Z Do We Say Quotes

Marry me, Zelda. We'll make it all up as we go. What do you say?

We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.”-World War Z

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

But evidence is all around you.” “The world is all around me. Some parts I understand, some I don’t. Some the scientists do, some they don’t. It exists. That only proves it exists.” “I don’t understand how you can look at the world and say there’s no God.” “And I don’t know how you can look at the world and pretend you know there’s a God and what he wants. So we’re even.

Do you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don’t, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. There are no rules, no scientific absolutes. You win, you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells.

What story will our kids be telling about us someday, do you suppose?” “It’ll be a lot more romantic than two senators matchmaking,” I said. “They’ll say that we were meant to be together no matter what. For us, stars aligned, the gods smiled—prob’ly there was a tidal wave someplace, too, and we just haven’t heard about it yet.” “A Homeric epic, it sounds like. Have another glass of champagne and tell me more.” *

What I’m about to tell you,” Elliott told me, “ninety-nine percent of people in the world will never understand.” For the first time all week, it was just the two of us. Elliott had told Austin he wanted to talk to me one-on-one. We were standing on a rooftop lounge during sunset, looking out at the Manhattan skyline. “You see, most people live a linear life,” he continued. “They go to college, get an internship, graduate, land a job, get a promotion, save up for a vacation each year, work toward their next promotion, and they just do that their whole lives. Their lives move step by step, slowly and predictably. “But successful people don’t buy into that model. They opt into an exponential life. Rather than going step by step, they skip steps. People say that you first need to ‘pay your dues’ and get years of experience before you can go out on your own and get what you truly want. Society feeds us this lie that you need to do x, y, and z before you can achieve your dream. It’s bullshit. The only person whose permission you need to live an exponential life is your own. “Sometimes an exponential life lands in your lap, like with a child prodigy. But most of the time, for people like you and me, we have to seize it for ourselves. If you actually want to make a difference in the world, if you want to live a life of inspiration, adventure, and wild success—you need to grab on to that exponential life—and hold on to it with all you’ve got.

You sayin' you want to go?" "Don't you?" "Hell no!" "Okay,I'll tell Matt and Jared that they can go to Paris without us." The only response was stunned silence, and I finally turned to smile at him. "Do you want to reconsider?" I asked. "The wedding's in Paris?" "Yep." His dark eyes were huge, and I could see so much in them. He was excited, almost giddy. I could see it bubbling up in him, but he was trying t stay calm and not get his hopes up. "Can we afford Paris?" "No," I said, "but it doesn't matter. Cole's footing the bill." He grabbed my shirt and pushed me back against the countertop, almost as if he was going to kiss me, but stopped short, looking into my eyes. "Are you serious?" "Would I lie to you about something like this?" "No." "Do you think I'd make it up just to tease you?" "No." "Yes." He backed up a step. "Yes what?" he asked. I could hardly keep from laughing that I'd finally managed to turn the tables on him with his own backward form of communication. "Yes, I'm absolutely serious. Cole offered to fly us all to Paris." ... His expression was so full of hope, I thought it was a good thing I hadn't tried to say no. He put his hand against my cheek and looked into my eyes. "Tell me what you want to do." All I had to do was tell him the truth. I brushed his hair out of his eyes and said, "I want to do whatever will make you happy." He smiled at me, the huge, excited smile of a child who woke up from his nap to find himself in Disneyland. "I want to go to Paris." "Okay," I said as I leaned down to kiss him. "Then you will.

Isn’t that… A lie? It’s okay. You can say it. Yes, they were lies and sometimes that’s not a bad thing. Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they’re used. The lies our government told us before the war, the ones that were supposed to keep us happy and blind, those were the ones that burned, because they prevented us from doing what had to be done. However, by the time I made Avalon, everyone was already doing everything they could possibly do to survive. The lies of the past were long gone and now the truth was everywhere, shambling down their streets, crashing through their doors, clawing at their throats. The truth was that no matter what we did, chances were most of us, if not all of us, were never going to see the future. The truth was that we were standing at what might be the twilight of our species and that truth was freezing a hundred people to death every night. They needed something to keep them warm. And so I lied, and so did the president, and every doctor and priest, every platoon leader and every parent. “We’re going to be okay.” That was our message.

If the dead are not raised, x “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” 33 y Do not be deceived: z “Bad company ruins good morals.” [4] 34 a Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For b some have no knowledge of God. c I say this to your shame.

For the longest time we believed the world around us was deterministic enough to be understood; that it was just a matter of encoding enough data, and enough processing power, to be able to see the future. That if I do x, and the other person does y, and if I know all the things I need to know about the actors and their actions, I can say that z is the logical outcome…

9Nicodemus said to him, x “How can these things be?” 10Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel y and yet you do not understand these things? 11Truly, truly, I say to you, z we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but z you [6] do not receive our testimony. 12If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

You remember your pre-internet brain, and you remember doing those things, but you don’t really remember how it felt. You don’t really remember how time felt. There’s that guy who wrote that book, I can’t remember what it’s called, fuckin’ genius guy. But he’s saying that the world has always been informed by people who read books, and not necessarily academically, but the concept of a narrative is very important to people’s lives. Those people grew up with not necessarily a sense of purpose, but a sense that your life is leading somewhere. That’s the way I relate to my music, because I see The 1975 as this story. But as we go into the future, the world is gonna start being informed by people who didn’t grow up with that narrative — who grew up with more of a sense of immediacy. And we start to feel more like a unit amongst other units, and everything becomes a lot more compartmentalized. So when we talk about Twitter, we know that we were happy before, but we can’t remember how it felt, so we won’t take the risk to leave it. The generation after us now, they don’t have that weird nostalgia or sense that something’s wrong: ‘I didn’t used to do this. I didn’t used to need this.

There’s been a revival of the old debate: with the failure of the wormholes, should we consider redesigning our minds to encompass interstellar distances? One self spanning thousands of stars, not via cloning, but through acceptance of the natural time scale of the lightspeed lag. Millennia passing between mental events. Local contingencies dealt with by non-conscious systems. I don’t think the idea will gain much support, though – and the new astronomical projects are something of an antidote. We can watch the stars from a distance, as ever, but we have to make peace with the fact that we’ve stayed behind. I keep asking myself, though: where do we go from here? History can’t guide us. Evolution can’t guide us. The C-Z charter says ”understand and respect the universe”… but in what form? On what scale? With what kind of senses, what kind of minds? We can become anything at all – and that space of possible futures dwarfs the galaxy. Can we explore it without losing our way? Fleshers used to spin fantasies about aliens arriving to ”conquer” Earth, to steal their ”precious” physical resources, to wipe them out for fear of ”competition”… as if a species capable of making the journey wouldn’t have had the power, or the wit, or the imagination, to rid itself of obsolete biological imperatives. ”Conquering the galaxy” is what bacteria with spaceships would do – knowing no better, having no choice. Our condition is the opposite of that: we have no end of choices. That’s why we need to find another space-faring civilisation. Understanding Lacerta is important, the astrophysics of survival is important, but we also need to speak to others who’ve faced the same decisions, and discovered how to live, what to become. We need to understand what it means to inhabit the universe.

The war will not only change the map of the world but it will affect the destiny of every one I care about. Already, even before the war had broken out, we were scattered to the four winds, those of us who had lived and worked together and who had no thought to do anything but what we were doing. My friend X, who used to be terrified at the very mention of war, had volunteered for service in the British Army; my friend Y, who was utterly indifferent and who used to say that he would go right on working at the Bibliothèque Nationale war or no war, joined the Foreign Legion; my friend Z, who was an out and out pacifist, volunteered for ambulance service and has never been heard of since; some are in concentration camps in France and Germany, one is rotting away in Siberia, another is in China, another in Mexico, another in Australia. When we meet again some will be blind, some legless, some old and white-haired, some demented, some bitter and cynical. Maybe the world will be a better place to live in, maybe it'll be just the same, maybe it'll be worse than it is now—who knows? The strangest thing of all is that in a universal crisis of this sort one instinctively knows that certain ones are doomed and that others will be spared.

Security is a big and serious deal, but it’s also largely a solved problem. That’s why the average person is quite willing to do their banking online and why nobody is afraid of entering their credit card number on Amazon. At 37signals, we’ve devised a simple security checklist all employees must follow: 1. All computers must use hard drive encryption, like the built-in FileVault feature in Apple’s OS X operating system. This ensures that a lost laptop is merely an inconvenience and an insurance claim, not a company-wide emergency and a scramble to change passwords and worry about what documents might be leaked. 2. Disable automatic login, require a password when waking from sleep, and set the computer to automatically lock after ten inactive minutes. 3. Turn on encryption for all sites you visit, especially critical services like Gmail. These days all sites use something called HTTPS or SSL. Look for the little lock icon in front of the Internet address. (We forced all 37signals products onto SSL a few years back to help with this.) 4. Make sure all smartphones and tablets use lock codes and can be wiped remotely. On the iPhone, you can do this through the “Find iPhone” application. This rule is easily forgotten as we tend to think of these tools as something for the home, but inevitably you’ll check your work email or log into Basecamp using your tablet. A smartphone or tablet needs to be treated with as much respect as your laptop. 5. Use a unique, generated, long-form password for each site you visit, kept by password-managing software, such as 1Password.§ We’re sorry to say, “secretmonkey” is not going to fool anyone. And even if you manage to remember UM6vDjwidQE9C28Z, it’s no good if it’s used on every site and one of them is hacked. (It happens all the time!) 6. Turn on two-factor authentication when using Gmail, so you can’t log in without having access to your cell phone for a login code (this means that someone who gets hold of your login and password also needs to get hold of your phone to login). And keep in mind: if your email security fails, all other online services will fail too, since an intruder can use the “password reset” from any other site to have a new password sent to the email account they now have access to. Creating security protocols and algorithms is the computer equivalent of rocket science, but taking advantage of them isn’t. Take the time to learn the basics and they’ll cease being scary voodoo that you can’t trust. These days, security for your devices is just simple good sense, like putting on your seat belt.

THESSALONIANS 5 Now concerning  w the times and the seasons, brothers, [1]  x you have no need to have anything written to you. 2For you yourselves are fully aware that  y the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then  z sudden destruction will come upon them  a as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 4But you  b are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief. 5For you are all  c children [2] of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness. 6So then  d let us not sleep, as others do, but let us  e keep awake and  f be sober.

They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keep them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? It rots the senses in the head! It kills imagination dead! It clogs and clutters up the mind! It makes a child so dull and blind He can no longer understand A fantasy, a fairyland! His brain becomes as soft as cheese! His powers of thinking rust and freeze! He cannot think-he only sees! 'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read, And read and read, and then proceed To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books!... Oh books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall... ...They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something good to read. And once they start-oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did...

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And  t we have seen and testify that  u the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of  v the world. 15 w Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So  x we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  y God is love, and  z whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this  a is love perfected with us, so that  b we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because  c as he is so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but  d perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not  a been perfected in love. 19 e We love because he first loved us. 20 f If anyone says, “I love God,” and  g hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot [1] love God  h whom he has not seen. 21And  i this commandment we have from him:  j whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Is she now? I didn’t know the FBI investigated murders,” Mama Z said. “I thought such things were matters for local authorities.” “There might be some civil rights violations involved,” Hind said. “Whose civil rights?” “I don’t know yet.” “I ask because you have to have civil rights in order for the them to be violated.” Mama Z let that hang in the air. “I’m sorry. Forgive my manners. We can sit in here. Gertie, be a dear and make us some tea and bring some cookies. Make sure the cat doesn’t come in here and bother us.” Gertrude nodded. “I actually like cats,” Hind said. “This one sheds like crazy,” Mama Z said. “Your suit would be a mess before you could say, ‘Mississippi goddamn.’” She didn’t quite sing the words. “What is your last name, Mama Z?” Hind asked. “Everybody just calls me Mama Z.” “But for my notes.” “Lynch. My name is Adelaide Lynch.” To Gertrude, “Go get that tea, baby.” Gertrude left. “Where does the Z come in?” “I don’t quite remember,” the old woman said. “It’s easier to spell than Omega.” Mama Z looked Hind in the eye. “How old are you?” “One hundred and five.” “You look great. Moving around like this. Do you live alone?” “Yes.” “That’s amazing. What’s your secret?” “Venom.” “What?” Hind asked. “It’s what I call my nightly tea,” Mama Z said, then, conspiratorially, she added, “I mix it with bourbon.” “I see.

David's Song of Thanks     8  f Oh give thanks to the LORD;  g call upon his name;          h make known his deeds among the peoples!     9 Sing to him, sing praises to him;         tell of all his wondrous works!     10 Glory in his holy name;         let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice!     11  i Seek the LORD and his strength;         seek his presence continually!     12  j Remember the wondrous works that he has done,          k his miracles and the judgments he uttered,     13 O offspring of Israel his servant,         children of Jacob, his chosen ones!     14 He is the LORD our God;          l his judgments are in all the earth.     15 Remember his covenant forever,         the word that he commanded, for a thousand generations,     16 the covenant  m that he made with Abraham,         his sworn promise to Isaac,     17 which  n he confirmed to Jacob as a statute,         to Israel as an everlasting covenant,     18 saying,  o “To you I will give the land of Canaan,         as your portion for an inheritance.”     19 When you were  p few in number,         of little account, and  q sojourners in it,     20 wandering from nation to nation,         from one kingdom to another people,     21 he allowed no one to oppress them;         he  r rebuked kings on their account,     22 saying, “Touch not my anointed ones,         do my  s prophets no harm!”     23  t Sing to the LORD, all the earth!         Tell of his salvation from day to day.     24 Declare his glory among the nations,         his marvelous works among all the peoples!     25 For  u great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised,         and he is to be feared  v above all gods.     26 For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,          w but the LORD made the heavens.     27 Splendor and majesty are before him;         strength and joy are in his place.     28 Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,          x ascribe to the LORD glory and strength!     29 Ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name;         bring an offering and come before him!      y Worship the LORD in the splendor of holiness; [2]         30 tremble before him, all the earth;         yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved.     31  z Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice,         and let them say among the nations,  a “The LORD reigns!”     32  b Let the sea roar, and all that fills it;         let the field exult, and everything in it!     33 Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy         before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth.     34 Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;         for his steadfast love endures forever! 35 c Say also:     “Save us, O God of our salvation,         and gather and deliver us from among the nations,     that we may give thanks to your holy name         and glory in your praise.     36  d Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,         from everlasting to everlasting!”  e Then all the people said, “Amen!” and praised the LORD.

sighed. “I can’t say that you weren’t expected.” “I’m just going to be walking around here and taking some measurements. It says here… you own eighty acres? That is one of the most gorgeous mansions I have ever seen,” he rambled on. “It must have cost you millions. I could never afford such a beauty. Well, heck, for that matter I couldn’t afford the millions of dollars in taxes a house like this would assess, let alone such a pricey property. Do you have an accountant?” Zo opened her mouth to respond, but he continued, “For an estate this size, I would definitely have one.” “I do have an accountant,” she cut in, with frustration. “Furthermore, I have invested a lot of money bringing this mansion up to speed. You can see my investment is great.” “Of course, it would be. The fact of the matter is, Mrs. Kane, a lot of people are in over their heads in property. You still have to pay up, or we take the place. Well, I’ll get busy now. Pay no mind to me.” He walked on, taking notes. “Clairrrrre!” Zo called as soon as she entered the house. “Bring your cell phone!” Two worry-filled months went by and many calls were made to lawyers, before Zoey finally picked one that made her feel confident. And then the letter came with the totals and the due date. “There is no way we can pay this, Mom, even if we sold off some of our treasures, because a lot of them are contracted to museums anyway. I am feeling awfully poor all of a sudden, and insecure.” “Yes, and I did some research, thinking I’d be forced to sell. It’s unlikely that anyone else around here can afford this place. It looks like they are going to get it all; they aren’t just charging for this year. What we have here is a value about equal to a little country. And all the new construction sites for housing developments suddenly popping up on this side of the river, does not help. Value is going up.” Zo put her head in her hands. “Ohhh, oh, oh, oh!” “Yeah, bring out the ice-cream and cake. I need comforting,” sighed Claire. The cell phone rang. “Yes, tonight? You guys have become pretty good to us, haven’t you?! You know, Bob, Mom and I thought we were just going to pig out on ice cream and cake. We found out we are losing this estate and are going to be poor again and we are bummed out.” There was a long pause. “No, that’s okay, I understand. Yeah, okay, bye.” “Well?” Zo ask dryly. “He was appropriately sorry, and he got off the phone fast, saying he remembered he had other business to take care of. Do you want to cry? I do…” “I’ll get the cake and dish the ice cream. You make our tea and we’ll cry together.” A pitter patter began to drum on the window. “Rain again. It seems softer though, dear.” “I thought you said this was going to be a softer rain!” It started to pour. “At least this is not a thunder storm… What was that?” “Thunder,” replied Claire, unmoved and resigned. An hour had gone by when there was a rapping at the door. “People rarely use the doorbell, ever notice that?” Zo asked on the way to the door. She opened it to reveal two wet guys holding a pizza, salad, soft drink, and giant chocolate chip cookies in a plastic container. In a plastic

JOHN 14  d“Let not your hearts be troubled.  eBelieve in God; [1] believe also in me. 2In  fmy Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that  gI go to prepare a place for you? [2] 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you  hto myself, that  iwhere I am you may be also. 4And you know the way to where I am going.” [3] 5 jThomas said to him, “Lord,  kwe do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” 6Jesus said to him, “I am  lthe way, and  mthe truth, and  nthe life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 oIf you had known me, you would have  pknown my Father also. [4] From now on you do know him and  qhave seen him.” 8 rPhilip said to him, “Lord,  sshow us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?  tWhoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10Do you not believe that  uI am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you  vI do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11Believe me that  uI am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else  wbelieve on account of the works themselves. 12“Truly, truly, I say to you,  xwhoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I  yam going to the Father. 13 zWhatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that  athe Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 zIf you ask me [5] anything in my name, I will do it.

9A writing of Hezekiah king of Judah, after he had been sick and had recovered from his sickness: 10 I said,  x In the middle [4] of my days I must depart; I am consigned to the gates of Sheol for the rest of my years. 11 I said, I shall not see the LORD, the LORD  y in the land of the living; I shall look on man no more among the inhabitants of the world. 12 My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me z like a shepherd’s tent; a like a weaver b I have rolled up my life;  c he cuts me off from the loom;  d from day to night you bring me to an end; 13 e I calmed myself [5] until morning; like a lion  f he breaks all my bones; from day to night you bring me to an end. 14 Like  g a swallow or a crane I chirp; h I moan like a dove.  i My eyes are weary with looking upward. O Lord, I am oppressed;  j be my pledge of safety! 15 What shall I say? For he has spoken to me, and he himself has done it.  k I walk slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul. 16  l O Lord, by these things men live, and in all these is the life of my spirit. Oh restore me to health and make me live! 17  m Behold, it was for my welfare that I had great bitterness;  n but in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction,  n for you have cast all my sins behind your back. 18  o For Sheol does not thank you; death does not praise you; those who go down to the pit do not hope for your faithfulness. 19 The living, the living, he thanks you, as I do this day;  p the father makes known to the children your faithfulness. 20 The LORD will save me, and we will play my music on stringed instruments all the days of our lives,  q at the house of the LORD.

Lfr Jp tZ~ LLtI~ A righteous [woman] who walks in [her] integrity-how blessed are [her] sons after [her]. -PROVERBS 20:7 My Bob often says, "Just do what you say you are going to do!" This has been our battle cry for more than 25 years. People get into relational problems because they forget to keep their promises. It's so easy to make a verbal promise for the moment and then grapple with the execution of that promise later. Sometimes we underestimate the consequences of not keeping the promise flippantly made in a moment of haste. Many times we aren't even aware we have made a promise. Someone says, "I'll call you at 7:00 tonight"; "I'll drop by before noon"; or "I'll call you to set up a breakfast meeting on Wednesday." Then the weak excuses begin to follow. "I called but no one answered" (even though you have voice mail and no message was left). "I got tied up and forgot." "I was too tired." I suggest that we don't make promises if we aren't going to keep them. The person on the other end would prefer not hearing a promise that isn't going to be kept. Yes, there will be times when the execution of a promise will have to be rescheduled, but be up front with the person when you call to change the time. We aren't perfect, but we can mentor proper relationship skills to our friends and family by exhibiting accountability in our words of promise. We teach people that we are trustworthy-and how they can be trusted too. You'll be pleased at how people will pleasantly be surprised when you keep your promises. As my friend Florence Littauer says, "It takes so little to be above average." When you develop a reputation for being a woman who does what she says, your life will have more meaning and people will enjoy being around you.

Perhaps I ought to stuff up these sleeping things and go to bed. But I’m still too wide awake I’d only writhe about. If I had got him on the phone if we’d talked pleasantly I should have calmed down. He doesn’t give a fuck. Here I am torn to pieces by heartbreaking memories I call him and he doesn’t answer. Don’t bawl him out don’t begin by bawling him out that would muck up everything. I dread tomorrow. I shall have to be ready before four o’clock I shan’t have had a wink of sleep I’ll go out and buy petits fours that Francis will tread into the carpet he’ll break one of my little ornaments he’s not been properly brought up that child as clumsy as his father who’ll drop ash all over the place and if I say anything at all Tristan will blow right up he never let me keep my house as it ought to be yet after all it’s enormously important. Just now it’s perfect the drawing room polished shining like the moon used to be. By seven tomorrow evening it’ll be utterly filthy I’ll have to spring-clean it even though I’ll be all washed out. Explaining everything to him from a to z will wash me right out. He’s tough. What a clot I was to drop Florent for him! Florent and I we understood one another he coughed up I lay on my back it was cleaner than those capers where you hand out tender words to one another. I’m too softhearted I thought it was a terrific proof of love when he offered to marry me and there was Sylvie the ungrateful little thing I wanted her to have a real home and a mother no one could say a thing against a married woman a banker’s wife. For my part it gave me a pain in the ass to play the lady to be friends with crashing bores. Not so surprising that I burst out now and then. “You’re setting about it the wrong way with Tristan” Dédé used to tell me. Then later on “I told you so!” It’s true I’m headstrong I take the bit between my teeth I don’t calculate. Maybe I should have learned to compromise if it hadn’t been for all those disappointments. Tristan made me utterly sick I let him know it. People can’t bear being told what you really think of them. They want you to believe their fine words or at least to pretend to. As for me I’m clear-sighted I’m frank I tear masks off. The dear kind lady simpering “So we love our little brother do we?” and my collected little voice: “I hate him.” I’m still that proper little woman who says what she thinks and doesn’t cheat. It made my guts grind to hear him holding forth and all those bloody fools on their knees before him. I came clumping along in my big boots I cut their fine words down to size for them—progress prosperity the future of mankind happiness peace aid for the underdeveloped countries peace upon earth. I’m not a racist but don’t give a fuck for Algerians Jews Negroes in just the same way I don’t give a fuck for Chinks Russians Yanks Frenchmen. I don’t give a fuck for humanity what has it ever done for me I ask you. If they are such bleeding fools as to murder one another bomb one another plaster one another with napalm wipe one another out I’m not going to weep my eyes out. A million children have been massacred so what? Children are never anything but the seed of bastards it unclutters the planet a little they all admit it’s overpopulated don’t they? If I were the earth it would disgust me, all this vermin on my back, I’d shake it off. I’m quite willing to die if they all die too. I’m not going to go all soft-centered about kids that mean nothing to me. My own daughter’s dead and they’ve stolen my son from me.

By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney - for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination over other people. Hence the enormous importance to a patriarch who has to conquer, who has to rule, of feeling that great numbers of people, half the human race indeed, are by nature inferior to himself. It must indeed be one of the chief sources of his power. But let me turn the light of this observation on to real life, I thought. Does it help to explain some of those psychological puzzles that one notes in the margin of daily life? Does it explain my astonishment the other day when Z, most humane, most modest of men, taking up some book by Rebecca West and reading a passage in it, exclaimed, 'The arrant feminist! She says that men are snobs!' The exclamation, to me so surprising for why was Miss West an arrant feminist for making a possibly true if uncomplimentary statement about the other sex? - was not merely the cry of wounded vanity; it was a protest against some infringement of his power to believe in himself. Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. The glories of all our wars would be unknown. We should still be scratching the outlines of deer on the remains of mutton bones and bartering flints for sheep skins or whatever simple ornament took our unsophisticated taste. Supermen and Fingers of Destiny would never have existed. The Tsar and the Kaiser would never have worn crowns or lost them. Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action. That is why Napoleon and Mussolini both insist so emphatically upon the inferiority of women, for if they were not inferior, they would cease to enlarge. That serves to explain in part the necessity that women so often are to men. And it serves to explain how restless they are under her criticism; how impossible it is for her to say to them this book is bad, this picture is feeble, or whatever it may be, without giving far more pain and musing far more anger than a man would do who gave the same criticism. For if she begins to tell the truth, the figure in the looking-glass shrinks; his fitness for life is diminished. How is he to go on giving judgement, civilizing natives, making laws, writing books, dressing up and speechifying at banquets, unless he can see himself at breakfast and at dinner at least twice the size he really is? So I reflected, crumbling my bread and stirring my coffee and now and again looking at the people in the street. The looking-glass vision is of supreme importance because it charges the vitality; it stimulates the nervous system. Take it away and man may die, like the drug fiend deprived of his cocaine. Under the spell of that illusion, I thought, looking out of the window, half the people on the pavement are striding to work. They put on their hats and coats in the morning under its agreeable rays. They start the day confident, braced, believing themselves desired at Miss Smith's tea party; they say to themselves as they go into the room, I am the superior of half the people here, and it is thus that they speak with that self-confidence, that self-assurance, which have had such profound consequences in public life and lead to such curious notes in the margin of the private mind.

The gospel is not just the ABCs but the A to Z of the Christian life. It is inaccurate to think the gospel is what saves non-Christians, and then Christians mature by trying hard to live according to biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our minds, hearts, and lives by believing the gospel more and more deeply as life goes on (see Rom 12:1 – 2; Phil 1:6; 3:13–14).

I've heard rumors that if we get too weak to give blood, they feed us to the zeds." Hannah just stared at her in horror a moment before asking, "The zeds?" "Yeah. You know, like how the Brits say the letter z? For zombie?" "Oh." "What do you call them?" Hannah thought about it a second before saying, "The scary dead things that ate my parents. But yours is catchier.

What are you doing here?” I said without turning around. I’d known the moment they entered the room but had been too far gone to stop. “Watching,” they said at the same time. “That was fucking intense,” Z groaned. “Why were you watching?” It wasn’t the first time they’ve watched me fuck, but this was different. This was Mian. “Because we want our turn,” Lucas answered. I finally turned on my back to face them. “That’s not going to happen unless she wants it,” I answered confidently. She’d never want it. They broke out in smiles at the same time. “We figured you’d say that.” Lucas laughed. “So,” Z drawled. “You and her?” I looked down at her comatose form. The sharp pain in my chest was answer enough. “It’s not possible.” “Says king of making the impossible possible,” Lucas argued.

you understand economics? I mean big-time, prewar, global capitalism. Do you get how it worked? I don’t, and anyone who says they do is full of shit. There are no rules, no scientific absolutes. You win, you lose, it’s a total crapshoot. The only rule that ever made sense to me I learned from a history, not an economics, professor at Wharton. “Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. That was my mantra. “Fear sells.” When

For comparison, we use the Mann-Whitney test to compare the two samples of 10th graders discussed earlier in this chapter. The sum of ranks for the “before” group is 69.55, and for the “one year later group,” 86.57. The test statistic is significant at p = .019, yielding the same conclusion as the independent-samples t-test, p = .011. This comparison also shows that nonparametric tests do have higher levels of significance. As mentioned earlier, the Mann-Whitney test (as a nonparametric test) does not calculate the group means; separate, descriptive analysis needs to be undertaken for that information. A nonparametric alternative to the paired-samples t-test is the Wilcoxon signed rank test. This test assigns ranks based on the absolute values of these differences (Table 12.5). The signs of the differences are retained (thus, some values are positive and others are negative). For the data in Table 12.5, there are seven positive ranks (with mean rank = 6.57) and three negative ranks (with mean rank = 3.00). The Wilcoxon signed rank test statistic is normally distributed. The Wilcoxon signed rank test statistic, Z, for a difference between these values is 1.89 (p = .059 > .05). Hence, according to this test, the differences between the before and after scores are not significant. Getting Started Calculate a t-test and a Mann-Whitney test on data of your choice. Again, nonparametric tests result in larger p-values. The paired-samples t-test finds that p = .038 < .05, providing sufficient statistical evidence to conclude that the differences are significant. It might also be noted that a doubling of the data in Table 12.5 results in finding a significant difference between the before and after scores with the Wilcoxon signed rank test, Z = 2.694, p = .007. Table 12.5 Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test The Wilcoxon signed rank test can also be adapted as a nonparametric alternative to the one-sample t-test. In that case, analysts create a second variable that, for each observation, is the test value. For example, if in Table 12.5 we wish to test whether the mean of variable “before” is different from, say, 4.0, we create a second variable with 10 observations for which each value is, say, 4.0. Then using the Wilcoxon signed rank test for the “before” variable and this new,

Abruptly, the sea of people parted . . . and then there they were. Bella, with Nalla in her arms, Z standing beside his girls. Beth broke down all over again as the female came forward. God, it was impossible not to remember how Nalla had started this, putting into motion the need that had become undeniable. Bella was tearing up, too, as she stopped. “We just want to say yay!” At that moment, Nalla reached out to Beth, a gummy smile on her face, pure joy radiating out. No turning that down, nope, not at all. Beth took the little girl out of her mother’s arms and positioned her on her chest, capturing one of the pinwheeling hands and giving kisses, kisses, kisses. “You ready to be a big . . .” Beth glanced at Z and then her husband. “. . . a big sister?” Yes, Beth thought. Because that’s what the Brotherhood and their families were. Close as siblings, tighter than blood because they were chosen. “Yes, she is,” Bella said as she wiped under her eyes and looked back at Z. “She is so ready.” “My brother.” Z shoved out his palm, his scarred face in a half smile, his yellow eyes warm. “Congratulations.” Instead of shaking anything, Wrath shoved that ultrasound picture into his Brother’s face. “Do you see him? See my son? He’s big, right, Beth?” She kissed Nalla’s supersoft hair. “Yes.” “Big and healthy, right?” Beth laughed some more. “Big and healthy. Absolutely perfect.” “Perfect!” Wrath bellowed. “And this is a doctor saying it—I mean, she went to medical school.” Even Z started laughing at that point. Beth gave Nalla back to her parents. “And Dr. Sam told me she’s delivered over fifteen thousand babies over the course of her career—” “See!” Wrath yelled. “She knows these things. My son is perfect! Where’s the champagne? Fritz! Get the fucking champagne!

listen,z you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”a 14Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.b 15Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will,c we will live and do this or that.

THE GOSPEL CHANGES EVERYTHING The gospel is not just the ABCs but the A to Z of the Christian life. It is inaccurate to think the gospel is what saves non-Christians, and then Christians mature by trying hard to live according to biblical principles. It is more accurate to say that we are saved by believing the gospel, and then we are transformed in every part of our minds, hearts, and lives by believing the gospel more and more deeply as life goes on (see Rom 12:1 – 2; Phil 1:6; 3:13–14).

Oh, dear,” said Mom when I came downstairs. “You aren’t going to wear that to the dentist’s office, are you? Well, there’s no time to change. Let’s go.” “Mom,” I said. “Good morning. How are you doing? Listen, could I go to the dentist later? Important things to do today.” Mom wearily pointed to the yellow paper on the table that announced, THIS IS A 3-2-1 DAY, in bright red crayon. “Does that mean no, Mom?” I said. “Why don’t you just say so?” Mom shrugged her shoulders and looked at me sadly. “I’m sorry. You’ll have to go,” she said. “I can’t change the appointment now.” I picked up a napkin and scribbled a reply. SO LET’S GET MOVING. And we did, without even time for a piece of fruit. At Dr. Dory’s office, Ellen cried and fussed and had perfect teeth. I sat quietly through the whole exam and he found two cavities, my first. I was shocked! Mom was embarrassed. She pointed to the chart Dr. Dory keeps of all the kids who have perfect teeth. “Now you won’t get to be in the Great Teeth Club,” she said. “Maybe you need to brush longer. Ellen seems to spend more time at it than you.” I looked up at the bright, curved light over my head and thought about the sun shining on the even-tempered Turtle People. They would never get upset over teeth, such a small part of the big scheme of things.

Gil handed Henny one of the cushions and a one-pound coffee can from under the seat. Henny was very suspicious. “What’s this for?” he asked. “Why are you giving me this stuff?” “The cushion is for your sitter,” Gil said, “and the can is for the water.” “What water?” said Henny. He didn’t look too good. “Well, there’s bound to be a little extra water with the three of us sitting here,” said Gil. “And your friend hasn’t done much rowing. He splashes a bit over the side.” Henny glared at me. “Quit it,” he said. “Just quit splashing water into the boat.” I tried to be smooth. By the time we got out into the river, I was doing better. “Two steps forward, one step backward,” said Gil. “We aren’t making much progress against this current.” “I’ll go out a little farther,” I said. “Maybe the current won’t be so strong out there.” I felt very good about things. My rowing was getting better. We were closer to the bowl. The crew was busy and in high spirits. Gil was reading from The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Henny was searching his photographic memory for loose information. “Says here that one time, the expedition had nothing to eat but bear fat and candles,” said Gil. “Now that’s real interesting.” Henny sighed. “Sometimes they ate buffalo humps, and wolf meat, and a root called Wappato. Wappato is supposed to taste like potatoes. Boy, am I hungry. Did anybody bring a snack?” “There might be a few crackers under your seat,” said Gil. “Then again, there might not be.” “There is a box of Wheat Thins,” said Henny after he rummaged around under the seat. “It is soggy, dirty, crushed, and unfit for human consumption.” “I never eat them,” said Gil. “I feed them to the kingfishers. But if you’re really hungry, they’re better than candles.” Henny waved the box in the air. “Is anything going to go right on this trip?” he said. A sea gull swooped down and almost got the box. The crew was starting to feel the hardships. Desperation and hunger had set in. I figured the people from my island would look to the turtle for an answer to this situation, so I tried to do the same. The only thing I could come up with was that the armor on a turtle was much better protection than an old rowboat.

Do not assume that a source agrees with a writer when the source summarizes that writer’s line of reasoning. Quote only what a source believes, not its account of someone else’s beliefs, unless that account is relevant. 2.  Record why sources agree, because why they agree can be as important as why they don’t. Two psychologists might agree that teenage drinking is caused by social influences, but one might cite family background, the other peer pressure. 3.  Record the context of a quotation. When you note an important conclusion, record the author’s line of reasoning: Not Bartolli (p. 123): The war was caused … by Z. But    Bartolli: The war was caused by Y and Z (p. 123), but the most important was Z (p. 123), for two reasons: First,… (pp. 124–26); Second,… (p. 126) Even if you care only about a conclusion, you’ll use it more accurately if you record how a writer reached it. 4.  Record the scope and confidence of each statement. Do not make a source seem more certain or expansive than it is. The second sentence below doesn’t report the first fairly or accurately. One study on the perception of risk (Wilson 1988) suggests a correlation between high-stakes gambling and single-parent families. Wilson (1988) says single-parent families cause high-stakes gambling. 5.  Record how a source uses a statement. Note whether it’s an important claim, a minor point, a qualification or concession, and so on. Such distinctions help you avoid mistakes like this: Original by Jones: We cannot conclude that one event causes another because the second follows the first. Nor can statistical correlation prove causation. But no one who has studied the data doubts that smoking is a causal factor in lung cancer. Misleading report: Jones claims “we cannot conclude that one event causes another because the second follows the first. Nor can statistical correlation prove causation.” Therefore, statistical evidence is not a reliable indicator that smoking causes lung cancer.

Author’s Note This series of stories are set in Australia and use Aussie words, expressions and spelling. We say ‘mum’ to rhyme with ‘thumb’. Year 9 is the same as ninth grade and high school begins in Year 7 and goes all the way through to Year 12. Christmas is in the summer. We do maths, not math, and we spell analyse (and a bunch of other words) with an ‘s’, not a ‘z’. In fact, lots of our spelling is just slightly different, so don’t get worried if it’s not what you’re used to.

Let me tell you, son, that he who lies to his lawyer is a fool who’ll tell the truth to the judge. You have to speak plainly to a lawyer, who can then proceed to make things more complicated. If you want me to help you, you have to tell me everything, from A to Z, with your heart in hand, the way you would your confessor. You have to give me the name of the person who hired you to commit the crime. Of course it’ll be a person of some standing, in which case I’ll go to him to pay my respects. I won’t let him know that you told me he hired you. Trust me. I’ll tell him I’m coming to request his protection for a poor maligned youth. And I’ll make the necessary arrangements with him to settle the matter to our mutual satisfaction. And by saving himself, you see, he’ll also be saving you. Now if this escapade turns out to have been of your own doing, I still won’t drop you. I’ve gotten other clients out of worse predicaments…So long as you didn’t attack a person of standing, let me be clear, I promise to get you out of this mess. It’ll cost you, I’m sure you realize. You have to tell me the name of the injured party. And depending on his condition, status, and temperament, we’ll decide whether to restrain him with some protection or find a way to bring him up on criminal charges, to scare him off. Because if you know how to manipulate the decrees, no one’s guilty and no one’s innocent. As for the priest, he’ll keep his mouth shut if he knows what’s good for him. And if he’s hardheaded, there’s a remedy for that, too. There’s a way out of every predicament, but it takes a man like me. And your case is serious, I’m telling you, very serious. The decrees speak plainly: If this matter were to be decided in the courts, just between us, they’d lock you up and throw away the key. I’m speaking to you as a friend. You have to pay for your escapades. If you want to come out of this with your freedom, money, and reputation intact, you’re going to have to trust someone who cares about you, and do everything I say.

Brilliance. Sheer fucking brilliance. Conventional executions might have reinforced discipline, might have restored order from the top down, but by making us all accomplices, they held us together not just by fear, but by guilt as well. We could have said no, could have refused and been shot ourselves, but we didn’t. We went right along with it. We all made a conscious choice and because that choice carried such a high price, I don’t think anyone ever wanted to make another one again. We relinquished our freedom that day, and we were more than happy to see it go. From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.

It’s very important to realize that, contrary to traditional estimation in statistics, some queries may not be answerable under the current causal model, even after the collection of any amount of data. For example, if our model shows that both D and L depend on a third variable Z (say, the stage of a disease), and if we do not have any way to measure Z, then the query P(L | do(D)) cannot be answered. In that case it is a waste of time to collect data. Instead we need to go back and refine the model, either by adding new scientific knowledge that might allow us to estimate Z or by making simplifying assumptions (at the risk of being wrong)—for example, that the effect of Z on D is negligible.

Wouldn’t there be fingerprints? I mean, if someone did take the real jewel, they’d leave prints on the fake one, right?” No one spoke for a minute. Then Dr. Pitts smiled at Dink. “That’s an excellent idea,” he said. “And I think we should ask the police to look for fingerprints. They will, of course, find mine. But unless I miss my guess, no others.” “Why do you say that?” Ruth Rose asked. “Because, young lady,” Dr. Pitts said, “this thief was very clever. And clever thieves wear gloves.” Uncle Warren nodded at the phone. “Please call the police,” he told Dr. Pitts. “They will prove that Jean-Paul and James are innocent!” Dr. Pitts looked at Dink’s uncle. “Excuse me, sir, but there is another suspect.” “And who would that be?” Uncle Warren asked. “Yourself,” Dr. Pitts said quietly.

The “F Word” My cousin’s name, Farbod, means “Greatness.” When he moved to America, all the kids called him “Farthead.” My brother Farshid (“He Who Enlightens”) became “Fartshit.” The name of my friend Neggar means “Beloved,” although it can be more accurately translated as “She Whose Name Almost Incites Riots.” Her brother Arash (“Giver”) initially couldn’t understand why every time he’d say his name, people would laugh and ask him if it itched. All of us immigrants knew that moving to America would be fraught with challenges, but none of us thought that our names would be such an obstacle. How could our parents have ever imagined that someday we would end up in a country where monosyllabic names reign supreme, a land where “William” is shortened to “Bill,” where “Susan” becomes “Sue,” and “Richard” somehow evolves into “Dick”? America is a great country, but nobody without a mask and a cape has a z in his name. And have Americans ever realized the great scope of the guttural sounds they’re missing? Okay, so it has to do with linguistic roots, but I do believe this would be a richer country if all Americans could do a little tongue aerobics and learn to pronounce “kh,” a sound more commonly associated in this culture

From that moment on we lived in true freedom, the freedom to point to someone else and say “They told me to do it! It’s their fault, not mine.” The freedom, God help us, to say “I was only following orders.

Instead of saying, “Part of the reason I wasn’t able to get this in on time was that you waited until Friday afternoon to ask me to work on it,” say, “I’m totally committed to ensuring that this doesn’t happen again. We’ve identified three things that I need to do differently: [x, y, and z]. Something else that would be really helpful to me is if I had more lead time on the more complicated projects. If I can get the assignments on Wednesday instead of Friday, that would enable me to balance new projects with my current projects and other hard-to-move commitments. I don’t know to what extent that’s possible on your end. What are your thoughts on that?

When we fail to heed this command, we demonstrate we have little faith in Him because we are the idol of our own lives. And that is when big anxiety kicks in. Anxiety says, “I’ve got this. I am trusting myself.” God says, “I’ve got this. Trust me.” When you submit to God and allow Him to reign in your life, you cannot descend into anxiety. Here is how that works: z You read, study, and ponder God’s Word. z Your Bible teaches you to do what you can do to address the situation but trust God for the outcome. z Something challenging, hard or scary happens. z You remember that God is sovereignly controlling every single detail of your life. z You are calm in the storm. z The storm rages harder and you begin to worry, but you remind yourself that there is no need to be anxious because your King has all things under His sovereign control. z You are acting like the obedient servant whom God loves as He reigns in your life. z You have peace knowing that God works all things for your good and His glory. Perhaps you think this is too simple. Well, perhaps you have simply made your anxiety issue more complex than it needs to be.

Ken Blanchard is famous for saying ‘we need to catch people doing something right’. These performers may need your feedback as well!

How often have we said, “That's the way I am,” or, “That's the way it is”? What we are really saying is that it is what we “believe to be true for us.” Usually what we believe is only someone else's opinion we have accepted and incorporated into our own belief system. It fits in with other things we believe. If we were taught as children that the world is a frightening place, then everything we hear that fits in with that belief, we will accept as true for us. “Don't trust strangers,” “Don't go out at night,” “People cheat you,” etc. On the other hand, if we were taught early in life that the world is a safe and joyous place, then we would believe other things: “Love is everywhere,” “People are so friendly,” “Money comes to me easily,” and so on. Life experiences definitely mirror our beliefs. We seldom sit down and question our beliefs. For instance, I could ask myself, “Why do I believe it is difficult for me to learn? Is that really true? Is it true for me now? Where did that belief come from? Do I still believe it because a first-grade teacher told me so over and over? Would I be better off if I dropped that belief?” Stop for a moment and catch your thought. What are you thinking right now? If thoughts shape your life and experiences, would you want this thought to become true for you? If it is a thought of worry or anger or hurt or revenge, how do you think this thought will come back to you? If we want a joyous life, we must think joyous thoughts. Whatever we send out mentally or verbally will come back to us in like form. Take a little time to listen to the words you say. If you hear yourself saying something three times, write it down. It has become a pattern for you. At the end of a week, look at the list you have made, and you will see how your words fit your experiences. Be willing to change your words and thoughts and watch your life change. The way to control your life is to control your choice of words and thoughts. No one thinks in your mind but you.