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 Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  red sox (1975) A helicopter lifts out of the embassy, people cling to the landing struts, we see some fall. This is how the undeclared war ends. Travis moves out as we watch the helicopters on the evening news. Shortly thereafter my mother, brother and I begin a summer of watching baseball on television. That we hadn’t given a damn about the Red Sox until then, not really, doesn’t matter. We need to toughen up. All in all it’s good Travis is leaving. After building the master bedroom his second act had been the cultivation of marijuana in our very public backyard. The marijuana plants towered ridiculous and gangly above the lesser tomatoes in our tiny garden, and I was sure the neighbors would turn us in. One afternoon I pulled up all the plants, shaved off their roots with an x-acto knife, stuck them back into the ground. Years later my brother admitted to having poured poison on each one, perhaps on the same afternoon, a hundredth-monkey kind of afternoon. Either way, they withered and were gone. Within a year, though, I was rummaging through Travis’s roach stash, cleaning his pipe with a straightened paper clip, searching out anything to smoke. By the time Saigon falls I’m drinking whatever liquor I can get my hands on, believing, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that it will get me laid. I cling to this sodden belief as my mother’s marriage to Travis collapses in on itself, grinding to its necessary halt. That summer she cuts off all her hair, becomes a vegetarian, and drops way too much weight, to hover in the ghostly realm, the realm of vapor and shade. Hollow-eyed, spooked. My brother sits down to dinner with her, shovels in the offered vegetables and grains, but I’m annoyed I have to buy my own meat. By now she’s taking pills for her migraines, pills to wake up. Thirty-five and her second marriage has ended as badly as the first. To me Travis had been a reckless older buddy, scary-fun. As a husband he’d been a nightmare. After two years in Vietnam he’d barely fit into our mickey mouse cottage, our badly converted summer shack. They were together from the time I was eleven until I was fifteen, and each year he lived with us our house felt smaller and smaller, in spite of the additions. They slept together for the first couple years in the room he’d built, then he began sleeping on a cot set up in that same room, then he began sleeping at a house he was renovating, unrolling his Marine sleeping bag on the floor of the job site. Then he was gone. The Red Sox started out that spring bristling with promise, but everyone knew they would break our hearts. Don’t get too excited, it’s not going to last —this is the mantra of the Red Sox fan, the mantra of our Irish Catholic town.

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

  I answer that, Tears and groans naturally assuage sorrow: and this for two reasons. First, because a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up, because the soul is more intent on it: whereas if it be allowed to escape, the soul’s intention is dispersed as it were on outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened. This is why men, burdened with sorrow, make outward show of their sorrow, by tears or groans or even by words, their sorrow is assuaged. Secondly, because an action, that befits a man according to his actual disposition, is always pleasant to him. Now tears and groans are actions befitting a man who is in sorrow or pain; and consequently they become pleasant to him. Since then, as stated above [1330](A[1]), every pleasure assuages sorrow or pain somewhat, it follows that sorrow is assuaged by weeping and groans. Reply to Objection 1: This relation of the cause to effect is opposed to the relation existing between the cause of sorrow and the sorrowing man. For every effect is suited to its cause, and consequently is pleasant to it; but the cause of sorrow is disagreeable to him that sorrows. Hence the effect of sorrow is not related to him that sorrows in the same way as the cause of sorrow is. For this reason sorrow is assuaged by its effect, on account of the aforesaid contrariety. Reply to Objection 2: The relation of effect to cause is like the relation of the object of pleasure to him that takes pleasure in it: because in each case the one agrees with the other. Now every like thing increases its like. Therefore joy is increased by laughter and the other effects of joy: except they be excessive, in which case, accidentally, they lessen it. Reply to Objection 3: The image of that which saddens us, considered in itself, has a natural tendency to increase sorrow: yet from the very fact that a man imagines himself to be doing that which is fitting according to his actual state, he feels a certain amount of pleasure. For the same reason if laughter escapes a man when he is so disposed that he thinks he ought to weep, he is sorry for it, as having done something unbecoming to him, as Cicero says (De Tusc. Quaest. iii, 27). Whether pain or sorrow are assuaged by the sympathy of friends?Objection 1: It would seem that the sorrow of sympathizing friends does not assuage our own sorrow. For contraries have contrary effects. Now as Augustine says (Confess. viii, 4), “when many rejoice together, each one has more exuberant joy, for they are kindled and inflamed one by the other.” Therefore, in like manner, when many are sorrowful, it seems that their sorrow is greater.

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

  She took a break from competition but not from figure skating. She spent 2006–2009 in a similarly demanding skating environment. A reward for a successful career in American figure skating is the chance to perform in professional exhibitions and touring in Champions on Ice and Stars on Ice , and Cohen reaped that reward, headlining from 2007 to 2009. Sasha Cohen was unhappy with touring. It was lucrative work but, as she described it, “it wasn’t the life that I wanted to live. I didn’t want to be hanging out in the bowels of an arena and doing the same thing over and over, like Groundhog Day .” That leaves one to wonder, if she was so miserable, why didn’t she quit? Cohen has wondered this herself, coming to no clear answer. She just couldn’t bring herself to retire, which she considered “too permanent and too final. It would end an identity. . . . I think I had to get to the point that I was so unhappy that I wasn’t functional.” She felt obligated to try to make the Olympic team one more time. Skating was her identity, and persevering was her identity. To do otherwise, “it would be weak, or I’d be giving up because it was hard if I didn’t make the effort.” In May 2009, she began training to return to competition. After withdrawing from two Grand Prix events due to tendinitis in her right calf (another in the inevitable accumulation of physical setbacks from fifteen years of commitment to such demanding work), she competed in the 2010 U.S. Championships. She needed a top-two finish to qualify for the Vancouver Olympics, but finished fourth. She was finally done with figure skating, though it was more through circumstances than choice. The competitive window for female figure skaters closes at twenty-five. She aged out, which she “didn’t interpret as quitting. It just seemed like I’m free.” Although her skating career is in her distant past, her legacy remains. Because of her 2006 silver medal, which extended the streak of U.S. success in women’s figure skating to eleven consecutive Olympics, she remains, as of 2022, the last American woman to earn an Olympic singles figure skating medal. After she was forced to quit skating, she created a happy life for herself. At twenty-six, she started college, fifteen years after her last time in a classroom. She earned her degree from Columbia University in 2016, the same year she was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame. She became an investment manager at Morgan Stanley, married, and is mother to two children, born in January 2020 and August 2021. There is a lot to be learned about quitting from Sasha Cohen’s story. There is the obvious accumulation of sunk costs from all the time, money, and effort devoted to her career, both by herself and her family. There was loss aversion and an inability (until she was forced) to visualize her life on the other side.

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

  When we find something that’s working for us, whether it’s a job, a career, a product that we’re developing, a business strategy, or even a favorite restaurant that we love going to, continuing to explore what other options might be available is a good strategy in a world as uncertain as the one that we live in. Never stop exploring. That’s the topic that we turn our attention to in the last section of this book. SECTION IVOpportunity CostCHAPTER 10Lessons from Forced QuittingWhen Maya Shankar was six years old, her mother brought a small violin down from the attic of the family’s Connecticut home. Maya’s mother had taken the instrument, which belonged to her mother, with her from India when she emigrated to the United States. Maya’s three older siblings had already deemed the instrument too uncool. But Maya was instantly taken with it. She quickly demonstrated prodigious talent. At the age of nine, she auditioned and was accepted into the precollege program at the Juilliard School, the legendary performing arts conservatory in New York. Every Saturday, her mother drove her to and from Juilliard for an intense, ten-hour boot camp. Maya excelled, so much so that at thirteen she scored a coveted audition with Itzhak Perlman, who is widely considered one of the greatest violinists of all time, having earned sixteen Grammy Awards, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmys. Perlman accepted her as a private student. Maya Shankar, having achieved so much so soon, was on a path to a stellar career at the highest levels of professional music. All that was taken away when, one day during the summer before her senior year in high school, she tore a tendon in her finger while playing a difficult section of Paganini’s Caprice no. 13. She underwent surgery to repair the tendon, but the pain persisted. Over the next year, she tried performing through the discomfort by taking anti-inflammatories. She was eventually diagnosed, in addition to the torn tendon, with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. That diagnosis meant that not only did she have to give up playing the violin, but also she was facing a future where she would experience pain every day and eventually perhaps be unable to walk. It was a sudden end to a promising career. The question is, what does someone do when they’re forced to quit the goal they’ve been working toward their entire life? The answer is, of course, that they have to start looking for a new goal to aspire to. For all of us, there are times in our lives when the world makes us stop what we’re doing. When you’re in a relationship, your partner can decide to break up with you even when you would prefer to stay. People lose their jobs all the time. Your employer could be unhappy with your performance and let you go for that reason.

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

  43 Arthur M. Eckstein, Mediterranean Anarchy, Interstate War, and the Rise of Rome (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 244–316; Revell, Roman Imperialism. 44 E.g., Nimrod (1.114); Korah (4.15–19); Abimelech (5.234); Hophni and Phineas (5.338–339); Saul (6.262–268); common people (11.40); Alexander Jannaeus (13.377–405); Herod (17.304–308); Drusilla 20.143–144; Ananus II (20.197–203); Ananias and other chief priests (20.204–207). Paul without Judaism25 25 as the threat has passed, they become suspect as potential spies and traitors, and face a most unjust massacre. Although Josephus presents the Judaean raids as the actions of an ethnos made “animal-like” in its vengeful brutality (2.458–460), he curiously also blames the Judaeans of Scythopolis for having killed fellow Judaeans and sided with foreigners (What else could they have done?), actions that placed them “under a curse” and polluted them (2.472–473). He dramatically singles out the best Judaean fighter, Simon, to craft a mini-tragedy: Simon resolved to kill his family and himself, before the Scythopolitans could kill them. To cast Simon’s activity as “leaving Judaism” would obscure the tragic tone of Josephus’ account, which underscores the real-life struggle of conflicting loyalties. Tiberius Alexander, Antiochus, and Simon were not following different “Judaic systems.” They were all Judaeans, who made the unique choices that seemed best in their particular situations. And, of course, we see them only through the literary construction of Josephus, not from an omniscient or even balanced perspective. We cannot ask them how they interpreted Judaean ancestral tradition in relation to their various identities. Of the many ways in which one could (seem to) let observance of the ancestral laws slide, two others merit attention. The first appears in Philo’s famous insistence that knowing the spiritual truth of scripture does not permit one “to dissolve the customs that more exalted and greater men than any of our time devised” (Migr. 90). We do not know the real-life situation behind this passage, but it raises the possibility that a purely philosophical approach was leading some Alexandrian Judaeans toward laxity in practically observing the laws. Second, the second chapter of Wisdom of Solomon, perhaps also from Alexandria, seems to describe a conflict among Judaeans, between those determined to enjoy life in the present and the “righteous,” who accept the constraints of ancestral law, partly in anticipation of the life to come (2.12). 45 In any real human society, there must have been an enormous range of thought and practice, and perceived thought and practice, in relation to observance of ancestral custom, as there surely was of Rome’s mos maiorum. Even civic officials who had to represent the national customs at public events may not have sincerely believed in them, 46 and a Greek’s or Roman’s enthusiasm for Egyptian or Judaean ways could effectively displace native allegiances. There is no reason to imagine that we would be able to categorize the kaleidoscope of individual possibilities, even if we wished to do so. In sum, just as there was no Judaism in Paul’s day, no authority could decide who was “in” or “out.” Just as the choice to join the Judaeans did not obliterate one’s Idumean or Adiabenian birth identity, becoming lax in relation to Judaean customs or following Greek or Roman ways to some extent could not stop one being Judaean—even if it caused rupture and scandal with family and friends. Paul was indisputably a Judaean,

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

  I answer that, Penance is twofold, internal and external. Internal penance is that whereby one grieves for a sin one has committed, and this penance should last until the end of life. Because man should always be displeased at having sinned, for if he were to be pleased thereat, he would for this very reason fall into sin and lose the fruit of pardon. Now displeasure causes sorrow in one who is susceptible to sorrow, as man is in this life; but after this life the saints are not susceptible to sorrow, wherefore they will be displeased at, without sorrowing for, their past sins, according to Is. 65:16. “The former distresses are forgotten.” External penance is that whereby a man shows external signs of sorrow, confesses his sins verbally to the priest who absolves him, and makes satisfaction for his sins according to the judgment of the priest. Such penance need not last until the end of life, but only for a fixed time according to the measure of the sin. Reply to Objection 1: True penance not only removes past sins, but also preserves man from future sins. Consequently, although a man receives forgiveness of past sins in the first instant of his true penance, nevertheless he must persevere in his penance, lest he fall again into sin. Reply to Objection 2: To do penance both internal and external belongs to the state of beginners, of those, to wit, who are making a fresh start from the state of sin. But there is room for internal penance even in the proficient and the perfect, according to Ps. 83:7: “In his heart he hath disposed to ascend by steps, in the vale of tears.” Wherefore Paul says (1 Cor. 15:9): “I . . . am not worthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.” Reply to Objection 3: These durations of time are fixed for penitents as regards the exercise of external penance. Whether Penance can be continuous?Objection 1: It would seem that penance cannot be continuous. For it is written (Jer. 31:16): “Let thy voice cease from weeping, and thy eyes from tears.” But this would be impossible if penance were continuous, for it consists in weeping and tears. Therefore penance cannot be continuous. Objection 2: Further, man ought to rejoice at every good work, according to Ps. 99:1: “Serve ye the Lord with gladness.” Now to do penance is a good work. Therefore man should rejoice at it. But man cannot rejoice and grieve at the same time, as the Philosopher declares (Ethic. ix, 4). Therefore a penitent cannot grieve continually for his past sins, which is essential to penance. Therefore penance cannot be continuous. Objection 3: Further, the Apostle says (2 Cor. 2:7): “Comfort him,” viz. the penitent, “lest perhaps such an one be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow.” But comfort dispels grief, which is essential to penance. Therefore penance need not be continuous.

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

  As Olstyn Martinez put it, “One of the underlying themes of emergency medicine is, if you’re not full-on suffering and in the trenches and digging yourself out of patients, you’re [a wimp].” At the start, the benefits of her career clearly outweighed the costs. The satisfactions included saving lives, serving the community, being a highly skilled and effective problem solver, and being part of the community of ER doctors handling the exposure to so many raw, trying situations. An additional benefit of working in the ER was that it provided Olstyn Martinez with a needed work-life separation. She had scheduled shifts and when they ended, she could attend to the rest of her life. Whether it was going to the gym or taking her dog to the vet, she had space away from her job. This became especially important with the births of her two daughters in 2014 and 2017. But then, her circumstances changed. In addition to her ER shifts, Dr. Olstyn Martinez became the hospital’s director of emergency and trauma services in 2015 and, in 2020, senior director of patient care quality for twelve emergency departments in the hospital’s healthcare system. Over the course of those years, as her administrative responsibilities expanded, the negatives started to grow. While Dr. Olstyn Martinez clearly excelled at the additional position as director, as evidenced by the further expansion of her responsibilities in 2020, the mounting administrative tasks allowed her to work only six shifts as a doctor in the ER per month. That meant limited time doing the part of her profession she had originally fallen in love with. Because of her expanded workload, especially during a period of growing financial constraints in medical practice and administration and (of course) the pandemic, the stress of the job increased and took its toll. The boundary between her career and the rest of her life evaporated. This was no longer a job that she could leave behind at the end of an ER shift. She couldn’t turn her brain off. She received a nonstop stream of texts and emails, all representing fires she had to put out. There was no downtime. Increasingly, she felt she was not fully present in her personal life. That hurt her the most with her two young daughters. At eight o’clock one night, she became aware that her seven-year-old had been trying to get her attention, repeating, “Mom. Mom? Mom! MOM!!” When she finally looked up, her daughter said, “You aren’t listening to me because you’re looking at your phone. You’re always on your phone.” And she was right. Olstyn Martinez was used to handling a challenging load, but she knew it was negatively impacting her and her family. She was bringing it all home. She could feel it physically. She had trouble sleeping. Her hair actually started falling out. The equation of the things she loved about her work and its costs started to flip for her.

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

  Reply to Objection 2: Separation can be pleasant, either because it removes something contrary to a thing’s perfection, or because it has some union connected with it, such as union of the sense to its object. Reply to Objection 3: Separation from things hurtful and corruptive is desired, in so far as they destroy the unity which is due. Wherefore the desire for such like separation is not the first cause of sorrow, whereas the craving for unity is. Whether an irresistible power is a cause of sorrow?Objection 1: It would seem that a greater power should not be reckoned a cause of sorrow. For that which is in the power of the agent is not present but future. But sorrow is for present evil. Therefore a greater power is not a cause of sorrow. Objection 2: Further, hurt inflicted is the cause of sorrow. But hurt can be inflicted even by a lesser power. Therefore a greater power should not be reckoned as a cause of sorrow. Objection 3: Further, the interior inclinations of the soul are the causes of the movements of appetite. But a greater power is something external. Therefore it should not be reckoned as a cause of sorrow. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Nat. Boni xx): “Sorrow in the soul is caused by the will resisting a stronger power: while pain in the body is caused by sense resisting a stronger body.” I answer that, As stated above [1320](A[1]), a present evil, is cause of sorrow or pain, by way of object. Therefore that which is the cause of the evil being present, should be reckoned as causing pain or sorrow. Now it is evident that it is contrary to the inclination of the appetite to be united with a present evil: and whatever is contrary to a thing’s inclination does not happen to it save by the action of something stronger. Wherefore Augustine reckons a greater power as being the cause of sorrow. But it must be noted that if the stronger power goes so far as to transform the contrary inclination into its own inclination there will be no longer repugnance or violence: thus if a stronger agent, by its action on a heavy body, deprives it of its downward tendency, its consequent upward tendency is not violent but natural to it. Accordingly if some greater power prevail so far as to take away from the will or the sensitive appetite, their respective inclinations, pain or sorrow will not result therefrom; such is the result only when the contrary inclination of the appetite remains. And hence Augustine says (De Nat. Boni xx) that sorrow is caused by the will “resisting a stronger power”: for were it not to resist, but to yield by consenting, the result would be not sorrow but pleasure. Reply to Objection 1: A greater power causes sorrow, as acting not potentially but actually, i.e. by causing the actual presence of the corruptive evil.

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

  Whether Penance is a virtue?Objection 1: It would seem that penance is not a virtue. For penance is a sacrament numbered among the other sacraments, as was shown above ([4732]Q[84], A[1];[4733] Q[65], A[1]). Now no other sacrament is a virtue. Therefore neither is penance a virtue. Objection 2: Further, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 9), “shame is not a virtue,” both because it is a passion accompanied by a bodily alteration, and because it is not the disposition of a perfect thing, since it is about an evil act, so that it has no place in a virtuous man. Now, in like manner, penance is a passion accompanied by a bodily alteration, viz. tears, according to Gregory, who says (Hom. xxxiv in Evang.) that “penance consists in deploring past sins”: moreover it is about evil deeds, viz. sins, which have no place in a virtuous man. Therefore penance is not a virtue. Objection 3: Further, according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iv, 3), “no virtuous man is foolish.” But it seems foolish to deplore what has been done in the past, since it cannot be otherwise, and yet this is what we understand by penance. Therefore penance is not a virtue. On the contrary, The precepts of the Law are about acts of virtue, because “a lawgiver intends to make the citizens virtuous” (Ethic. ii, 1). But there is a precept about penance in the Divine law, according to Mat. 4:17: “Do penance,” etc. Therefore penance is a virtue. I answer that, As stated above (OBJ[2];[4734] Q[84], A[10], ad 4), to repent is to deplore something one has done. Now it has been stated above ([4735]Q[84] , A[9]) that sorrow or sadness is twofold. First, it denotes a passion of the sensitive appetite, and in this sense penance is not a virtue, but a passion. Secondly, it denotes an act of the will, and in this way it implies choice, and if this be right, it must, of necessity, be an act of virtue. For it is stated in Ethic. ii, 6 that virtue is a habit of choosing according to right reason. Now it belongs to right reason than one should grieve for a proper object of grief as one ought to grieve, and for an end for which one ought to grieve. And this is observed in the penance of which we are speaking now; since the penitent assumes a moderated grief for his past sins, with the intention of removing them. Hence it is evident that the penance of which we are speaking now, is either a virtue or the act of a virtue. Reply to Objection 1: As stated above (Q[84], A[1], ad 1; [4736]AA[2],3), in the sacrament of Penance, human acts take the place of matter, which is not the case in Baptism and Confirmation. Wherefore, since virtue is a principle of an act, penance is either a virtue or accompanies a virtue, rather than Baptism or Confirmation.

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

  Reply to Objection 1: Pleasure is caused by good, which has only one meaning: and so pleasure is not divided into several species as sorrow is; for the latter is caused by evil, which “happens in many ways,” as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv). Reply to Objection 2: Repentance is for one’s own evil, which is the proper object of sorrow: wherefore it does not belong to these species. Jealousy and indignation are included in envy, as we shall explain later ([1310]SS, Q[36], A[2]). Reply to Objection 3: This division is not according to opposite species; but according to the diversity of foreign matter to which the notion of sorrow is applied, as stated above. OF THE CAUSES OF SORROW OR PAIN (FOUR ARTICLES)We must now consider the causes of sorrow: under which head there are four points of inquiry: (1) Whether sorrow is caused by the loss of a good or rather by the presence of an evil? (2) Whether desire is a cause of sorrow? (3) Whether the craving for unity is a cause of sorrow? (4) Whether an irresistible power is a cause of sorrow? Whether sorrow is caused by the loss of good or by the presence of evil?Objection 1: It would seem that sorrow is caused by the loss of a good rather than by the presence of an evil. For Augustine says (De viii QQ. Dulcit. qu. 1) that sorrow is caused by the loss of temporal goods. Therefore, in like manner, every sorrow is caused by the loss of some good. Objection 2: Further, it was said above ([1311]Q[35], A[4]) that the sorrow which is contrary to a pleasure, has the same object as that pleasure. But the object of pleasure is good, as stated above ([1312]Q[23], A[4];[1313] Q[31], A[1];[1314] Q[35], A[3]). Therefore sorrow is caused chiefly by the loss of good. Objection 3: Further, according to Augustine (De Civ. Dei xiv, 7,9), love is the cause of sorrow, as of the other emotions of the soul. But the object of love is good. Therefore pain or sorrow is felt for the loss of good rather than for an evil that is present. On the contrary, Damascene says (De Fide Orth. ii, 12) that “the dreaded evil gives rise to fear, the present evil is the cause of sorrow.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In humans, this highly evolved adaptive function, according to Schore and others, is the basis for the core sense of self. 175 These same circuits in the orbitofrontal cortex receive inputs from the muscles, joints and viscera. The sensations that form the inner landscape of the body are mapped in the orbitofrontal portions of the brain. 176 Hence, as we are able to change our body sensations, we change the highest function of our brains. Emotional regulation, our rudder through life, comes about through embodiment. Embodiment and Refinement For in my flesh I shall see God. —Book of Job Curse the mind that mounts the clouds in search of mythical kings and only mystical things, mystical things cry for the soul that will not face the body as an equal place and I never learned to touch for real down, down, down where the iguanas feel. —Dory Previn song Traumatized people are fragmented and disembodied. The constriction of feeling obliterates shade and texture, turning everything into good or bad, black or white, for us or against us. It is the unspoken hell of traumatization. In order to know who and where we are in space and to feel that we are vital, alive beings, subtleties are essential. Furthermore, it is not just acutely traumatized individuals who are disembodied; most Westerners share a less dramatic but still impairing disconnection from their inner sensate compasses. Given the magnitude of the primordial and raw power of our instincts, the historical role of the church and other cultural institutions in subjugating the body is hardly surprising. In contrast, various (embodied) spiritual traditions have acknowledged the “baser instincts” not as something to be eliminated, but rather as a force in need of, and available for, transformation. In Vipassana meditation and various traditions of tantric Buddhism (such as Kum Nye), the goal is “to manifest the truly human spiritual qualities of universal goodwill, kindness, humility, love, equanimity and so on.” 177 These traditions, rather than renouncing the body, utilize it as a way to “refine” the instincts. The essence of embodiment is not in repudiation, but in living the instincts fully as they dance in the “body electric,” while at the same time harnessing their primordial raw energies to promote increasingly subtle qualities of experience. 178 As the song by Dory Previn suggests, mystical experiences that are not experienced in the body just don’t “stick”; they are not grounded. Trauma sufferers live in a world of chronic dissociation. This perpetual state of disembodiment keeps them disoriented and unable to engage in the here and now. As mentioned earlier, trauma survivors, however, are not alone in being disembodied; a lower level of separation between body/mind is widespread in modern culture, affecting all of us to a greater or lesser degree. Recall the distinction made in the German language between the word Körper, meaning a physical body, and Leib, which translates to English as the “lived (or living) body.”

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

  The time, at forty-six, when you had a sudden desire to color. “Let’s go to Walmart,” you said one morning. “I need coloring books.” For months, you filled the space between your arms with all the shades you couldn’t pronounce. Magenta, vermilion, marigold, pewter, juniper, cinnamon. Each day, for hours, you slumped over landscapes of farms, pastures, Paris, two horses on a windswept plain, the face of a girl with black hair and skin you left blank, left white. You hung them all over the house, which started to resemble an elementary school classroom. When I asked you, “Why coloring, why now?” you put down the sapphire pencil and stared, dreamlike, at a half-finished garden. “I just go away in it for a while,” you said, “but I feel everything. Like I’m still here, in this room.” The time you threw the box of Legos at my head. The hardwood dotted with blood. “Have you ever made a scene,” you said, filling in a Thomas Kinkade house, “and then put yourself inside it? Have you ever watched yourself from behind, going further and deeper into that landscape, away from you?” How could I tell you that what you were describing was writing? How could I say that we, after all, are so close, the shadows of our hands, on two different pages, merging? “I’m sorry,” you said, bandaging the cut on my forehead. “Grab your coat. I’ll get you McDonald’s.” Head throbbing, I dipped chicken nuggets in ketchup as you watched. “You have to get bigger and stronger, okay?” — I reread Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary yesterday, the book he wrote each day for a year after his mother’s death. I have known the body of my mother, he writes, sick and then dying. And that’s where I stopped. Where I decided to write to you. You who are still alive. Those Saturdays at the end of the month when, if you had money left over after the bills, we’d go to the mall. Some people dressed up to go to church or dinner parties; we dressed to the nines to go to a commercial center off I-91. You would wake up early, spend an hour doing your makeup, put on your best sequined black dress, your one pair of gold hoop earrings, black lamé shoes. Then you would kneel and smear a handful of pomade through my hair, comb it over. Seeing us there, a stranger couldn’t tell that we bought our groceries at the local corner store on Franklin Avenue, where the doorway was littered with used food stamp receipts, where staples like milk and eggs cost three times more than they did in the suburbs, where the apples, wrinkled and bruised, lay in a cardboard box soaked on the bottom with pig’s blood that had leaked from the crate of loose pork chops, the ice long melted.

• From The History of World Literature (2007)

  249 Biographical Notes for Lectures 13–24 Cervantes, Miguel de (1547–1616): The man who wrote Don Quixote , which may be the most important novel in history, led an eventful but largely unsuccessful life. He fought at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571—the battle which freed the Mediterranean from Ottoman control—and received three wounds, one of which paralyzed his left hand for the rest of his life. On his way home, he was captured by Turkish pirates and held for an impossibly high ransom given his circumstances; it was many years before the ransom was actually collected, by which time the chance to use the glory of Lepanto for personal advancement had long passed. He wrote voluminously, but nothing much by way of income accrued from his efforts, so in 1587 he took a position as a commissary for the Armada that would invade England the next year. His accounts failed to balance, and he was thrown into prison until about 1603. He made little personal pro¿ t from the two parts of Don Quixote (1605, 1615), but he did ful ¿ ll his lifelong dream of becoming a famous writer and had the satisfaction of knowing at his death that it was one of the most popular books in all of Europe. Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340–1400): He was a public servant for most of his life, serving as a soldier in the Hundred Years War in France, carrying out diplomatic missions to Italy, serving as a member of Parliament from Kent, and holding down the positions of Controller of Customs at the Port of London and Clerk of the King’s Works. Poetry was always for him an avocation, even though it seems to have been his ¿ rst real love. He is the author of many other works besides The Canterbury Tales; the most important of these is probably Troilus and Criseyde , a long poem drawn from post-Homeric Greek legend which has been treated as the ¿ rst novel in English. He helped to make English a language for poetry (as Dante and Petrarch had done for Italian) and is thus sometimes called “The Father of English Poetry.” He was the ¿ rst poet buried in Westminster Abbey in what became, because of his presence there, “The Poets’ Corner.”

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

  Even when someone seeking that advice gives permission, it’s still better when you can help them get to the decision for themselves, as opposed to telling them what to do. When Sarah Olstyn Martinez reached out to me, she gave me permission to have an honest conversation. Even so, I didn’t tell her what decision she should make. I just asked her questions that helped her by framing her choice as an expected-value problem. That allowed her to see it for herself quite quickly. If you’re in a leadership position, Astro Teller provides an outstanding example of how to be a great quitting coach. He helps the people at X be better at shutting things down by tackling monkeys, avoiding pedestals, and setting kill criteria that increase the chances that they’ll get to a rational decision faster. This is all part of his creating a culture that doesn’t just destigmatize quitting but celebrates it. Quitting is hard, too hard to do entirely on our own. We as individuals are riddled by the host of biases, like the sunk cost fallacy, endowment effect, status quo bias, and loss aversion, which lead to escalation of commitment. Our identities are entwined in the things that we’re doing. Our instinct is to want to protect that identity, making us stick to things even more. If there’s one thing that you’ve learned from this book, it’s that just knowing about the problem, doing a thought experiment of taking somebody else’s perspective and trying to see it from the outside, looking in on yourself, is something you cannot do. That’s why Daniel Kahneman thinks he needs a quitting coach, and why we all ought to see that need. Life is just too short to be spending our time on things that aren’t worthwhile. We all need people around us who will tell us when we’re on the wrong path. Chapter 9 Summary Optimism makes you less likely to walk away while not actually increasing your chances of success. That means that being overly optimistic will make you stick to things longer that aren’t worthwhile. Better to be well calibrated. Life’s too short to spend your time on opportunities that are no longer worthwhile. When someone is on the outside looking in, they can usually see your situation more rationally than you can. The best quitting coach is a person who loves you enough to look out for your long-term well-being. They are willing to tell you the hard truth even if it means risking hurt feelings in the short term. Decisions about when to quit improve when the people who make the decisions to start things are different from the people who make the decisions to stop those things. Getting the most out of a quitting coach requires permission to speak the truth. INTERLUDE IIIThe Ants Go Marching . . .

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

  I saw all the blocks in our city you were too busy at work to know about, blocks where things happend. Things even Trevor, having lived all his life on this side of the river, the white side, the one I was now riding on, never saw. I saw the lights on Asylum Ave., where there used to be an asylum (that was actually a school for the deaf) that caught fire and killed half a ward back in 18-something and to this day no one knows what caused it. But I know it as the street where my friend Sid lived with his family after they came over from India in ’95. How his mom, a schoolteacher back in New Delhi, went door-to-door, hobbling on her bloated diabetic feet selling hunting knives for Cutco to make ninety-seven dollars a week—cash. There were the Canino brothers, whose father was in jail for what seemed like two lifetimes for going seventy on a sixty-five in front of a state trooper on 91. That and the twenty bags of heroin and the Glock under his passenger seat. Still, still. There was Marin, who took the bus forty-five minutes each way to work at the Sears in Farmington, who always had gold around her neck and ears, whose high heels clacked like the slowest, most deliberate applause when she walked to the corner store for cigarettes and Hot Cheetos, her Adam’s apple jutting out, a middle finger to the men who called her faggot, called her homomaphedite. Who’d say, holding their daughter’s or son’s hand, “I’m gonna kill you, bitch, I’m gonna cut you, AIDS gonna take you out. Don’t sleep tonight, don’t sleep tonight, don’t sleep tonight. Don’t sleep.”

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  Some stand defiant, with their hand on the button, pressing it like a gambler murmuring, Hit me . Burt comes in every night, stands under the shower for an hour, slams the button over and over with the side of his fist. I don’t know his story. To chat is difficult up in Housing, difficult to start up a conversation with a naked man. Burt looks like he works construction, at least he wears a hardhat, and his clothes are often covered with plaster dust. A big man, barrel-chested, he comes upstairs in the last hour, stands under the hot water until it’s time to close up, his legs spread wide. He looks like a construction worker, but perhaps it’s just a costume. Perhaps he was a construction worker, once, and at some point he lost his job, got laid off. Maybe he never was, technically, constructing anything, maybe he did demolition, maybe they handed him a sledgehammer and a pry bar, pointed to a wall. Maybe he drank, maybe the job dried up, maybe he swung the sledgehammer at the boss one day, maybe one day they pointed to the door. In subsequent months I’ll see Burt walking downtown. Once or twice I’ll see him dozing on a bench in the Common, still wearing that yellow plastic hardhat.

• From The Boys of My Youth (1998)

  We are lying backward against the sloping front terrace of her yard, we have on light blue shorts (stretchy) and dark blue men’s T-shirts (baggy); we’re using our bodies to form the letter D. I pass this tidbit along to Elizabeth. “He must’ve thought we were nuts,” she replies. “What did we have on?” I tell her. “Did we shoplift those shorts?” she asks. We never shoplifted anything; we were too scared. “I think I did, didn’t I?” she says uncertainly. “Like underpants or something, and you were chicken?” That rings a bell with me, but I can’t quite place it. So, if we didn’t meet in French class, then how did we meet? She thinks for a minute. “I have no idea,” she says. “We just met , that’s how we met.” More paper rifling. “I’ll try to remember and then call you after lunch. I have to proofread this thing this afternoon.” She can proof a manuscript and talk on the phone at the same time; so can I. In school, we had a policy of never studying unless it was absolutely necessary, and still got high-to-mediocre grades. This convinced us that we were smarter than the average citizen, and actually, we’re still thinking that way. It might be one of the reasons our husbands divorced us. We’re in our late thirties, childless, and were flung at the same time out of our marriages and back into teenagehood. We spend an hour on the telephone each week talking about boys and clothes. We alternate between hating our exes in a robust, vociferous style, and lying paralyzed on our living room floors sobbing. “Of course you’re lying on the floor,” I tell her consolingly. It’s a Tuesday morning and I’m ready to leave for work. She just called me from her house in Chicago; she’s in her underwear, stretched out full length alongside her coffee table. She’s just realized that the husband who recently left her really did recently leave her. “I didn’t believe it was actually happening,” she says into the receiver. She’s completely stuffed up and having an asthma attack at the same time. I can hear her spraying her inhaler every few minutes. Talking about her divorce is making me think of my own, and I feel like I suddenly need my inhaler, too. I set the phone down quietly while she’s weeping and run into the bathroom to retrieve it. “I’m having an asthma attack,” I tell her. “Welcome to the club,” she replies. “The divorce club.” She’s coming out of it a little. “Can you get up yet?” I ask her. She thinks maybe she can, so I direct her into her bedroom where she starts going through the clothes in her closet. She’s on the cordless phone and we have to talk around a big annoying hiss in the background. She picks out something to wear and gets dressed, putting the phone down once to pull a shirt over her head.

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

  In other words, if they played the hand out over and over again, which choice (staying or folding) would be the more profitable decision in the long run? Obviously, we’re not omniscient and most of us aren’t going to be as good at doing this mental time travel as Stewart Butterfield, but every single one of us is capable of getting some peek into the future and that’s going to help you be better at your quitting decisions. Quitting Decisions Are Expected-Value DecisionsIn the summer of 2021, I received an email from a reader who wanted help working through a decision about whether to quit her job. Dr. Sarah Olstyn Martinez felt she had reached a crossroads in her professional life. She had been an emergency room physician for sixteen years, having fallen in love with emergency medicine from the first moment in 2005 when she rotated through a hospital ER during her one-year internship after medical school. Mount Sinai Hospital, where Olstyn Martinez did her internship, was a leading trauma center in Chicago. Its neighborhood, North Lawndale, is considered one of the most dangerous in the city. According to a 2019 study on trends in firearm violence based on emergency room data, “it is accurate to say that Mount Sinai sees a large percentage of the total firearm violence that occurs in Chicago.” It was great training and she loved the experience of working in a leading trauma center. The internship worked out so well that she did her four-year residency in emergency medicine. In 2009, she moved to Austin, Texas, and became an ER doctor at the hospital where she worked for the next twelve years. This, too, was a job she loved. People have the idea that an ER doctor is running around pumping people’s chests, constantly doing crazy life-and-death stuff. Of course, there is some of that, but, as Olstyn Martinez describes it, the essence of the job is more about the daily challenge of dealing with the wear of seeing humanity at its loneliest and most heartbreaking. For example, on one shift in 2021, her first patient was a ninety-year-old woman brought in from a nursing home. She was so ill that she wasn’t verbal and Dr. Olstyn Martinez couldn’t get ahold of any family to help her figure out what was wrong. In the next room, a woman in her sixties complained that someone was trying to poison her because every hit off her crack pipe gave her palpitations. She vehemently denied the possibility that the crack was the problem, since she had been smoking it for twenty years. It was both emotionally challenging and engrossing work. But inside the ER community, handling the hard aspects of the job is what makes ER doctors special.

• From Reading the Bible from the Margins (2002)

  Without much thought she quickly responded, “So as not to tempt the men.” Frankly, I didn't have the heart to tell this eighty-year-old woman that she need not worry about this. Nevertheless, what I found fascinating about her comment was the way she saw herself—that is, through the eyes of the men of her church. Her activities, including the way she dressed her body, were molded by this viewpoint. From the pulpit, for all of her life, she has heard men preach about the sinful nature of women's bodies. It is the woman who leads men astray, and so she must be hidden from sight. Pious Christian women impose upon themselves their own subjugation by dressing the way men expect them to dress so that these same holy men do not fall into temptation. In my mind's eye I could just see her walking up to the female teenagers of the church to lecture them about their “improper” attire, thus maintaining a dress code established by men and perpetuated by the church women, who have been taught to see themselves only through the eyes of men. For many churches, any not biblically sanctioned sexual activity between men and women becomes the fault of the woman. How many times have you heard the same questions raised, at times by women, upon hearing of a rape? What was she wearing? What was she doing at that party? Why did she go out with those boys? How was she acting? Did she drink too much? What can you expect if she was asking for it? These questions, and many like them, underline a major component of patriarchy: women's bodies are evil and so lead righteous men to sin; hence the Bible grants authority to these holy men to protect and confine female bodies against sin. For the good of the community, for the purity of women, men must rule, a concept justified by how some men read the biblical text. JUSTIFYING PATRIARCHY At seminary I attended a class where the professor would begin each session by asking the students to call out their favorite biblical verse. This being a class full of future ministers and theologians, you can imagine the types of verses that were typically called out—John 3:16, Psalm 23, Romans 3:23, and Ephesians 2:8, to name a few. One day the professor looked in my direction and asked what was my favorite verse. Without hesitating I said Genesis 2:25, “And they were both naked, the man and his wife, yet they were not ashamed.” I was not trying to be funny. I am attracted to this verse because I can find no better depiction of God's intention concerning human relationships, relationships where participants stand totally vulnerable before each other yet feel no shame. Nonetheless, the Bible is seen as patriarchal by many women who read the text.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  As she began her career as a film actress at a very young age, she examined herself and her flaws with ruthless objectivity: she was hypersensitive and fragile; she had a lot of pain and sadness she could not get rid of or disguise; she wanted desperately to be loved; she had a continual need for a father figure. Such insecurities could easily be the death of someone in a place as ruthless as Hollywood. Instead, through much introspection and work, she managed to transform these very weaknesses into the pillars of her highly successful career. She decided, for instance, to bring her own feelings of sadness and betrayal into all of the different roles she played, making women around the world identify with her; she was unlike so many of the other actresses, who were so falsely cheerful and superficial. She directed her desperate need to be loved toward the camera itself, and audiences could feel it. The film directors became father figures whom she adored and treated with extreme respect. And her most pronounced quality, her hypersensitivity, she turned outward instead of inward. She developed intensely fine antennae tuned to the likes and dislikes of the directors she worked with. Without looking at them or hearing a word they said, she could sense their displeasure with her acting, ask the right questions, and quickly incorporate their criticisms. She was a director’s dream. She coupled all of this with her fierce willpower, forging a career that spanned over forty years, something unheard of for an actress in Hollywood. This is the alchemy that you must use on yourself. If you are a hyperperfectionist who likes to control everything, you must redirect this energy into some productive work instead of using it on people. Your attention to detail and high standards are a positive, if you channel them correctly. If you are a pleaser, you have developed courtier skills and real charm. If you can see the source of this trait, you can control the compulsive and defensive aspect of it and use it as a genuine social skill that can bring you great power. If you are highly sensitive and prone to take things personally, you can work to redirect this into active empathy (see chapter 2), and transform this flaw into an asset to use for positive social purposes. If you have a rebellious character, you have a natural dislike of conventions and the usual ways of doing things. Channel this into some kind of innovative work, instead of compulsively insulting and alienating people. For each weakness there is a corresponding strength.