Vitality Quick Quotes

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality and my life, as I write this, is vital even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It's a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over...I hate these feelings but, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living, I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely, and sometimes against the moment's reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

We are the centuries... We have your eoliths and your mesoliths and your neoliths. We have your Babylons and your Pompeiis, your Caesars and your chromium-plated (vital-ingredient impregnated) artifacts. We have your bloody hatchets and your Hiroshimas. We march in spite of Hell, we do – Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus vulgaris, telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve and a traveling salesman called Lucifer. We bury your dead and their reputations. We bury you. We are the centuries. Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little godhood, feel pain, give birth, struggle a little while, succumb: (Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.) Generation, regeneration, again, again, as in a ritual, with blood-stained vestments and nail-torn hands, children of Merlin, chasing a gleam. Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens – and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same. (AGH! AGH! AGH! – an idiot screams his mindless anguish amid the rubble. But quickly! let it be inundated by the choir, chanting Alleluias at ninety decibels.)

But I consider that the matter of defining what is real — that is a serious topic, even a vital topic. And in there somewhere is the other topic, the definition of the authentic human. Because the bombardment of pseudo- realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans — as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides. My two topics are really one topic; they unite at this point. Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland. You can have the Pirate Ride or the Lincoln Simulacrum or Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride — you can have all of them, but none is true.

He wanted to scream at his parents, to hit them, to elicit from them something - some melting into grief, some loss of composure, some recognition that something large had happened, that in Hemming's death they had lost something vital and necessary to their lives. He didn't care if they really felt that way or not: he just needed them to say it, he needed to feel that something lay beneath their imperturbable calm, that somewhere within them ran a thin stream of quick, cool water, teeming with delicate lives, minnows and grasses and tiny white flowers, all tender and easily wounded and so vulnerable you couldn't see them without aching for them.

Blest as the immortal gods is he, The youth who fondly sits by thee, And hears and sees thee, all the while, Softly speaks and sweetly smile. 'Twas this deprived my soul of rest, And raised such tumults in my breast; For, while I gazed, in transport tossed, My breath was gone, my voice was lost; My bosom glowed; the subtle flame Ran quick through all my vital frame; O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung; My ears with hollow murmurs rung; In dewy damps my limbs were chilled; My blood with gentle horrors thrilled: My feeble pulse forgot to play; I fainted, sunk, and died away.

He went to his own dark house and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it. Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life.

The days are passing so quickly. This is the only time of year when I want to slow time down. I spend the entire year trying to get here as fast as I can, then once I'm here I want to slam on the brakes. I'm beginning to have those moments when the feel of autumn is so strong it drowns out everything else. Lately it's been making me think about the perfect soundtrack for a Halloween party. The top of any Halloween music list as to be the theme song from the movie Halloween; right on its heels is "Pet Sematary" by the Ramones. For some reason I've always equated the old Van Morrison song "Moondance" with Halloween, too. I love that song. "Bela Lugosi's Dead" by Bauhaus is an October classic, as well as anything by Type O Negative. And Midnight Syndicate. If you've never heard anything by Midnight Syndicate, look them up right this moment. If you distilled the raw essence of every spooky story you ever heard, you would have Midnight Syndicate. I have a friend who swears by them, believing them to be a vital element of any Halloween party. To finish off the list you must have "The Lyre of Orpheus" by Nick Cave and "I Feel Alright" by Steve Earle.

Weight gain, mood swings, fatigue, and low libido aren’t diseases that can be “cured” with a quick injection or a pharmaceutical. Most of these problems can’t be permanently solved by eating less or exercising more. They are hormonal problems. They mean our bodies are trying to tell us that something is wrong.

We quickly learn that God is more interested in our holiness than in our comfort. He more greatly delights in the integrity and purity of his church than in the material well-being of its members. He shows himself more clearly to men and women who enjoy him and obey him than to men and women whose horizons revolve around good jobs, nice houses, and reasonable health. He is far more committed to building a corporate “temple” in which his Spirit dwells than he is in preserving our reputations. He is more vitally disposed to display his grace than to flatter our intelligence. He is more concerned for justice than for our ease. He is more deeply committed to stretching our faith than our popularity. He prefers that his people live in disciplined gratitude and holy joy rather than in pushy self-reliance and glitzy happiness. He wants us to pursue daily death, not self-fulfillment, for the latter leads to death, while the former leads to life. These essential values of the gospel must shape our praying, as they shape Paul’s. Indeed, they become the ground for our praying (“For this reason . . . I pray”): it is a wonderful comfort, a marvelous boost to faith, to know that you are praying in line with the declared will of almighty God.

Hope is a sign of vitality. With it, anything is possible.

Because the truth is, while bulimia is a devastating illness I would wish upon no one, it has taught me about the fragility of life and the vital need for compassion. Today, I’m quick to love and throw my arms around any girl who has ever stared at a puddle of her own vomit and questioned the point of her life. Or who has ever let a Photoshopped image on a glossy magazine preach to her about her own self-worth, her own beauty. Or who has ever been afraid to face the pain and suffering, within and outside of herself. Today, I’m quick to love.

Oh." Her expression falls a little, but she shrugs it off quickly. "The first and foremost vital rule is to never read the comments. That is exponentially more important for anyone who doesn't fit the traditional views on beauty or anyone is marginalized in any way, but the truth is that even the thinnest, most gorgeous models get people being terrible in their comments. Trolls will be trolls.

Failure is vital. It is an incredibly important quotient in the equation of a career. After you wipe away your tears, it’s not a bad experience and under the right circumstances it will make you better, both as a person and as an artist. I think it’s important to fail, especially between the ages of twenty and thirty. Success is like sugar. It’s too good. It’s too sweet. It’s too wonderful and it burns up very quickly. Failure is like corned beef hash. It takes a while to eat. It takes a while to digest. But it stays with you.

He who deceives another deceives himself much more. Therefore know the Charlatans by their love of rich robes, ceremony, ritual, magical retirements, absurd conditions, and other stupidity, too numerous to relate. Their entire doctrine a boastful display, a cowardice hungering for notoriety; their standard everything unnecessary, their certain failure assured. Hence it is that those with some natural ability quickly lose it by their teaching. They can only dogmatise, implant and multiply that which is entirely superficial. Were I a teacher I should not act as master, as knowing more, the pupil could lay no claim to discipleship. Assimilating slowly, he would not be conscious of his learning, he would not repeat the vital mistake; without fear he would accomplish with ease. The only teaching possible is to show a man how to learn from his own wisdom, and to utilise his ignorance and mistakes. Not by obscuring his vision and intention by righteousness. 

One reason she had been as successful an assassin had always been her attention to detail, but the weeks of using the cream to maintain her disguise as the hapless dock technician, were taking their toll. Details slipped her mind occasionally, and concentrating was sometimes hard. She’d used the time she had available to study her target, learn his mannerisms and speech pattern, food and clothing preferences. Most of this possible with the right programs and access to the dock AI system. Those hours ‘at work’ in the Fabrication Unit had been well spent, and supplemented by frequenting places where she could observe him. The lack of her usual team of ‘daemons’ had created a number of difficulties, and though she wondered how Security had managed to take them down so quickly, she didn’t waste time worrying over it. Now she knew who he associated with, and his sexuality—all of it vital if she was to escape detection in such a high profile role.

I want more than tonight.” “It was never tonight,” I replied, the words quick and rough. “You didn’t come here for tonight.

And all of the self-awareness in the world can quickly go to waste if you fail to keep learning about what the world needs from you and how you can best serve others.

Man. (alone). We are the fools of Time and Terror: Days Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live, Loathing our life, and dreading still to die. In all the days of this detested yoke — This vital weight upon the struggling heart, Which sinks with sorrow, or beats quick with pain, Or joy that ends in agony or faintness — 170 In all the days of past and future — for In life there is no present — we can number How few — how less than few — wherein the soul Forbears to pant for death, and yet draws back As from a stream in winter, though the chill Be but a moment’s.

The typical capitalists are lovers of power rather than sensual indulgence, but they have the same tendency to crush and to take tribute that the cruder types of sensualism possess. The discipline of the capitalist is the same as that of the frugalist. He differs from the latter in that he has no regard for the objects through which productive power is acquired. HE does not hesitate to exploit natural resources, lands, dumb animals and even his fellowman. Capital to such a man is an abstract fund, made up of perishable elements which are quickly replaced… The frugalist…stands in marked contrast to the attitude of the capitalist. The frugalist takes a vital interest in his tools, in his land, and in the goods he produces. He has a definite attachment to each. He dislikes to see an old coat wear out, an old wagon break down, or an old horse go lame. He always thinks of concrete things, wants them and nothing else. He desires not land, but a given farm, not horses or cattle and machines, but particular breeds and implements; not shelter, but a home…. He rejects as unworthy what is below standard and despises as luxurious what is above or outside of it. Dominated by activities, he thinks of capital as a means to an end.

The tangible and factual components of reality along with the intangible strands of memory and imagination constitute the framework that houses our vital life force. A person is likewise composed of contradictory and complementary forces of pain and pleasure, darkness and lightness, and clashing and harmonizing bands of thoughts and feelings. The web and root of all persons consists of both the expressible and the unsayable. Who has not held imaginary conversations with gods, devils, and spirits? Persons whom enthusiastically cultivate an inner life, ardently experience the quick of nature, and willingly immerse themselves in all aspects of everyday living will experience renewal. Analogous to the heat source of fire, we need the spark of desire to fuel our hearts and the spirit of the breeze to spread our heart songs.

She ate quickly. Hunger was a sensation so long situated in his abdomen he felt it as he would an inflamed organ. He took his time, tonguing the pulp into a little oval and resting it against his cheek like a lozenge. If the bread wouldn't fill his stomach, it might at least fill his mouth. The girl had finished half of hers before he took a second bite. "You shouldn't rush'" he said. "There are no taste buds in your stomach." She paused to consider his reasoning, then took another bite. "There’s no hunger in your tongue," she mumbled between chews. Her cupped hand caught the crumbs and tossed them back in her mouth.

that I would give up my life readily if I found myself in war, or if my plane crashed into a desert. I would struggle tooth and nail to survive. It’s as though my life and I, having sat in opposition to each other, hating each other, wanting to escape each other, have now bonded forever and at the hip. The opposite of depression is not happiness but vitality, and my life, as I write this, is vital, even when sad. I may wake up sometime next year without my mind again; it is not likely to stick around all the time. Meanwhile, however, I have discovered what I would have to call a soul, a part of myself I could never have imagined until one day, seven years ago, when hell came to pay me a surprise visit. It’s a precious discovery. Almost every day I feel momentary flashes of hopelessness and wonder every time whether I am slipping. For a petrifying instant here and there, a lightning-quick flash, I want a car to run me over and I have to grit my teeth to stay on the sidewalk until the light turns green; or I imagine how easily I might cut my wrists; or I taste hungrily the metal tip of a gun in my mouth; or I picture going to sleep and never waking up again. I hate those feelings, but I know that they have driven me to look deeper at life, to find and cling to reasons for living. I cannot find it in me to regret entirely the course my life has taken. Every day, I choose, sometimes gamely and sometimes against the moment’s reason, to be alive. Is that not a rare joy?

The earthly father is a God-given mnemonic device to remind us of the glory of the heavenly Father. The shepherd is a mnemonic device to remind us of God’s care for his own. The snow is meant to remind us of the Lord’s purity and holiness. The storm is a mnemonic device to remind us of God’s power and wrath. The daily rising sun is a mnemonic device to remind us of God’s faithfulness. We’re literally surrounded by gracious reminders of the presence, power, authority, and character of God because he designed created things to function mnemonically. He knows how quickly and easily we forget and how vital it is for us to remember, so he embedded reminders everywhere we look in his creation.

you repair any breach in the relationship as quickly as possible. You want to restore a collaborative, nurturing connection with your child. Ruptures without repair leave both parent and child feeling disconnected. And if that disconnection is prolonged—and especially if it’s associated with your anger, hostility, or rage—then toxic shame and humiliation can grow in the child, damaging her emerging sense of self and her state of mind about how relationships work. It’s therefore vital that we make a timely reconnection with our kids after there’s been a rupture. It’s our responsibility as parents to do this.

I had to become a patient. And I had to make up my mind quickly before the unthinkable happened. So I went under the knife. And I surrendered, knowing surgery can fail, no matter how hard we wish it to succeed. If surgery could end well - without risk - then it wouldn't be surgery as we know it. Without chance, luck, fate, it can't be surgery. They're all vital ingredients of the recipe.

just because we can't sense something doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't important. Our brains evolved to process information as quickly and efficiently as possible. It's likely the brain filters out much of our environment because it’s the efficient thing to do. But who's to say that we're not missing some very important or vital pieces of information that our brains are editing out for us in the name of efficiency?

There are three ways to take down a wild tusklan. The average hunter takes a large-bore weapon with which to shoot the animal. When it works, the method is quick and efficient. But if the first shot fails to hit a vital organ, the tusklan may be upon its attackerbfore a second shot can be aimed and fired. The wise hunter takes a smaller-bore weapon. The method is less likely to produce a first-shot kill, but the second, third, or fourth shot may succeed. However if the bore is to small, none of the shots will penetrate to vital points, and the tusklan will again triumph over its attacker. The subtle hunter takes no visible weapon at all. He instead induces a thousand sting flies to attack the tusklan from all sides. The method is slow, and destructive of the pelt. But in the end, the tusklan is dead. And dies never knowing where the attack came from.

Thus, the deeper problem in honor disputes is nearly always that of respect, and respect is vital when a reputation for strength or vulnerability quickly becomes public knowledge and largely determines how others will treat one. (For this reason, as the historian Edward Ayers [1984: 274] has noted, a white southern aristocrat of the nineteenth-century would probably better understand the violent conflicts of young, lower-income males than do most middle-class people today.)

Can it be that there is anything of more consequence in life than the great business in hand, which absorbs the vitality and genius of this age? Surely, we say, it is better to go by steam than to go afoot, because we reach our destination sooner—getting there quickly being a supreme object. It is well to force the soil to yield a hundred-fold, to congregate men in masses so that all their energies shall be taxed to bring food to themselves, to stimulate industries, drag coal and metal

Celestial Music” I have a friend who still believes in heaven. Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god, she thinks someone listens in heaven. On earth, she’s unusually competent. Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness. We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. I’m always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality. But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes. Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out according to nature. For my sake, she intervened, brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road. My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains my aversion to reality. She says I’m like the child who buries her head in the pillow so as not to see, the child who tells herself that light causes sadness— My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person— In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We’re walking on the same road, except it’s winter now; she’s telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music: look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees like brides leaping to a great height— Then I’m afraid for her; I see her caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth— In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set; from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall. It’s this moment we’re both trying to explain, the fact that we’re at ease with death, with solitude. My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn’t move. She’s always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image capable of life apart from her. We’re very quiet. It’s peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering— it’s this stillness that we both love. The love of form is a love of endings.

Police often think of themselves as soldiers in a battle with the public rather than guardians of public safety. That they are provided with tanks and other military-grade weapons, that many are military veterans, and that militarized units like Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) proliferated during the 1980s War on Drugs and post-9/11 War on Terror only fuels this perception, as well as a belief that entire communities are disorderly, dangerous, suspicious, and ultimately criminal. When this happens, police are too quick to use force.

God caught Day’s falling body before he was able to hit the floor. He dropped to his knees with his lover in his arms and held him close. “Breathe, Leo.” God coaxed while rubbing Day’s cheek. He felt Day take in a few quick breaths before he opened his eyes and stared up at him. God closed his eyes and pressed their foreheads together, not wanting to see what Day was saying. “If he had killed you, I would’ve swallowed my own gun. There’s no life without you,” God whispered just for Day to hear. He felt Day grab onto his neck, holding him close. “Let the paramedics take a look at him, Detective Godfrey.” God raised his head at his captain’s order and slowly lowered Day’s head while he moved back to let them tend to his partner. God watched them closely while they took a few quick vitals before placing him on the stretcher. One of them turned to look at God and his captain. God stepped forward. “His blood pressure’s high and pulse is erratic, so we're going to take him to the hospital to be monitored. He’ll be at St. Mary’s.” “I’m riding with him,” God demanded. “I’m sorry sir, but regulations don’t allow that.” The thin guy answered him as the other paramedic wheeled his man away. God bared his teeth right before he felt a hand come down hard on his shoulder. “Let them do their jobs, because you still have one to do too, Detective. Is that going to be a problem?” His captain leveled a hard stare on him. God paused for a second, then gave a quick jerk of his head and turned in the opposite direction that his love had gone. God walked through the hangar aware of the many eyes that were on him. He just wanted to finish his job so he could go home.    

But the young Count insisted on the Beauty selecting a flower for him. He was waiting impatiently for her second present, the promised kiss — her first kiss. The Beauty looked at the flowers. Once again her face was darkened by a delicate shade of sadness. Suddenly, as if prompted by some strange will, she quickly stretched out a hand, so exquisite in its naked whiteness, and plucked a many-petaled flower. Her hand hesitated, and she bowed her head, and finally with an expression of shy indecision she approached the Count and placed the flower in a buttonhole of his cloak. The powerful and pungent scent wafted into the young Count's face, which grew pale as his head reeled in languid impotence. Indifference and tedium overcame him. He was scarcely aware of himself, he hardly noticed that the Beauty took him by the arm and led him into the house, away from the fragrances of the wondrous Garden. In one of the rooms of the house where all was bright, white and rosy, the Count came to himself. A youthful vitality returned to his face, his black eyes were aflame with passion once again, and he felt the joy of life and the surge of desire anew. But already the inescapable lay in wait for him. A white hand, bare, slender, lay on his neck; and the fragrant kiss of the Beauty was tender, sweet, long. The two blue lightnings of her eyes flashed close to his eyes and were masked with the subtle mystery of her long eyelashes. The sinister fires of some sweet pain swirled like a whirlwind about the heart of the young Count. He raised his arms to embrace the Beauty — but with a soft cry she stepped away and softly, quietly, ran away, leaving him alone. ("The Poison Garden")

Hypnosis is a fascinating subject, and more common than we realize. How does it work? Essentially, when we relax our inner powers of discrimination, associated with our personal wills, and passively allow ideas and input into our subconscious mind, we are open to suggestions, which over time can be directed in specific ways that we call conditioning. The discriminating part of the mind is sometimes called the Gateway to the Unconscious. This gateway opens naturally and is most apparent, and useful, in the way children can quickly learn and adapt to their surroundings. This is an automatic occurrence and part of the learning process. This dynamic of “taking in” our surroundings is natural. It is fast and fluid and probably vital for the survival of our species to “learn” things rapidly. Our cultures, languages and civilizations are, to a great extent, passed on this way. Children are like sponges, we are told. We are delighted by this open and vital acceptance and curiosity of the world displayed by children. Interestingly enough, adults who maintain this open sense of wonder are labeled naive and gullible. I take delight in children, and encourage my clients to nurture their inner children.

We are fortified by exemplary lives, especially those who have earned the right to be respected by their character, sacrifice, patience, and ability to press on in spite of hardship, injustice, pain, and failure. Our heroes do not have to be perfect. They must, however be courageous, authentic, clear-minded, and determined to endure no matter the sacrifice or cost. We need heroes of integrity and consistency, admirable men and women we can admire, not because they exemplify a quick burst of bravery, but because they represent the stuff of greatness and stay at it to the end. Finishing strong is a vital part of standing tall.

For as medical men sometimes,   although they could quickly cover over the scars of wounds, keep back   and delay the cure for the present, in the expectation of a better and   more perfect recovery, knowing that it is more salutary to retard the   treatment in the cases of swellings caused by wounds, and to allow the   malignant humours to flow off for a while, rather than to hasten a   superficial cure, by shutting up in the veins the poison of a morbid   humour, which, excluded from its customary outlets, will undoubtedly   creep into the inner parts of the limbs, and penetrate to the very   vitals of the viscera, producing no longer mere disease in the body,   but causing destruction to life; so, in like manner, God also, who   knows the secret things of the heart, and foreknows the future, in much   forbearance allows certain events to happen, which, coming from without   upon men, cause to come forth into the light the passions and vices   which are concealed within, that by their means those may be cleansed   and cured who, through great negligence and carelessness, have admitted   within themselves the roots and seeds of sins, so that, when driven   outwards and brought to the surface, they may in a certain degree be   cast forth and dispersed. [2342]   And thus, although a man may appear   to be afflicted with evils of a serious kind, suffering convulsions in   all his limbs, he may nevertheless, at some future time, obtain relief   and a cessation from his trouble; and, after enduring his afflictions   to satiety, may, after many sufferings, be restored again to his   (proper) condition.  For God deals with souls not merely with a view to   the short space of our present life, included within sixty years [2343]   or more, but with reference to a perpetual and never-ending period,   exercising His providential care over souls that are immortal, even as   He Himself is eternal and immortal. 

I'm told my father cemented a number of profitable deals in this room." Alan eased down beside her. Shelby opened her eyes to slits. "I imagine he did.By the time he was through, he could've reduced most normally built men to puddbles." Idly the trailed a fingertip down Alan's thigh. "Do you ever use saunas for vital government intrigue, Senator?" "I'm inclined to think of other things in small hot rooms." Bending,he brushed his lips over her bare shoudler-the touch of a tongue,the quick pressure of teeth. "Vital,certainly, but more personal." "Mmm." Shelby tilted her head as he trailed his lips closer to her throat. "How personal?" "Highly confidential.

SOUL CONTRACTIONS My mother ages all too quickly now, the latest illness claiming more chunks of her vitality each day. This beloved woman whose womb held my body, I now hold in the chalice of my vigilance. Sadness and sorrow pulse inside my spirit, a kindred soul-contraction resonating with her spiritual gestation as she prepares during these final years for her birth into eternity. Dear mother, I, who burst forth from your womb on a sunny morning in June, embrace you now with gratitude, praying to let you go freely, to encourage your spirit to wing forward peacefully into the mystery of the One Great Womb, where there is space enough to embrace us all.

respiratory system encompasses the nose, throat, and lungs. Some of the oils that help the respiratory system include eucalyptus, myrrh, fennel, sandalwood, thyme, cypress, bergamot, and sage. · The digestive system is responsible for breaking down food and includes the stomach, liver, intestines, and gallbladder. Oils used for this include dandelion, marshmallow, meadow sweet, and chamomile. · The circulatory system is responsible for transporting blood and oxygen throughout the body. Oils used for this include lemon, lavender, peppermint, fennel, thyme, juniper, and white birch.  · The endocrine system includes the thyroid glands, the pancreas, and the hormone glands. Essential oils used are sweet marjoram, clary sage, fennel, jasmine, rose, lemon, and juniper. · The immune system is responsible for fighting against diseases including everything from a cold to malaria.   ·  The nervous system transmits nerve impulses throughout the body. These cells are vitally important to the function of the human body. Oils used for the nervous system include clove, basil, ylang ylang, lavender, chamomile, bergamot, and sweet marjoram. · The brain is responsible for the functions of almost every organ system throughout the body. The essential oils used for the brain include lavender, chamomile, basil, lemon, peppermint, and ginger.

The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities.

From the moment an apprentice has discovered his power he is an apprentice no more, but has become a master in his own right worthy of being called a warrior. No longer just an ordinary man at the mercy of the world around him, the warrior steps forward lightly with the full authority and power of a leader. His command is instinctively recognised and obeyed. His vitality engenders in those around him a sense of hope and excitement, whilst his daring moves foster in them an inspiration and a respect which quickly makes of his word the law. At this point the warrior's power is such that it enables him to do whatever he sees fit, but it is also in this moment that he is brought face to face with the challenges of the third natural enemy - power.

Being held by him, kissed and mastered, taken under and swept away, enthralled her in a way she—an independent woman if nothing else in this life—could not have understood until forced to understand. From the tips of her toes to the ends of her hair, finally, a man's strength dominated her. Suddenly, she understood why women wanted so deeply. Why they wanted him. If they sensed even one-tenth of his passion, his power, his vitality, they would break his door down to get to him. And this, she learned as quickly as any pupil could, was what had been missing before: Zachariah Garrett's full participation. In all fairness to the dare, she locked her arms around his neck and consented to a draw. He murmured something low and unintelligible, his wine glass dropping to the grass with a soft thump. The arm around her waist tightened, the other climbing, his fingers delving into her loose chignon and tilting her head as he deepened the kiss, drawing down on her bottom lip and sucking. Instinct had her following his lead, shifting to better accommodate, parrying each thrust of his tongue with her own, rising on the tips of her toes to better sink into him, to gorge herself in vast, voracious gulps. The frantic nature of their joining melted her stiff posture and her cocksure bearing, rolling through her in a languid, glorious wave of sensation and recognition. It was a peculiar time to realize she had built her sense of self around an erroneous ideal. She was no different than other women.

and state. But for the time being, in summer 1940, she saw a continent that was genuinely impressed by this unprecedented German vitality: ‘Hitler, Europe felt, was a smart guy – disagreeable, but smart. He had gone far in making his country strong. Why not try his way?’ That was how many Europeans felt, and they all expressed it in their own way. In France they spoke of the ‘Pax Hitlérica’. In the upper circles of society, it quickly became fashionable to invite young SS and Wehrmacht officers to dinner. They represented a dynamism that had never been seen before, that could perhaps breathe new life into stuffy old France. The leader of the Dutch Anti-Revolutionary Party (ARP), the former prime minister Hendrik Colijn, wrote in June 1940: ‘Unless a true

In order to bring the feminine into our world, we must begin in a personal way. It is not an easy path, and we will quickly see how readily it conflicts with the patterns of our daily lives. But in order to value the feminine and have it become reborn within us, we must take the time to reconnect with the wholeness of who we are. We have to take the time to listen to our dreams, to write them down, and to reflect on our lives. Honoring the feminine means having the patience and taking the time, like Mary in the Gospel according to Luke, to ponder these things in our hearts. We must recognize that there are many things going on within us that need to be perceived, accepted, felt, said, lived, grieved, and raged over. We need to give these things our attention, concern, and understanding.

According to Shaivism, anupaya may also be reached by entering into the infinite blissfulness of the Self through the powerful experiences of sensual pleasures. This practice is designed to help the practitioner reach the highest levels by accelerating their progress through the sakta and sambhava upayas. These carefully guarded doctrines of Tantric sadhana are the basis for certain practices, like the use of the five makaras (hrdaya) mentioned earlier. The experience of a powerful sensual pleasure quickly removes a person’s dullness or indifference. It awakens in them the hidden nature and source of blissfulness and starts its inner vibration. Abhinavagupta says that only those people who are awakened to their own inner vitality can truly be said to have a heart (hrdaya). They are known as sahrdaya (connoisseurs). Those uninfluenced by this type of experiences are said to be heartless. In his words: “It is explained thus—The heart of a person, shedding of its attitude of indifference while listening to the sweet sounds of a song or while feeling the delightful touch of something like sandalpaste, immediately starts a wonderful vibratory movement. (This) is called ananda-sakti and because of its presence the person concerned is considered to have a heart (in their body) (Tantraloka, III.209-10). People who do not become one (with such blissful experiences), and who do not feel their physical body being merged into it, are said to be heartless because their consciousness itself remains immersed (in the gross body) (ibid., III.24).” The philosopher Jayaratha addresses this topic as well when he quotes a verse from a work by an author named Parasastabhutipada: “The worship to be performed by advanced aspirants consists of strengthening their position in the basic state of (infinite and blissful pure consciousness), on the occasions of the experiences of all such delightful objects which are to be seen here as having sweet and beautiful forms (Tantraloka, II.219).” These authors are pointing out that if people participate in pleasurable experiences with that special sharp alertness known as avadhana, they will become oblivious to the limitations of their usual body-consciousness and their pure consciousness will be fully illumined. According to Vijnanabhairava: “A Shiva yogin, having directed his attention to the inner bliss which arises on the occasion of some immense joy, or on seeing a close relative after a long time, should immerse his mind in that bliss and become one with it (Vijnanabhairava, 71). A yogin should fix his mind on each phenomenon which brings satisfaction (because) his own state of infinite bliss arises therein (ibid., 74).” In summary, Kashmir Shaivism is a philosophy that embraces life in its totality. Unlike puritanical systems it does not shy away from the pleasant and aesthetically pleasing aspects of life as somehow being unspiritual or contaminated. On the contrary, great importance has been placed on the aesthetic quality of spiritual practice in Kashmir Shaivism. In fact, recognizing and celebrating the aesthetic aspect of the Absolute is one of the central principles of this philosophy. — B. N. Pandit, Specific Principles of Kashmir Shaivism (3rd ed., 2008), p. 124–125.

Communities that prematurely close down questions produce reactionary questioners. A faith that is not oriented toward understanding is a faith in name only. And if a community shows no interest in understanding the revelation that it purports to follow, then its children will react accordingly. When communities are reduced to repeating clichés, those with eager intellects who are raised in those communities will want to ask questions but have no sense of questioning well. We know there is something vital missing. But reactions can quickly become overreactions, as when a teetotaler first takes up drink. Or like Shakespeare’s monkish Angelo in Measure for Measure, whose repressed sexual desires run rampant after years of being dormant. If people do not learn to question well, then they will almost certainly question badly.

Apocalypse is a part of the modern Absurd. This is testimony to its vitality, a vitality dependent upon its truth to the set of our fear and desire. Acknowledged, qualified by the scepticism of the clerks, it is--even when ironized, even when denied--an essential element in the arts, a permanent feature of a permanent literature of crisis. If it becomes myth, if its past is forgotten, we sink quickly into myth, into stereotype. We have to employ our knowledge of the fictive. With it we can explain what is essential and eccentric about early modernism, and purge the trivial and stereotyped from the arts of our own time. Great men deceived themselves by neglecting to do this; other men, later, have a programme against doing it. The critics should know their duty. Part of this duty, certainly, will be to abandon ways of speaking which on the one hand obscure the true nature of our fictions--by confusing them with myths, by rendering spatial what is essentially temporal--and on the other obscure our sense of reality by suggesting that fictions represent some kind of surrender or false consolation. The critical issue, given the perpetual assumption of crisis, is no less than the justification of ideas of order. They have to be justified in terms of what survives, and also in terms of what we can accept as valid in a world different from that out of which they come, resembling the earlier world only in that there is biological and cultural continuity of some kind. Our order, our form, is necessary; our skepticism as to fictions requires that it shall not be spurious. It is an issue central to the understanding of modern literary fiction, and I hope in my next talk to approach it more directly.

Come on, Gray,” another sailor called. “Just one toast.” Miss Turner raised her eyebrows and leaned into him. “Come on, Mr. Grayson. Just one little toast,” she taunted, in the breathy, seductive voice of a harlot. It was a voice his body knew well, and vital parts of him were quickly forming a response. Siren. “Very well.” He lifted his mug and his voice, all the while staring into her wide, glassy eyes. “To the most beautiful lady in the world, and the only woman in my life.” The little minx caught her breath. Gray relished the tense silence, allowing a broad grin to spread across his face. “To my sister, Isabel.” Her eyes narrowed to slits. The men groaned. “You’re no fun anymore, Gray,” O’Shea grumbled. “No, I’m not. I’ve gone respectable.” He tugged on Miss Turner’s elbow. “And good little governesses need to be in bed.” “Not so fast, if you please.” She jerked away from him and turned to face the assembled crew. “I haven’t made my toast yet. We ladies have our sweethearts too, you know.” Bawdy murmurs chased one another until a ripple of laughter caught them up. Gray stepped back, lifting his own mug to his lips. If the girl was determined to humiliate herself, who was he to stop her? Who was he, indeed? Swaying a little in her boots, she raised her tankard. “To Gervais. My only sweetheart, mon cher petit lapin.” My dear little rabbit? Gray sputtered into his rum. What a fanciful imagination the chit had. “My French painting master,” she continued, slurring her words, “and my tutor in the art of passion.” The men whooped and whistled. Gray plunked his mug on the crate and strode to her side. “All right, Miss Turner. Very amusing. That’s enough joking for one evening.” “Who’s joking?” she asked, lowering her mug to her lips and eyeing him saucily over the rim. “He loved me. Desperately.” “The French do everything desperately,” he muttered, beginning to feel a bit desperate himself. He knew she was spinning naïve schoolgirl tales, but the others didn’t. The mood of the whole group had altered, from one of good-natured merriment to one of lust-tinged anticipation. These were sailors, after all. Lonely, rummed-up, woman-starved, desperate men. And to an innocent girl, they could prove more dangerous than sharks. “He couldn’t have loved you too much, could he?” Gray grabbed her arm again. “He seems to have let you go.” “I suppose he did.” She sniffed, then flashed a coquettish smile at the men. “I suppose that means I need a new sweetheart.” That was it. This little scene was at its end. Gray crouched, grasping his wayward governess around the thighs, and then straightened his legs, tossing her over one shoulder. She let out a shriek, and he felt the dregs of her rum spill down the back of his coat. “Put me down, you brute!” She squirmed and pounded his back with her fists. Gray bound her legs to his chest with one arm and gave her a pat on that well-padded rump with the other. “Well, then,” he announced to the group, forcing a roguish grin, “we’ll be off to bed.” Cheers and coarse laughter followed them as Gray toted his wriggling quarry down the companionway stairs and into the ladies’ cabin. With another light smack to her bum that she probably couldn’t even feel through all those skirts and petticoats, Gray slid her from his shoulder and dropped her on her feet. She wobbled backward, and he caught her arm, reversing her momentum. Now she tripped toward him, flinging her arms around his neck and sagging against his chest. Gray just stood there, arms dangling at his sides. Oh, bloody hell.

In these moments, I acted not, as I most often did, as death’s enemy, but as its ambassador. I had to help those families understand that the person they knew—the full, vital independent human—now lived only in the past and that I needed their input to understand what sort of future he or she would want: an easy death or to be strung between bags of fluids going in, others coming out, to persist despite being unable to struggle. Had I been more religious in my youth, I might have become a pastor, for it was the pastoral role I’d sought. — With my renewed focus, informed consent—the ritual by which a patient signs a piece of paper, authorizing surgery—became not a juridical exercise in naming all the risks as quickly as possible, like the voiceover in an ad for a new pharmaceutical, but an opportunity to forge a covenant with a suffering compatriot: Here we are together, and here are the ways through—I promise to guide you, as best as I can, to the other side.

THAT ESSENTIAL QUALITY of sympathy was never absent from Morgenthau’s relationship with Hannah Arendt, colored, it should be said, by an element of the erotic. They met in the early 1950s and developed an unshakeable friendship that lasted up to her death in 1975. Hans Jonas, who had known Arendt since their student days in Germany during the 1920s and who saw her every day when they were both attending the University of Marburg, remembered that “it was almost to be taken for granted that men of high intelligence and sensibility would be enchanted by Hannah.” Morgenthau was enchanted. “What struck one at first meeting Hannah Arendt,” he recalled, was “the vitality of her mind, quick—sometimes too quick—sparkling, seeking and finding hidden meanings and connections beneath the surface of man and things.” She had an extraordinary depth of knowledge combined with rare intellectual passion. “As others enjoy playing cards or the horses for their own sake, so Hannah Arendt enjoyed thinking.

Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make him laugh—but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine. There's never none of these demure boys come to any proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a kind of male green-sickness; and then, when they marry, they get wenches. They are generally fools and cowards-which some of us should be too, but for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it. It ascends me into the brain; dries me there all the foolish and dull and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes; which delivered o'er to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is the warming of the blood; which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice; but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extremes. It illumineth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart, who, great and puff'd up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage—and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and learning, a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil till sack commences it and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and till'd, with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I would teach them should be to forswear thin potations and to addict themselves to sack.

Our failure to keep our children attached to us and to the other adults responsible for them has not only taken away their shields but put a sword in the hands of their peers. When peers replace parents, children lose their vital protection against the thoughtlessness of others. The vulnerability of a child in such circumstances can easily be overwhelmed. The resulting pain is more than many children can bear. Studies have been unequivocal in their findings that the best protection for a child, even through adolescence, is a strong attachment with an adult. The most impressive of these studies involved ninety thousand adolescents from eighty different communities chosen to make the sample as representative of the United States as possible. The primary finding was that teenagers with strong emotional ties to their parents were much less likely to exhibit drug and alcohol problems, attempt suicide, or engage in violent behavior and early sexual activity. Such adolescents, in other words, were at greatly reduced risk for the problems that stem from being defended against vulnerability. Shielding them from stress and protecting their emotional health and functioning were strong attachments with their parents. This was also the conclusion of the noted American psychologist Julius Segal, a brilliant pioneer of research into what makes young people resilient. Summarizing studies from around the world, he concluded that the most important factor keeping children from being overwhelmed by stress was “the presence in their lives of a charismatic adult — a person with whom they identify and from whom they gather strength.” As Dr. Segal has also said, “Nothing will work in the absence of an indestructible link of caring between parent and child.” Peers should never have come to matter that much — certainly not more than parents or teachers or other adult attachment figures. Taunts and rejection by peers sting, of course, but they shouldn't cut to the quick, should not be so devastating. The profound dejection of an excluded child reveals a much more serious attachment problem than it does a peer-rejection problem.

These powerful words used by Paul in Second Thessalonians 3:1 convey the following ideas: “Finally, brothers, pray for us and for those things that concern us. Pray that the word of the Lord will spread quickly and without resistance. Pray that we will be able to keep up the pace that is required for us to get this message out! “To fulfill this task, we have to be like runners whose eyes are fixed on the goal before us! We must be like brave, bold, daring, and courageous messengers, whose job is to carry vital information across enemy lines. We have to move promptly and swiftly to get the message of the Gospel to the other side where people are desperately waiting. “Since the Lord has dispatched us to carry this message, and since this task requires us to run speedily through dangerous territory, we request prayer that we will be able to make it through every skirmish, clash, confrontation, and struggle that we might come across as we run to the other side to deliver the word of the Lord. I request that your prayers be unbroken, uninterrupted, and never-ending. As you pray, remember to specifically stipulate that the word of the Lord would usher in a triumphant and glorious new day in the lives of those who hear it, as it has done among you.

Max’s unflinching gaze never left that house. “What do you think’s going to happen?” Jules asked him quietly, “if you let yourself peel that giant S off your shirt and take a nap? If you let yourself spend an hour, an evening, screw it, a whole weekend doing nothing more than breaking and taking enjoyment from living in the moment? What’s going to happen, Max, if—after this is over—you give yourself permission to actually enjoy Gina’s company? To sit with her arms around you and let yourself be happy. You don’t have to be happy forever—just for that short amount of time.” Max didn’t say anything. So Jules went on. “And then maybe you could let yourself be happy again the next weekend. Not too happy,” he added quickly. “We wouldn’t want that. But just happy in a small way, because this amazing woman is part of your life, because she makes you smile and probably fucks like a dream and yeah—see? You are listening. Don’t kill me, I was just making sure you hadn’t checked out.” Max was giving him that look. “Are you done?” “Oh, sweetie, we have nowhere to go and hours til dawn. I’m just getting started.” Shit, Max said with his body language. But he didn’t stand up and walk away. He just sat there. Across the street, nothing moved. And then it still didn’t move. But once again, Max was back to watching it not move. Jules let the silence go for an entire minute and a half. “Just in case I didn’t make myself clear,” he said, “I believe with all my heart that you deserve—completely—whatever happiness you can grab. I don’t know what damage your father did to you but—” “I don’t know if I can do that,” Max interrupted. “You know, what you said. Just go home from work and . . .” Holy shit, Max was actually talking. About this. Or at least he had been talking. Jules waited for more, but Max just shook his head. “You know what happens when you work your ass off?” Jules finally asked, and then answered the question for him. “There’s no ass there the next time. So then you have to work off some other vital body part. You have to give yourself time to regrow, recharge. When was the last time you took a vacation? Was it nineteen ninety-one or ninety-two?” “You know damn well that I took a really long vacation just—” “No, sir, you did not. Hospitalization and recovery from a near-fatal gunshot wound is not a vacation,” Jules blasted him. “Didn’t you spend any of that time in ICU considering exactly why you made that stupid mistake that resulted in a bullet in your chest? Might it have been severe fatigue caused by asslessness, caused by working said ass off too many 24-7’s in a row?” Max sighed. Then nodded. “I know I fucked up. No doubt about that.” He was silent for a moment. “I’ve been doing that a lot lately.” He glanced over to where Jones was pretending to sleep, arm up and over his eyes. “I’ve been playing God too often, too. I don’t know, maybe I’m starting to believe my own spin, and it’s coming back to bite me.” “Not in the ass,” Jules said.

Theobald Smith, yet another of those forgotten heroes of medical history. Smith, born in 1859, was the son of German immigrants (the family name was Schmitt) in upstate New York and grew up speaking German, so was able to follow and appreciate the experiments of Robert Koch more quickly than most of his American contemporaries. He taught himself Koch’s methods for culturing bacteria and was thus able to isolate salmonella in 1885, long before any other American could do so. Daniel Salmon was head of the Bureau of Animal Husbandry at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and was primarily an administrator, but the convention of the day was to list the bureau head as lead author on the department’s papers, and that was the name that got attached to the microbe. Smith was also robbed of credit for the discovery of the infectious protozoa Babesia, which is wrongly named for a Romanian bacteriologist, Victor Babeş. In a long and distinguished career, Smith also did important work on yellow fever, diphtheria, African sleeping sickness, and fecal contamination of drinking water, and showed that tuberculosis in humans and in livestock was caused by different microorganisms, proving Koch wrong on two vital points. Koch also believed that TB could not jump from animals to humans, and Smith showed that that was wrong, too. It was thanks to this discovery that pasteurization of milk became a standard practice. Smith was, in short, the most important American bacteriologist during what was the golden age of bacteriology and yet is almost completely forgotten now.

Mr. Edwards and the Spider" I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea; What are we in the hands of the great God? It was in vain you set up thorn and briar In battle array against the fire And treason crackling in your blood; For the wild thorns grow tame And will do nothing to oppose the flame; Your lacerations tell the losing game You play against a sickness past your cure. How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure? A very little thing, a little worm, Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said, Can kill a tiger. Will the dead Hold up his mirror and affirm To the four winds the smell And flash of his authority? It’s well If God who holds you to the pit of hell, Much as one holds a spider, will destroy, Baffle and dissipate your soul. As a small boy On Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider die When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire: There’s no long struggle, no desire To get up on its feet and fly It stretches out its feet And dies. This is the sinner’s last retreat; Yes, and no strength exerted on the heat Then sinews the abolished will, when sick And full of burning, it will whistle on a brick. But who can plumb the sinking of that soul? Josiah Hawley, picture yourself cast Into a brick-kiln where the blast Fans your quick vitals to a coal— If measured by a glass, How long would it seem burning! Let there pass A minute, ten, ten trillion; but the blaze Is infinite, eternal: this is death, To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death.

It may seem paradoxical to claim that stress, a physiological mechanism vital to life, is a cause of illness. To resolve this apparent contradiction, we must differentiate between acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the immediate, short-term body response to threat. Chronic stress is activation of the stress mechanisms over long periods of time when a person is exposed to stressors that cannot be escaped either because she does not recognize them or because she has no control over them. Discharges of nervous system, hormonal output and immune changes constitute the flight-or-fight reactions that help us survive immediate danger. These biological responses are adaptive in the emergencies for which nature designed them. But the same stress responses, triggered chronically and without resolution, produce harm and even permanent damage. Chronically high cortisol levels destroy tissue. Chronically elevated adrenalin levels raise the blood pressure and damage the heart. There is extensive documentation of the inhibiting effect of chronic stress on the immune system. In one study, the activity of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells were compared in two groups: spousal caregivers of people with Alzheimer’s disease, and age- and health-matched controls. NK cells are front-line troops in the fight against infections and against cancer, having the capacity to attack invading micro-organisms and to destroy cells with malignant mutations. The NK cell functioning of the caregivers was significantly suppressed, even in those whose spouses had died as long as three years previously. The caregivers who reported lower levels of social support also showed the greatest depression in immune activity — just as the loneliest medical students had the most impaired immune systems under the stress of examinations. Another study of caregivers assessed the efficacy of immunization against influenza. In this study 80 per cent among the non-stressed control group developed immunity against the virus, but only 20 per cent of the Alzheimer caregivers were able to do so. The stress of unremitting caregiving inhibited the immune system and left people susceptible to influenza. Research has also shown stress-related delays in tissue repair. The wounds of Alzheimer caregivers took an average of nine days longer to heal than those of controls. Higher levels of stress cause higher cortisol output via the HPA axis, and cortisol inhibits the activity of the inflammatory cells involved in wound healing. Dental students had a wound deliberately inflicted on their hard palates while they were facing immunology exams and again during vacation. In all of them the wound healed more quickly in the summer. Under stress, their white blood cells produced less of a substance essential to healing. The oft-observed relationship between stress, impaired immunity and illness has given rise to the concept of “diseases of adaptation,” a phrase of Hans Selye’s. The flight-or-fight response, it is argued, was indispensable in an era when early human beings had to confront a natural world of predators and other dangers. In civilized society, however, the flight-fight reaction is triggered in situations where it is neither necessary nor helpful, since we no longer face the same mortal threats to existence. The body’s physiological stress mechanisms are often triggered inappropriately, leading to disease. There is another way to look at it. The flight-or-fight alarm reaction exists today for the same purpose evolution originally assigned to it: to enable us to survive. What has happened is that we have lost touch with the gut feelings designed to be our warning system. The body mounts a stress response, but the mind is unaware of the threat. We keep ourselves in physiologically stressful situations, with only a dim awareness of distress or no awareness at all.

Just as I have named authenticity and attachment as two basic needs, so Bruce has identified people's "vital need for social belonging with their equally vital needs for individual autonomy and achievement" and calls the marriage of the two psychosocial integration. A sane culture, Bruce and I agree, would have psychosocial integration as both an aim and a norm. Authenticity and attachment would cease to be in conflict: there would be no fundamental tension between belonging and being oneself. Dislocation, in Bruce's formulation, describes a loss of connection to self, to others, and to a sense of meaning and purpose — all of which appear on the roster of essential needs. Lest the word "dislocation" conjure something hazy like "being lost," he is quick with a graphic metaphor. "Think of a dislocated shoulder," he said, "a shoulder disarticulated, out of joint. You didn't cut off the arm, but it's just hanging there and not working anymore. Useless. That's how dislocated people experience themselves. It's excruciatingly painful." More than an individual experience, the same intense pain often occurs at the social level when large groups of people find themselves cut off from autonomy, relatedness, trust, and meaning. This is social dislocation, which, along with personal trauma, is a potent source of mental dysfunction, despair, addictions, and physical illness. Abnormal from the perspective of human needs, such dislocation is now an entrenched fact of "normality" in our culture. Dislocation spares no class of people, even if it shows up differently in different strata of society. Societal privilege may insulate some of us from being outwardly wrecked by dislocation's gale-force winds , but it cannot exempt us from the inner impacts of having our needs for interconnection, purpose, and genuine self-esteem denied. Neither achievements nor attributes nor external evaluations of our worth can possibly compensate us for such a lack.

On the one hand, I recognize the power of the placebo effect: if you believe it’s working, it may well work. If you think an object brings you luck, you are more confident. And yet what the Italian students in the “lucky” seats showed wasn’t confidence; it was overconfidence. They thought they were doing better, but the evidence didn’t actually back them up. And then there’s the flip side of the placebo, the nocebo effect: the belief in evil signs or bad luck. It turns out people can literally scare themselves to death. If you think you’ve been cursed or otherwise made ill, you may end up actually getting sick, failing to improve poor health, or, yes, dying altogether. In one medically documented instance, a man was given three months to live after a diagnosis of metastatic cancer of the esophagus. He died shortly after. When his body was autopsied, doctors realized that he had been misdiagnosed: he did indeed have cancer, but a tiny, non-metastatic tumor on his liver. Clinically speaking, it could not have killed him. But, it seems, being told he was dying of a fatal illness brought about that very outcome. In another case, a man thought he was hexed by a voodoo priest. He came close to death, only to recover miraculously after an enterprising doctor “reversed” the curse through a series of made-up words. In yet a third, a man almost died in the emergency room after overdosing on pills. He’d been in a drug trial for depression and decided to end his life with the antidepressants he’d been prescribed. His vitals were so bad when he was admitted that doctors didn’t think he would make it—until they discovered his blood was completely clear of any drugs. He’d been taking a placebo. Once he found out he had not in fact taken a life-threatening quantity of pills, he recovered quickly. The effect our mind has on our body makes for a scary proposition. Belief is a powerful thing. Our mental state is crucial to our performance. And ultimately, while some superstitions may give you a veneer of false confidence, they also have the power to destroy your mental equilibrium. I like to think of this as the black cat effect. You see one cross the parking lot as you walk to a tournament. You brood about the bad luck. Your game is thrown off. You blame the cat. You bust. You feel validated. Superstitions are false attributions, so they give you a false sense of your own abilities and in the end, impede learning.

This is not a hypothetical example. In the middle of the nineteenth century Karl Marx reached brilliant economic insights. Based on these insights he predicted an increasingly violent conflict between the proletariat and the capitalists, ending with the inevitable victory of the former and the collapse of the capitalist system. Marx was certain that the revolution would start in countries that spearheaded the Industrial Revolution – such as Britain, France and the USA – and spread to the rest of the world. Marx forgot that capitalists know how to read. At first only a handful of disciples took Marx seriously and read his writings. But as these socialist firebrands gained adherents and power, the capitalists became alarmed. They too perused Das Kapital, adopting many of the tools and insights of Marxist analysis. In the twentieth century everybody from street urchins to presidents embraced a Marxist approach to economics and history. Even diehard capitalists who vehemently resisted the Marxist prognosis still made use of the Marxist diagnosis. When the CIA analysed the situation in Vietnam or Chile in the 1960s, it divided society into classes. When Nixon or Thatcher looked at the globe, they asked themselves who controls the vital means of production. From 1989 to 1991 George Bush oversaw the demise of the Evil Empire of communism, only to be defeated in the 1992 elections by Bill Clinton. Clinton’s winning campaign strategy was summarised in the motto: ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Marx could not have said it better. As people adopted the Marxist diagnosis, they changed their behaviour accordingly. Capitalists in countries such as Britain and France strove to better the lot of the workers, strengthen their national consciousness and integrate them into the political system. Consequently when workers began voting in elections and Labour gained power in one country after another, the capitalists could still sleep soundly in their beds. As a result, Marx’s predictions came to naught. Communist revolutions never engulfed the leading industrial powers such as Britain, France and the USA, and the dictatorship of the proletariat was consigned to the dustbin of history. This is the paradox of historical knowledge. Knowledge that does not change behaviour is useless. But knowledge that changes behaviour quickly loses its relevance. The more data we have and the better we understand history, the faster history alters its course, and the faster our knowledge becomes outdated.

Click, hum, click, hum, click, hum. Click, click, click, click, click, hum. Hmmm. A low-level supervising program woke up a slightly higher-level supervising program deep in the ship’s semisomnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all it got was a hum. The higher-level supervising program asked it what it was supposed to get, and the low-level supervising program said that it couldn’t remember what it was meant to get, exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distant satisfied sigh, wasn’t it? It didn’t know what this hum was. Click, hum, click, hum. That was all it was getting. The higher-level supervising program considered this and didn’t like it. It asked the low-level supervising program what exactly it was supervising and the low-level supervising program said it couldn’t remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to go click, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It had tried to consult its error look-up table but couldn’t find it, which was why it had alerted the higher-level supervising program of the problem. The higher-level supervising program went to consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low-level supervising program was meant to be supervising. It couldn’t find the look-up table. Odd. It looked again. All it got was an error message. It tried to look up the error message in its error message look-up table and couldn’t find that either. It allowed a couple of nanoseconds to go by while it went through all this again. Then it woke up its sector function supervisor. The sector function supervisor hit immediate problems. It called its supervising agent, which hit problems too. Within a few millionths of a second virtual circuits that had lain dormant, some for years, some for centuries, were flaring into life throughout the ship. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong, but none of the supervising programs could tell what it was. At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing. Small modules of software—agents—surged through the logical pathways, grouping, consulting, regrouping. They quickly established that the ship’s memory, all the way back to its central mission module, was in tatters. No amount of interrogation could determine what it was that had happened. Even the central mission module itself seemed to be damaged. This made the whole problem very simple to deal with, in fact. Replace the central mission module. There was another one, a backup, an exact duplicate of the original. It had to be physically replaced because, for safety reasons, there was no link whatsoever between the original and its backup. Once the central mission module was replaced it could itself supervise the reconstruction of the rest of the system in every detail, and all would be well.

The alienating effects of wealth and modernity on the human experience start virtually at birth and never let up. Infants in hunter-gatherer societies are carried by their mothers as much as 90 percent of the time, which roughly corresponds to carrying rates among other primates. One can get an idea of how important this kind of touch is to primates from an infamous experiment conducted in the 1950s by a primatologist and psychologist named Harry Harlow. Baby rhesus monkeys were separated from their mothers and presented with the choice of two kinds of surrogates: a cuddly mother made out of terry cloth or an uninviting mother made out of wire mesh. The wire mesh mother, however, had a nipple that dispensed warm milk. The babies took their nourishment as quickly as possible and then rushed back to cling to the terry cloth mother, which had enough softness to provide the illusion of affection. Clearly, touch and closeness are vital to the health of baby primates—including humans. In America during the 1970s, mothers maintained skin-to-skin contact with babies as little as 16 percent of the time, which is a level that traditional societies would probably consider a form of child abuse. Also unthinkable would be the modern practice of making young children sleep by themselves. In two American studies of middle-class families during the 1980s, 85 percent of young children slept alone in their own room—a figure that rose to 95 percent among families considered “well educated.” Northern European societies, including America, are the only ones in history to make very young children sleep alone in such numbers. The isolation is thought to make many children bond intensely with stuffed animals for reassurance. Only in Northern European societies do children go through the well-known developmental stage of bonding with stuffed animals; elsewhere, children get their sense of safety from the adults sleeping near them. The point of making children sleep alone, according to Western psychologists, is to make them “self-soothing,” but that clearly runs contrary to our evolution. Humans are primates—we share 98 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees—and primates almost never leave infants unattended, because they would be extremely vulnerable to predators. Infants seem to know this instinctively, so being left alone in a dark room is terrifying to them. Compare the self-soothing approach to that of a traditional Mayan community in Guatemala: “Infants and children simply fall asleep when sleepy, do not wear specific sleep clothes or use traditional transitional objects, room share and cosleep with parents or siblings, and nurse on demand during the night.” Another study notes about Bali: “Babies are encouraged to acquire quickly the capacity to sleep under any circumstances, including situations of high stimulation, musical performances, and other noisy observances which reflect their more complete integration into adult social activities

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Often when things are not working, there is a message, lesson, or gift associated with the situation. At such a moment you may be tempted to rant or try to force a quick fix. But sometimes you may do better to step back and ask, “What would be my wisest action here?” There is something else more vital for you to do in that moment. Or getting what you think you want or need right then might not be in your best interest, and you are being protected. Or there is a more favorable option you do not see that will show up later. Or there is better timing that would unfold to your advantage if you waited.

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PRE- AND POST-SLEEP ROUTINES: SEVEN STEPS TO SLEEP SMARTER Pre- and post-sleep routines directly affect the quality of your sleep and waking day: value them as the important activities they are, and you’ll be more efficient all day and night. Take technology breaks during the day as a reward and training for body and mind. Post-sleep is vitally important for PMers if they want to keep up with the AMers – don’t forgo this in favour of the ‘snooze’ button. Don’t text drunk! Raise your alertness before you reach for your phone. Moving your body from warm to cooler helps trigger the natural drop in body temperature – a quick warm rinse under the shower and a cooler sleeping environment will achieve this. Declutter your environment and mind and download your day before bed, so you don’t lie awake thinking when you could be asleep. Pre-sleep is about shutting down – nose-breathing, relaxing, light to dark – while post-sleep is about starting up in an unrushed way: these periods belong to you and no one else.

Why did nations turn so often to war in the belief that it was a sharp and quick instrument for shaping international affairs when again and again the instrument had proved to be blunt or unpredictable? This recurring optimism is a vital prelude to war. Anything which increases the optimism is a cause of war. Anything which dampens that optimism is a cause of peace.

It would have been unusual in the ancient Near East for a deity quickly and easily to reveal his name (e.g., Ge 32:29); this may be part of the reason for the delayed answer here in Ex 3. Nevertheless, Yahweh’s name is not meant to be kept secret, and it is vitally important for Moses to have this knowledge. He is to speak Yahweh’s words (6:29), wield his power (7:17) and function like Yahweh to both his brother Aaron (4:16) and to Pharaoh (7:1). To this day, no one knows for sure how to pronounce the name of God—at least not as the ancient Israelites would have pronounced it. There are four consonants in the name—sometimes called the Tetragrammaton (“four-letter word”): y-h-w-h. The vowels are the tricky part. Hebrew is generally written without vowels. In the second half of the first millennium AD, some Jewish scribes began adding small marks to Biblical manuscripts in order to indicate how the vowel sounds of each word should be pronounced. They treated the name of God, however, differently from other words. It had long been customary in Jewish tradition not to pronounce the name Yahweh. Instead of saying “Yahweh,” people would often say “Adonay,” which means “my Lord” (and has led to “the LORD” as the traditional rendering of Yahweh in the English Bible). In order to remind readers to say “Adonay” instead of “Yahweh,” the scribes added the marks for the vowel sounds of Adonay to the consonants for Yahweh in their manuscripts. Pronouncing the consonants of yhwh with the vowels of adonay produces the well-known “Jehovah,” which is certainly not the right pronunciation.

Sometimes it seems I can happily hold all Christian tenets in an active abeyance, a fusion of faith and skepticism that includes and transcends all literal and figurative truths, if I hold fast to one indestructible fact (FACT!?): Christ's resurrection. This event answers every impulse, fear, and need of my imagination, quiets and clarifies the raucous onslaught of time, suffers me—the mute, destitute, unselfed seed of being that is most me—to understand what suffering is, and what it means. But no. The reality wavers, the image fades like a reflection on the water, for under every assertion about God, including the one I am making at this very minute, the ground gives way, and once again I am left with the vital and futile truth that to live in faith is to live like the Jesus lizard, quick and nimble on the water into which a moment's pause would make it sink.

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And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes…. I consider that the matter of defining what is real—that is a serious topic, even a vital topic. And in there somewhere is the other topic, the definition of the authentic human. Because the bombardment of pseudo-realities begins to produce inauthentic humans very quickly, spurious humans—as fake as the data pressing at them from all sides….Fake realities will create fake humans. Or, fake humans will generate fake realities and then sell them to other humans, turning them, eventually, into forgeries of themselves. So we wind up with fake humans inventing fake realities and then peddling them to other fake humans. It is just a very large version of Disneyland.

A child is usually quick to forgive and to forget those experiences which have been negative. Unless conditions are extremely bad, he is accepting of life as he finds it, and accepting of the people with whom he lives.

Adam became an expert, able to navigate through the different war zones, killing everything in his path with relative ease. Moving from scene to scene, the skill of quickly reloading before his magazine emptied was vital to acquiring the most kills in the shortest amount of time. Through repetitive play of Call of Duty, Adam learned how to load the second cartridge in a single fluid motion before the first was emptied by ejecting the magazine with the hand holding the weapon while drawing a new magazine from its place using his fourth and fifth fingers, and inserting a fresh magazine with the thumb and index finger. That skill, called the “tactical reload,” had previously been available only to law enforcement or for military training. Call

HT-1 This point is difficult to access, as it is well protected by the structure of the human body. HT-1is a bilateral Vital Point that is located in the armpit at the junction of the inner arm with the torso. It is associated with the Heart Meridian and is the point that the internal aspects of that meridian leaves the inner torso and emerges close to the surface of the skin. It does not have a direct connection to any Extraordinary Vessels, but is highly sensitive to attack. Traditional Chinese Medicine state that this is a no-needle point in many related textbooks. On the surface, this point would appear to be a difficult one to access during an altercation, but it is accessible. HT-1 becomes easily accessible if the opponent’s arm is raised, which occurs in the short instances that they are throwing a punch. A quick finger thrust or one-knuckle fist strike can easily activate it, but it requires a fair amount of precision to land. Combat science teaches us that precision generally diminishes during an altercation, but I add the above variant for those that would be willing to put in the training time for achieve such a strike. Just remember that the likelihood of landing such a technique during an actual altercation is remote, even with copious amounts of practice. A more realistic attack to HT-1 is when you have used your opponent’s arm to take them to the ground. Once established, as a generally rule of thumb, it is advised that if you have established control over an opponent’s arm that you should maintain that control until you deliver a blow that ends the fight. So, with that in mind, one of my favorite attacks to HT-1 after driving an opponent to ground while having established and maintained arm control, that you jerk the arm towards yourself as you throw a kick into this Vital Point. The type of kick will be dependent on the positioning of your opponent. If he is bladed on the ground (laying on one side with the arm you control in the air) a hard side kick or stomp works well. If the opponent starts turning, or squaring his shoulders towards you as he hits the ground in an attempt to regain his feet, then a forceful forward, or straight kick, can work. I would suggest working with a training partner to determine the various configurations that a downed opponent would react when you maintain control of one of their arms. Notice that I did not advise that you kick your training partner in HT-1, which is ill advised since it theoretically can cause disruptions to the heart and according to Traditional Chinese Medicine theory even death. Again, this technique is not for demonstration or sport-oriented martial arts, but mature and thoughtful training practice can provide a wealth of knowledge on how best to attack a Vital Point, even if it is not actually struck.

Circles in time A causal loop (also known as a closed time loop or predestination paradox)2 is a sequence of looped events where an event causes another event, which in turn seems to cause the first event. In a nutshell, each event in the loop is one of the causes of the next event and at least one of the later events causes an earlier event.p It is possible that understanding the general idea of causal loops is absolutely essential to understanding how precognition might work. But the problem with causal loops is that you may start to think of everything as a causal loop, and that can drive you nuts. Let’s take the coffee-cup dropping example. Sure, we can say that one event is dropping the coffee cup and the other is the shattering of the cup on the floor. But what about the initial act of picking up the cup? And then there’s the sweeping up of the shattered remains. Maybe those are really the pushing/pulling events? Oh, but go one more step back into the past and one more step forward into the future, and now let’s look at the idea that you wanted coffee and the disposal of the shards of ceramic followed by finding an unbreakable, plastic mug in your cabinet. Maybe the plastic mug search pulled forward the original desire for coffee? This kind of game is never-ending, and in time you start to go a little crazy and see that your birth pushes your death and your death pulls your birth. You can take any point in time and choose events on the left and the right of the timeline, centred around that event, and create a causal loop, depending on how you think of things. This kind of thinking leads quickly to what we call “fantasy thinking”. When you are engaging in fantasy thinking and at the same time trying to understand precognition, you can take every dream and every thought that you have and try to find the future event that is pulling that dream or thought. For example, you dream you are in a plane crash the night before you go on a flight, and the next day you feel lucky that your flight doesn’t crash. But you decide your dream was precognitive, and you start obsessively combing the news for a plane crash. Within about four months, a plane crashes. So you decide that plane crash was the one you were dreaming about, even though there were no other correspondences between your dream and the crash. While fantasy thinking is vitally important to creativity, it is not helpful when developing your precognitive skills. Even in the forward direction in time, most causes and effects are not understandable in a simple way. Trying to figure out possible causal loops for everything is futile, and, more importantly, unnecessary.

It’s generally accepted that protein takes the most energy to digest, with approximately 20 to 30 percent of total calories in the protein going into digesting it. Approximately 5 to 10 percent of the calories in carbohydrates are used just to digest it, and the caloric energy used to digest fats is usually in the range of 0 to 3 percent. Again, it’s vital to understand that it costs calories to absorb calories. This is called the thermic effect of food. As a quick example, say you eat 100 calories of protein. Your body will require 20 to 30 of those calories (right off the bat) just to digest and absorb it. In actuality, you’re only receiving 70 to 80 calories from the 100 calories you consumed.

GB-3 This vital point is located near the lower aspects of the temple area of skull, along the Zygomatic Arch, and is directly forward of the ear. It is bilateral, meaning it is found on both sides of the head, which is unlike any of the centerline points that only occur once. It is not directly associated with any of the Extraordinary Vessels, but is an Intersection Point for the Gall Bladder Meridian, Triple Warmer Meridian, and the Stomach Meridian. This makes it valuable to martial artists, since Intersection Points provide the ability to disrupt multiple meridians with a single strike. It makes attacking them economic from a time and motion standpoint. In a standard defense of being grabbed at the waist, with your arms free, slapping the ears forcefully will allow activation of this point with the meaty part of your hand. It is one of several points in this region of the skull and other would likely be activated while striking it given their proximity and size of the surface you are striking with. EYES If you asked a non-martial artist what are vital points on the human body, most of them would include the eyes. This is just basic common sense, as the eyes allow us to see our environment and determine any possible threats. If you happen to be struck in the eye it would inhibit your ability to effectively defend yourself. This is as true today as it was at the time that the author(s) were putting together what became the Bubishi. Though the eyes are not pressure point per se, these organs are extremely sensitive to attack. Flicking, poking, or thrusting into the eyes directly will greatly inhibit your opponent’s ability to see you in a combative situation. In fact, many of the old school Western hand-to-hand instructors of the World War II area were adamant in attacking the eyes. Likewise, it is common place in many martial arts systems, especially the ones that are truly combative and not sport oriented. Quick flicks of the wrist, with the fingertips striking the eyes, is a method that most opponents aren’t expecting. Thrusting your fingers into the eyes, either all or singularly, is another effective technique. More extreme is thrusting one finger into the inner corner of the opponent’s eye and then jerking forward and to the outside. This technique will dislodge the eye from its socket and should only be used in extreme circumstances. Defending against eye attacks is built into each of us, as we instinctually know their importance. If you recognize an eye attack from your opponent, dropping, raising and/or turning the head will many times save you from eye injury.

Surprise has a vital purpose: to quickly redirect our attention.

Exhaustion means that our vital energies are completely worn out and spent. Spiritual exhaustion is never the result of sin, but of service. Whether or not you experience exhaustion will depend on where you get your supplies. Jesus said to Peter, “Feed My sheep,” but He gave him nothing with which to feed them (John 21:17). The process of being made broken bread and poured-out wine means that you have to be the nourishment for other people’s souls until they learn to feed on God. They must drain you completely—to the very last drop. But be careful to replenish your supply, or you will quickly be utterly exhausted. Until others learn to draw on the life of the Lord Jesus directly, they will have to draw on His life through you. You must literally be their source of supply, until they learn to take their nourishment from God. We owe it to God to be our best for His lambs and sheep, as well as for Him.

Failure is vital. It is an incredibly important quotient in the equation of a career. After you wipe away your tears, it’s not a bad experience and under the right circumstances it will make you better, both as a person and as an artist. I think it’s important to fail, especially between the ages of twenty and thirty. Success is like sugar. It’s too good. It’s too sweet. It’s too wonderful and it burns up very quickly. Failure is like corned beef hash. It takes a while to eat.

During his life, Brunetti had often heard people begin sentences with, ‘If it weren’t for him . . .’ and he could not hear the words without substituting Sergio’s name. When Brunetti, always the acknowledged scholar of the family, was eighteen, it was decided that there was not enough money to allow him to go to university and delay the time when he could begin to contribute to the family’s income. He yearned to study the way some of his friends yearned for women, but he assented to this family decision and began to look for work. It was Sergio, newly engaged and newly employed in a medical laboratory as a technician, who agreed to contribute more to the family if it would mean that his younger brother would be allowed to study. Even then, Brunetti knew that it was the law he wanted to study, less its current application than its history and the reasons why it developed the way it had. Because there was no faculty of law at Ca Foscari, it meant that Brunetti would have to study at Padova, the cost of his commuting adding to the responsibility Sergio agreed to assume. Sergio’s marriage was delayed for three years, during which time Brunetti quickly rose to the top of his class and began to earn some money by tutoring students younger than himself. Had he not studied, Brunetti would not have met Paola in the university library, and he would not have become a policeman. He sometimes wondered if he would have become the same man, if the things inside of him that he considered vital would have developed in the same way, had he, perhaps, become an insurance salesman or a city bureaucrat. Knowing idle speculation when he saw it, Brunetti reached for the phone and pulled it towards him.

Charlie. He must have called Ariel by mistake. Satisfied that she had everything that was vital, and informing Bruno that she would be sending a moving company for her furniture and other items, Ariel exited the building with as much grace as she could, having to walk out to her car accompanied by the tank-like security guard. At least Bruno had offered to carry her cardboard box. Unexpectedly, once they reached her sedan and Bruno had loaded her belongings into the trunk, he gave her a tight bear hug and said, “Sorry, Ms. H. This ain’t right.” Then he turned and strode away quickly—but not before she saw the misty shine in his eyes. “Thank you, Bruno!” she called after him, and he waved a meaty hand in the air but kept walking. In her car alone, Ariel felt her own eyes finally fill too. She cried all the way home, so upset that she barely noticed the traffic that would normally be the source of her evening stress. When she pulled into the driveway of her sprawling Mediterranean Revival, she made sure to tidy her makeup so that it wasn’t so apparent that she had been crying. She would be strong so that, when she broke the news to Katie, her daughter wouldn’t feel like everything was out of control.

Yes… Obviously!” I replied. I'd just finished explaining to one of my mentors why it was so vitally important that I achieve a particular objective. “That means you don't understand where your security and well-being come from,” he told me. “Your happiness, security and OK-ness don't come from outside you, so they're not vulnerable to anything outside you.

People don't know they should be looking for 3000 degrees Kelvin, or what we call warm light. Look at the color rendering index ( CRI ) of a bulb. Choosing bulbs with a CRI close to 100 will keep you and your spaces looking bright and colorful. If we want more wildness in our lives, we have to be willing to let go of some control. Harmony offers visible evidence that someone cares enough about a place to invest energy in it. Disorder has the opposite effect. Disorderly environments have been linked to feelings of powerlessness, fear, anxiety and depression and they exert a subtle, negative influence on people's behavior. Joy is the brain's natural reward for staying alert to correlations and connections in our surroundings. This principle helps explain why collections feel so joyful. Even if the individual items don't have much value, our eyes read a collection as more than the sum of its parts. Surprise has a vital purpose: to quickly redirect our attention. In stable, predictable situations, the parts of the brain that attend to our environment slip into a kind of background mode. Situations rich in ambiguity tend to spur magical thinking. When we witness something mysterious, it disrupts our sense of certainty about the world and our place in it.

Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of resentment—who knows how very much after all I am indebted to my long illness for these two things? The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have experienced both through his strength and through his weakness, If illness and weakness are to be charged with anything at all, it is with the fact that when they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes decayed. He knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to terms with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything wounds him. People and things draw importunately near, all experiences strike deep, memory is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy—I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow. To accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more—to cease entirely from reacting.... The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for death, but which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute a self-preservative measure, amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of will to hibernate. A few steps farther in this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for weeks in a tomb.... Owing to the fact that one would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for revenge, the concoction of every sort of poison—this is surely the most injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else—it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching—this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself—conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness-with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of "free will" (my conflict with Christianity is only a particular instance of it), will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my moments of decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of the above feelings, because they were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden, but this time because they were beneath me.

There’s no denying the fact that smart phones have become more and more important in our lives. It’s the first thing that you look at when you wake up, and it’s likely the last thing that you look at before going to sleep. Smart phones have become a vital tool in a common man’s life.

The Country Ambassador versus the Country Manager Some companies experiment with an interesting profile: a country chairperson who is a weak overlay over the business and largely plays an ambassadorial role. However, statesmanship and ambassadors are best left to the realm of diplomacy. These roles are a legacy of an era that no longer exists. GE tried the model over the past decade with limited success and finally abandoned it. A ceremonial role, with no accountability for the business and the responsibility only for engaging government, industry associations, and other CEOs, is usually not effective. Everyone—employees, customers, business partners, government officials—will quickly see this role for what it is and dismiss the person as lightweight. This does disservice to the incumbent and the role. The ambassadorial country manager who smells opportunity, but is powerless to act, can become intensely frustrated. Increasingly, the connections among strategy and execution, business, reputation, and regulation are tightening, so an artificial separation of these functions is suboptimal. Bringing accountability for these together in a single leader is vital for growing competent and well-rounded business leaders, who are capable of even being the CEO someday. If the business does require wise counsel, access, and influence and a senior public face, a strong advisory board headed by an iconic leader who serves as a nonexecutive chairperson may be a more prudent approach. We followed this model at Microsoft India with considerable success; the approach is gaining popularity at companies like Coca-Cola, Schneider Electric, and JCB.

The ability to quickly analyze data is vital for a system of countering the laundering of the proceeds of crime, and computerized databases and analytical tools are an important element in achieving this goal. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that electronic databases and software can only facilitate the work of analysts, not replace it.

the new creation thrives in an environment of freedom and love and depends on transformation coming from within, not conformity imposed from without. But that takes time and rare is the man, woman, or institution that can long refuse the urge to give people rules to follow instead of help to discover a transformative relationship with a loving Father. The demands of religion and the needs of an institution for conformity are perfectly aligned so as to make the path of human effort virtually irresistible. It can yield quick results externally, while it saps the vitality of the Gospel.

Slow Is Good Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear [a ready listener], slow to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry. For man’s anger does not promote the righteousness God [wishes and requires]. JAMES 1:19–20 In these verses, God is telling us to listen more than we talk. Think about it: If God wanted us to be quick to speak and slow to listen, He would have created us with two mouths and only one ear! God is also telling us not to easily get offended or angry. If you have a quick, bad temper, start listening more and talking less. Slow is good. Read everything you can get your hands on about managing anger. Repeat over and over in your mind: I am quick to listen and slow to speak, slow to anger, and quick to forgive. Trust God to help you manage the feelings of anger. It is vitally necessary for you to be able to control this emotion if you want to enjoy the life God has in mind for you. Power Thought: I am quick to listen and slow to speak, slow to anger and quick to forgive.

Deer get to live in the wild, and then they die fairly quickly from a well-placed shot to the vitals. For a deer, the most likely alternatives are a slower and more painful death by a nonhuman predator (i.e., getting torn apart by a coyote), starvation, or disease. Being killed by a skilled human hunter may well be the least painful way for a deer to die.

Our society fails to appreciate the woman who quietly responds to life with intense interest and with love for people, ideas, and things. Yet these characteristics are as deeply and truly creative as are the characteristics of those who seek to lead, to act, and to achieve. We have a bias against feminine values. Not only are we too busy to adequately nurture our children, but we are also unable to truly nourish our own creativity, our personhood, our ability to take a stand for life, and our capacities to love and live from the heart. The feminine qualities of receptivity, nurturing in silence, relatedness, patience, and secrecy (whether in a man or in a woman) are absolutely necessary to offset our society’s increasing institutionalization and pressures that leave us too busy to live. We cannot be good enough parents to our children, ourselves, or to the matters of our own heart until we confront the Death Mother’s power in ourselves and in our culture. Determination makes the difference. We must be determined to get over our culture’s impatient, quick fix, and get-on-with-it attitude that feeds the Death Mother. We must never give up and never let so-called reasons—Death Mother excuses such as time, money, health, an overpacked schedule, too many obligations, fears about hurting others or being selfish—stop us.

Joseph Ruggles Wilson reminds us how unique is each preacher’s challenge: In other words, preaching is not an imitative exercise. Every preacher is to regard himself as an original exhibitor and enforcer of the terms of human salvation; a channel of gracious speech, markedly different from every other.    . . . Turn it which way we will, the conclusion is always before us, the preacher’s preaching is just another form of himself; i.e., if he does his own thinking; exhibits no emotions that he does not actually feel; and presents divine truth, not as a bundle of opinions which orthodoxy has agreed upon, but as so much vital blood that has been made to course in his veins, and therefore takes the form of his own Christian life. It is these live men whom God supremely calls; men who have eaten the word, as a prophet did, and into whom it has passed to become a perpetual throb in their hearts; so that when it comes forth again, it will proceed upon its errand, bearing the warmth of their innermost experiences; those experiences wherein are traced the musings which continued until they could find vent only in fire; the fire that burns quickly into other souls, melts where it burns, and remoulds where it melts.25

It’s vital that producers accept the challenge of redefinition, because this is often the key to finding more customers, and the ability to find more customers and sales very quickly is critical to the success of lean thinking.

When you have the money- and "you" are a big, economically and culturally vital nation- you get more than just a higher standard of living for your citizens. You get power and influence, and a much-enhanced ability to act out. When the money drains out, you can maintain the edge in living standards of your citizens for a considerable time (as long as others are willing to hold your growing debt and pile interest payments on top). But you lose power, especially the power to ignore others, quite quickly, though hopefully, in quiet, nonconfrontational ways.And you lose influence- the ability to have your wishes, ideas, and folkways willingly accepted, eagerly copied, and absorbed into daily life by others.

They killed my goombah,” Baldo Amato wept to Vitale, who had quickly arranged for a sit-down for the two at the Blue Bay Dinner on Frances Lewis Blvd., in Queens, New York.

No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism. And in this way it didn’t matter who won the war between the Feds and fundamentalists: the notion of a democratic and fully sovereign Chechnya would be crushed regardless.

My climb took so long that I spent literally only a few minutes on the top. Thunderstorms were brewing all around me, so I made a quick exit to the nearest tree line. (In the opposite direction, I might add, of the trailhead and my car!) While on the ridge, I made a critical decision that I’m sure helped me not only survive the climb but also reach the summit. I decided to rest. On a long, hard climb, sometimes the most important time on the mountain is the time you spend not doing anything. Those brief minutes of rest give your body the necessary breathing time to catch up with your exertion level; they give you time to take in some much-needed food and water; and they allow you to enjoy the view, mark your progress, and remember why you started up the mountain in the first place. Rest on a long, difficult journey is vital. That’s why I believe that one of the most important statements Jesus ever made was about rest. To a group of road-weary spiritual seekers, Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–30). Have you ever heard more beautiful or inviting words? Against the backdrop of a culture that stressed the importance of

Visiting users in their workplaces was vital—if we’d simply imagined the manager at his desk we would have missed the crucial aspects. Watching people in the real world is quick and you rarely need to pay anyone to do it. Even with minimal planning you can learn a lot. If you can’t get permission to do it, then talk to some users about where they are and what’s happening when they use your software.

Feelings of joy and contentment can quickly reverse the narrowing, defensive thinking style that’s induced by stress. Over a period of weeks, people who experience more positive emotions become more creative in their coping skills and more resilient in the face of stress. And, in an example of a virtuous circle, better coping and greater resilience lead to more positive emotions. So it’s vital that we be willing to take on our own minds and find ways to minimize the damage we do to ourselves, limit our self-defeating behavior, and learn that we don’t need to deny, or intellectualize, or project our own emotions.