| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: He was proud of being always "all there."
He was abrupt in manner and grumpy in speech with the seamen. To
his successive captains, he was outwardly as deferential as he
knew how, and as a rule inwardly hostile--so very few seemed to
him of the "all there" kind. Of Lingard, with whom he had only
been a short time--having been picked up in Madras Roads out of a
home ship, which he had to leave after a thumping row with the
master--he generally approved, although he recognized with regret
that this man, like most others, had some absurd fads; he defined
them as "bottom-upwards notions."
He was a man--as there were many--of no particular value to
The Rescue |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: infirmity.
Now, whilst a very slight force is sufficient to produce very
great and constant effects, when it acts in harmony with natural
tendency and environment, every process, on the other hand, which
is opposed to the natural tendencies of man, or which does not
follow them closely, encounters a resistance which triumphs in the
last resort.
Everyday life gives us many examples. The university student,
when he gambles, risks on a single card the last remnant of his
allowance, and prepares for himself a thousand privations. Miners
and workmen at dangerous trades refuse to take warning by the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: extreme. One man, a master of a family in my neighbourhood, having
had the distemper, he thought he had it given him by a poor workman
whom he employed, and whom he went to his house to see, or went
for some work that he wanted to have finished; and he had some
apprehensions even while he was at the poor workman's door, but did
not discover it fully; but the next day it discovered itself, and he was
taken very in, upon which he immediately caused himself to be
carried into an outbuilding which he had in his yard, and where there
was a chamber over a workhouse (the man being a brazier). Here he
lay, and here he died, and would be tended by none of his neighbours,
but by a nurse from abroad; and would not suffer his wife, nor
A Journal of the Plague Year |
