| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: remembering; you would have understood that life in the lazaretto
is an ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit shrink, even
as his eye quails under the brightness of the sun; you would have
felt it was (even today) a pitiful place to visit and a hell to
dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a
little thing when compared with the pain, the pity, and the disgust
of the visitor's surroundings, and the atmosphere of affliction,
disease, and physical disgrace in which he breathes. I do not
think I am a man more than usually timid; but I never recall the
days and nights I spent upon that island promontory (eight days and
seven nights), without heartfelt thankfulness that I am somewhere
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: he was halfway to the steps. It did not strike him at the
time as being unusual, though afterward he remarked it.
Very softly he tiptoed up the stairs and along the gallery
to the door of his wife's boudoir. In his hand was a
heavy walking stick--in his heart, murder.
Olga was the first to see him. With a horrified shriek she
tore herself from Tarzan's arms, and the ape-man turned just
in time to ward with his arm a terrific blow that De Coude
had aimed at his head. Once, twice, three times the heavy
stick fell with lightning rapidity, and each blow aided in the
transition of the ape-man back to the primordial.
The Return of Tarzan |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Faith of Men by Jack London: of the raven call.
The Factor roused, not with the abrupt start of civilized man, but
with the swift and comprehensive glide from sleep to waking of the
savage. In the night-light he made out a dark object in the midst
of the grass and brought his gun to bear upon it. A second croak
began to rise, and he pulled the trigger. The crickets ceased from
their sing-song chant, the wildfowl from their squabbling, and the
raven croak broke midmost and died away in gasping silence.
John Fox ran to the spot and reached for the thing he had killed,
but his fingers closed on a coarse mop of hair and he turned
Snettishane's face upward to the starlight. He knew how a shotgun
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