| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: been lecturing and debating with no lack of spirit on the
platform, I have preferred to go without what I wanted at the
hotel rather than to ring and make the waiter fetch it.
Combative on the platform in defense of any cause I cared for, I
shrink from quarrel or disapproval in the house, and am a coward
at heart in private while a good fighter in public. How often
have I passed unhappy quarters of an hour screwing up my courage
to find fault with some subordinate whom my duty compelled me to
reprove, and how often have I jeered myself for a fraud as the
doughty platform combatant, when shrinking from blaming some lad
or lass for doing their work badly. An unkind look or word has
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;
Some friendship will it lend you 'gainst the tempest.
Repose you there, whilst I to this hard house
(More harder than the stones whereof 'tis rais'd,
Which even but now, demanding after you,
Denied me to come in) return, and force
Their scanted courtesy.
Lear. My wits begin to turn.
Come on, my boy. How dost, my boy? Art cold?
I am cold myself. Where is this straw, my fellow?
The art of our necessities is strange,
King Lear |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: The paroxysm gradually subsided, the sobs became less convulsive
and then ceased; by an odd but not quite unnatural
conjunction, the captain's soothing current of talk died away at
the same time and by proportional steps, and the pair remained
sunk in silence. The lagoon broke at their feet in petty
wavelets, and with a sound as delicate as a whisper; stars of all
degrees looked down on their own images in that vast mirror; and
the more angry colour of the Farallone's riding lamp burned in
the middle distance. For long they continued to gaze on the scene
before them, and hearken anxiously to the rustle and tinkle of
that miniature surf, or the more distant and loud reverberations
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