each of us humans has a moment-if not many-in which we lapse. for some, the transgression involves sex. for others, simply doubt or a rage so all encompassing, it impels us to make irreversible decisions. but whatever the transgression is doesn't rea...
Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly witho...
Destiny is not always preordained. Life is about making choices. Our lives are the sum of all the choices we make, the bridges we cross, and the ones we burn. Our souls cast long shadows over many people, even after we are gone. Fate, luck, and provi...
The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking. Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, ‘If only I could light up now, it would...
When you’ve had a psychotic breakdown it’s always so difficult making that decision. You meet someone new and you wonder how much you should tell them? You wonder what that person’s threshold of ‘strange’ is, and at what point in my story w...
Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shal...
At last, somebody in line steps forward. “I can commit,” he says. He’s a tall, lean young man with a rifle slung over his back. “What’s your name?” Chris asks. “Andrew,” he replies. “And I’m in.” Chris nods. A few other guys ste...
One thing this night taught her beyond all doubt - all males were lunkheads, all of them. She recognized that protect the poor helpless girl and don’t worry her little wee head tone. “I’m not stupid. I’m not going to run into a situation I ha...
North Korean defectors often find it hard to settle down. It is not easy for somebody who’s escaped a totalitarian country to live in the free world. Defectors have to rediscover who they are in a world that offers endless possibilities. Choosing w...
And if you learn only one thing from the ensuing maybe let it be this: the police were not merely interested observers who occasionally witnessed criminality and were then basically compelled to make an arrest, rather the police had the special abili...
It is tempting when looking at the life of anyone who has committed suicide to read into the decision to die a vastly complex web of reasons; and, of course, such complexity is warranted. No one illness or event causes suicide; and certainly no one k...
Another way to be prepared is to think negatively. Yes, I'm a great optimist. but, when trying to make a decision, I often think of the worst case scenario. I call it 'the eaten by wolves factor.' If I do something, what's the most terrible thing tha...
Allowing yourself to stop reading a book - at page 25, 50, or even, less frequently, a few chapters from the end - is a rite of passage in a reader's life, the literary equivalent of a bar mitzvah or a communion, the moment at which you look at yours...
Mokona: Please! Fai is about to die! Fai: Y... You... can't... While I'm still ailve... Syaoran-kun's magic still lives. Even half of that power is too much... Nothing... will be able to stop him. Mokona: Kurogane: *punches hole in wall* Who told you...
Early on I realized that I had to hire people smarter and ore qualified than I was in a number of different fields, and I had to let go of a lot of decision-making. I can't tell you how hard that is. But if you've imprinted your values on the people ...
He was not being courageous as he bore the freezing stream for his wife and children. He simply chose between the lesser of two evils—the pain and suffering he would endure in the river, a physical pain that he could stand to bear, or the pain and ...
You must make a decision that you are going to move on. It wont happen automatically. You will have to rise up and say, ‘I don’t care how hard this is, I don’t care how disappointed I am, I’m not going to let this get the best of me. I’m mo...
There are responses which originate from joy. Intuition can also mean an instant recognition of a truth, sensing that you are doing the right thing in making a choice or decision even if it is not the immediately obvious option, or an experience of k...
Global citizenship means simply being willing to focus on the game, to notice the world and the people in it. It does not mean noticing your world, but the world. It means being conscious of the fact that you, and your country, are not the center of ...
Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random...
I think sometimes in literature we kind of police ourselves. I know a lot of people talked about Twilight, and they would say, oh, but the heroine, she lets this man make her decisions. And I thought, that may not be the particular fantasy or trope t...
