length slakes its thirst and is perfectly happy; but deny him his Lord, and his heart heaves, his bosom palpitates, his whole frame is convulsed, like one who gasps for breath, or pants with long running. Dear friend, dost thou know what this is, by personally having felt the same? It is a sweet bitterness. The next best thing to living in the light of the Lord’s love is to be unhappy till we have it, and to pant hourly after it – hourly, did I say? Thirst is a perpetual appetite, and not to be forgotten, and even thus continually is the heart’s longing after God. When it is as natural for us to long for God as for an animal to thirst, it is well with our souls, however painful our feelings

American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.

Oh, look, the lights are so pretty,” I said dreamily, having just noticed them. I smiled at the way the lights were dancing overhead, pink and yellow and blue. I felt some pressure on my arm and thought, I should look over and see what’s going on, but then the thought was gone, sliding away like Jell-O off a hot car hood. “Fang?” “Yeah. I’m here.” I struggled to focus on him. “I’m so glad you’re here.” “Yeah, I got that.” “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I peered up at him, trying to see past the too-bright lights. “You’d be fine,” he muttered. “No,” I said, suddenly struck by how unfine I would be. “I would be totally unfine. Totally.” It seemed very urgent that he understand this. Again I felt some tugging on my arm, and I really wondered what that was about. Was Ella’s mom going to start this procedure any time soon? “It’s okay. Just relax.” He sounded stiff and nervous. “Just...relax. Don’t try to talk.” “I don’t want my chip anymore,” I explained groggily, then frowned. “Actually, I never wanted that chip.” “Okay,” said Fang. “We’re taking it out.” “I just want you to hold my hand.” “I am holding your hand.” “Oh. I knew that.” I drifted off for a few minutes, barely aware of anything, but feeling Fang’s hand still in mine. “Do you have a La-Z-Boy somewhere?” I roused myself to ask, every word an effort. “Um, no,” said Ella’s voice, somewhere behind my head. “I think I would like a La-Z-Boy,” I mused, letting my eyes drift shut again. “Fang, don’t go anywhere.” “I won’t. I’m here.” “Okay. I need you here. Don’t leave me.” “I won’t.” “Fang, Fang, Fang,” I murmured, overwhelmed with emotion. “I love you. I love you sooo much.” I tried to hold out my arms to show how much, but I couldn’t move them. “Oh, jeez,” Fang said, sounding strangled.

She draws him out of bed, and into the kitchen, and Henry sits on a stool and listens as she makes an omelet and tells him about the first time she flew a plane, heard a song on the radio, saw a moving picture. This is the last gift she can give him, these moments he will never have. And this is the last gift he can give her, the listening. And he wishes they could climb back into bed with Book, but they both know there’s no going back. And now that he’s up, he cannot bear the stillness. He is all restless energy, and urgent need, and there isn’t enough time, and he knows of course that there will never be. That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.

I straightened up and shut my eyes, getting ready to start casting, and then had to push him off; he was trying to grab hold of my hand, which I needed rather urgently right then. "What are you doing?" I said, trying to get loose: he was being stupidly persistent about it. Yes, I really sincerely hadn't any idea: whatever was Orion doing, trying to hold hands with me in the moment of what he thought was his imminent demise, and then as soon as I spared it that much of a thought, the answer became so obvious that I felt like a complete idiot. "You are dating me?" I yelled at him, in a fury, and he turned around with his face screwed up in pinched determination and grabbed my face and kissed me. I kneed him with as much energy as the situation called for, since I also needed my voice, and then pushed him down to the floor so I could turn back to the onrushing fires and conjure up my own wall of mortal flame, just in time to put it around us as a firebreak.

Workable solutions for Earth are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers, or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

What a nice surprise! Come on up! " "I hope you don't mind—it's urgent." "Of course not! I was just about to make some tea, do you want some?" "Doctor, have you... Looked out the window recently?" "Oh, the fire? Yes, I was wondering about that. I've got earl grey and oolong. Take your pick!" "There is no time for that, Doctor. You need to get out of here—it's not safe." "There's always time for a cup of tea!

He wanted to write urgent love letters to her all day long and crowd the endless pages with desperate, uninhibited confessions of his humble worship and need with careful instructions for administering artificial respiration. He wanted to pour out to her in torrents of self-pity all his unbearable loneliness and despair and warn her never to leave the boric acid or the aspirin in reach of the children or to cross a street against the traffic light. He did not wish to worry her.

But the root of all sin is self-sufficiency—independence from the rule of God. When we fail to wait prayerfully for God’s guidance and strength, we are saying with our actions, if not with our words, that we do not need him. How much of our service is actually a “going it alone”?

The primary, the most urgent requirement is the promotion of education. It is inconceivable that any nation should achieve prosperity and success unless this paramount, this fundamental concern is carried forward. The principal reason for the decline and fall of peoples is ignorance. Today the mass of the people are uninformed even as to ordinary affairs, how much less do they grasp the core of the important problems and complex needs of the time.

Was she happy? I suppose she was happy. She had, after all, fulfilled a dog's most urgent need, she had managed to bestow her heart, and upon steady people whose dull, uneventful lives required the consolation of what she had to give.

As much as I’d like to take full intellectual credit for my exquisitely sensitive scam nose, I know that my disdain for pyramid schemes likely correlates to the fact that I am privileged enough to have no urgent need for their promises.

You need to have a Why Having a “Why” whatever it is, becomes food. It makes your dreams become more urgent.

If ever an obsolete term urgently needed redefining, the humble 'glove compartment' would surely win any contest hands down.

Coronavirus needs a better name. Something bad ass, like the Black Plague. I'm thinking Airborne Aids. Or Flying Herpes.

Each cell of a living organism cooperates with the cell next to it. It does not need any sentiment or declarations of undying love to do so. Each cell is wise enough to know that if its neighbour goes, it also goes. The cells stick together not out of brotherhood, love and that kind of thing, but out of the urgent drive to survive.   It is the same with us, but only in a larger scale. Soon we will all come to know one simple thing: if I try to destroy you, I will also be destroyed.

No one has expressed what is needed better than Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the London-based al-Arabiya news channel. One of the best-known and most respected Arab journalists working today, he wrote the following, in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (September 6, 2004), after a series of violent incidents involving Muslim extremist groups from Chechnya to Saudi Arabia to Iraq: "Self-cure starts with self-realization and confession. We should then run after our terrorist sons, in the full knowledge that they are the sour grapes of a deformed culture... The mosque used to be a haven, and the voice of religion used to be that of peace and reconciliation. Religious sermons were warm behests for a moral order and an ethical life. Then came the neo-Muslims. An innocent and benevolent religion, whose verses prohibit the felling of trees in the absence of urgent necessity, that calls murder the most heinous of crimes, that says explicitly that if you kill one person you have killed humanity as a whole, has been turned into a global message of hate and a universal war cry... We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women. We cannot redeem our extremist youth, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to reinvent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.

The key needed urgent tending. It was for certain the most restless of the lot. This wasn't even a slim sliver of surprise. Keys were hardly known for their complacency, and this one was near howling for a lock. Auri picked it up and turned it in her hands. A door key. It wasn't shy about the fact at all.

When everyone is hungry and waiting – when things need doing urgently and the clock is ticking - it’s often wiser to get cooking and present a ready-made dish they’ll find tasty to eat rather than getting everyone involved in deciding on the recipe.

Faith is always coveted most and needed most urgently where will is lacking; for will, as the affect of command, is the decisive sign of sovereignty and strength. In other words, the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands, who commands severely—a god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience. From this one might perhaps gather that the two world religions, Buddhism and Christianity, may have owed their origin and above all their sudden spread to a tremendous collapse and disease of the will. And that is what actually happened: both religions encountered a situation in which the will had become diseased, giving rise to a demand that had become utterly desperate for some "thou shalt." Both religions taught fanaticism in ages in which the will had become exhausted, and thus they offered innumerable people some support, a new possibility of willing, some delight in willing. For fanaticism is the only "strength of the will" that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain, being a sort of hypnotism of the whole system of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment (hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes dominant— which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes "a believer." Conversely, one could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will [ This conception of "freedom of the will" ( alias, autonomy) does not involve any belief in what Nietzsche called "the superstition of free will" in section 345 ( alias, the exemption of human actions from an otherwise universal determinism).] that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence.

Okay," said Harry, staring at it, "Pear Drop. Er – Licorice Wand. Fizzing Whizbee. Drooble's Best Blowing Gum. Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans… oh no, he doesn't like them, does he?… oh just open, can't you?" He said angrily. "I really need to see him, it's urgent!" The gargoyle remained immovable. Harry kicked it, achieving nothing but an excruciating pain in his big toe. "Chocolate frog!" he yelled angrily, standing on one leg. "Sugar Quill! Cockroach Cluster! The gargoyle sprang to life and jumped aside. Harry blinked.

Urgency addiction is a self-destructive behavior that temporarily fills the void created by unmet needs. And instead of meeting these needs, the tools and approaches of time management often feed the addiction. They keep us focused on daily prioritization of the urgent.

He loved her manner of sleepy acquiescence when they lay on the beach at dusk. He drew solace and sedation from her nearness. He had a craving to touch her always, to remain always in physical communication. He liked to encircle her ankle loosely with his fingers...to lightly and lovingly caress the downy skin of her fair, smooth thigh with the backs of his nails or dreamily, sensuously, almost unconsciously, slide his proprietary, respectful hand up the shell-like ridge of her spine... ...she was puzzled by the convulsive ecstasy men could take from [her body], by the intense and amazing need they had merely to touch it, to reach out urgently and press it, squeeze it, rub it... ...It thrilled Nurse Duckett rapturously that Yossarian could not keep his hand off her when they were together. She loved to look at his wide, long, sinewy back with its bronzed, unblemished skin. She loved to bring him to flame instantly by taking his whole ear in her mouth suddenly and running her hand down his front all the way. She loved to make him burn and suffer till dark, then satisfy him. Then kiss him adoringly because she had brought him such bliss.

Those who imagined, in 1989, that never again would an intellectual be caught defending the Leninist Party, or advocating the methods of Josef Stalin, had reckoned without the overwhelming power of nonsense. In the urgent need to believe, to find a central mystery that is the true meaning of things and to which one’s life can be dedicated, nonsense is much to be preferred to sense. For it builds a way of life around something that cannot be questioned. No reasoned assault is possible against that which denies the possibility of a reasoned assault.

The theory helps to restore a kind of justice that we may not ourselves directly be able to administer. The explanation of the origins of nastiness changes how we assess our opponent. No longer are they necessarily strong and impervious. We have not been able to punish them, but the universe has in a sense, and the clearest evidence for the sentence lies in the unhappiness that is powering their attacks. They have not got away with injuring us; their punishment lies in the pain they must be enduring in order to have such an urgent need to lash out. We, who have no wish to hurt, are in fact the stronger party; we, who have no wish to diminish others, are truly powerful. We can move from

But “ancestry” is not a euphemism, nor is it synonymous with “race.” Instead, the term is born of an urgent need to come up with a precise language to discuss genetic differences among people at a time when scientific developments have finally provided the tools to detect them.

In the end, Americans will have to decide whether or not this country will remain racist. To make that decision, we will have to avoid the trap of placing the burden of our national sins on the shoulders of Donald Trump. We need to look inward. Trump is us. Or better, Trump is you.

What you can’t afford to lose is precisely what the world robs you of. How it knew what you needed the most, just so it could deny you that very thing, was a question for philosophers. Answer it and you’d have the kind of book Tom Ford would’ve considered worth writing: urgent and new and absolutely necessary. To write it, though, you’d have to be on fire.

Especially when we are afraid, angry, or confused, we may be tempted to give away bits of our freedom—or, less painfully, somebody else’s freedom—in the quest for direction and order. Bill Clinton observed that when people are uncertain, they’d rather have leaders who are strong and wrong than right and weak. Throughout history, demagogues have often outperformed democrats in generating popular fervor, and it is almost always because they are perceived to be more decisive and sure in their judgments. In times of relative tranquility, we feel we can afford to be patient. We understand that policy questions are complicated and merit careful thought. We want our leaders to consult experts, gather as much information as possible, test assumptions, and give us a chance to voice our opinions on the available options. We see long-term planning as necessary and deliberation as a virtue, but when we decide that action is urgently needed, our tolerance for delay disappears. In those moments, many of us no longer want to be asked, “What do you think?” We want to be told where to march. That is when Fascism gets its start: other options don’t seem enough.

There’s something else about this list that really jumps out. Take another look at the top five attributes listed there—the key characteristics defining a world-class sales experience: Rep offers unique and valuable perspectives on the market. Rep helps me navigate alternatives. Rep provides ongoing advice or consultation. Rep helps me avoid potential land mines. Rep educates me on new issues and outcomes. Each of these attributes speaks directly to an urgent need of the customer not to buy something, but to learn something. They’re looking to suppliers to help them identify new opportunities to cut costs, increase revenue, penetrate new markets, and mitigate risk in ways they themselves have not yet recognized. Essentially this is the customer—or 5,000 of them at least, all over the world—saying rather emphatically, “Stop wasting my time. Challenge me. Teach me something new.

We need – more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes – to comprehend the nature of citizenship, to make serious imaginative assessment of that special relationship between the self and the city; its unique plasticity, its privacy and freedom.

Seth and Jenny after they've escaped Alexander in Mexico. Seth: "Here's what we need to do. Find a flat area, like a farm, a little bit out of the way where we can spend a little time." Seth unbuttoned his black fatigues. Jenny: "Seth, I think we have more urgent things to think about..." Seth: "I know." He pushed his pants down to his knees. "I want to show you something. Jenny: "I've seen it before." Seth: "Ha ha." Seth tugged back the leg of his boxer shorts to reveal a black band around one thigh with a circular device mounted on it.

When man finds in himself a certain defect, of which he can by no means rid himself, there remains but to accept the so-called failing as a natural quality. The more grave and important the defect, the more urgent is the need to ennoble it.

So the experience I have of my everyday work environment is of a conformist, claustrophobic and repressive verbal universe, a penitential domain of reason-mongering in which hyperactivity in detail—the endlessly repeated shouts of “why,” the rebuttals, calls for “evidence,” qualifications and quibbles—stands in stark contrast to the immobility and self-referentiality of the structure as a whole. I suffer from recurrent bouts of nausea in the face of this densely woven tissue of “arguments,” most of which are nothing but blinds for something else altogether, generally something unsavory; and I feel an urgent need to exit from it altogether.

The very word philosophy terrifies many women. In Quintessence I strive to exorcise this patriarchally embedded fear that undermines our intelligence and passion. We were all philosophers when we were five years old. Re-Calling our connections with nature at that age, many women can Re-member our sense of wonder and our urgent need to know. We were always asking “Why?” This state of mind can be called Wonderlust—meaning a strong and unconquerable longing for Elemental adventure and knowledge. What happened to our Wonderlust? Our visions, dreams, and far-out questions have been stunted by phallocratic society and its institutions. When we come into contact with our own deep and passionate intellectuality, we become intolerably threatening to the patriarchy. This is why there is an overwhelming taboo against women becoming philosophers, that is, seekers of wisdom on our own terms/turf. Philosophy—of our own kind, for our own kind—is a source of wholeness and power that rightfully belongs to women. Breaking the patriarchal taboo against it—against us—we break out of the state of deception. Moreover, we open gateway after gateway into our own Other-world, our Homeland. From this perspective we can See, Name, and Act to end the atrocities perpetrated against ourSelves and all the Biophilic beings.

Nothing has emerged more clearly from the Everyday Sexism Project than the urgent need for far more comprehensive mandatory sex-and-relationships education in schools, to include issues such as consent and respect, domestic violence and rape. It’s not just girls who need it so desperately. For boys porn provides some very scary, dictatorial lessons about what it means to be a man and how they are apparently expected to exert their male dominance over women. It is as unrealistic to expect them, unaided, to instinctively work out the difference between online porn and real, caring intimacy, as it is to demand the same intuition of young women. According

We, who had no designated safe havens where we could carry our vomit for other people to clean up for us — who were too urgently needed to afford to pause for occasional maintenance, too dignified to succumb to emotional fatigue — not for us the overpaid charlatans disguised as therapists, who would only poke at our scabs and suck our money. No. We, the unbreakable ones, we ourselves were all the therapy that we needed.

Late August" Late August — This is the plum season, the nights blue and distended, the moon hazed, this is the season of peaches with their lush lobed bulbs that glow in the dusk, apples that drop and rot sweetly, their brown skins veined as glands No more the shrill voices that cried Need Need from the cold pond, bladed and urgent as new grass Now it is the crickets that say Ripe Ripe slurred in the darkness, while the plums dripping on the lawn outside our window, burst with a sound like thick syrup muffled and slow The air is still warm, flesh moves over flesh, there is no hurry

I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference.

What is aura? A peculiar web of space and time: the unique manifestation of a distance, however near it may be. To follow, while reclining on a summer’s noon, the outline of a mountain range on the horizon or a branch, which casts its shadow on the observer until the moment or  the hour partakes of their presence—this is to breathe in the aura of these mountains, of this branch. Today, people have as passionate an inclination to bring things close to themselves or even more to the masses, as to overcome uniqueness in every situation by reproducing it. Every day the need grows more urgent to possess an object in the closest proximity, through a picture or, better, a reproduction. And the reproduction, as the illustrated newspaper and weekly readily prove, distinguishes itself unmistakably from the picture. Uniqueness and permanence are as closely intertwined in the latter as transitoriness and reproducibility in the former.

Technology is merely an amplifier of human intention, and so it is being used for good as well as bad.

it is a well-known trick that if you need something urgently done, give the task to the busiest (or second busiest) person in the office.

The Scriptures in their own sphere are like God in the universe – all-sufficient. All the light and power the mind of man can need in spiritual things is revealed in Scripture.

When you're just 'living to live', there's no chance for a break. Taking a break is just as urgent a need in life as anything else

I feel him beside me, hear the even sound of his breathing, smell the delicious saltiness of his skin. I have missed him. I move to face him, and that’s when the pain reminds me that I’ve recently been stabbed. I bury my face in the pillow, but it doesn’t quite muffle my yelp. “Emma?” Galen says groggily. I feel his hand in my hair, stroking the length of it. “Don’t move, angelfish. Stay on your stomach. I’ll go tell Rachel you’re ready for more pain medicine.” Immediately I disobey and turn my face up to him. He shakes his head. “I’ve recently learned where your stubbornness comes from.” I grimace/smile. “My mom?” “Worse. King Antonis. The resemblance is uncanny.” He leans down and presses his lips to mine and all too quickly springs back up. “Now, be a good little deviant and stay put while I go get more pain meds.” “Galen,” I say. “Hmmm?” “How bad am I hurt?” He caresses the outline of my cheek. His touch could disintegrate me. “Hurt at all is bad enough for me.” “Yeah, but you’ve always been a baby about this stuff.” I grin at his faux offense. “Your mother says it’s only a flesh wound. She’s been treating it.” “Mom is here?” “She’s downstairs. Uh…You should know that Grom is here, too.” Grom left the tribunal and headed for land? Did that mean it all ended badly? Well, even worse than my getting impaled? An urgent need to know everything about everything shimmies through me. “Whoa. Sit. Talk. Now.” He laughs. “I will, I promise. But I want to make you comfortable first.” “Well, then, you need to come over here and switch places with the bed.” A blush fills my cheeks, but I don’t care. I need him. All of him. It feels like forever since we’ve talked like this, just me and him. But talking usually doesn’t last long. Lips were made for other things, too. And Galen is especially good at the other things. He walks back and squats by the bed. “You have no idea how tempting that is.” It seems like the violet of his eyes gets darker. It’s the color they get when he has to pull away from me, when we’re about to violate a bunch of Syrena laws if we don’t stop. “But you’re not well enough to…” He runs a hand through his hair. “I’ll go get Rachel. Then we can talk.” I’m a little surprised that his argument didn’t begin with “But the law…” That is what has stopped us in the past. Now the only thing that appears to be stopping us is my stabby condition. What’s changed? And why am I not excited about it? I used to get so frustrated when he would pull away. But a small part of me loved that about him, his respect for the law and for the tradition of his people. His respect for me. Respect is a hard thing to come by when picking from among human boys. Is that respect gone? And is it my fault?

The scabs feel like I have a message on my arm. Something that needs to be read, urgently, by someone. It was only years later that I realized the person I had written that message to- the person who wasn't listening- was me. I was the one who should have been staring at that arm, and working out what the red hieroglyphics meant. Had I translated them, I would have realized those red lines read: 'Never feel this bad again. Never come back to this place, where only a knife will do. Live a gentle and kind life. Don't do things that make you want to hurt yourself. Whatever you do, every day, remember this- then steer away from here.

Every accommodation that women make to this domination, however apparently stupid, self-defeating, or dangerous, is rooted in the urgent need to survive somehow on male terms. Inevitably this causes women to take the rage and contempt they feel for the men who actually abuse them, those close to them, and project it onto others, those far away, foreign, or different.

Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all. And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage.

He pulled her into the alley between the restaurant and the art gallery next door, pushed her up against the cool brick of the building and kissed her. It was not a searching, tentative kiss. It was urgent and fiercely demanding, as were the hands that skimmed down her shoulders to her hips.

Every one of the many wars the United States has engaged in since the end of World War II has been presented to the American people, explicitly or implicitly, as a war of necessity, not a war of choice; a war urgently needed to protect American citizens, American allies, vital American ‘interests,’ freedom and/or democracy, or kill dangerous anti-American terrorists and various other bad guys.

The very desire to preserve animals was a subjective sentiment of fail in the animal's intrinsic worth. It was a feeling possessed by most of the scientists there, who regarded the wildebeeste migration with the same awe that others feel for the Mona Lisa, but they would not admit this sentiment into their arguments because it could not be backed up by facts; the right and worng of aesthetics being imponderables not open to scientific analysis. At the end of the meeting there was a consensus of opinion on only one fact, that there was an urgent need for research before taking any hasty action.

The reader of almost any motivational or success-oriented book has urgent needs, often financial. But the dedicated seeker--the person whose questions are persistent and ever deepening--will inevitably find that the quest for a "better way" in material affairs broadens to include the meaning and nature of all of life. The sincere search for a "better way" leads to questions of purpose and existence.

Gerald’s sharp blue eyes noticed how efficiently his neighbors’ houses were run and with what ease the smooth-haired wives in rustling skirts managed their servants. He had no knowledge of the dawn-till-midnight activities of these women, chained to supervision of cooking, nursing, sewing and laundering. He only saw the outward results, and those results impressed him. The urgent need of a wife became clear to him one morning when he was dressing to ride to town for Court Day. Pork brought forth his favorite ruffled shirt, so inexpertly mended by the chambermaid as to be unwearable by anyone except his valet.

To be productive, you need a system. You need to build it, use it, perfect it, and rely on it. Your system needs to gain your confidence so that you can trust it to remember what needs to be remembered, to alert you to what is urgent, to direct you to what is important, and to divert you away from what is distracting.

Dharma is born mysteriously out of the intersection between The Gift and The Times. Dharma is a response to the urgent—though often hidden—need of the moment. Each of us feels some aspect of the world’s suffering acutely. It tears at our hearts. Others don’t see it or don’t care. But we feel it. And we must pay attention. We must act. This little corner of the world is ours to transform. This little corner of the world is ours to save.

If your current skill doesn’t pay your bills, perhaps you should re-tool - and fast at that. The pursuit of knowledge and the skills that come with it must be done strategically. We must put the society we live in into serious consideration before we embark on this journey otherwise make urgent adjustments if we have gone astray. We can’t isolate our skills from the need of the society we live in. Well, actually, we can, but to our peril.

Woman!" said the litle man testily. "Get out of my light. You are interfering with my reserarch!" You and your research!" said the woman. "Who cares about that? The important thing is my health elixir. Those two outside are in urgent need of it." "Those two," said the man irritably, "will be far more in need of my help and advice." "Maybe so," said the little woman. "But not until they are well. Move over, old man!"... Atreyu cleared his throat to call attention to his presence... "He's already well," said the little man. "Now it's my turn." "Certainly not! the little woman hissed. "He'll be well when I say so. It'll be your turn when I say it's your turn.

When I was 15, I sat in despair one day in a creaky old bus that was winding its way through central Mexico (that’s another story), trying to decide if I truly believed in God. Not necessarily God with a big white beard looking down from a Biblical heaven, but some kind of sacred spirit above, beneath, and within all things. I’d always had a deep, instinctive faith (even as a small child) in a sacred dimension to life, a Mystery I didn’t need to fully define in order to know it, feel it, experience it. But recent grueling events had shaken my faith and closed that connection. Now, I realize that sitting and railing at God is practically a cliche of teenage angst; that doesn’t make the experience any less urgent at age 15, and I was in a dark place. “Okay,” I said, throwing the gauntlet down to whatever out there might be listening, “if there is something more than this, then prove it. Just prove it. Or I quit.” The bus turned a corner on the narrow, dusty road, and a gasp went up from the people around me. Above us, a rainbow arched through a bright blue, cloudless, rainless desert sky. Rainbows have been special to me ever since. I know the scientific explanation, of course, water and air and angles of sunlight and all that. But to me, they are always a message. They say: “The universe is a Mystery and you’re part of it.” And sometimes that’s all I need to hear; that’s all the answer I need, no matter what the prayer.

So getting your brain to move to create an ending, and getting the people around you to do the same, is going to take both: the fear of the negative and the draw of the positive. Your brain needs to really get it—that if you don’t move, something bad is going to happen, and also that if you do, you will get what you desire. You have to break through the comfort level that you are in, where you are settling for living in hell just because you know the names of all the streets. Remember, you were not designed to cope but to thrive. But just like a rosebush, you can’t thrive without pruning, which means your necessary endings truly are urgent. Let’s look at how to get there.

Never in the known history of man has a people or nation stockpiled weapons and in the end not used them. But if we use the weapons we have stockpiled it will be the end of nations and peoples if not the end of the whole race. Never has the human family so urgently needed a transformation of consciousness. Those who devote themselves to contemplative meditation are performing a most basic and loving service. It is a very real response to the call to love and to act.

If we look for love in others without finding it in ourselves, we are like an underdeveloped country at the mercy of industrialised countries. Some may rescue us, providing the resources we lack and creating a tie of dependence, while others may teach us to produce what we need so that in a distant future we may become self-sufficient. Others may refuse to offer support, hating and even fighting us, hence urgently forcing us to find our own resources within. Perhaps one day someone will become aware that we are part of the same planet, and that all resources, including love, belongs to all.

Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float. Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying. Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The real issue is our elementary accord with Earth and the plant and animal kingdoms has to be revitalized and re-understood. The burning question is, How?

However, revolt is the only way out of the colonial situation, and the colonized realizes it sooner or later. His condition is absolute and cries for an absolute solution; a break and not a compromise. He has been torn away from his past and cut off from his future, his traditions are dying and he loses the hope of acquiring a new culture. He has neither language, nor flag, nor technical knowledge, nor national or international existence, nor rights, nor duties. He possesses nothing, is no longer anything and no longer hopes for anything. Moreover, the solution becomes more urgent every day. The mechanism for destroying the colonized cannot but worsen daily. The more oppression increases, the more the colonizer needs justification. The more he must debase the colonized, the more guilty he feels, the more he must justify himself, etc. How can he emerge from this increasingly explosive circle except by rupture, explosion? The colonial situation, by its own internal inevitability, brings on revolt. For the colonial condition cannot be adjusted to; like an iron collar, it can only be broken.

You know, I think I'm actually good. Thank you for offering, but it's not urgent. I don't want to derail your day.” ‘Derail my day? I'd drive my truck off a cliff if it meant that I got a few moments alone with her, but she didn't need to know that.

Myrnin blinked, looked at Eve, and smiled. It was his seductive smile, and it came with a lowering of his thick eyelashes. “Sweet lady,” he said, “could you get me one of those delicious drinks you prepared for my friend, here?” He gracefully indicated Oliver, who remembered the cup of blood still sitting in front of him, and angrily choked it down. “Perhaps warm the bag a bit in hot water first? It’s a bit disgusting, cold.” “Yeah, sure,” Eve sighed. “Want a shot of espresso with that?” Myrnin seemed to be honestly considering it. Claire urgently shook her head no. The last thing she—any of them—needed just now was Myrnin on caffeine.

Kale's body was the warmest I'd ever felt it. Normally his hands were freezing, but as he caressed the hem of my shirt, his thumb grazed my skin, sending sparks of heat up and down my spine. I'd never felt this way before-so alive that every inch of my body was so sensitive the mere thought of Kale's touch excited me. My need for Kale was so urgent it slammed through me like a freight train.

No need to be embarassed. After seeing you in my cousin's nightgown, you've got nothing to hide. But why were you crying in the shower?" he murmured into her hair. She could feel his lips moving against her scalp, and feel the press of his hips through the covers, but his arms were an unyielding cage. She tried to turn over to face him, to welcome him under the covers with her, but he wouldn't let her. "I was crying because I'm frustrated! Why are you doing this?" she whispered into her pillow. "We can't, Helen," was all he said. He kissed her neck and said he was sorry over and over, but try as she might, he wouldn't let her face him. She began to feel like she was being used. "Please be patient," he begged as he stopped her hand from reaching back to touch him. She tried to sit up, to push him out of her bed, anything but suffer lying next to someone who would play with her so terribly. They wrestled a bit, but he was much better at it than she was and felt even heavier than he looked. He easily blocked every attempt she made to wrap her arms or legs or lips around him. "Do you want me at all, or do you just think it's fun to tease me like this?" she asked, feeling rejected and humiliated. "Won't you even kiss me?" She finally struggled onto her back where she could at least see his face. "If I kiss you, I won't stop," he said in a desperate whisper as he propped himself up on his elbows to look her in the eye. She looked back at him, really seeing him for the first time that night. His expression was vulnerable and uncertain. His mouth was swollen with want. His body was shaking and there was a fine layer of anxious sweat wilting his clothes. Helen relaxed back into the bed with a sigh. For some reason that obviously had nothing to do with desire, he wouldn't allow himself to be with her. "You're not laughing at me, are you?" she asked warily, just as a precaution. "No. There's nothing funny about this," he answered. He shifted himself off her and lay back down alongside her, still breathing hard. "But for some reason, you and I will never happen," she said, feeling calm. "Never say never," he said urgently, rolling back on top of her and using all of his unusually heavy mass to press her deep into the cocoon of her little-girl bed. "The gods love to toy with people who use absolutes." Lucas ran his lips around her throat and let her put her arms around him, but that was all.

By the late nineteenth century, as British cities teemed with new inhabitants, crime rates rose and more established residents came to be afflicted with a new, urban, and distinctly modern anxiety. For the middle and upper classes, it centered acutely on the protection of property, coalescing in particular around city dwellers who were not members of the bourgeoisie. These included the working class, the poor, new immigrants, and Jews, all of whom were viewed increasingly as agents of social contagion - a threat in urgent need of containment.

I make soup and I back bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine sinks and polish through to the realization that trusting God is my most urgent need. If I deep trusted God in all the facets of my life, wouldn't that deep heal my anxiety, my self-condemnation, my soul holes? The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything. If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too?

More history than ever is today being revised or invented by people who do not want the real past, but only a past that suits their purpose. Today is the great age of historical mythology. The defence of history by its professionals is today more urgent in politics than ever. We are needed.

What we all need most urgently now: to realize that transience is not separation—for we, transient as we are, have it in common with those who have passed from us, and they and we exist together in one being where separation is just as unthinkable. Could we otherwise understand such poems if they had been nothing but the utterance of someone who was going to be dead in the future? Don’t such poems continually address inside of us, in addition to what is found there now, also something unlimited and unrecognizable? I do not think that the spirit can make itself anywhere so small that it would concern only our temporal existence and our here and now: where it surges toward us there we are the dead and the living all at once.

During the Civil War, traumatized combatants developed a condition that they called “soldier's heart.”8 The violence that results in soldier's heart shatters a person's sense of self and community, and war is not the only setting in which violence is done: violence is done whenever we violate another's integrity. Thus we do violence in politics when we demonize the opposition or ignore urgent human needs in favor of politically expedient decisions.

I was sitting on the bench outside his barn, reading an old copy of Our Man in Havana from his shelf. It turned out that I still loved reading. I loved that a novelist on the payroll of MI6 had dreamed up a hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, drafted into the Secret Intelligence Service so that he might better fund the extravagant lifestyle of his beautiful daughter. I loved that I could read about this man for hours and never once pause to overthink my own life. I loved that, with a book in my hand and no urgent need to be anywhere, or to be doing anything, I felt like a Sarah I’d entirely forgotten.

It is a tragedy, at rate at which EBOLA VIRUS is spreading in West Africa. It is a fatal disease in the history of the world. Intensive education (formal and informal approaches) of the citizens of African can help prevent the spread. International cooperation is urgently needed to combat the EBOLA virus.

But though there were no formal parties, it is true that there were now two broadly opposing worldviews floating in the political ether waiting to be tapped as needed. As the crisis over the Lex Agraria revealed, it was no longer a specific issue that mattered so much as the urgent necessity to triumph over rivals. Reflecting on the recurrent civil wars of the Late Republic, Sallust said, “It is this spirit which has commonly ruined great nations, when one party desires to triumph over another by any and every means and to avenge itself on the vanquished with excessive cruelty.” Accepting defeat was no longer an option.

I doubt your Argonaut kin would approve of that,” she managed. “They didn’t much like me being in your realm.” “They’ll just have to get used to it. Some things in life are more important than duty and honor.” Gods, how she wished that were true. “Nothing in life is more important than duty and honor, Titus.” He cradled her face in his hands again. “You are.” That was it. All she could take. A desperate need to be close to him one last time overwhelmed every thought and action. She pressed her mouth to his. Kissed him hard. Gasped when his arms closed around her waist with the strength of a vise. Lost herself in the sweet taste of his tongue stroking urgently across hers. “I want you,” she whispered against his lips. Desperation clawed at her soul. She pressed her lips to his again, opened, licked into his mouth. Warmth, wetness, hunger caressed her tongue in an erotic dance. She trailed one hand down his bare chest, over the waistband of his pants.

our society suffers from an attention deficit. Today’s children grow up with a digital device at hand continuously, and those devices offer constant distractions (and a larger stream of information than for any generation in the past), so we consider boosting attention skills to be nothing short of an urgent public health need.

Oh, you’re going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I’ll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars—big bangs, black holes—who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?

She sorts out her lipstick with a glance in the hall mirror, her free hand simultaneously pointing out rogue books and magazines that suddenly, urgently need me to tidy them. She ducks into her bedroom, rummages noisily, makes a brief appearance in the hallway in what can only be described as a Poncho. 'No,' she says. 'No.' And she balls it up and flings it back through her bedroom door. I want to medicate her. One of those tranquilliser darts they use to bring down big cats would do. - Joel

An economy that depends on slavery needs to promote images of slaves that “justify” the institution of slavery. Western economies are absolutely dependent now on the continued underpayment of women. An ideology that makes women feel “worth less” was urgently needed to counteract the way feminism had begun to make us feel worth more.

The question of “canon and creed,” which underlies quite a bit of this book, has become quite urgent and controversial and needs to be addressed from the point of view of those of us who are actually working with the biblical canon itself rather than using the word “canon” as shorthand for the systematic theology they already possess.

I visited towns and fortresses. I looked for proclamations nailed to posts at the crossroads. I looked for the words ‘Witcher urgently needed.’ And then there’d be a sacred site, a dungeon, necropolis or ruins, forest ravine or grotto hidden in the mountains, full of bones and stinking carcasses. Some creature which lived to kill, out of hunger, for pleasure, or invoked by some sick will. A manticore, wyvern, fogler, aeschna, ilyocoris, chimera, leshy, vampire, ghoul, graveir, werewolf, giant scorpion, striga, black annis, kikimora, vypper… so many I’ve killed. There’d be a dance in the dark and a slash of the sword, and fear and distaste in the eyes of my employer afterward.

I'd never made love with anyone but Nico. This thought occurred to me as we were lying in my bed, touching each other. Touching is the difference between making love and having sex. The physical act of making love expresses the desire to touch someone and to be touched in return. A hunger for your partner consumes you. It's an insatiable craving. It's a need for his skin, his hands, his mouth; it's a need to see his eyes. It must be fed every second or else it builds into something unmanageably urgent and ferocious.

Even Diotima and Amheim were shy of using it without a modifier, for it is still possible to speak of having a great, noble, craven, daring, or debased soul, but to come right out with "my soul" is something one simply cannot bring oneself to do. It is distinctly an older person's word, and this can only be understood by assuming that in the course of life people become more and more aware of something for which they urgently need a name they cannot find until they finally resort, reluctantly, to the name they had originally despised. How to describe it, then? Whether one is at rest or in motion, what matters is not what lies ahead, what one sees, hears, wants, takes, masters. It forms a horizon, a semicircle before one, but the ends of this semicircle are joined by a string, and the plane of this string goes right through·the middle of the world. In front, the face and hands look out of it; sensations and strivings run ahead of it, and no one doubts that whatever one does·is always reasonable, or at least passionate. In other words, outer circumstances call for us to act in a way everyone can understand; and if, in the toils of passion, we do something incomprehensible, that too is, in its own way, understandable.

Too often she had seen the first indignation of disappointed parents at the marriage of the their children harden into a matter of pride, a matter of doggedness and principle, and finally become ridiculous. If the marriages turned out happy, how absurd to persist in an antiquated disapproval; if they turned out wretched, then how urgent the special need for love.

The writer does want to be published; the painter urgently hopes that someone will see the finished canvas (van Gogh was denied the satisfaction of having his work bought and appreciated during his lifetime; no wonder the pain was more than he could bear); the composer needs his music to be heard. Art is communication, and if there is no communication it is as though the work has been stillborn.

We recently walked through essential traits of a church according to the Bible, and they’re fairly simple and straightforward: •Preach his Word. •Share the gospel. •Pray fervently and frequently. •Worship together. •Give together. •Love one another. •Help one another grow in Christ. •Commit our lives together to making disciples and multiplying churches among the nations, no matter what it costs us.*1

People in grief think a great deal about self-pity. We worry it, dread it, scourge our thinking for signs of it. We fear that our actions will reveal the condition tellingly described as 'dwelling on it.' We understand the aversion most of us have to ‘dwilling on it.’ Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation. ‘A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty,’ Philippe Aries wrote to the point of this aversion in Western Attitudes toward Death. ‘But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.’ We remind ourselves repeatedly that our own loss is nothing compared to the loss experienced (or, the even worse thought, not experienced) by he or she who died; this attempt at corrective thinking serves only to plunge us deeper into the self-regarding deep. (Why didn’t I see that, why am I so selfish.) The very language we use when we think about self-pity betrays the deep abhorrence in which we hold it: self-pity is feeling sorry for yourself, self0pity is thumb-sucking, self0pity is boo hoo poor me, self-pity is the condition in which those feeling sorry for themselves indulge, or even wallow. Self-pity remains both the most common and the most universally reviled of our character defects, its pestilential destructiveness accepted as given…In fact the grieving have urgent reasons, even an urgent need, to feel sorry for themselves. Husbands walk out, wives walk out, divorces happen, but these husbands and wives leave behind them webs of intact associations, however acrimonious. Only the survivors of a death are truly left alone.

My curiosity is dying, I told Professor Mephi one pleasant day, during a seminar on Thomas Paine. I remember the sounds of a baseball game drifting thru his open window. My mentor said we had to identify the source of this malady, and urgently. I said something about reading not being knowledge, about knowledge without xperience being food without sustenance. “You need to get out more,” remarked the professor.

There is an urgent need…to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim. The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. For a light to be this powerful, it cannot come from ourselves; it must come from a more primordial source: in a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfillment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time.

Don't go!" Rycca said urgently. "It's a trap." Her husband looked down at her with amusement. "Of course it's a trap, sweetling.There are a dozen men out there.They assume they've got us neatly caught." "You could be killed before anyone got near enough to stop them." He shook his head. "I'm not going to be killed.But I am going to get Wolscroft to talk.It's the only way." He turned toward the door,turned back,and said, "Do not, under any circumstances, even think about so much as poking a finger outside.Do you understand?" Every obedient,Rycca nodded. Again he turned to go,again he looked back. "Let me rephrase that.Do you promise me you won't come outside until I tell you to?" Her reponse was a glare but she followed it with a nod. If nothing else,this husband of hers was learning caution,which was all the good since he surely had need of it.

Get away from the door." she whispered. "Both of you get out of here NOW." "Miss," said Alf. "We don't mean no..." "You don't know what you're getting into." she said. "You must leave here this instant." Alf, his face worried said to Peter. "Maybe we should..." "No," sad Peter, furious. "We've come this far, and we're going to go in there, and she can't stop us." "Yes I can." said Molly, her voice dead calm. Peter and Alf both looked at her. "I can scream." she said. "You wouldn't." Peter said. "Yes I would." "You don't dare." said Peter. "You're not supposed to be here, either. You'd be in as much trouble as us." "I could say I heard a noise," she said. "I heard something fall." she pointed to the padlcok. "I came to investigate, and when I saw you I screamed." "All right miss. said Alf. "No need for that." he put a hand on Peter's shoulder. "Come on lad." "No," said Peter, shrugging off the hand, glaring at Molly. "You go if you want. She doesn't scare me." "I'm going to count," said Molly. "If you're not gone when I get to ten, I WILL scream." "You're bluffing." said Peter." said Peter. "One." said Molly. On the floor Leatherface stirred, rolling over, resumed snoring. "Little friend." whispered Alf, his tone urgent now. "I'm going." "Go then." said Peter. "Two." "Please little friend." "NO." "Three" "All right, then." said Alf, shaking his head. "Good luck, then." "Four" Alf was up the ladder and gone. "Five" "Why are you doing this?" hissed Peter. "Six. Because I have to." Her face was grim. "But why?" "Seven. I can't tell you." "Tell me WHAT? Why can't you tell me anyway? How do you know if you don't try?" "Nine. Because I... Because it... it's so..." Molly's voice broke. Peter saw she was crying. "Molly, please, whatever it is, JUST TELL ME.. Maybe...maybe I can help you." For several seconds, Molly looked at him, a look of lonely desperation, tears brimming in her luminescent green eyes. Then she made a decision- Peter saw it happen- and her expression was grim again. She's going to say ten, thought Peter. She's going to scream. Molly opened her mouth. "All right, then." she said. "I'll tell you.

The Sex and the City Problem wasn't just Reese's problem, it was a problem for all women. But unlike millions of cis women before Reese, no generation of trans women had ever solved it. The problem could be described thusly: When a women begins to notice herself aging, the prospect of making some meaning out of her life grows more and more urgent. A need to save herself, or be saved, as the joys of beauty and youth repeat themselves to lesser and lesser effect.

After that, Lily was recuperating and then dealing with significant financial hardships. The birth was described to me by Lily and also by her obstetrician, who I spoke to myself yesterday. The doctor, in his own words, remembers what he describes as that ‘hideous day’ like it was yesterday. The labour, intense and excruciating, lasted for days. In the end, in extreme distress at the length of the labour, the baby nearly died. Lily did die. She was flatline for two minutes and thirty-eight –” Alistair didn’t get the opportunity to finish his grand statement because Nate surged out of his chair so fast, it flew on its wheels and shot across the room, slamming into the wall. “Mr. McAllister…” Alistair said warningly but Nate was coming swiftly around the table, coming at her. At this sight, Lily, too, jumped out of her chair in a panic, her numbness not that complete, and backed away in self-defence as Nate came at her, came at her with purposeful, long strides. She backed up jerkily, one hand behind her, one hand in front, retreating until she hit the wall. Before she knew what he was about, his hard chest came up against her hand, pushing it back and his body pressed against hers. Terrified and confused at this sudden change, she looked to the right and to the left, anywhere for escape, anywhere but at Nate. And to her shock, his hands caught her face, resting one on either side, gently trying to force her to look into his impossibly dark eyes. “I didn’t know,” he whispered and the absolute ache dripping from his first words said to her since she found out he was alive cut through her thin shield of numbness like a razor. She attempted to pull her face free but his hands tightened. “Lily, I didn’t know,” he repeated, and she caught his eyes and they were glittering dark with something that she couldn’t read, something hideously painful and she had to get away from it. Was desperate to get away from it. She needed to flee. She tried to look over his shoulder but he was too tall, too close. Things were happening in the room, there was urgent talk, maybe even a tussle. But all she could see was Nate.

He wasn’t sure who moved first, her or him. There was the thunk of her bag sliding down her arm to hit the floor, followed by the muted clank of her keys a split-second later, then he was pulling her into his arms and she was lifting her face to kiss him. She tasted of salt and fresh air and life and he spread his hands across the small of her back and pulled her closer, need an urgent tattoo drumming through his blood. She felt so good, so strong and supple, and they fit together perfectly.

I would trust you with my life. I'm betting that something evil would appear pleasing but feel foul." Gregori's glittering silver eyes settled on his face, a glimmer of warmth in them, a hint of humor. "You are already trusting me with your life." Savannah leaned into Gregori. "I'm so proud of you. You're getting this humor thing down." She looked across the table at Gary, laughter dancing in her enormous blue eyes. "He has a little trouble with the concept of humor." Gary found himself laughing with her. "I can believe that." "Watch it,kid. There is no need to be disrespectful. Do not make the mistake of believing you can get away with it the way this one does." Gregori tugged at Savannah's long ebony hair. It hung to her waist, a fall of blue-black silk that moved with a life of its own, that tempted, invited men to touch it. "So,what are you going to do about me?" Gary ventured painfully. Savannah resisted the urge to touch him sympathetically. She was naturally demonstrative, naturally affectionate. When someone was upset, she needed to make things better.Gregori inhibited her normal tendency to comfort. I cannot change what I am, ma petite,he whispered softly in her mind, a slow,soothing black-velvet drawl. His voice wrapped her up and touched her with tenderness. I can only promise to keep you safe and to try to make you as happy as I can to make up for my deficiencies. I didn't say you had deficiencies, she returned softly, her voice a caress, fingers trailing over the back of his neck, down the muscles of his back. Need slammed into him, low and wicked. His skin crawled with fire. His silver eyes slid slowly, possessively over her, touching her body with tongues of flame. Touching. Caressing. His urgent need exploded in him like a volcano. In his head a dull roar began. Abruptly he wished Gary gone. The cafe gone. The world gone.He wasn't altogether certain he could wait until he was home with her. The riverbank as suddenly looking very inviting.

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. For the first side of this equation, I need no sources. As a conservative, I can confidently attest that whatever else my colleagues might disagree about—Bosnia, John McCain, precisely how many orphans we’re prepared to throw into the snow so the rich can have their tax cuts—we all agree that liberals are stupid. We mean this, of course, in the nicest way. Liberals tend to be nice, and they believe—here is where they go stupid—that most everybody else is nice too. Deep down, that is. Sure, you’ve got your multiple felon and your occasional war criminal, but they’re undoubtedly depraved ’cause they’re deprived. If only we could get social conditions right—eliminate poverty, teach anger management, restore the ozone, arrest John Ashcroft—everyone would be holding hands smiley-faced, rocking back and forth to “We Shall Overcome.” Liberals believe that human nature is fundamentally good. The fact that this is contradicted by, oh, 4,000 years of human history simply tells them how urgent is the need for their next seven-point program for the social reform of everything.

When you are uncomfortable with the tasks you are ignoring in favor of the urgency of the moment, guilt, mental angst, and frustration build up.   To solve this, you need to make a conscious choice between the preplanned and the seemingly urgent at the moment.   Then, renegotiate any timeline agreements with yourself.     This simple and conscious mental alignment combined with the elevated perspective of the weekly review is enough to regain control and relax your mind in the face of daily surprises.

If I had the luxury of an entire week, I would spend it meditating and reading, refreshing myself spiritually and intellectually. . . . Amidst the struggle, amidst the frustrations, amidst the endless work, I often reflect that I am forever giving—never pausing to take in. I feel urgently the need for even an hour of time to get away, to withdraw, to refuel. I need more time to think through what is being done, to take time out from the mechanics of the movement, to reflect on the meaning of the movement.

Tired as I was of conflict, I felt that I must not shrink from the fight, nor abandon in cowardice the attempt to prove, as no theories could ever satisfactorily prove without examples, that marriage and motherhood need never tame the mind, nor swamp and undermine ability and training, nor trammel and domesticise political perception and social judgement. Today, as never before, it was urgent for individual women to show that life was enriched, mentally and spiritually as well as physically and socially, by marriage and children; that these experiences rendered the woman who accepted them the more and not the less able to take the world's pulse, to estimate its tendencies, to play some definite, hard-headed, hard-working part in furthering the constructive ends of a political civilisation

From the moment they're recruited to the time they're 'rescued' and deported, trafficked women are terrorized. Every single day they face a world stacked heavily against them. Their only friends are the dedicated women and men who form the thin front line against trafficking--an often thankless job. Those working for nongovernmental aid agencies and organizations are the real heroes in this bleak morass. Still, their work is merely a Band-Aid solution. In the vast majority of cases, NGO workers report that their funding is ad hoc and wholly inadequate to meet even basic needs. If we truly want a fair shot at saving these women, we need to open not only our minds but also our wallets. We need to focus on programs that care compassionately for the victims and we need to implement them immediately, worldwide. The most urgent priorities are safe shelters and clinics equipped and staffed to offer medical and psychological treatment. We need to understand that most of these women have been psychologically and physically ripped apart. And we need to be prepared for the fac thtat most have been infected with various sexually transmitted diseases.

The spiritual experience of oneness conduces to the same insight as reasoning through science. Both convey the insight of fundamental interconnection between ourselves, other people, other forms of life, the biosphere and, ultimately, the universe. Science and spirituality, far from being mutually exclusive and conflicting elements, are complementary partners in the search for the path that can enable humanity to recover its oneness with the world. Science demonstrates the urgent and objective need for it; and spirituality testifies to its inherent value and supreme desirability.

If you take nothing else from this chapter, remember this: you won’t just do it. Getting organized is not a matter of simply buckling down and trying harder. If you’re currently unhappy with the level of disorganization in your life, take some time to figure out why that is — and what you’re looking for. You need a reason for getting organized that will be its own reward. Something that will make you feel so good, you won’t want to lose it, and even if you do, you’ll fight to get it back. Humans, and especially humans with ADHD, need to feel compelled by something urgent and important.

Jenna’s family’s boat. “That’s great!” Bess exclaimed. “It’s very generous,” Marni said. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to use it or not.” “Why wouldn’t you?” George asked incredulously. “I just don’t know if I feel comfortable,” Marni replied. She paused for a second before continuing, “Besides, the GPS is on the fritz. I have to see if I can get that to work before I can make a decision.” “I bet I can fix it!” George offered enthusiastically. “She’s really good with gadgets,” I said. “Don’t you need to help Nancy find the figurehead?” Marni asked George. “Do you mind, Nancy? If you need help, of course I will, but if you two are okay on your own . . .” George gave me a hopeful look. It was a look I couldn’t resist, and honestly, Bess and I could handle talking to Connor by ourselves. “Have fun,” I said. George beamed. Marni smiled, still looking a little uneasy. “Hey, Nancy,” Bess said urgently. “There

Her hands were splayed against the wet tile, her body pulsing. Water rained over them, hot and needle sharp, as he felt the orgasm tear through her. A kind of purging, he thought. She was still gasping when he spun her around and closed his mouth greedily over her breast. She was helpless against what he brought to her. Each time, every time, helpless, staggered. And grateful. She dived her fingers into his hair, twisting, tangling them in that thick wet silk while those good, strong tugs of desire in her belly followed the restless hunger of his mouth on her. His hands, slick, skilled, strong, raced over her, took her to the edge and over. Where he wanted her, where he needed her — shuddering, moaning his name, swamped in her own pleasure. The nails biting viciously into his back thrilled him, the frenzied race of her heart against his incited him. More. All. Now, was all he could think as they savaged each other’s mouths. “I want you.” His breath was heaving as he gripped her hips. “Always. Ever. Mine.” His eyes were a wild and burning blue. She could see nothing else. It should have been too much, this desperate, endless need for him. Yet somehow it was never, never enough. “Mine.” She dragged his mouth back to hers, and when he drove into her, met him beat for urgent beat.

Her slender arms instantly circled his neck so that she could press her body against his hard frame. "I am a superstar,lifemate,yet you wish to leave me along at every opportunity. There are men everywhere who would be happy to take your place by my side." He bent his head, his teeth scraping a provocative rythm over her pulse. Desari went liquid, boneless, her stomach clenching in anticipation. "No, they would not be happy to take my place at your side,cara mia, because I would promptly end their lives in a most unhappy way." "You are such a caveman, Julian. You look tall and elegant and princely, yet you have not matured beyond the cave." Desari allowed her tongue a brief inspection of the taste of his skin. She closed her eyes to savor the moment. "I have no intention of rising above caveman mentality," he growled in her ear, his breath teasing tendrils of hair and sending little flames dancing through her bloodstream. "There are so many benefits for the caveman." "You like playing the part of the dominant male,no doubt," she whispered, her voice so husky with need that his body tightened in urgent, painful response. Her mouth moved over his throat, her hands seeking skin beneath his shirt. "I have a need of you, lifemate, and you are deliberately ignoring your sworn duties to me." "Little minx.

First, this is what we welcome now above all, that human beings are making a new start here and there to rebuild life with the strength and the faith of their indestructible hearts. There are others who could try this but who still just stand there, staring and trying to make sense of it all, and for whom sadness and sloth finally become utterly insurmountable. And this even though, based on feeling and reflection, only one thing is urgently needed: to attach oneself somewhere to nature with unconditional purpose, to what is strong, striving, and bright, and to move forward without guile, even if it can happen only in the least important, daily matters.

There is a plurality to our being: We are one heart with many parts. We are one psyche holding many minds and many psychologies. This opens doors, and they are doors that urgently need opening... while we are not responsible for the conditioning that’s brought us where we are now, we are indeed accountable for what we do with it.

The chopped salad is engineered…to free one’s hand and eyes from the task of consuming nutrients, so that precious attention can be directed toward a small screen, where it is more urgently needed, so it can consume data: work email or Amazon’s nearly infinite catalog or Facebook’s actually infinite News Feed, where, as one shops for diapers or engages with the native advertising sprinkled between the not-hoaxes and baby photos, one is being productive by generating revenue for a large internet company, which is obviously good for the economy, or at least it is certainly better than spending lunch reading a book from the library, because who is making money from that?

If it is written in the books of providence", the sorceress said after a while, “that Geralt will find Ciri, then it will happen. Regardless of whether the witcher sets off into the mountains or sits in Toussaint. Predestination overtakes humans. Not vice versa. Do you understand that? Do you understand, Mr. Regis Terzieff-Godefroy?" "Better than you think, Miss Vigo.” The vampire turned the sausage link in his fingers. "However, you must excuse me, I do not accept that predestination is in some book, written by the hand of a great Demiurge, or the will of heaven, or the unalterable judgment of any providence. Rather, it is the result of many seemingly unconnected facts, events, and actions. I tend to agree with you that the predestination overtakes humans...and not only humans. However, I accept much less the view that it could not also be reversed. Because this view is a convenient fatalism. It is a paean to apathy and baseness on a feather bed and the charming warmth of a woman’s womb. In short, to live in a dream. Life, Miss Vigo may be a dream, may end in a dream ... But it's a dream that you must actively dream. Therefore, Miss Vigo, the road awaits us." "Go ahead." Fringilla stood up, almost as violent as Milva had recently. "As you wish! Snow, cold, and predetermination await you on the passes. And the atonement that you so urgently seem to need. Go ahead! But the witcher is staying here. In Toussaint! With me!" "I believe," the vampire replied calmly, "You are mistaken, Miss Vigo. The dream you dream with the witcher is, I confess with a bow, magical and beautiful. However, any dream that we dream for too long becomes a nightmare. And from it we awake with a scream.

In the jungle of modern permissiveness the meaning and purpose of sex is missed, and its glory is lost. Our benighted society urgently needs recalling to the noble and ennobling view of sex that Scripture implies and the seventh commandment assumes: namely, that sex is for fully and permanently committed relationships that, by being the blend of affection, loyalty, and biology that they are, prepare us for and help us into that which is their archetype—“the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united” to God, men, and angels “in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water” (C. S. Lewis).

The countless tight squeezes you have been in during the course of your life, the desperate moments when you have felt an urgent, overpowering need to empty your bladder and no toilet is at hand, the times when you have found yourself stuck in traffic, for example, or sitting on a subway stalled between stations, and the pure agony of forcing yourself to hold it in. This is the universal dilemma that no one ever talks about, but everyone has been there at one time or another, everyone has lived through it, and while there is no example of human suffering more comical that that of the bursting bladder, you tend not to laugh about these incidents until after you have managed to relieve yourself—for what person over the age of three would want to wet his pants in public? That is why you will never forget these words, which were the last words spoken to one of your friends by his dying father: “Just remember, Charlie,” he said, “never pass up an opportunity to piss.” And so the wisdom of the ages is handed down from one generation to the next.

But architects are not makers of public policy, and while they can design whatever they please, they can build only what a client wants to pay for. It is not the architect’s role to solve the problem of housing the poor. It is the architect’s role to give the poor the very best housing possible when society decides it is ready to address this urgent problem. The same applies for education and health care and every other social need that can be satisfied, in part, by more and better buildings: it is the job of architects to design the best buildings, the most beautiful and civilized and useful ones, but society must be willing to address these problems before the architect can do his or her best work.

Christian art understands that images are important partly because they can generate compassion, the fragile quality which enables the boundaries of our egos to dissolve, helps us to recognize ourselves in the experiences of strangers and can make their pain matter to us as much as our own. Art has a role to play in this manoeuvre of the mind upon which, not coincidentally, civilization itself is founded, because the unsympathetic assessments we make of others are usually the result of nothing more sinister than our habit of looking at them in the wrong way, through lenses clouded by distraction, exhaustion and fear, which blind us to the fact that they are really, despite a thousand differences, just altered versions of ourselves: fellow fragile, uncertain, flawed beings likewise craving love and in urgent need of forgiveness. As if to reinforce the idea that to be human is, above all else, to partake in a common vulnerability to misfortune, disease and violence, Christian art returns us relentlessly to the flesh, whether in the form of the infant Jesus’s plump cheeks or of the taut, broken skin over his ribcage in his final hours. The message is clear: even if we do not bleed to death on a cross, simply by virtue of being human we will each of us suffer our share of agony and indignity, each face appalling, intractable realities which may nevertheless kindle in us feelings of mutuality. Christianity hints that if our bodies were immune to pain or decay, we would be monsters.

Real time is slower than social media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility. Real time transformation requires stating your needs and setting functional boundaries. Transformative justice requires us at minimum to ask ourselves questions like these before we jump, teeth bared, for the jugular. I think this is some of the hardest work. It's not about pack hunting an external enemy, it's about deep shifts in our own ways of being. But if we want to create a world in which conflict and trauma aren't the center of our collective existence, we have to practice something new, ask different questions, access again our curiosity about each other as a species.

Our Constitution is not good. It is a document designed to create a society of enduring white male dominance, hastily edited in the margins to allow for what basic political rights white men could be convinced to share. The Constitution is an imperfect work that urgently and consistently needs to be modified and reimagined to make good on its unrealized promises of justice and equality for all. And yet you rarely see liberals make the point that the Constitution is actually trash. Conservatives are out here acting like the Constitution was etched by divine flame upon stone tablets, when in reality it was scrawled out over a sweaty summer by people making deals with actual monsters who were trying to protect their rights to rape the humans they held in bondage. Why would I give a fuck about the original public meaning of the words written by these men? Conservatives will tell you that the text of laws explicitly passed in response to growing political, social, or economic power of nonwhite minorities should be followed to their highest grammatical accuracy, and I’m supposed to agree the text of this bullshit is the valid starting point of the debate? Nah. As Rory Breaker says in the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels: “If the milk turns out to be sour, I ain’t the kind of pussy to drink it.” The Constitution was so flawed upon its release in 1787 that it came with immediate updates. The first ten amendments, the “Bill of Rights,” were demanded by some to ensure ratification of the rest of the document. All of them were written by James Madison, who didn’t think they were actually necessary but did it to placate political interests.

Religion, when restricted to these principles, is a form of gratitude. A man is grateful for his own existence; for this he must have a God. — Such a God must be able to benefit and to injure him, he must be able to act the friend and the foe. He must be esteemed for his good as well as for his evil qualities. The monstrous castration of a God by making him a God only of goodness, would lie beyond the pale of the desires of such a community. The evil God is just as urgently needed as the good God: for a people in such a form of society certainly does not owe its existence to toleration and humaneness .... What would be the good of a God who knew nothing of anger, revenge, envy, scorn, craft, and violence? — who had perhaps never experienced the rapturous ardeurs of victory and of annihilation? No one would understand such a God: why should one possess him?

Lemon drop?” he tried tentatively. The gargoyle did not move. “Okay,” said Harry, staring at it, “Pear Drop. Er — Licorice Wand. Fizzing Whizbee. Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum. Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans . . . oh no, he doesn’t like them, does he? . . . oh just open, can’t you?” he said angrily. “I really need to see him, it’s urgent!” The gargoyle remained immovable. Harry kicked it, achieving nothing but an excruciating pain in his big toe. “Chocolate Frog!” he yelled angrily, standing on one leg. “Sugar Quill! Cockroach Cluster!” The gargoyle sprang to life and jumped aside. Harry blinked. “Cockroach Cluster?” he said, amazed. “I was only joking. . . .” He hurried through the gap in the walls and stepped onto the foot of a spiral stone staircase, which moved slowly upward as the doors closed behind him, taking him up to a polished oak door with a brass door knocker.

The plight of Jews in German-occupied Europe, which many people thought was at the heart of the war against the Axis, was not a chief concern of Roosevelt. Henry Feingold's research (The Politics of Rescue) shows that, while the Jews were being put in camps and the process of annihilation was beginning that would end in the horrifying extermination of 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews, Roosevelt failed to take steps that might have saved thousands of lives. He did not see it as a high priority; he left it to the State Department, and in the State Department anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action. Was the war being fought to establish that Hitler was wrong in his ideas of white Nordic supremacy over "inferior" races? The United States' armed forces were segregated by race. When troops were jammed onto the Queen Mary in early 1945 to go to combat duty in the European theater, the blacks were stowed down in the depths of the ship near the engine room, as far as possible from the fresh air of the deck, in a bizarre reminder of the slave voyages of old. The Red Cross, with government approval, separated the blood donations of black and white. It was, ironically, a black physician named Charles Drew who developed the blood bank system. He was put in charge of the wartime donations, and then fired when he tried to end blood segregation. Despite the urgent need for wartime labor, blacks were still being discriminated against for jobs. A spokesman for a West Coast aviation plant said: "The Negro will be considered only as janitors and in other similar capacities.... Regardless of their training as aircraft workers, we will not employ them." Roosevelt never did anything to enforce the orders of the Fair Employment Practices Commission he had set up.

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can’t see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases—like my ALS—without also glimpsing its dangers. Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage. We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our potential and create a better world for the whole human race. We need to take learning beyond a theoretical discussion of how AI should be and to make sure we plan for how it can be. We all have the potential to push the boundaries of what is accepted, or expected, and to think big. We stand on the threshold of a brave new world. It is an exciting, if precarious, place to be, and we are the pioneers. When we invented fire, we messed up repeatedly, then invented the fire extinguisher. With more powerful technologies such as nuclear weapons, synthetic biology and strong artificial intelligence, we should instead plan ahead and aim to get things right the first time, because it may be the only chance we will get. Our future is a race between the growing power of our technology and the wisdom with which we use it. Let’s make sure that wisdom wins.

Been to your office, Lupin. You forgot to take your potion tonight, so I took a gobletful along. And very lucky I did . . . lucky for me, I mean. Lying on your desk was a certain map. One glance at it told me all I needed to know. I saw you running along this passageway and out of sight.” “Severus —” Lupin began, but Snape overrode him. “I’ve told the headmaster again and again that you’re helping your old friend Black into the castle, Lupin, and here’s the proof. Not even I dreamed you would have the nerve to use this old place as your hideout —” “Severus, you’re making a mistake,” said Lupin urgently. “You haven’t heard everything — I can explain — Sirius is not here to kill Harry —” “Two more for Azkaban tonight,” said Snape, his eyes now gleaming fanatically. “I shall be interested to see how Dumbledore takes this. . . . He was quite convinced you were harmless, you know, Lupin . . . a tame werewolf —” “You fool,” said Lupin softly. “Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?” BANG! Thin, snakelike cords burst from the end of Snape’s wand and twisted themselves around Lupin’s mouth, wrists, and ankles; he overbalanced and fell to the floor, unable to move. With a roar of rage, Black started toward Snape, but Snape pointed his wand straight between Black’s eyes. “Give me a reason,” he whispered. “Give me a reason to do it, and I swear I will.” Black stopped dead. It would have been impossible to say which face showed more hatred.

There’s mounting evidence that processing your email in batches is much more efficient and less stress inducing than checking it throughout the day. This is because our brains take time to switch between tasks, so it’s better to focus on answering emails all at once. I know what you’re thinking—you can’t wait all day to check email. I understand. I too need to check my inbox to make sure there’s nothing truly urgent. Checking email isn’t so much the problem; it’s the habitual rechecking that gets us into trouble.

Terrorism cannot be overcome by the use of force because it does not address the complex underlying problems. In fact the use of force may not only fail to solve the problems, it may exacerbate them and frequently leaves destruction and suffering in its wake. Human conflicts should be resolved with compassion. The key is non-violence. Retaliatory military action by the United States may bring some satisfaction and short-term results but it will not root out the problem of terrorism. Long-term measures need to be taken. The US must examine the factors that breed and give rise to terrorism. I have written to President Bush urging him to exercise restraint and not to seek a brutal revenge for the 11th September attacks. I expressed my sympathy but I suggested that responding to violence with more violence might not be the answer. I would also like to point out that to talk of nonviolence when things are going smoothly is not of much relevance. It is precisely when things become really difficult, urgent and critical that we should think and act nonviolently.

Walking was a habit he'd been unwilling to give up. He couldn't see the point in shutting himself up in a vehivle any more often than he had to, doing damage to the earth and the air in order to avoid using his body. People did just that all the time, though. Most claimed they needed to save time. It was true they had little enough of that-- their lives were so soon ended. But Nathan didn't see them treating time as precious otherwise. They'd sit in their cars at a fast-food place for fifteen minutes when it would be quicker to park and go inside. No, he blamed the modern culture of urgency. Only the most urgent sensations, emotions, and situations were considered important. They called it living life to the fullest. Not surprisingly, many sought numbness in alcohol or the pervasive voyeurism of reality TV while others tried to live a perpetual peak experience through drugs, sex, or celebrity. Ordinary lives, ordinary living had little value. Nathan thought people needed to wash dishes by hand sometimes. Prepare their own meals more often. And take walks.

Have Candace bring the ball up,” she said urgently. It was totally counterintuitive: Candace was our go-to player, on whom we counted when we needed a score. If Candace brought the ball up the court, that meant she’d have to pass it off. It meant someone else would take the last shot of the game. It meant that if we lost, everyone in the country would want to know why we hadn’t gone to the best player in the game. I nodded. It was a high-stakes decision. But I loved being the trigger puller. Loved it. I went into the huddle—and made the last critical call I would ever make in an NCAA Final Four. I looked at Lex, who would be our inbounder. “Get the ball in to Candace,” I said. I turned to Candace. “They will converge on you. Find the open player.” They all nodded and took their places. What happened next is a credit to the culture of a program in which players are taught to commit, to play all out, to attend to every detail no matter how seemingly unimportant, to never go through the motions, no matter how routine seeming, to finish with as much energy as they started with.

Yet another tactic was offered the Negro. He was encouraged to seek unity with the millions of disadvantaged whites of the South, whose basic need for social change paralleled his own. Theoretically, this proposal held a measure of logic, for it is undeniable that great masses of southern whites exist in conditions scarcely better than those which afflict the Negro. But the rationale of this theory wilted under the heat of fact. The need for immediate change was more urgently felt and more bitterly realized by the Negro than by the exploited white. As individuals, the whites could better their situation without the barrier that society places in front of a man whose racial identification by color is inescapable. Moreover, the underprivileged southern whites saw the color that separated them from Negroes more clearly than they saw the circumstances that bound them together in mutual interest. Negroes were therefore forced to face the fact that, in the South, they must move without allies; and yet the coiled power of state force made such a prospect appear both futile and quixotic.

The point that the Scientific Christian needs to note is that, as usual, the vital bearing of the principle covered in this Beatitude lies in its application to the realm of thought. The thing that really matters is that you be merciful in your thought. Kind actions coupled with unkind thoughts are hypocrisy, dictated by fear, or desire for self-glory, or some such motive. They are counterfeits and they bless neither the giver nor the recipient. On the other hand, the true thought about fellowman blesses him spiritually, mentally, and materially; and blesses you too. Let us be merciful in our mental judgments of our brother, for, in truth, we are all one, and the more deeply he seems to err, the more urgent is the need for us to help him with the right thought, and so make it easier for him to get free. You—because you understand the power of the Spiritual Idea, the Christ Truth—have a responsibility that others have not; see that you do not evade it. When his delinquency comes to your notice, remember that the Christ in him is calling out for help to you who are enlightened—so be merciful.

There is one circumstance in which the extremity of do-gooders looks normal, and that is war. In wartime — or in a crisis so devastating that it resembles war, such as an earthquake or a hurricane — duty expands far beyond its peacetime boundaries ... In war, what in ordinary times would be thought weirdly zealous becomes expected ... People respond to this new moral regime in different ways: some suffer under the tension of moral extremity and long for the forgiving looseness of ordinary life; others feel it was the time when they were most vividly alive, in comparison with which the rest of life seems dull and lacking in purpose... in wartime, duty takes on the glamour of freedom, because duty becomes more exciting than ordinary liberty. This is the difference between do-gooders and ordinary people: for do-gooders, it is always wartime. They always feel themselves responsible for strangers — they always feel that strangers, like compatriots in war, are their own people. They know that there are always those as urgently in need as the victims of battle, and they consider themselves conscripted by duty.

We desperately need the gospel. I need the gospel. Every day I need Jesus’ gospel to shepherd my heart and mind. When I see all the bad news on my newsfeed on Facebook, if I’m not in my Bible, preaching the gospel to myself, looking at the eschatological hope, I will lose my mind. And so I’m glad that when we see the injustices and the brokenness of our society we have the tool of God’s Word to help us become change agents—to make a difference in our spheres of influence. The gospel is the truth that unites us. It is the common ground that knits our souls together as one.

She sighed. It was a sad, weary sound, and it nearly broke his heart. “You’re very kind to try to help me,” she said, “but I have already explored all of those avenues. Besides, I am not your responsibility.” “You could be.” She looked at him in surprise. In that moment, Benedict knew that he had to have her. There was a connection between them, a strange, inexplicable bond that he’d felt only one other time in his life, with the mystery lady from the masquerade. And while she was gone, vanished into thin air, Sophie was very real. He was tired of mirages. He wanted someone he could see, someone he could touch. And she needed him. She might not realize it yet, but she needed him. Benedict took her hand and tugged, catching her off-balance and wrapping her to him when she fell against his body. “Mr. Bridgerton!” she yelped. “Benedict,” he corrected, his lips at her ear. “Let me—” “Say my name,” he persisted. He could be very stubborn when it suited his interests, and he wasn’t going to let her go until he heard his name cross her lips. And maybe not even then. “Benedict,” she finally relented. “I—” “Hush.” He silenced her with his mouth, nibbling at the corner of her lips. When she went soft and compliant in his arms, he drew back, just far enough so that he could focus on her eyes. They looked impossibly green in the late-afternoon light, deep enough to drown in. “I want you to come back to London with me,” he whispered, the words tumbling forth before he had a chance to consider them. “Come back and live with me.” She looked at him in surprise. “Be mine,” he said, his voice thick and urgent. “Be mine right now. Be mine forever. I’ll give you anything you want. All I want in return is you.” -Sophie & Benedict

In times of crisis you either deepen democracy, or you go to the other extreme and become totalitarian. Our struggles for democracy have taught us some important and valuable lessons. Over a million citizen activists of all ethnic groups, mostly young people, made history by going door to door, urging voters to go to the polls and send Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. We did this because we believed and hoped that this charismatic black man could bring about the transformational changes we urgently need at this time on the clock of the world, when the U.S. empire is unraveling and the American pursuit of unlimited economic growth has reached its social and ecological limits. We have since witnessed the election of our first black president stir increasingly dangerous counterrevolutionary resentments in a white middle class uncertain of its future in a country that is losing two wars and eliminating well-paying union jobs. We have watched our elected officials in DC bail out the banks while wheeling and dealing with insurance company lobbyists to deliver a contorted version of health care reform. We have been stunned by the audacity of the Supreme Court as it reaffirmed the premise that corporations are persons and validated corporate financing of elections in its Citizens United decision.

This raises a novel question: which of the two is really important, intelligence or consciousness? As long as they went hand in hand, debating their relative value was just a pastime for philosophers. But in the twenty-first century, this is becoming an urgent political and economic issue. And it is sobering to realise that, at least for armies and corporations, the answer is straightforward: intelligence is mandatory but consciousness is optional. Armies and corporations cannot function without intelligent agents, but they don’t need consciousness and subjective experiences. The conscious experiences of a flesh-and-blood taxi driver are infinitely richer than those of a self-driving car, which feels absolutely nothing. The taxi driver can enjoy music while navigating the busy streets of Seoul. His mind may expand in awe as he looks up at the stars and contemplates the mysteries of the universe. His eyes may fill with tears of joy when he sees his baby girl taking her very first step. But the system doesn’t need all that from a taxi driver. All it really wants is to bring passengers from point A to point B as quickly, safely and cheaply as possible. And the autonomous car will soon be able to do that far better than a human driver, even though it cannot enjoy music or be awestruck by the magic of existence.

Corvallis sometimes thought back on the day, three decades ago, when Richard Forthrast had reached down and plucked him out of his programming job at Corporation 9592 and given him a new position, reporting directly to Richard. Corvallis had asked the usual questions about job title and job description. Richard had answered, simply, “Weird stuff.” When this proved unsatisfactory to the company’s ISO-compliant HR department, Richard had been forced to go downstairs and expand upon it. In a memorable, extemporaneous work of performance art in the middle of the HR department’s open-plan workspace, he had explained that work of a routine, predictable nature could and should be embodied in computer programs. If that proved too difficult, it should be outsourced to humans far away. If it was somehow too sensitive or complicated for outsourcing, then “you people” (meaning the employees of the HR department) needed to slice it and dice it into tasks that could be summed up in job descriptions and advertised on the open employment market. Floating above all of that, however, in a realm that was out of the scope of “you people,” was “weird stuff.” It was important that the company have people to work on “weird stuff.” As a matter of fact it was more important than anything else. But trying to explain “weird stuff” to “you people” was like explaining blue to someone who had been blind since birth, and so there was no point in even trying. About then, he’d been interrupted by a spate of urgent text messages from one of the company’s novelists, who had run aground on some desolate narrative shore and needed moral support, and so the discussion had gone no further. Someone had intervened and written a sufficiently vague job description for Corvallis and made up a job title that would make it possible for him to get the level of compensation he was expecting. So it had all worked out fine. And it made for a fun story to tell on the increasingly rare occasions when people were reminiscing about Dodge back in the old days. But the story was inconclusive in the sense that Dodge had been interrupted before he could really get to the essence of what “weird stuff” actually was and why it was so important. As time went on, however, Corvallis understood that this very inconclusiveness was really a fitting and proper part of the story.

minimizes the trauma, either by shifting blame for it onto fringe actors of the present (“These acts don’t represent who we are”), relative values of the times (“Everyone back then believed in slavery”), or, worst, back onto the traumatized (“They are responsible for themselves”). There has never been a mechanism, through something like a truth and reconciliation commission, for telling ourselves the truth about what we have done in a way that would broadly legitimate government policies to repair systemic discrimination across generations. Instead, we pine for national rituals of expiation that wash away our guilt without the need for an admission of guilt, celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day or pointing to the election of Barack Obama, and in the process doing further damage to the traumatized through a kind of historical gaslighting.

Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the har­monious functioning of the world. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be, and he laughs at the idea that he might equally well be wearing a Roman toga or medieval armor. He respects and envies a minister of state or a bank director, and regards the possession of a considerable amount of money the main guarantee of peace and security. He cannot believe that one day a rider may appear on a street he knows well, where cats sleep and chil­dren play, and start catching passers-by with his lasso. He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physio­logical needs which are considered private as dis­creetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human so­cieties. In a word, he behaves a little like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, bustling about in a shack poised precariously on the edge of a cliff. His first stroll along a street littered with glass from bomb-shattered windows shakes his faith in the "naturalness" of his world. The wind scatters papers from hastily evacuated offices, papers labeled "Con­fidential" or "Top Secret" that evoke visions of safes, keys, conferences, couriers, and secretaries. Now the wind blows them through the street for anyone to read; yet no one does, for each man is more urgently concerned with finding a loaf of bread. Strangely enough, the world goes on even though the offices and secret files have lost all meaning. Farther down the street, he stops before a house split in half by a bomb, the privacy of people's homes-the family smells, the warmth of the beehive life, the furniture preserving the memory of loves and hatreds-cut open to public view. The house itself, no longer a rock, but a scaffolding of plaster, concrete, and brick; and on the third floor, a solitary white bath­ tub, rain-rinsed of all recollection of those who once bathed in it. Its formerly influential and respected owners, now destitute, walk the fields in search of stray potatoes. Thus overnight money loses its value and becomes a meaningless mass of printed paper. His walk takes him past a little boy poking a stick into a heap of smoking ruins and whistling a song about the great leader who will preserve the nation against all enemies. The song remains, but the leader of yesterday is already part of an extinct past.

Come inside with me,” he urged, increasing the pressure on her elbow, “and I’ll begin making it up to you.” Elizabeth let herself be drawn forward a few steps and hesitated. “This is a mistake. Everyone will see us and think we’ve started it all over again-“ “No, they won’t,” he promised. “There’s a rumor spreading like fire in there that I tried to get you in my clutches two years ago, but without a title to tempt you I didn’t have a chance. Since acquiring a title is a holy crusade for most of them, they’ll admire your sense. Now that I have a title, I’m expected to use it to try to succeed where I failed before-as a way of bolstering my wounded male pride.” Reaching up to brush a wisp of hair from her soft cheek, he said, “I’m sorry. It was the best I could do with what I had to work with-we were seen together in compromising circumstances. Since they’d never believe nothing happened, I could only make them think I was in pursuit and you were evading.” She flinched from his touch but didn’t shove his hand away. “You don’t understand. What’s happening to me in there is no less than I deserve. I knew what the rules were, and I broke them when I stayed with you at the cottage. You didn’t force me to stay. I broke the rules, and-“ “Elizabeth,” he interrupted in a voice edge with harsh remorse, “if you won’t do anything else for me, at least stop exonerating me for that weekend. I can’t bear it. I exerted more force on you than you understand.” Longing to kiss her, Ian had to be satisfied instead with trying to convince her his plan would work, because he now needed her help to ensure its success. In a teasing voice he said, “I think you’re underrating my gift for strategy and subtlety. Come and dance with me, and I’ll prove to you how easily most of the male minds in there have been manipulated.” Despite his confidence, moments after they entered the ballroom Ian noticed the increasing coldness of the looks being directed at them, and he knew a moment of real alarm-until he glanced at Elizabeth as he took her in his arms for a waltz and realized the cause of it. “Elizabeth,” he said in a low, urgent voice, gazing down at her bent head, “stop looking meek! Put your nose in the air and cut me dead or flirt with me, but do not on any account look humble, because these people will interpret it as guilt!” Elizabeth, who had been staring at his shoulder, as she'd done with her other dancing partners, tipped her head back and looked at him in confusion. "What?" Ian's heart turned over when the chandeliers overhead revealed the wounded look in her glorious green eyes. Realizing logic and lectures weren't going to help her give the performance he badly needed her to give, he tried the tack that had, in Scotland, made her stop crying and begin to laugh: He tried to tease her. Casting about for a subject, he said quickly, "Belhaven is certainly in fine looks tonight-pink satin pantaloons. I asked him for the name of his tailor so that I could order a pair for myself." Elizabeth looked at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses; then his warning about looking meek hit home, and she began to understand what he wanted her to do. That added to the comic image of Ian's tall, masculine frame in those absurd pink pantaloons enabled her to manage a weak smile. "I have greatly admired those pantaloons myself," she said. "Will you also order a yellow satin coat to complement the look?" He smiled. "I thought-puce." "An unusual combination," she averred softly, "but one that I am sure will make you the envy of all who behold you.

What happens when insatiability dominates a person's emotional functioning? The process of maturation is preempted by an obsession or an addiction, in this case for peer connection. Peer contact whets the appetite without nourishing. It titillates without satisfying. The end result of peer contact is usually an urgent desire for more. The more the child gets, the more he craves. The mother of an eight-year-old girl mused, “I don't get it — the more time my daughter spends with her friends, the more demanding she becomes to get together with them. How much time does she really need for social interaction, anyway?” Likewise, the parents of a young adolescent complained that “as soon as our son comes home from camp, he gets on the phone right away to call the kids he's just been with. Yet it's the family he hasn't seen for two weeks.” The obsession with peer contact is always worse after exposure to peers, whether it is at school or in playtimes, sleepovers, class retreats, outings, or camps. If peer contact satiated, times of peer interaction would lead automatically to increased self-generated play, creative solitude, or individual reflection. Many parents confuse this insatiable behavior with a valid need for peer interaction. Over and over I hear some variation of “but my child is absolutely obsessed with getting together with friends. It would be cruel to deprive him.” Actually, it would be more cruel and irresponsible to indulge what so clearly fuels the obsession. The only attachment that children truly need is the kind that nurtures and satisfies them and can bring them to rest. The more demanding the child is, the more he is indicating a runaway obsession. It is not strength that the child manifests but the desperation of a hunger that only increases with more peer contact.

Baldwin's words can sound harsh, as if he's throwing away millions of Americans and declaring them irrelevant to the life and future of our democracy. It's easy to read him that way, and sometimes, when his rage boils, he might actually mean it. But in the end, he wanted us to see that whiteness as an identity was a moral choice, an attitude toward the world based on ugly things. People can, if they want to, choose to be better. We need only build a world where that choice can be made with relative ease. If we--and I mean all of us who are committed to a New America--organize and fight with every ounce of energy we have to found an America free from the categories that bind our feet, implement policies that remedy generations-old injustices, and demonstrate in our living and political arrangements the value that every human being is sacred, we can build a New Jerusalem where the value gap [between whites and people of color] cannot breathe.

ONCE, a youth went to see a wise man, and said to him: “I have come seeking advice, for I am tormented by feelings of worthlessness and no longer wish to live. Everyone tells me that I am a failure and a fool. I beg you, Master, help me!” The wise man glanced at the youth, and answered hurriedly: “Forgive me, but I am very busy right now and cannot help you. There is one urgent matter in particular which I need to attend to...”—and here he stopped, for a moment, thinking, then added: “But if you agree to help me, I will happily return the favor.” “Of...of course, Master!” muttered the youth, noting bitterly that yet again his concerns had been dismissed as unimportant. “Good,” said the wise man, and took off a small ring with a beautiful gem from his finger. “Take my horse and go to the market square! I urgently need to sell this ring in order to pay off a debt. Try to get a decent price for it, and do not settle for anything less than one gold coin! Go right now, and come back as quick as you can!” The youth took the ring and galloped off. When he arrived at the market square, he showed it to the various traders, who at first examined it with close interest. But no sooner had they heard that it would sell only in exchange for gold than they completely lost interest. Some of the traders laughed openly at the boy; others simply turned away. Only one aged merchant was decent enough to explain to him that a gold coin was too high a price to pay for such a ring, and that he was more likely to be offered only copper, or at best, possibly silver. When he heard these words, the youth became very upset, for he remembered the old man’s instruction not to accept anything less than gold. Having already gone through the whole market looking for a buyer among hundreds of people, he saddled the horse and set off. Feeling thoroughly depressed by his failure, he returned to see the wise man. “Master, I was unable to carry out your request,” he said. “At best I would have been able to get a couple of silver coins, but you told me not to agree to anything less than gold! But they told me that this ring is not worth that much.” “That’s a very important point, my boy!” the wise man responded. “Before trying to sell a ring, it would not be a bad idea to establish how valuable it really is! And who can do that better than a jeweler? Ride over to him and find out what his price is. Only do not sell it to him, regardless of what he offers you! Instead, come back to me straightaway.” The young man once more leapt up on to the horse and set off to see the jeweler. The latter examined the ring through a magnifying glass for a long time, then weighed it on a set of tiny scales. Finally, he turned to the youth and said: “Tell your master that right now I cannot give him more than 58 gold coins for it. But if he gives me some time, I will buy the ring for 70.” “70 gold coins?!” exclaimed the youth. He laughed, thanked the jeweler and rushed back at full speed to the wise man. When the latter heard the story from the now animated youth, he told him: “Remember, my boy, that you are like this ring. Precious, and unique! And only a real expert can appreciate your true value. So why are you wasting your time wandering through the market and heeding the opinion of any old fool?

It is not a small thing I want...but it is very important to the Kurds, to all Kurds. Perhaps it would be too easy to ask you to simply be a partisan of the Kurds in the counsels of your country, but it is more than that. We ask you to explain our situation so that all people in your country may understand and appreciate our struggle. It is the Kurd who will decide the direction and activity of his own political future, but a great deal of our hope will depend upon the final attitude of friendship or enmity from the powerful Englis . Perhaps all over the world there are primitive peoples like the Kurd, seeking independence, political expression, and material progress. There are certain things that we can do for ourselves, but so much depends upon the large countries. Their governments shape the primitive states by rich and powerful influence. Much of the responsibility for our situation therefore depends upon the people of your own country. If they apathetic and ignorant of our Kurdish aspirations; If they make no attempt to influence the direction of their own government in dealing with our affairs; then all will depend on ourselves alone. That would mean reluctant but necessary and bloody and terrible struggle because I would warn your Ministers that we cannot give up until we have achieved national sovereignty and our equal right among all people. It is therefore a vital and great service that I ask you, dear Brother, because our immediate hope of urgent success will depend on the strength and deliberation of those who oppose our aims. If the Englis continue to turn all their influence and strength against us, and against the Azerbaijani, they will choke the first great breath of our free choice as men. It will never destroy us, but it will be a bitter, hateful, shameful thing, and the Englis will live for ever in our history as despicable wretches who break the spirit of all advancement. That is why we desperately need support among the people and the counsels of your country. So much may depend on it, and so many decisions at Sauj Bulaq will be clearer and simpler if we know that in your country there is an active partisan of the Kurd; a partisan who understands and appreciates the Kurdish struggle for political autonomy and material advancement: a friend and a true brother. Dare I ask more of thee, Englis ?

Those who govern on behalf of the rich have an incentive to persuade us we are alone in our struggle for survival, and that any attempts to solve our problems collectively – through trade unions, protest movements or even the mutual obligations of society – are illegitimate or even immoral. The strategy of political leaders such as Thatcher and Reagan was to atomize and rule. Neoliberalism leads us to believe that relying on others is a sign of weakness, that we all are, or should be, ‘self-made’ men and women. But even the briefest glance at social outcomes shows that this cannot possibly be true. If wealth were the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the ‘self-attribution fallacy’.10 This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you were not responsible. The same applies to the belief in personal failure that assails all too many at the bottom of the economic hierarchy today. From birth, this system of belief has been drummed into our heads: by government propaganda, by the billionaire media, through our educational system, by the boastful claims of the oligarchs and entrepreneurs we’re induced to worship. The doctrine has religious, quasi-Calvinist qualities: in the Kingdom of the Invisible Hand, the deserving and the undeserving are revealed through the grace bestowed upon them by the god of money. Any policy or protest that seeks to disrupt the formation of a ‘natural order’ of rich and poor is an unwarranted stay upon the divine will of the market. In school we’re taught to compete and are rewarded accordingly, yet our great social and environmental predicaments demand the opposite – the skill we most urgently need to learn is cooperation. We are set apart, and we suffer for it. A series of scientific papers suggest that social pain is processed11 by the same neural circuits as physical pain.12 This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact of breaking social bonds without the terms we use to denote physical pain and injury: ‘I was stung by his words’; ‘It was a massive blow’; ‘I was cut to the quick’; ‘It broke my heart’; ‘I was mortified’. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical pain.13 This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is a powerful analgesic.14 Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction.

Back home, Chris struggled to readjust, physically and mentally. He also faced another decision-reenlist, or leave the Navy and start a new life in the civilian world. This time, he seemed to be leaning toward getting out-he'd been discussing other jobs and had already talked to people about what he might do next. It was his decision, one way or another. But if I’d been resigned to his reenlistment last go-around, this time I was far more determined to let him know I thought he should get out. There were two important reasons for him to leave-our children. They really needed to have him around as they grew. And I made that a big part of my argument. But the most urgent reason was Chris himself. I saw what the war was doing to him physically. His body was breaking down with multiple injuries, big and small. There were rings under his eyes even when he had slept. His blood pressure was through the roof. He had to wall himself off more and more. I didn’t think he could survive another deployment. “I’ll support you whatever you decide,” I told him. “I want to be married to you. But the only way I can keep making sense of this is…I need to do the best for the kids and me. If you have to keep doing what is best for you and those you serve, at some point I owe it to myself and those I serve to do the same. For me, that is moving to Oregon.” For me, that meant moving from San Diego to Oregon, where we could live near my folks. That would give our son a grandfather to be close to and model himself after-very important things, in my mind, for a boy. I didn’t harp on the fact that the military was taking its toll. That argument would never persuade Chris. He lived for others, not himself. It didn’t feel like an ultimatum to me. In fact, when he described it that way later on, I was shocked. “It was an ultimatum,” he said. He felt my attitude toward him would change so dramatically that the marriage would be over. There would also be a physical separation that would make it hard to stay together. Even if he wasn’t overseas, he was still likely to be based somewhere other than Oregon. We’d end up having a marriage only in name. I guess looked at one way, it was an ultimatum-us or the Navy. But it didn’t feel like that to me at the time. I asked him if he could stay in and get an assignment overseas where we could all go, but Chris reminded me there was never a guarantee with the military-and noted he wasn’t in it to sit behind a desk. Some men have a heart condition they know will kill them, but they don’t want to go to the doctor; it’s only when their wives tell them to go that they go. It’s a poor metaphor, but I felt that getting out of the Navy was as important for Chris as it was for us. In the end, he opted to leave. Later, when Chris would give advice to guys thinking about leaving the military, he would tell them it would be a difficult decision. He wouldn’t push them one way or the other, but he would be open about his experiences. “There’ll be hard times at first,” he’d admit. “But if that is the thing you decide, those times will pass. And you’ll be able to enjoy things you never could in the service. And some of them will be a lot better. The joy you get from your family will be twice as great as the pleasure you had in the military.” Ultimatum or not, he’d come to realize retiring from the service was a good choice for all of us.

What else do you want to know?’ he asked. Possessed by morbid curiosity, her eyes darted to the scar that cut just over his ear. She’d found it shortly after they met, while he lay unconscious in the grass. He didn’t need to ask what had caught her attention. ‘I got that in a fight against imperial soldiers. Ask me why.’ She shook her head, unable to bring herself to do it. The cocoon of warmth that had enveloped the entire afternoon unwound itself in an instant. ‘Are you having second thoughts about being here with me?’ He planted a hand into the grass, edging closer. ‘No. I trust you.’ He was giving her all the time in the world to shove him away, to rise, to flee. Her heartbeat quickened as she watched him. Moving ever so slowly, he braced an arm on either side of her, his fingers sinking into the moss. ‘I asked you to come with me.’ Despite her words, she dug her heels into the ground and inched backwards. ‘I feel safe with you.’ ‘I can see that.’ He affected a lazy smile as she retreated until her back pressed against the knotted roots that crawled along the ground. His boldness was so unexpected, so exciting. She held her breath and waited. Her pulse jumped when he reached for her. She’d been imagining this moment ever since their first duel and wondering whether it would take another swordfight for him to come near her again. His fingers curled gently against the back of her neck, giving her one last chance to escape. Then he lowered his mouth and kissed her. It was as natural as breathing to wrap his arms around her and lower her to the ground. He settled his weight against her hips. The perfume of her skin mixed with the damp scent of the moss beneath them. At some point, her sense of propriety would win over. Until then he let his body flood with raw desire. It felt good to kiss her the way he wanted to. It felt damn good. He slipped his tongue past her lips to where she was warm and smooth and inviting. Her hands clutched at his shirt as she returned his kiss. A muted sound escaped from her throat. He swallowed her cry, using his hands to circle her wrists: rough enough to make her breath catch, gentle enough to have her opening her knees, cradling his hips with her long legs. He stroked himself against her, already hard beyond belief. He groaned when she responded, instinctively pressing closer. ‘I need to see you,’ he said. The sash around her waist fell aside in two urgent tugs while his other hand stole beneath her tunic. She gasped when his fingers brushed the swath of cloth at her breasts. The faint, helpless sound nearly lifted him out of the haze of desire. He didn’t want to think too hard about this. Not yet. He felt for the edge of the binding. ‘In back.’ She spoke in barely a whisper, a sigh on his soul. She peered up at him, her face in shadow as he parted her tunic. She watched him in much the same way she had when they had first met: curious, fearless, her eyes a swirl of green and gold. He pulled at the tight cloth until Ailey’s warm, feminine flesh swelled into his hands. He soothed his palms over the cruel welts left by the bindings. She bit down against her lip as blood rushed back into the tortured flesh. With great care, he stroked her nipples, teasing them until they grew tight beneath his roughened fingertips. God’s breath. Perfect. He wanted his mouth on her and still it wouldn’t be enough. Her heart beat out a chaotic rhythm. His own echoed the same restless pulse. ‘I knew it would be like this.’ His words came out hoarse with passion. At that moment he’d have given his soul to have her. But somewhere in his thick skull, he knew he had a beautiful, vulnerable girl who trusted him pressed against the bare earth. He sensed the hitch in her breathing and how her fingers dug nervously into his shoulders, even as her hips arched into him. He ran his thumb gently over the reddened mark that ran just below her collarbone and felt her shiver beneath him.