| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: strangely simple economy of the world people only get what they
give, and to those who have not enough imagination to penetrate the
mere outward of things, and feel pity, what pity can be given save
that of scorn?
I write this account of the mode of my being transferred here
simply that it should be realised how hard it has been for me to
get anything out of my punishment but bitterness and despair. I
have, however, to do it, and now and then I have moments of
submission and acceptance. All the spring may be hidden in the
single bud, and the low ground nest of the lark may hold the joy
that is to herald the feet of many rose-red dawns. So perhaps
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from 1984 by George Orwell: brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to
deny the evidence of your senses. In the end the Party would announce that
two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable
that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their
position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very
existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The
heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that
they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the
force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past
and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is
1984 |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: at the acknowledged and well-known connection between her father and a
woman to whom her mother-in-law and sister-in-law owed their ruin and
their sorrows. As may be supposed, Lisbeth took advantage of this to
see Valerie as often as possible.
Thus, about twenty months passed by, during which the Baroness
recovered her health, though her palsied trembling never left her. She
made herself familiar with her duties, which afforded her a noble
distraction from her sorrow and constant food for the divine goodness
of her heart. She also regarded it as an opportunity for finding her
husband in the course of one of those expeditions which took her into
every part of Paris.
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