Love

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Paul and Matthew Among Jews and Gentiles: Essays in Honor of Terence L. Donaldson (2021)

  Faith and obedience are, in this sense, two sides of the same coin. Thus the one calling himself a Jew must exercise his faith in God and the Torah so that he or she may remain faithful to the covenant. The faith and obedience required of the people of God has also a creational ideal of commitment to God the creator, rather than the created order. If Adam and Eve failed to remain in this setting of believing-obedience, Israel must avoid this path by living in complete devotion to Yahweh. Their salvation must be seen not in any meritorious work but in love, in obedience, in a heart entirely devoted to pleasing God. E. P. Sanders is on target when he concludes that in the book of Jubilees: Salvation is given graciously by God in his establishing the covenant with the fathers, a covenant which he will not forsake (I.18); individuals may, however, be excluded from Israel if they sin in such a way as to spurn the covenant itself. Those who are faithful and do not sin in such a way and who confess and repent for their transgressions constitute a kind of “true Israel,” although the term is not employed.11 9 The translator of this book in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha states this in the footnote to the title: “In order to provide a chronological framework for dealing with events covering a long period of time, the author has used a system based on multiples of seven, the number of days in the week. Seven years are treated as a week of years, and seven weeks of years equal a jubilee.” See Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 2, 52 n. 1b. 10 It is interesting to note how the author interprets the role of covenants in the Genesis-Exodus accounts and how to him humanity, or even animals, do not seem to occupy any part in God’s covenantal interest. Rather, the focus of the various covenants is deemed to be solely directed toward Israel. On more on the understanding of covenant in Jubilees see, among others, Annie Jaubert, La notion d’al iance dans le Judaïsme (Patristica Sorbonensia 6; Paris: Seuil, 1963), 90–115; Betsy Halpern-Amaru, Rewriting the Bible: Land and Covenant in Post-Biblical Jewish Literature (Valley Forge, PA:Trinity Press International, 1994), 25–54; Jacques T. A. G. M. van Ruiten, “The Covenant of Noah in Jubilees 6.1-38,” in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period (ed. Stanley Porter and Jacqueline de Roo; JSJSup 71; Leiden: Bril , 2003), 167–90; William Gilders, “The Concept of Covenant in Jubilees,” in Boccaccini and Ibba, Mosaic Torah, 178–92; and Ari Mermelstein, Creation, Covenant, and the Beginnings of Judaism: Reconceiving Historical Time in the Second Temple Period (JSJSup 168; Leiden: Bril , 2014), 88–132. 11 Paul and Palestinian Judaism, 370–1. 62 62 Paul and Matthew among Jews and Gentiles

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Even though I was safe—my back was exposed to the air and I was inches from oxygen—I gasped and lifted my face out of the water. My brother said, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” and I tried to explain but could not. A few seconds later, Rollo surfaced, grinning. “Did you see?” he asked. A theory about the end of everything: the heat death of the universe. Entropy will take over and matter will scatter and nothing will be anymore. Dream House as DestinationYou drive to Bloomington with her, because you love her and you want to deliver her safely. You don’t trust those airplanes to remind her how much she is loved. The Dream House looks just as you remember it. The pod full of her things has been delivered and sits in the yard like a shed. It occurs to you, when you open it, that someone could live in one of these, probably. A microapartment. Then you think about Narnia; the way Lucy enters the wardrobe and steps through those fur coats until she is in the snow, and there is the lamppost, and there is a whole new world frozen in a terrible winter by the White Witch. You unload it under the watchful eyes of her parents, who observe as you lift her tiny frame high to untie the mattress from the ceiling. She tells you later that they looked starry-eyed to see you picking her up like that—like you were some strapping lad showing off your strength. After you all go out to dinner, you fall into bed and cry and marvel, all at once. Dream House as UtopiaBloomington: even the name is a promise. (Living, unfurling, soft in your mouth.) Dream House as DoppelgängerWhen your cell phone rings in the late afternoon, you know what’s happening before you pick up. You do not believe in psychic powers, but still, you are certain. “I need to know this is real,” she says when you pick up. “I need to know that you’re in this for real.” “I am, I am.” “I just broke up with Val,” she says. “It’s just—it’s just clear from what’s been happening since she moved that this won’t work between us. We’re gonna stay friends, of course, and she adores you. But she’s going to go back to the East Coast.” You email Val, feeling strange. She writes back: “I hope eventually we can be really good friends. I want to be in your lives for a long time.” Afterward, you feel happy. Then you feel guilty for feeling happy, then happy again. You’ve won the game. You didn’t know you were playing, but you’ve won the game just the same. From now on, it will just be you and the woman in the Dream House.15 Just the two of you, together.16

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  And so when she entered public life at the age of ten, she naturally drifted beyond that restricted circle imposed on women. She could play many roles. As a dutiful Sforza, she could be the loyal wife. Naturally empathetic and caring, she could be the devoted mother. She felt great pleasure in being the most fashionable and beautiful young woman at the papal court. But when the actions of her husband appeared to doom her and her family, she felt herself called to play another role. Trained to think for herself and inspired by her father, she could turn into the daring soldier, bringing an entire city under her control. She could become the keen strategist, plotting several moves ahead in a crisis. She could lead her troops, sword in hand. As a young girl she had fantasized about playing these various roles, and it felt natural and deeply satisfying to do so in real life. We could say of Caterina that she had a feminine spirit with a pronounced masculine undertone, the reverse of her father. And these feminine and masculine traits were blended together, giving her a unique style of thinking and acting. When it came to ruling, she displayed a high degree of empathy, something quite unusual for the time. When plague struck Forlì, she comforted the sick, at great risk to her own life. She was willing to suffer the worst conditions in prison to safeguard the inheritance for her children, a rare act of self-sacrifice for a person of power. But at the same time she was a shrewd and tough negotiator, and she had no tolerance for the incompetent or the weak. She was ambitious and proud of it. In conflicts, she always strategized to outwit her aggressive male opponents and avoid bloodshed. With Cesare Borgia, she tried to lure him onto the drawbridge using her feminine wiles; later, she tried to lure him deeper and deeper into the castle, trapping him in a protracted battle, giving her allies plenty of time to rescue her. She nearly succeeded in both efforts. This ability to play many different roles, to blend the masculine with the feminine, was the source of her power. The only time she relinquished this was in her marriage to Giacomo Feo. When she fell in love with Feo, she was in a highly vulnerable position. The pressures on her had been immense—dealing with a hopeless and abusive husband, surviving the numerous pregnancies that had worn her down, holding together the tenuous political alliances she had built up. And so suddenly experiencing Feo’s adoring attention, it was natural for her to seek a respite from her burdens, to relinquish power and control for love. But in narrowing herself down to the role of the devoted wife, she had to repress her naturally expansive character. She had to expend her energy in placating her husband’s insecurities. In the process she lost all initiative and paid the price,

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Such an enduring task demanded nothing short of love, perhaps the same emotion that drives soldiers in the heat of battle to rescue fallen comrades, pulling them to safety even at the supreme risk to their own lives. And love, in the final analysis, may be our collective antidote—the salvation for a species with such a penchant for senseless killing and carnage. Love is the glue that holds family, tribes, and—perhaps in times of need—even societies together. It is also the potion that binds the human animal to the divine through the highest religious and spiritual feelings of oneness and connection. Was I, at the lake’s edge, witnessing an early precursor to that love supreme in the primitive instinctual programs that so nonchalantly inhibited the adult birds from exhibiting their normal voracious competitive appetites so that their young could fill their bellies first? An Open Window Science is our new religion and its holy water is disinfectant. —George Bernard Shaw In spite of persistent rejection of our animal nature, there was a vital and rich window of time during the twentieth century when six Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine were awarded on the subject of instincts. † Darwin, a century and a half ago, emphasized just how nuanced and intelligent instincts are. In Notebook M (1838) Darwin mused, “The origin of man is now proved. He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.” In this regard it was recently demonstrated that a mere one or two percentage points differentiates the human and chimpanzee genomes (with not much more distinguishing humans from other mammals). Indeed chimps can outperform college sophomores in a fairly sophisticated math exercise, and yet psychology, purportedly a natural science, still seems to favor overlooking the reality that we are, in the last analysis, animals. Even our sense of wonder may be shared by our nearest cousins, the apes. Jane Goodall, a leading primatologist, has suggested the existence of primal spiritual feelings in the chimps she had carefully studied over many years. Here she describes the behaviors of a troupe visiting an especially beautiful place with a waterfall and river: For me, it is a magical place, and a spiritual one. And sometimes, as they approach, the chimpanzees display in slow, rhythmic motion along the river bed. They pick up and throw great rocks and branches. They leap to seize the hanging vines, and swing out over the stream in the spray-drenched wind until it seems the slender stems must snap or be torn from their lofty moorings. For ten minutes or more they may perform this magnificent “dance.” Why? Is it not possible that the chimpanzees are responding to some feeling like awe? A feeling generated by the mystery of the water; water that seems alive, always rushing past yet never going, always the same yet ever different.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Fourthly, the effect of this sacrament is considered from the species under which it is given. Hence Augustine says (Tract. xxvi in Joan.): “Our Lord betokened His body and blood in things which out of many units are made into some one whole: for out of many grains is one thing made,” viz. bread; “and many grapes flow into one thing,” viz. wine. And therefore he observes elsewhere (Tract. xxvi in Joan.): “O sacrament of piety, O sign of unity, O bond of charity!” And since Christ and His Passion are the cause of grace. and since spiritual refreshment, and charity cannot be without grace, it is clear from all that has been set forth that this sacrament bestows grace. Reply to Objection 1: This sacrament has of itself the power of bestowing grace; nor does anyone possess grace before receiving this sacrament except from some desire thereof; from his own desire, as in the case of the adult. or from the Church’s desire in the case of children, as stated above ([4617]Q[73], A[3]). Hence it is due to the efficacy of its power, that even from desire thereof a man procures grace whereby he is enabled to lead the spiritual life. It remains, then, that when the sacrament itself is really received, grace is increased, and the spiritual life perfected: yet in different fashion from the sacrament of Confirmation, in which grace is increased and perfected for resisting the outward assaults of Christ’s enemies. But by this sacrament grace receives increase, and the spiritual life is perfected, so that man may stand perfect in himself by union with God. Reply to Objection 2: This sacrament confers grace spiritually together with the virtue of charity. Hence Damascene (De Fide Orth. iv) compares this sacrament to the burning coal which Isaias saw (Is. 6:6): “For a live ember is not simply wood, but wood united to fire; so also the bread of communion is not simple bread but bread united with the Godhead.” But as Gregory observes in a Homily for Pentecost, “God’s love is never idle; for, wherever it is it does great works.” And consequently through this sacrament, as far as its power is concerned, not only is the habit of grace and of virtue bestowed, but it is furthermore aroused to act, according to 2 Cor. 5:14: “The charity of Christ presseth us.” Hence it is that the soul is spiritually nourished through the power of this sacrament, by being spiritually gladdened, and as it were inebriated with the sweetness of the Divine goodness, according to Cant 5:1: “Eat, O friends, and drink, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, This sacrament is both a sacrifice and a sacrament. it has the nature of a sacrifice inasmuch as it is offered up; and it has the nature of a sacrament inasmuch as it is received. And therefore it has the effect of a sacrament in the recipient, and the effect of a sacrifice in the offerer, or in them for whom it is offered. If, then, it be considered as a sacrament, it produces its effect in two ways: first of all directly through the power of the sacrament; secondly as by a kind of concomitance, as was said above regarding what is contained in the sacrament ([4626]Q[76], AA[1],2). Through the power of the sacrament it produces directly that effect for which it was instituted. Now it was instituted not for satisfaction, but for nourishing spiritually through union between Christ and His members, as nourishment is united with the person nourished. But because this union is the effect of charity, from the fervor of which man obtains forgiveness, not only of guilt but also of punishment, hence it is that as a consequence, and by concomitance with the chief effect, man obtains forgiveness of the punishment, not indeed of the entire punishment, but according to the measure of his devotion and fervor. But in so far as it is a sacrifice, it has a satisfactory power. Yet in satisfaction, the affection of the offerer is weighed rather than the quantity of the offering. Hence our Lord says (Mk. 12:43: cf. Lk. 21:4) of the widow who offered “two mites” that she “cast in more than all.” Therefore, although this offering suffices of its own quantity to satisfy for all punishment, yet it becomes satisfactory for them for whom it is offered, or even for the offerers, according to the measure of their devotion, and not for the whole punishment. Reply to Objection 1: The sacrament of Baptism is directly ordained for the remission of punishment and guilt: not so the Eucharist, because Baptism is given to man as dying with Christ, whereas the Eucharist is given as by way of nourishing and perfecting him through Christ. Consequently there is no parallel. Reply to Objection 2: Those other sacrifices and oblations did not effect the forgiveness of the whole punishment, neither as to the quantity of the thing offered, as this sacrament does, nor as to personal devotion; from which it comes to pass that even here the whole punishment is not taken away. Reply to Objection 3: If part of the punishment and not the whole be taken away by this sacrament, it is due to a defect not on the part of Christ’s power, but on the part of man’s devotion.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, This effect of mutual indwelling may be understood as referring both to the apprehensive and to the appetitive power. Because, as to the apprehensive power, the beloved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as the beloved abides in the apprehension of the lover, according to Phil. 1:7, “For that I have you in my heart”: while the lover is said to be in the beloved, according to apprehension, inasmuch as the lover is not satisfied with a superficial apprehension of the beloved, but strives to gain an intimate knowledge of everything pertaining to the beloved, so as to penetrate into his very soul. Thus it is written concerning the Holy Ghost, Who is God’s Love, that He “searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). As the appetitive power, the object loved is said to be in the lover, inasmuch as it is in his affections, by a kind of complacency: causing him either to take pleasure in it, or in its good, when present; or, in the absence of the object loved, by his longing, to tend towards it with the love of concupiscence, or towards the good that he wills to the beloved, with the love of friendship: not indeed from any extrinsic cause (as when we desire one thing on account of another, or wish good to another on account of something else), but because the complacency in the beloved is rooted in the lover’s heart. For this reason we speak of love as being “intimate”; and “of the bowels of charity.” On the other hand, the lover is in the beloved, by the love of concupiscence and by the love of friendship, but not in the same way. For the love of concupiscence is not satisfied with any external or superficial possession or enjoyment of the beloved; but seeks to possess the beloved perfectly, by penetrating into his heart, as it were. Whereas, in the love of friendship, the lover is in the beloved, inasmuch as he reckons what is good or evil to his friend, as being so to himself; and his friend’s will as his own, so that it seems as though he felt the good or suffered the evil in the person of his friend. Hence it is proper to friends “to desire the same things, and to grieve and rejoice at the same,” as the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 3 and Rhet. ii, 4). Consequently in so far as he reckons what affects his friend as affecting himself, the lover seems to be in the beloved, as though he were become one with him: but in so far as, on the other hand, he wills and acts for his friend’s sake as for his own sake, looking on his friend as identified with himself, thus the beloved is in the lover.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Dream House as Menagerie A line has been crossed—you’ve fallen in love. “I have to talk to Val,” she says. “I have to tell her, I have to figure this out. We’ve been together for three years,” she finishes, by way of explanation. And though everything has been on the up-and-up, you feel a weird stab of guilt. This is how emotions work, right? They get tangled and complicated? They take on their own life? Trying to control them is like trying to control a wild animal: no matter how much you think you’ve taught them, they’re willful. They have minds of their own. That’s the beauty of wildness. Dream House as Star-Crossed Lovers One day, a letter arrives. She is rejected from Iowa’s graduate writing program but accepted into Indiana’s. She tells you this with sorrow, over the phone even though you live less than a mile apart. You cry in the privacy of your bedroom. This was inevitable, you think. It’s been great, but it’s over. A few hours later, she knocks on your door. In your bedroom, she kisses you and explains: Val is going to leave New York and come live with her in Indiana. But she wants you to come and visit, to continue dating. “Val says we can try it,” she says. “I just—I think I’ve always been polyamorous, and it makes so much sense. I want to be with both of you. I want to make this work. Is that crazy?” “No,” you say, wiping the tears from your glasses. “I can’t wait to try.”

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  I was talking last week with a couple whom I’ve known for about four years. The wife has cancer. It came on strong, she received treatment, it came back, she received more treatment. If you have been down the cancer road yourself or with someone you’re close to, you know what I’m talking about. A roller coaster. Often when I run into this couple, they give me an update on how she’s doing, how their last visit to the doctor went, what the latest test scores were. She’s amazing—the strength of her spirit, her faith—but I’m always struck as well by his attitude toward her. His body language, the way he looks at her, his involvement with the doctors and the tests and the procedures—you can’t be around the two of them for very long before you become convinced he’d take the cancer for her if he could. Agape. Imagine a wife whose husband isn’t the man she wishes he was. He lets her down, again and again and again. She begins to withdraw, to retreat, and to hold his failures against him. If they are even capable of discussing the problems between them, often she will have a list of things she wishes he did. And so this puts him in an awkward position. If he does the things on the list, she won’t know why he’s doing them. Because it just comes naturally? Or because he’s trying to score points with her? From her perspective, his motives are unclear. And so she develops a scorecard, usually subconsciously. If he’s good, she comes near, but if he fails, she stays at a distance. Her affection, her actions, and ultimately her love become conditional. Not agape. Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re worthy. Agape makes them worthy by the strength and power of its love. Agape doesn’t love somebody because they’re beautiful. Agape loves in such a way that it makes them beautiful. There is a love because, love in order to, love for the purpose of, and then there is love, period.7 Agape doesn’t need a reason. Pulled into the Future It’s written in the book of Romans that Christ died “while we were still sinners.”8 And in the letter to the Corinthians, it’s written, “Think of what you were when you were called.”9 And the prophet Jeremiah is told that God knew him and set him apart before he was born.10 Jesus reminds his disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”11 People in the scriptures essentially are loved into their futures.12 Think of how many of us had encouraging or affirming or inspiring words spoken to us years ago about our worth, our value, our future, and how those words shaped us. We often carry those words of agape around with us our whole lives.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  A slight abrupt approach on my part toward the female would evoke frightening, hissing, aggressive reactions—unexpected for these otherwise staid and regal birds. As they drift peacefully by, I carefully toss out some small pieces of bread. It is curious to observe how the adults stand back, carefully monitoring their chicks while allowing them to peck and feast. Only after they have filled their fluffy bellies do the adults take some morsels for themselves. So it seems they not only ferociously protect their young from outside harm but with patient restraint show an uncharacteristic deference, protecting them from their own gluttony. When they are not parents, these gracious lily-white swans show their true colors as nasty aggressive beasts, jousting with one another for any crumbs thrown their way. In mammalian development the instincts for protection and care were greatly extended and elaborated, flourishing with a wide range of nurturing behaviors. Then, in the evolution of primates and Homo sapiens, care of the young made a monumental jump; this involved paradigm shifts such as diverse altruistic and mutually supportive social behaviors. Then bonding, through direct physical touch and eye contact, promoted focus on one potential mating partner at a time. And that procreative connection between male and female—the one above all others—was cemented by the orgasm’s commanding neurochemical surge. * We find ourselves, consequently, rising to the perennial saga of mustering the courage to love that which time will claim for its own; love, sexuality and loss were now forever and intrinsically entwined, becoming the broad business of the world’s poetry, art, music and prose. We humans do not hesitate to speak of the almost superhuman power of unconditional parental love; otherwise how could we explain the profound feelings and actions we take toward our newborns, with their slimy, wrinkled-prune bodies that know little else but to defecate, urinate and wail in ear-piercing shrieks of frantic discomfort? We gaze at them, listen, coo and smell; we hold and rock them; we become hopelessly and ridiculously smitten in love. And this, as any parent knows, is only just the beginning of trial by fire and infinite patience. Evolution has given us the most compelling of all feelings to direct and organize the critical acts of care and nurturance. The Darwinian emotions and behaviors of “love” have evolved, presumably, for the protection and care of the babies in a species bearing one offspring and compressing an eighteen-month gestation (arguably because of its large head) into nine. For these underdeveloped creatures to survive, special, extended, and therefore highly motivated caregiving behaviors were required.

• From Stripped: Las Vegas (2021)

  And had he not came, I probably wouldn't be sitting in this chair, saying this story today because I was on life support for three days, and just waking up, that's nothing, but God, depression does not belong to a race. It comes for everybody and it comes in many different ways. Suicide is definitely not the answer. [upbeat music] [birds chirping] - Bow slightly, three, two. [camera snapping] Shit. [placid music] - I am fortunate that I have a partner in my life. My partner is a photographer. [camera snapping] We have a lot of fun together, we laugh a lot. [laughs] I cannot laugh, okay [laughs]. Shut up [laughs]. [birds chirping] We're both competitive. We also clash because of that, because he's a power dude and I'm a power woman. Sometimes we're at odds. We can go all day about the stupid TV. You wanna know how much I disliked the TV, because I was happily on my way to go get the drill, remember? And then you came over and tried to rub up behind me, like, babe, can I go next door and buy the TV? And remember I brought the drill over there, and we've now been to three separate fucking Walmarts where the drill doesn't grab the bit. - So, that's you hate of my TV, it's got to do with the drill? - Yeah, your TV is, yeah. [placid music] Okay, so, we're gonna put that there, I don't want, babe, stop, no. - How much I'm putting [mumbles]. [upbeat music] [bottle squirting] [Galaxciii laughing] [upbeat music] - I love bonding with my sister, it's a lot of fun. It's great to know that she helps me in a lot of different areas, I help her in a lot of different. [cards thumping] Oh, yeah. We used to always play cards together actually before, even with our mom, we would play cards. So when she comes over and we get to do that, it's super cool. [cards thumping] - [Angel] Shit, wait, whoa. - Don't fuck around, I know what you've got. [Angel and Galaxciii laughing] - I thought you had a Jack, why did I think you had a Jack? - I don't know, you saw what I had too. - I did, stupid. [upbeat music] - Don't shoulder mount and Superman, if anything, shoulder mount, leg hang, grab, Superman. - Oh, okay, let's try that, let's try that, okay. - Leg hang. - Rob. - Up. - Bring it in, okay. - Up, grab. - Superman. - Superman, don't lock your feet, don't lock your feet. - See, and that is where I get stuck. - Point your toes, grab yourself up. - And that's where I get stuck. - She doesn't really do pole tricks that much anymore, but she's very experienced, so when she does, she's been doing this a lot longer than me.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  That’s when I started playing poker as something to do in the meantime. This was a decade before poker became ubiquitous on television and before internet poker was a thing. For most people, it probably never crossed their mind that poker could even be a job. But it just so happened that my brother, Howard Lederer, had already been playing poker for ten years, earning a living in New York in high-stakes games that included some of the best players on the East Coast. He had also already achieved success on a bigger stage, having made the final table of the annual World Series of Poker Main Event in Las Vegas at the age of twenty-three, becoming, at the time, the youngest player to ever have achieved that. While I was in graduate school, he started offering to fly me out and put me up at the Golden Nugget to hang out with him during his annual trek to the World Series. I jumped at the opportunity since I obviously couldn’t afford a vacation like that on my own. It was on those trips that I first tried my hand at some low-stakes poker. Having watched my brother play for hours when I was in college, when we both lived in New York, I understood enough about the game to have some modest success. When I was abruptly forced to take a leave from academics, it was my brother who suggested that I play poker to make ends meet, until I could finish my dissertation and get back on the academic track. My circumstances imposed a lot of limits on what I could do to earn a living. I didn’t know how I was going to feel from day to day, so I needed flexible hours. I fully intended to become a professor sometime in the next year, so I also needed to do something that I could easily quit when that time came. Poker fit my needs well. If there’s a game going on, you can play or not play whenever you want. You can pick which days you work, what time you start, and when you want to leave the game. And if you want to quit poker for something else, you don’t have to give notice or worry you’re inconveniencing someone who’s depending on you. The rest of my story is pretty well known. I fell in love with the challenges of poker, even the version being played in the place I started, the smoky basement of a bar in Billings, Montana. I had been studying learning and cognition and poker was a real-life, high-stakes application of those subjects. I loved the constant test of excelling in an environment with so much uncertainty, especially figuring out how to overcome the very same biases that we’ve talked about in this book. I didn’t go back to Penn the next spring . . . or the spring after that.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  Tom Petty said, “You just couldn’t help but love her. John so depended on June, and he so bounced everything off June. It was just such a deep love that it was great to see how the two of them were such a team, really involved in everything together, including the music.” According to Benmont Tench, “She was such a delight . . . He was kind of ‘the man in black’ and she was this entirely different light, and it was wonderful the way that they fit together.” Here are people in their seventies who have been married for well over thirty years, and the thing that everybody who spent time with them mentions is the love between the two of them. Whatever it is that they had, it spread. It spilled over. It couldn’t be contained by just the two of them. It affected those around them. It inspired those around them. Maybe when we meet older couples who obviously still love each other and love being married to each other, we’re inspired because so many things around us are in the endless process of falling apart. When something isn’t dying but it’s going the other way, it’s growing. It’s not losing life, it’s gaining life. What is it about their marriage that inspires us? Is there something that a couple can do now so that people will talk about them someday like the way they talk about Johnny and June Cash? To find some answers, we need to go back to the garden of Eden, to God declaring everything “good.” The only thing God declares “not good” is Adam’s being alone. None of the animals fit with Adam.2 None of them are adequate to be his partner. After naming them all, he is still lonely. It’s in this context that God announces the need for a woman. There’s a mission here. Adam has been commanded to watch over the earth and manage it and creatively order it. Adam has something to do, and it’s not good for him to do it alone. So God says, “I will make a helper suitable for him.”3 The word helper is the word ezer in the Hebrew language. We can find it in Psalm 121: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help [ezer] come from? My help comes from the Lord.”4 Here it is in Psalm 89, where the words of God are recorded: “I have bestowed strength [ezer] on a warrior.”5 In Psalm 121, the word refers to help that comes from God. In Psalm 89, ezer means strength. To give more depth to the phrase, notice what Adam says about this woman: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”6 “Bones” is a way of talking about strength, and “flesh” is a way of talking about weakness. He’s essentially saying, “Where I am weak, she is strong, and where she is weak, I am strong.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  The entire family was spiraling downward at an alarming rate, and the neighborhood they lived in only made it worse. The father and Alexander had recently moved out. Anton decided he needed to do the opposite—move into the cramped room and become the catalyst for change. He would not preach or criticize but rather set the proper example. What mattered was keeping the family together and elevating their spirits. To his overwhelmed mother and sister he announced that he would take charge of the housework. Seeing Anton cleaning and ironing, his brothers now agreed to share in these duties. He scrimped and saved from his own medical school scholarship and got more money from his father and Alexander. With this money he put Mikhail, Ivan, and Maria back into school. He managed to find his father a better job. Using his father’s money and his own savings, he was able to move the entire family to a much larger apartment with a view. He worked to improve all aspects of their lives. He got his brothers and sister to read books he had chosen, and well into the night they would discuss and argue the latest findings in science and philosophical questions. Slowly they all bonded on a much deeper level, and they began to refer to him as Papa Antosha, the leader of the family. The complaining and self-pitying attitude he had first encountered had mostly disappeared. His two younger brothers now talked excitedly about their future careers. Anton’s greatest project was to reform Alexander, whom he considered the most gifted yet troubled member of the family. Once Alexander came home completely drunk, began to insult the mother and sister, and threatened to smash Anton’s face in. The family had become resigned to these tirades, but Anton would not tolerate this. He told Alexander the next day that if he ever yelled at another family member, he would lock him out and disavow him as a brother. He was to treat his mother and sister with respect and not blame the father for his turning to drink and womanizing. He must have some dignity—dress well and take care of himself. That was the new family code. Alexander apologized and his behavior improved, but it was a continual battle that demanded all of Anton’s patience and love, for the self-destructive streak in the Chekhovs was deeply ingrained. It had led Nikolai to an early death from alcoholism, and without constant attention Alexander could easily follow the same path. Slowly Anton weaned him from drinking and helped him with his journalistic career, and eventually Alexander settled into a quiet and satisfying life. Sometime in 1884, Anton had begun to spit blood, and it was apparent to him that he had the preliminary signs of tuberculosis. He refused to submit to the examination of a fellow doctor.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  What if that woman, the one with the husband who constantly disappoints her, what if she treated him as if he already were the man she wishes he was? What if she agapes him exactly as he is, today, with all of his flaws? If you are him, which is more motivating: being reminded of all of your failures and shortcomings, or being loved as if you’re a great man? This idea that we can be pulled into our futures appears throughout the Bible. Often the writer Paul starts with the underlying theology and foundation and then works his way to the practical examples of how to actually live these beliefs out every day. The book of Ephesians follows this pattern, with a compelling twist. The first three chapters are full of statements about who these Christians are, what their true identity is as followers of Jesus. Paul tells them they’re blessed, chosen, predestined, given, redeemed, forgiven, included, marked, been made alive, saved, raised up, seated with, created, brought near; they are fellow citizens, they are members, they are being built together. It’s verse after verse of description of who they are in God’s eyes. For three chapters, Paul goes on about who they already are, what’s already been done for them, what’s already true. He doesn’t give his readers one command for the first half of the letter. He doesn’t tell them to do anything. He tells them who they are and speaks to them of their identity in Christ. It isn’t until chapter four that anybody is told to do anything. Paul lays it out in this order because our understanding of how God sees us will shape everything about how we live. What we do comes out of who we believe we are.13 Agape shakes us. It’s too good to be true. Or maybe you could say it’s good enough to actually be true. It affects how we live, how we act, how we think about ourselves. For God so agaped the world . . . And so the man is commanded to agape the woman with the same kind of love that God has for all people everywhere. It’s a big task the man is given, and it’s reflected in the number of words in the passage. In the Greek, the command for the woman is 47 words long, while the commands for the man are 143 words long. The onus here is on the man to love with the kind of love that will go all the way to death if it has to. What if she were loved like this? Do you realize that you are worth dying for? You don’t need to give yourself away to someone who won’t give himself to you. You don’t need to use your body to get what you need. It’s a cop-out for not being a certain kind of woman—a woman of dignity and honor.14

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  It’s true that, in Vietnamese, we rarely say I love you, and when we do, it is almost always in English. Care and love, for us, are pronounced clearest through service: plucking white hairs, pressing yourself on your son to absorb a plane’s turbulence and, therefore, his fear. Or now—as Lan called to me, “Little Dog, get over here and help me help your mother.” And we knelt on each side of you, rolling out the hardened cords in your upper arms, then down to your wrists, your fingers. For a moment almost too brief to matter, this made sense—that three people on the floor, connected to each other by touch, made something like the word family. You groaned with relief as we worked your muscles loose, unraveling you with nothing but our own weight. You lifted your finger and, speaking into the blanket, said, “Am I happy?” It wasn’t until I saw the mood ring that I realized you were asking me, once more, to interpret another portion of America. Before I could answer, Lan thrust her hand before my nose. “Check me too, Little Dog—am I happy?” It could be, in writing you here, I am writing to everyone—for how can there be a private space if there is no safe space, if a boy’s name can both shield him and turn him into an animal at once? “Yes. You’re both happy,” I answered, knowing nothing. “You’re both happy, Ma. Yes,” I said again. Because gunshots, lies, and oxtail—or whatever you want to call your god—should say Yes over and over, in cycles, in spirals, with no other reason but to hear itself exist. Because love, at its best, repeats itself. Shouldn’t it? “I’m happy!” Lan threw her arms in the air. “I’m happy on my boat. My boat, see?” She pointed to your arms, splayed out like oars, she and I on each side. I looked down and saw it, the brown, yellowish floorboards swirling into muddy currents. I saw the weak ebb thick with grease and dead grass. We weren’t rowing, but adrift. We were clinging to a mother the size of a raft until the mother beneath us grew stiff with sleep. And we soon fell silent as the raft took us all down this great brown river called America, finally happy. It is a beautiful country depending on where you look. Depending on where you look you might see the woman waiting on the shoulder of the dirt road, an infant girl wrapped in a sky-blue shawl in her arms. She rocks her hips, cups the girl’s head. You were born, the woman thinks, because no one else was coming. Because no one else is coming, she begins to hum.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  He immediately fell in love with his product and that feeling intensified when he compared it to Asana, a similar type of product that he immediately described as “ugly,” “complicated,” and “hard to use.” Flow was a beautiful, functional coffee mug, while Asana was a candy bar he wouldn’t touch. It’s hard to say whether his belief in the value of Flow was reasonable at the beginning, but it certainly wasn’t reasonable during the last several years of his commitment to the losing venture. The endowment effect was clearly causing Wilkinson to overvalue his product, but you can also see how this mixed with the sunk cost effect to create a very destructive cognitive brew. When he was at the point where he had already decided to scale back his commitment to Flow, he nevertheless turned down an offer to sell it for $6 million, because that wouldn’t allow him to recoup all of his $11 million in losses. The endowment effect adds more mass to the katamari, beyond what is already added by the sunk cost effect. As you start on a course of action and as you make subsequent decisions to continue on that course of action, not only are you accumulating more sunk costs, but you’re becoming more endowed to your ideas, to the belief that you’re on the right course. As you build things, whether they’re train tracks, or bookshelves, or relationships, or essays that you’ve written for classes, the endowment effect gaffs the scale even more, further escalating our commitment to failing causes. Pro Sports Teams and Their Escalating Commitment to High Draft PicksAfter two decades of exploration of escalation of commitment in the lab, Barry Staw set out to validate his findings in the field. One of the first places he looked was in professional sports decisions about roster management. In a 1995 study, Staw and Ha Hoang explored whether there was an effect of a player’s draft order on their subsequent playing time and career length in the NBA, independent of their skill level. When an NBA team uses a high draft pick to acquire a player, this is a real-world, high-stakes decision where sunk cost and endowment are potential issues. Spending a high draft pick to acquire a player burns a valuable, limited resource and comes with a higher salary paid to that player. Endowment also comes into play because teams are making a very public decision, a decision that they own. Because the teams with the worst records receive the highest picks, their first-round pick very clearly links the team’s future with that player. Would sunk cost and endowment influence future decisions to play and retain those highly drafted players more than other equally productive players? You might be surprised, given the strong incentives of NBA teams to field their best players, that the answer is yes. The NBA and other professional sports leagues offer a unique environment in which to study quitting behavior.

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  A marriage is a sacred, holy thing, and it needs to be treated with respect and honor. They have lost the awareness of just what it is they have, and they’re suffering. Actually, lots of people are suffering. This is why marriage counseling is so powerful. It’s two people who are aware of what they have and are willing to protect it and care for it and do whatever it takes to make it better. Several years ago, I was teaching in our church from the book of Exodus about the chuppah. I had a prayer shawl with me and showed how they would make a canopy out of it and how the bride and groom would stand under it when they exchanged their vows. I got to the end of the teaching and had this sense that something was missing. That I wasn’t finished. I then invited people to the stage to stand under the prayer shawl. People started coming. A married couple would come down, the man obviously being dragged by the woman, but the moment they stood under the chuppah, the man would start crying. People had strong, emotional responses to simply standing under a sheet. I met a man the other day who reminded me that it was that moment, five years ago, that changed the whole way he thought about what it meant to give himself to the woman who was his girlfriend at the time, and is now his wife, to love her and devote himself to this sacred, holy thing called marriage. He wanted me to know that it changed his life. Standing under a sheet of fabric for a few moments. It’s just a prayer shawl, right? A towel on four sticks, correct? It’s a chuppah, but maybe it’s more than a chuppah. CHAPTER EIGHT JOHNNY AND JUNE Somebody recently gave me the Johnny Cash Unearthed box set.1 There’s around a hundred songs on five CDs, all recorded in the last ten years of Johnny Cash’s life. With the box set came a book, and it’s fascinating reading. It covers how Johnny Cash’s career was revitalized in his later years by producer Rick Rubin, how he would sit for hours at the microphone strumming his guitar and playing the hymns his mother taught him, how he gained a whole new audience of people in their twenties and thirties when he was in his seventies. But what struck me most were the interviews with the various musicians who consistently mentioned the love between Johnny Cash and his wife, June Carter Cash. What I’ve come across in everything I’ve ever read about him or by him is that their love grew over the years. They were more in love in their sixties and seventies than ever. Their marriage got better and better and better. They were more in love as the years went by.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  Despite the fact that you were the same age, you felt like she was older than you: wiser, more experienced, worldlier. She’d worked in publishing, she’d lived abroad, she spoke fluent French. She’d lived in New York and been to launch parties for literary magazines. And, it turned out, she had a weakness for curvy-to-fat brunettes in glasses. God herself couldn’t have planned it better. Dream House as DreamboatYou love writing across from her, the two of you tapping away with verve and purpose, and occasionally peeking over the edges of your laptops at each other with goofily contorted faces. When you go out to dinner, she orders tuna sashimi and insists on placing it on your tongue. It is sturdy, labial. It melts there. She orders dirty vodka martinis and you come to love their brine. She reads your stories, marvels at the beauty of your sentences. You listen to her read an old essay about how her parents never let her eat sugary cereal. You tell her, often, how hysterically funny she is. Dream House as Luck of the DrawPart of the problem was, as a weird fat girl, you felt lucky. She did what you’d wished a million others had done—looked past arbitrary markers of social currency and seen your brain and ferocious talent and quick wit and pugnacious approach to assholes. When you started writing about fatness—a long time ago, in your LiveJournal—a commenter said to you that you were pretty and smart and charming, but as long as you were zaftig you’d never have your choice of lovers. You remember feeling outrage, and then processing the reality, the practicality, of what he’d said. You were so angry at the world. You wondered, when she came along, if this was what most people got to experience in their lives: a straight line from want to satisfaction; desire manifested and satisfied in reasonable succession. This had never been the case before; it had always been fraught. How many times had you said, “If I just looked a little different, I’d be drowning in love”? Now you got to drown without needing to change a single cell. Lucky you. Dream House as Road Trip to SavannahIt was your idea to go to Georgia over spring break. You’ve never been to the South, not properly, and you’re writing a story about Juliette Gordon Low and her house in Savannah. It’s a twelve-hour drive, a sneeze. Plus, it’s March, and freezing, and it’s been a long winter. You want some sun. So you ask her if she’d like to come with you. She says yes. You buy new underwear at the mall.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Why should he expect her to suddenly change? His demands were almost sadistic. He could have simply explained his own side without demanding that she follow him, even expressing his understanding of her own position and needs. That would have revealed true spirituality on his part. And she, instead of focusing only on his hypocrisy, could have seen a man who was clearly unhappy with himself, someone who had never felt loved enough since early childhood and who was undergoing a very real personal crisis. She could have offered her love and support for his new life while gently declining to follow him all the way. Such use of empathy has the opposite effect of mutual narcissism. Coming from one side, it tends to soften the other one up and invite his or her empathy as well. It is hard to stay in one’s defensive position when the other person is seeing and expressing your side and entering your spirit. It beckons you to do the same. Secretly people yearn to let go of their resistance. It is exhausting to continually be so defensive and suspicious. The key to employing empathy within a relationship is to understand the value system of the other person, which inevitably is different from yours. What they interpret as signs of love or attention or generosity tends to diverge from your way of thinking. These value systems are largely formed in early childhood and are not consciously created by people. Keeping in mind their value system will allow you to enter their spirit and perspective precisely in the moment you would normally turn defensive. Even deep narcissists can be pulled out of their shell in this way, because such attention is so rare. Measure all of your relationships on the narcissism spectrum. It is not one person or the other but the dynamic itself that must be altered. 4. The Healthy Narcissist—the Mood Reader. In October of 1915, the great English explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1874–1922) ordered the abandonment of the ship Endurance , which had been trapped in an ice floe in Antarctica for over eight months and was beginning to take on water. For Shackleton this meant he essentially had to give up on his great dream of leading his men on the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. This was to have been the culmination of his illustrious career as an explorer, but now a much greater responsibility weighed on his mind—to somehow get the twenty-seven men of his crew safely back home.