Sadness

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 The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Fortunately this myth has come under strong attack in recent years with reports from parents, teachers, and researchers like me who found that the children were suffering. The euphoria of the early 1970s soon gave way to a rising tide of concern about the impoverishment of women and children, the high distress among the many parents who did not agree with their spouse that their marriage was on the rocks, and the fact that children did not bounce back quickly. Children in postdivorce families do not, on the whole, look happier, healthier, or more well adjusted even if one or both parents are happier. National studies1 show that children from divorced and remarried families are more aggressive toward their parents and teachers. They experience more depression, have more learning difficulties, and suffer from more problems with peers than children from intact families. Children from divorced and remarried families are two to three times more likely to be referred for psychological help at school than their peers from intact families. More of them end up in mental health clinics and hospital settings. There is earlier sexual activity, more children born out of wedlock, less marriage, and more divorce. Numerous studies2 show that adult children of divorce have more psychological problems than those raised in intact marriages. Although many people no longer believe the myth that children always benefit from a divorce that makes parents happier, it continues to exert subtle, unconscious influences on how we think about divorce and our reactions to it. It has encouraged parents to expect that their children will approve their decision. Actually, as you will see in the chapters that follow, this is hardly ever true for children who have not yet reached their teens. It has made it harder for parents to see or believe that their children suffer with fears and sadness after the breakup. And it has made it harder for parents to prepare their children properly for the forthcoming divorce and provide them with the comfort they need. The fact that many men and women get caught up in the search for new lovers or taxing new jobs after divorce—both of which make parents less available to their children—only serves to compound their desire to hold on to this myth.

• From Hillbilly Elegy (2016)

  Behind the drugs, and the fighting matches, and the financial struggles, these were people with serious problems, and they were hurting. Our neighbors had a kind of desperate sadness in their lives. You’d see it in how the mother would grin but never really smile, or in the jokes that the teenage girl told about her mother “smacking the shit out of her.” I knew what awkward humor like this was meant to conceal because I’d used it in the past. Grin and bear it, says the adage. If anyone appreciated this, Mamaw did. The problems of our community hit close to home. Mom’s struggles weren’t some isolated incident. They were replicated, replayed, and relived by many of the people who, like us, had moved hundreds of miles in search of a better life. There was no end in sight. Mamaw had thought she escaped the poverty of the hills, but the poverty—emotional, if not financial—had followed her. Something had made her later years eerily similar to her earliest ones. What was happening? What were our neighbor’s teenage daughter’s prospects? Certainly the odds were against her, with a home life like that. This raised the question: What would happen to me? I was unable to answer these questions in a way that didn’t implicate something deep within the place I called home. What I knew is that other people didn’t live like we did. When I visited Uncle Jimmy, I did not wake to the screams of neighbors. In Aunt Wee and Dan’s neighborhood, homes were beautiful and lawns well manicured, and police came around to smile and wave but never to load someone’s mom or dad in the back of their cruiser. So I wondered what was different about us—not just me and my family but our neighborhood and our town and everyone from Jackson to Middletown and beyond. When Mom was arrested a couple of years earlier, the neighborhood’s porches and front yards filled with spectators; there’s no embarrassment like waving to the neighbors right after the cops have carted your mother off. Mom’s exploits were undoubtedly extreme, but all of us had seen the show before with different neighbors. These sorts of things had their own rhythm. A mild screaming match might invite a few cracked shutters or peeking eyes behind the shades. If things escalated a bit, bedrooms would illuminate as people awoke to investigate the commotion. And if things got out of hand, the police would come and take someone’s drunk dad or unhinged mom down to the city building. That building housed the tax collector, the public utilities, and even a small museum, but all the kids in my neighborhood knew it as the home of Middletown’s short- term jail.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Adult children of divorce are telling us loud and clear that their parents’ anger at the time of the breakup is not what matters most. Unless there was violence or abuse or unremitting high conflict, they have dim memories of what transpired during this supposedly critical period. Indeed, as youngsters then and as adults now, all would be profoundly astonished to learn that any judge, attorney, mediator—indeed, anyone at all—had genuinely considered their best interests or wishes at the breakup or at any time since. It’s the many years living in a postdivorce or remarried family that count, according to this first generation to come of age and tell us their experience. It’s feeling sad, lonely, and angry during childhood. It’s traveling on airplanes alone when you’re seven to visit your parent. It’s having no choice about how you spend your time and feeling like a second-class citizen compared with your friends in intact families who have some say about how they spend their weekends and their vacations. It’s wondering whether you will have any financial help for college from your college-educated father, given that he has no legal obligation to pay. It’s worrying about your mom and dad for years—will her new boyfriend stick around, will his new wife welcome you into her home? It’s reaching adulthood with acute anxiety. Will you ever find a faithful woman to love you? Will you find a man you can trust? Or will your relationships fail just like your parents’ did? And most tellingly, it’s asking if you can protect your own child from having these same experiences in growing up. Not one of the men or women from divorced families whose lives I report on in this book wanted their children to repeat their childhood experiences. Not one ever said, “I want my children to live in two nests—or even two villas.” They envied friends who grew up in intact families. Their entire life stories belie the myths we’ve embraced.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Caught between his inability to hope or to give up hope that his nurturing mother will come back, he comes increasingly to believe that he is unloved and unwanted. Like Paula, he’s angry but instead of lashing out at the world, he turns his frustrations inward. He withdraws into a sullen passivity. And as we’ll see in his later interviews, this passivity comes to dominate his adult life, including his attempts to build intimate relationships with young women—or to avoid them. B EIGHTEEN The Stepfamily illy was almost fifteen when I drove to Petaluma to meet him for our five-year follow-up. Billy, his mom, and stepfather Tom were now living in a Victorian home in an old section of the city with Tom’s son Dave. Billy also had a new half brother, Mark, who was two years old. We timed it right, for Billy arrived in a friend’s car just as I drove up. Still small for his age, he looked wiry rather than scrawny. I knew from my preliminary phone call to his mother setting up this round of interviews that Billy’s health was still precarious. Any physical exertion could bring on palpitations and shortness of breath. He carried his heart medication with him. In high school, as in previous school years, he had study hall when other students had physical education, and he had special permission to rest in the nurse’s office when he was fatigued. His mother was worried because his few friends tended to be loners and troublemakers rather than kids in the “in” crowd, which revolved around sports. Nevertheless Billy looked better than I had expected. His scowl and sullen attitude were replaced by a teenage awkwardness and tentative smile. Sitting in the large, sunny kitchen before the other family members arrived home, he was articulate for the first time about the divorce and his mother’s remarriage. “All divorces are bad for kids,” he told me. “They make kids do things that they normally wouldn’t do.” “Like what, Billy?” And then Billy told me with shame in his face how he had gotten into trouble in the year and a half since the family moved to Petaluma. “I ripped off some stores. I got caught smoking dope. I had a bad attitude toward my teachers. I fought a lot with my mother.” He looked at me as if to say, “You want to hear more? I’ll give you more.” Instead I asked, “How is this connected with your parents’ divorce?” “I was really angry,” Billy said quickly. “I remember thinking over and over, ‘If you won’t do for me, I’ll make life miserable for everyone.’” “Are you still angry?” Billy shrugged. “Sometimes I am. Sometimes I’m sad. I wish my parents would have tried harder and maybe they could have worked it out.” “Do you think they might still get back together?” Billy looked startled by my question.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Most large studies of divorce are conducted using questionnaires or other survey techniques administered by people who never see those they are questioning. Researchers gather data from large numbers of families and then segregate children into two big categories—from a divorced family or from an intact family. Such “controlled” studies indeed show that children of divorce and those raised in second marriages are a whole lot more troubled than children from intact marriages are. Researchers have found significant differences in learning problems, school drop-out rates, early sexual behavior, incidence of divorce, physical illness, anger toward parents, and a host of other very important social measures. 1 But these large-scale studies, while worrisome, usually don’t answer the questions that parents want answered. And one reason for this is that subgroups (within the larger legally defined samples of divorced versus not divorced families) are not examined separately. If we really want to tease out the long-term effects of divorce on children in contrast to the effects of being raised in a culture where divorce is rampant, we need to look at similar kinds of families in both groupings. For example, some intact families are characterized by enduring love and friendship with a primary commitment to parenting. Some divorced families are characterized by a lasting sense of attachment with a similar commitment to parenting, despite the breakup. These would be roughly comparable. However, some intact families are enmeshed in mutually destructive behavior, driven by alcoholic rages, in which the children are not protected. Similarly, some divorced families suffer the same kind of chaos where the children are not protected either before or after the divorce. Again, these subgroups are worth comparing. The middle group, where parents are very unhappy in the marriage but want to protect their children, is the largest of all, and indeed, this is where the question is hardest to answer. Many parents in our divorce group had marriages that were of “middling” quality but they decided on balance to go their separate ways. And most of the young adults who were raised in intact families in our study described their parents’ marriages the same way—not very happy but they stayed together anyway. Until this study, no one to my knowledge has ever directly compared the experience of growing up in divorced or remarried families with what it’s like to grow up in intact families—yet this is exactly what we, as a society, need to know. Parents want to know how the lives of their children will be different if they decide to stay married or to get a divorce. That said, these young adults did indeed describe three kinds of intact families. At one end of the spectrum are the highly dysfunctional, bordering-on-cruel families revealed by Carol’s story in Chapter 7 .

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Black defendant and white victim pairings increased the likelihood of a death sentence even more. Many poor and minority victims complained that they were not getting calls or support from local police and prosecutors. Many weren’t included in the conversations about whether a plea bargain was acceptable or what sentence was appropriate. If your family had lost a loved one to murder or had to suffer the anguish of rape or serious assault, your victimization might be ignored if you had loved ones who were incarcerated. The expansion of victims’ rights ultimately made formal what had always been true: Some victims are more protected and valued than others. More than anything else, it was the lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers that devastated Mozelle and Onzelle. “You’re the first two people to come to our house and spend time with us talking about Vickie,” Onzelle told us. After nearly three hours of hearing their heartbreaking reflections, we promised to do what we could to find out who else was involved in their niece Vickie’s death. — We were getting to the point where, without access to police records and files, we wouldn’t be able to make more progress. Because the case was now pending on direct appeal, the State had no obligation to let us see those records and files. So we decided to file what is known as a Rule 32 petition, which would put us back in a trial court with the opportunity to present new evidence and obtain discovery, including access to the State’s files. Rule 32 petitions are required to include claims that were not raised at trial or on appeal and that could not have been raised at trial or on appeal. They are the vehicle to challenge a conviction based on ineffective counsel, the State’s failure to disclose evidence, and most important, new evidence of innocence. Michael and I put a petition together that asserted all of these claims, including police and prosecutorial misconduct, and filed it in the Monroe County Circuit Court. The document, which alleged that Walter McMillian was unfairly tried, wrongly convicted, and illegally sentenced, drew a lot of attention in Monroeville. Three years had passed since the trial. The initial confirmation of Walter’s conviction on appeal had generated significant press in the community, and most people now felt that Walter’s guilt was a settled matter. All there was left to do was wait for an execution date.

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

  Nevertheless we must know that the passions were in Christ otherwise than in us, in three ways. First, as regards the object, since in us these passions very often tend towards what is unlawful, but not so in Christ. Secondly, as regards the principle, since these passions in us frequently forestall the judgment of reason; but in Christ all movements of the sensitive appetite sprang from the disposition of the reason. Hence Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xiv, 9), that “Christ assumed these movements, in His human soul, by an unfailing dispensation, when He willed; even as He became man when He willed.” Thirdly, as regards the effect, because in us these movements, at times, do not remain in the sensitive appetite, but deflect the reason; but not so in Christ, since by His disposition the movements that are naturally becoming to human flesh so remained in the sensitive appetite that the reason was nowise hindered in doing what was right. Hence Jerome says (on Mat. 26:37) that “Our Lord, in order to prove the reality of the assumed manhood, ‘was sorrowful’ in very deed; yet lest a passion should hold sway over His soul, it is by a propassion that He is said to have ‘begun to grow sorrowful and to be sad’”; so that it is a perfect “passion” when it dominates the soul, i.e. the reason; and a “propassion” when it has its beginning in the sensitive appetite, but goes no further. Reply to Objection 1: The soul of Christ could have prevented these passions from coming upon it, and especially by the Divine power; yet of His own will He subjected Himself to these corporeal and animal passions. Reply to Objection 2: Tully is speaking there according to the opinions of the Stoics, who did not give the name of passions to all, but only to the disorderly movements of the sensitive appetite. Now, it is manifest that passions like these were not in Christ. Reply to Objection 3: The “passions of sins” are movements of the sensitive appetite that tend to unlawful things; and these were not in Christ, as neither was the “fomes” of sin. Whether there was sensible pain in Christ?Objection 1: It would seem that there was no true sensible pain in Christ. For Hilary says (De Trin. x): “Since with Christ to die was life, what pain may He be supposed to have suffered in the mystery of His death, Who bestows life on such as die for Him?” And further on he says: “The Only-begotten assumed human nature, not ceasing to be God; and although blows struck Him and wounds were inflicted on Him, and scourges fell upon Him, and the cross lifted Him up, yet these wrought in deed the vehemence of the passion, but brought no pain; as a dart piercing the water.” Hence there was no true pain in Christ.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Becoming a Caregiver ChildSIX MONTHS AFTER the divorce, Dr. James married a much younger woman whom the children liked very much. She was lively, funny, and did not try to intrude into their lives as a rule-making stepmother but rather befriended them and treated them warmly. Unfortunately, Dr. James carried some baggage into his second marriage and it, too, was stormy, featuring many unexplained weekend departures by the second wife. Three years later, she kissed the children good-bye and left to marry another man. “I was a basket case,” Dr. James told me during one of our follow-up interviews. The children were stunned, bereft of explanation for the second loss in their family life. Nor did Mrs. James find much happiness in the years after her divorce. She had several love affairs followed by a second marriage. The new husband, who ran a landscape business, could not tolerate the children and soon grew bored with his pretty wife. The marriage lasted less than five years, throwing the mother into continued turmoil. For Karen, the legacy of divorce was that she moved into the role of substitute parent for her younger siblings and of confidante and adviser to her troubled mother and father. It was an entirely new role for this child who, like many others before the divorce, had been leading a fairly protected life. Yet Karen undertook the classic role of caregiver or “parentified” child with aplomb and grace. In fact, she was a model parent. “My brother is scared of a lot of things,” she once warned me. “What is he scared of?”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Like quality time, parallel parenting—a term coined by mediators to mean that two parents who raise a child separately are comparable to two parents who raise a child together—is a great slogan, but it can’t replicate the cooperative parenting that children and parents need. In a good intact family, a constant parental dialogue revolves around the day’s events and interactions within the family. Daily conversations and the pillow talk that follows literally shape the child’s environment to fit her needs as she grows up and changes. Such parental dialogue, if it existed, is abruptly shut off by divorce. As a result, the role of the parents as the child’s champion is weakened. This is a serious loss in our crowded, fast-moving society, especially for the child who has special needs or who may be a late or an early bloomer. Of course single parents can take on this role to the extent that their busy schedule permits, but as they often tell me, they feel weighed down by the responsibility for making all the decisions themselves and by the pressures of time. Remarried parents can and do reinstate the invisible parenting structure, but that may not happen for several years. Even then, it takes on a different cast, as we’ll see later in the book. O THREE Growing Up Is Harder ne of the many myths of our divorce culture is that divorce automatically rescues children from an unhappy marriage. Indeed, many parents cling to this belief as a way of making themselves feel less guilty. No one wants to hurt his or her child, and thinking that divorce is a solution to everyone’s pain genuinely helps. Moreover, it’s true that divorce delivers a child from a violent or cruel marriage (which we will soon see in Chapter 7). However, when one looks at the thousands of children that my colleagues and I have interviewed at our center since 1980, most of whom were from moderately unhappy marriages that ended in divorce, one message is clear: the children do not say they are happier. Rather, they say flatly, “The day my parents divorced is the day my childhood ended.” What do they mean? Typically parent and child relationships change radically after divorce—temporarily or, as in Karen’s family, permanently. Ten years after the breakup only one-half of the mothers and one-quarter of the fathers in our study were able to provide the kind of nurturant care that had distinguished their parenting before the divorce. To go back to what Gary said about his parents being “offstage” while he grew up, after a divorce one or both parents often move onto center stage and refuse to budge. The child becomes the backstage prop manager making sure the show goes on.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  I reminded him of the awful night that he left after hitting my mom a whole lot of times. I said to him, ‘You could have dealt with things a little better.’” Larry looked up with a pained expression. “He hardly heard me. He just didn’t get it. You know, it still makes me sad not to have had a father in my life. I know I still have a lot of pent-up anger. I try not to think about it.” Larry sat back and then responded to my unspoken question. “I don’t really see a road for me to be able to work through all of the anger and hurt from my childhood. It comes up now because of my own children. I want to do for my children everything that my dad didn’t do for me.” This last remark rang familiar. Karen had said the same. These young people do not want their children to have a childhood like their own. They want something better and are willing to fight for it. I was also very interested that none of the adults who had felt rejected or misused by their fathers as children rejected their importance or denied their longstanding wish to have had a loving, concerned father. How Fathers Rate AFTER DECADES OF minutely recording mother-child interactions as if they existed in a “daddy-less” world, researchers have finally discovered fathers and how important they are to a child’s development. Today’s answers to the question “What good are fathers?” would fill a small library. Children with sensitive, involved fathers surge ahead in their cognitive and social development as they explore their environment and play with other children. One important study that followed children for twenty-five years showed that those who were closely involved with their fathers at age five were more empathic as adults and were happier as husbands and as parents than those who had not experienced close relationships with their own fathers a quarter of a century earlier. 1 And just to dispel the strange notion that fathers are more important to their sons than to their daughters, a study of young women who excelled in their academic studies at Stanford and Berkeley revealed that they attributed their high ambition to their father’s long-standing encouragement. 2 In my own work on good marriages, I found that women who maintain a passionate relationship with their husbands throughout many years of the marriage had a healthy, loving relationship with their fathers as children. 3 But in divorced families, father-child relationships run a different course. Because the child lives only part-time or even half-time with her father or sees him according to a set schedule, their interaction is not a given. Coming and going as they do, father and child don’t take one another for granted (this is true for visiting or joint custody arrangements). Instead, their relationship must be created from the more limited interactions they enjoy or, if things are not going well, do not enjoy.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  As Carol described these scenes, a heavy sadness fell over her small frame and her spirit seemed almost crushed. But she was not finished. “The worst times,” Carol said, crumbling a cookie on the plate in front of her, “was when they’d go for us. I was the favorite target. It only happened a few times a year but I remember every detail. They’d spot me or hear me in the kitchen making dinner and then they’d call me into the living room. Dad usually started it with a question about dinner or school that then escalated into a verbal attack by both of them. Before you knew it, they were hitting me. If I tried to say anything in self-defense, they hit me harder. I remember one time being chased into my bedroom, where my dad held me down and my mom slapped me over and over like she couldn’t stop.” Carol’s voice trailed off. I was stunned by her story. “And no one protected you?” “My little sister used to come in my room and lie down beside me on the bed. She’d wrap her arms around my neck and pat my cheek. We’d lie there and hug each other. We were frightened our whole childhood. We never knew what to expect or when it would get real bad again.” Carol fell silent as the memories flooded her body and caused her throat to constrict. Unable to speak, she stared vacantly at the flowers, holding back her pain. I waited a good thirty seconds for her to regain her composure and leaned closer, “Carol, what an awful way to grow up.” She was stone still as the next words came out in a slow monotone, stripped of inflection because her emotions were on the brink. “The worst part wasn’t being hit.” She rocked slowly with each word. “It was the wishing and hoping that things would change and especially that my mother would become another person—a mother who loved her children and cared for them and protected them.” She put her face in her hands. “I longed so desperately for the parents that I never had.” We sat in silence for another minute until Carol recovered enough to say, “I’ve been in and out of therapy since I was thirty years old. And I’ve thought about this and know now that they couldn’t change. All my life I wanted a mom or a dad or someone I could rely on even a little. I’ve tried to stop hoping for what I’ll never have and I’ve tried to get some comfort from being a better mother someday—if I ever have children.” “You’ve had so much pain, Carol. Do you have any happy memories?”

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

  BASIL. (in Reg. Brev. ad int. 217.) We shall receive the kingdom of God as a child if we are disposed towards our Lord’s teaching as a child under instruction, never contradicting nor disputing with his masters, but trustfully and teachably imbibing learning. THEOPHYLACT. The wise men of the Gentiles therefore who seek for wisdom in a mystery, which is the kingdom of God, and will not receive this without the evidence of logical proof, are rightly shut out from this kingdom. 18:18–2318. And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? 19. And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. 20. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother. 21. And he said, All these have I kept from my youth up. 22. Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me. 23. And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful: for he was very rich. BEDE. A certain ruler having heard our Lord say, that only those who would be like little children should enter the kingdom of heaven, entreats Him to explain to him not by parable but openly by what works he may merit to obtain eternal life. AMBROSE. That ruler tempting Him said, Good Master, he ought to have said, Good God. For although goodness exists in divinity and divinity in goodness, yet by adding Good Master, he uses good only in part, not in the whole. For God is good altogether, man partially. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA. Now he thought to detect Christ in blaming the law of Moses, while He introduced His own commands. He went then to the Master, and calling Him good, says that he wishes to be taught by Him, for he sought to tempt Him. But He who takes the wise in their craftiness answers him fitly as follows, Why callest thou me good? there is none good, save God alone.

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

  JEROME. (in Matt. 19:19.) The young man speaks false, for if he had fulfilled that which was afterwards placed among the commandments, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, how was it that when he heard, Go and sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, he went away sorrowful? BEDE. Or we must not think him to have lied, but to have avowed that he had lived honestly, that is, at least in outward things, else Mark could never have said, And Jesus seeing him, loved him. (Mark. 10:21.) TITUS BOSTRENSIS. Our Lord next declares, that though a man has kept the old covenant, he is not perfect, since he lacks to follow Christ. Thou yet lackest one thing, Sell all that thou hast, &c. As if He says, Thou askest how to possess eternal life; scatter thy goods among the poor, and thou shalt obtain it. A little thing is that thou spendest, thou receivest great things. ATHANASIUS. (ex Apol. de sua fuga.) For when we despise the world, we must not imagine we have resigned any thing great, for the whole earth in comparison of the heaven is but a span long; therefore even should they who renounce it be lords of the whole earth, yet still it would be nothing worth in comparison of the kingdom of heaven. BEDE. Whoever then wishes to be perfect must sell all that he hath, not a part only, as Ananias and Sapphira did, but the whole. THEOPHYLACT. Hence when he says, All that thou hast, He inculcates the most complete poverty. For if there is any thing left over or remaining to thee, thou art its slave. BASIL. (in Reg. Brev. int. 92.) He does not tell us to sell our goods, because they are by nature evil, for then they would not be God’s creatures; He therefore does not bid us cast them away as if they were bad, but distribute them; nor is any one condemned for possessing them, but for abusing them. And thus it is, that to lay out our goods according to God’s command both blots out sins, and bestows the kingdom. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 22. in 1 ad Cor.) God might indeed feed the poor without our taking compassion upon them, but He wishes the givers to be bound by the ties of love to the receivers. BASIL. (in Reg. fus. disp. 3. ad int. 9.) When our Lord says, Give to the poor, it becomes a man no longer to be careless, but diligently to dispose of all things, first of all by himself if in any measure he is able, if not, by those who are known to be faithful, and prudent in their management; for cursed is he who doeth the work of the Lord negligently. (Jerem. 49, 10.)

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

  Whether the pain of Christ’s Passion was greater than all other pains?Objection 1: It would seem that the pain of Christ’s Passion was not greater than all other pains. For the sufferer’s pain is increased by the sharpness and the duration of the suffering. But some of the martyrs endured sharper and more prolonged pains than Christ, as is seen in St. Lawrence, who was roasted upon a gridiron; and in St. Vincent, whose flesh was torn with iron pincers. Therefore it seems that the pain of the suffering Christ was not the greatest. Objection 2: Further, strength of soul mitigates pain, so much so that the Stoics held there was no sadness in the soul of a wise man; and Aristotle (Ethic. ii) holds that moral virtue fixes the mean in the passions. But Christ had most perfect strength of soul. Therefore it seems that the greatest pain did not exist in Christ. Objection 3: Further, the more sensitive the sufferer is, the more acute will the pain be. But the soul is more sensitive than the body, since the body feels in virtue of the soul; also, Adam in the state of innocence seems to have had a body more sensitive than Christ had, who assumed a human body with its natural defects. Consequently, it seems that the pain of a sufferer in purgatory, or in hell, or even Adam’s pain, if he suffered at all, was greater than Christ’s in the Passion. Objection 4: Further, the greater the good lost, the greater the pain. But by sinning the sinner loses a greater good than Christ did when suffering; since the life of grace is greater than the life of nature: also, Christ, who lost His life, but was to rise again after three days, seems to have lost less than those who lose their lives and abide in death. Therefore it seems that Christ’s pain was not the greatest of all. Objection 5: Further, the victim’s innocence lessens the sting of his sufferings. But Christ died innocent, according to Jer. 9:19: “I was as a meek lamb, that is carried to be a victim.” Therefore it seems that the pain of Christ’s Passion was not the greatest. Objection 6: Further, there was nothing superfluous in Christ’s conduct. But the slightest pain would have sufficed to secure man’s salvation, because from His Divine Person it would have had infinite virtue. Therefore it would have been superfluous to choose the greatest of all pains. On the contrary, It is written (Lam. 1:12) on behalf of Christ’s Person: “O all ye that pass by the way attend, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow.”

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

  Objection 3: Further, will is consequent upon nature, as was said [4074](A[1]). But in Christ there was only one nature besides the Divine. Hence in Christ there was only one human will. On the contrary, Ambrose says (De Fide ii, 7): “Mine is the will which He calls His own; because as Man He assumed my sorrow.” From this we are given to understand that sorrow pertains to the human will of Christ. Now sorrow pertains to the sensuality, as was said in the [4075]FS, Q[23], A[1]; [4076]FS, Q[25], A[1]. Therefore, seemingly, in Christ there is a will of sensuality besides the will of reason. I answer that, As was said ([4077]Q[9], A[1]), the Son of God assumed human nature together with everything pertaining to the perfection of human nature. Now in human nature is included animal nature, as the genus in its species. Hence the Son of God must have assumed together with the human nature whatever belongs to animal nature; one of which things is the sensitive appetite, which is called the sensuality. Consequently it must be allowed that in Christ there was a sensual appetite, or sensuality. But it must be borne in mind that sensuality or the sensual appetite, inasmuch as it naturally obeys reason, is said to be “rational by participation,” as is clear from the Philosopher (Ethic. i, 13). And because “the will is in the reason,” as stated above, it may equally be said that the sensuality is “a will by participation.” Reply to Objection 1: This argument is based on the will, essentially so called, which is only in the intellectual part; but the will by participation can be in the sensitive part, inasmuch as it obeys reason. Reply to Objection 2: The sensuality is signified by the serpent—not as regards the nature of the sensuality, which Christ assumed, but as regards the corruption of the “fomes,” which was not in Christ. Reply to Objection 3: “Where there is one thing on account of another, there seems to be only one” (Aristotle, Topic. iii); thus a surface which is visible by color is one visible thing with the color. So, too, because the sensuality is called the will, only because it partakes of the rational will, there is said to be but one human will in Christ, even as there is but one human nature. Whether in Christ there were two wills as regards the reason?Objection 1: It would seem that in Christ there were two wills as regards the reason. For Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 22) that there is a double will in man, viz. the natural will which is called {thelesis}, and the rational will which is called {boulesis}. Now Christ in His human nature had whatever belongs to the perfection of human nature. Hence both the foregoing wills were in Christ.

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Hamlet’s personal realization that Ophelia’s beauty is not an indicator of her honesty follows the same course as Fisher’s two-stage model of evolution by mate choice. Hamlet begins his relationship with Ophelia in a rosy state of Wallacean contentment, in which her beauty is an honest indicator of the inner quality of her soul and her commitment to him. Yet this inherently unstable relationship cannot endure, just as Fisher proposed that correlation between display traits and quality would be eroded by the emerging advantages of attraction—the power of beauty. In defense of Ophelia, however, she is not acting with sexual autonomy. She has shunned and lied to Hamlet under the coercive instructions of her father. (I haven’t focused a lot on the sexual coercion of offspring by parents, but this is a great example from literature.) In the final act when Ophelia goes mad, she finally expresses some of her true, autonomous sexual desires. She sings a bawdy(!) tale of her own Valentine’s Day deflowering by a deceptive rogue (perhaps Hamlet?). She then imagines herself as Hamlet’s queen, addresses her wise counselors and fine courtiers, and orders the servants to bring around her carriage. In her madness, Ophelia can finally reveal her real desires and fantasy. Constrained in life from realizing her sexual self because of her father’s coercion, Ophelia is only liberated and self-realized through madness and death. This is, perhaps, Shakespeare’s cautionary tale about the social risks of the pursuit of female sexual autonomy in Elizabethan society. Indeed, Ophelia’s demise is the second tragedy of Hamlet. “The fox knows many things”: Berlin (1953). dominated, indeed hijacked, by adaptationist Hedgehogs: See David Hull’s Science as a Process (1988) and Ron Amundson’s The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought (2005). the painful history of political and ethical abuse: For an authoritative social history of eugenics, see Kevles (1985).

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  In planning remarriage, a parent needs to work out the complex feelings of love and resentment between caregiver and child. Just as weaning means gradually giving up a dependency for both mother and baby, the vulnerable child and his mother need to respect their relationship and give it time to adapt to new conditions. Boys who are ill and lack stamina usually cannot compete in the world of sports, which in our society is often a major link between fathers and sons. A sensitive father will help his son cope with this loss, finding other ways to bond and real achievements that he can take pride in. In a good intact family, parents spell each other in taking care of their children; when one person is exhausted, the other takes over. This sort of sharing is even more needed in homes with a vulnerable child, where physical and emotional exhaustion are constant undercurrents of daily life. Most important, people should not use divorce to solve their tremendous distress about bringing a defective child into the world and the overwhelming emotional and financial cost of raising the child. This is a very serious issue. Most people assume that divorce is caused by marital conflict. But we now know how readily stress from another sphere can ricochet into the marriage and lead to an impulsive divorce decision. Vulnerable children evoke strong passions and great suffering. The impulse to run away is potent. Trickle-Down Happiness W HEN I SAW Billy eighteen months after the divorce, he was a very sad and troubled child. He told me he no longer liked school. He refused to discuss Tom, his new stepfather. He wanted to see his biological father more often but he admitted that the visits had not been good. It was obvious from his story that his father continued to deny his son’s handicap or didn’t care. “Dad’s girlfriend is a runner and they invited me to run with them,” he said miserably. “I tried it once and I got halfway around the track and I had to sit down. I couldn’t breathe. They just waved and kept on running. Finally I waited in the car for an hour. Then Dad dropped me off at home.” Billy was also having a great deal of trouble with his mother’s remarriage. “It was bad timing for Billy,” his mother said, shaking her head. “He adored his fifth-grade teacher but she left unexpectedly in the middle of the school year for emergency surgery. So he had to change teachers. This was a week before our wedding. Her leaving really hit him hard and he was very quiet and withdrawn at the wedding. Everyone else had a great time. We were all kind of annoyed at Billy. He was a real party pooper.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  No one was there.” Talking to these children at that time and as they recalled their childhoods made me think of the song “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.” This emotional cut-off—from feeling that you are the center of your mother’s attention to feeling that you are a peripheral appendage—remains an enduring part of mother-child relationships in many divorced families. While mothers desperately struggle to raise their children alone, many enriching parts of their shared lives must change. Mothers no longer have the time to witness and participate in their child’s everyday life. They don’t have the luxury to plan playdates and have friends to the house. Baking and cooking are abandoned for convenience meals. There is no time to monitor a child’s small ups and downs, their worries and achievements; there is no other parent with whom to share and to strategize the child’s future. Budding talent and potential trouble areas are overlooked in the mad rush to get out of the house and to get to bed in order to have the energy to meet another day. Overseeing table manners and teaching the niceties of life give way to making sure clothes are washed and the house is presentable. Fatigue and anxiety consume tolerance, softness, and cheeriness. There arises a harsher, stricter personality in which smiles are often forced and irritability reigns. The transformation of one’s mother and the loss of her availability is abrupt and, for many children of divorce, permanent. It is the hidden but most significant loss for young children following divorce, and we have almost completely overlooked its impact. Paula’s wonderful care of her pet rabbit reflects this loss. In mothering the rabbit, she rediscovers and resurrects the loving mother she has lost. By identifying with the mother she loves, she rehearses the memory, keeping it fresh and alive. She is in her imagination the well- cared-for rabbit, and she is also the loving available mother whom she loved and lost when she was four years old. Of course, there are many millions of married mothers of young children who work full-time, but they have a husband to help them with the job of parenting when both return home in the evening. This joint support is critical for those who want or need to work while raising young children. Two parents can spell each other in daily routines and when children fall sick. Recent studies show that compared with fathers a decade ago, fathers in today’s two-income families spend more time with their young children. There really are four hands rather than two. Intact families with two people working also have higher incomes than single-parent families and can spend more on child care and other kinds of help.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  It doesn’t have to be this way, but it takes thoughtfulness and time for divorcing parents to help their children. Let’s assume for the moment that you are the one getting divorced. What should you do? First, gather the children together and tell them that you have decided to separate and what that means and when it will happen. Talk simply, slowly, and keep in mind that they will remember forever what you are saying. They’ll also remember what you don’t say. Choose a quiet time when you and the children have plenty of time, that is, not when homework is pending or when you are flying off in the morning on a business trip. Turn off the TV and the computer and make clear that you expect to stay home and be available for the rest of the day and evening. Tell them why this is happening and how sorry you both are for you and for them. Explain that when you got married you loved each other and hoped to live together for your whole lives. Go out of your way to talk about the dream you had when you married and how happy you were when the children were born. Why? Because you want the children to feel that they were born into a loving family and that they were wanted. You want to offset their notion, which can gnaw at them over time, that they were born in anger and are leftovers from a marriage no one wanted. Speak to their self-esteem and keep in mind that you’re talking about the relationship between a man and a woman that will shape their lives. Tell them honestly how reluctant you are to call it quits, how hard you tried. If you went to a therapist, minister, or rabbi for help, say so. Don’t deprecate or scapegoat each other. Because you and your spouse cannot make the marriage work, and things between you can only get worse, say you’ve decided to divorce for everyone’s sake. You don’t want them to grow up with the wrong view of what marriage is. You don’t want to live a lie or mislead them into thinking that your failing marriage is the best that marriage provides. It isn’t.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  On a burning evening in May I rode out beyond the city gates along the banks of the Orontes to meet the small group so worn by anxiety, fever, and fatigue: the ailing emperor, Attianus, and the women. Trajan determinedly kept to his horse as far as the palace door. He could hardly stand; this man once so full of vitality seemed more changed than others are by the approach of death. Crito and Matidia helped him to climb the steps, induced him to lie down, and thereafter established themselves at his bedside. Attianus and Plotina recounted to me those incidents of the campaign which they had not been able to include in their brief dispatches. One of these episodes so moved me as to become forever a personal remembrance, a symbol of my own. As soon as the weary emperor had reached Charax he had gone to sit upon the shore, looking out over the brackish waters of the Persian Gulf. This was still the period when he felt no doubt of victory, but for the first time the immensity of the world overwhelmed him, and the feeling of age, and those limits which circumscribe us all. Great tears rolled down the cheeks of the man ever deemed incapable of weeping. The supreme commander who had borne the Roman eagles to hitherto unexplored shores knew now that he would never embark upon that sea so long in his thoughts: India, Bactria, the whole of that vague East which had intoxicated him from afar, would continue to be for him only names and dreams. On the very next day bad news forced him to turn back. Each time, in my turn, that destiny has denied me my wish I have remembered those tears shed that evening on a distant shore by an old man who, perhaps for the first time, was confronting his own life face to face. I went the following morning to the emperor's room. I felt filial toward him, or rather, fraternal. The man who had prided himself on living and thinking in every respect like any ordinary soldier of his army was ending his life in complete solitude; lying abed he continued to build up grandiose plans in which no one was any longer interested. As always, his brusque habits of speech served to disfigure his thought; forming his words now with utmost difficulty he talked to me of the triumph which they were preparing for him in Rome. He was denying defeat just as he was denying death. Two days later he had a second attack. My anxious consultations were renewed with Attianus, and with Plotina. The foresight of the empress had just effected the elevation of my old friend to the all-powerful position of commander of the Praetorian cohorts, bringing the imperial guard thus under our control.