fuming and fretting

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One autumn day Mrs. Peale and I took a trip into Massachusetts to see our son John and we pride ourselves on the good old American custom of promptness. Therefore, being a bit behind schedule, we were driving at breakneck speed through the autumnal landscape. My wife said, "Norman, did you see that radiant hillside?"

"What hillside?" I asked.

"It just went by on the other side," she explained.

"Look at that beautiful tree."

"What tree?" I was already a mile past it.

"This is one of the most glorious days I have ever seen," my wife said. "How could you possibly imagine such amazing colors as these New England hillsides in October? In fact," she said, "it makes me happy inside."

That remark of hers so impressed me that I stopped the car and went back a quarter of a mile to a lake backed by towering hills dressed in autumn colors. We sat and looked and meditated. God with His genius and skill had painted that scene in the varied colors which He alone can mix. In the still waters of the lake lay a reflected vision of His glory, for the hillside was unforgettably pictured in that mirrorlike pond.

For quite a while we sat without a word until finally my wife broke the silence by the only appropriate statement that one could make, "He leadeth me beside the still waters." (Ps 23:2) We arrived at Deerfield at eleven, but we were not tired. In fact, we were deeply refreshed.

Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking

The Geography of Cancer

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Chance has a genius for disguise. Frequently it appears in numbers that seem to form a pattern. People feel an overwhelming temptation to deduce that there is more to the events they witness than chance alone. Sometimes we are right. Often, though, we are suckered, and the apparent order merely resembles one.

To see why, take a bag of rice and chuck the contents straight into the air.

Observe the way the rice is scattered on the carpet at your feet. What you have done is create a chance distribution of rice grains. There will be thin patches here, thicker ones there, and every so often a much larger and distinct pile of rice. It has clustered.

Now imagine each grain of rice as a cancer case falling across a map of the United States.

Wherever cases of cancer bunch, people demand an explanation. The rice patterns, however, don’t need an explanation. The rice shows that clustering, as the result of chance alone, is to be expected. The truly weird result would be if the rice had spread itself in a smooth, regular layer. Similarly, the genuinely odd pattern of illness would be an even spread of cases across the population.

This analogy draws no moral equivalence between cancer and rice patterns. Sometimes, certainly, a cancer cluster will point to a shared local cause. Often, though, the explanation lies in the complicated and myriad causes of disease, mingled with the complicated and myriad influences on where we choose to live, combined with accidents of timing, all in a collision of endless possibilities that, just like the endless collisions of those flying rice grains, come together to produce a cluster.

Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, The Numbers Game

Solving the problem is more important than blaming the cause

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When you’re young, it’s easy to get into the blame game when things go wrong. Your alarm clock didn’t go off. Your computer crashed as you were typing the last sentence of that 10-page history paper. That professor didn’t like you. Then you grow up, and guess what? No one cares about your excuses, unavoidable as they might be. Be proactive. Get the job done. Worry about the rest later. 

Alex McDaniel

Shut up with your cynical, I’ve-seen-some-things attitude

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You’re at the beginning of your life with the entire world in front of you. Whatever happened before reaching this point is done and unchangeable. What lies ahead is entirely up to you. Get the chip off your shoulder and walk on. Allow your past to be a source of strength and direction, not the thing that keeps you from moving on with your life.

Alex McDaniel

If you’re not being challenged on a daily basis, change something

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Reaching adulthood is no excuse to stop learning or growing. It just means now we’re responsible for reaching new heights in every aspect of our lives. Go for a morning jog. Ask your boss if you can have a hand in a bigger project with more responsibility. Meet new people. Keep pushing.

Alex McDaniel

Being single is not an illness to be cured

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There’s a big difference in aspiring to be in a relationship with someone who brings out the best in you and simply wanting to be in a relationship so you don’t have to be single anymore. Your relationship status isn’t indicative of your personal success, so why not embrace the dating lulls when they come as time to work on yourself until someone better comes along? And slap anyone who asks when you’re finally going to settle down and find someone. They need it. 

Alex McDaniel

Ambiguity and narrative

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The discomfort with ambiguity and arbitrariness is equally powerful, or more so, in our need for a rational understanding of our lives. We strive to fit the events of our lives into a coherent story that accounts for our circumstances, the things that follow us, and the choices we make. Each of us has a different narrative that has many threads woven into it from our shared culture and experience of being human, as well as many distinct threads that explain the singular events of one's personal past. All these experiences influence what comes to mind in a current situation and the narrative through which you make sense of it: why nobody in my family attended college until me. Why my father never made a fortune in business. Why I'd never want to work in a corporation, or, maybe, why I would never want to work for myself. We gravitate to the narratives that best explain our emotions. In this way, narrative and memory become one. The memories we organize meaningfully become those that are better remembered. Narrative provides not only meaning but also a mental framework for imbuing future experiences andinformation with meaning, in effort shaping new memories to fit our establish constructs of the world and ourselves. The narrative of memory becomes central to our intuitions regarding the judgments we make and the actions we take. Because memory is a shape-shifter, reconciling the competing demands of emotions, suggestions, and narrative, it serves you well to stay open to the fallibility of your certainties: even your most cherished memories may not represent events in the exact way they occurred.

Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Couple spends wedding day feeding refugees

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A Turkish couple celebrated their wedding day by hosting 4,000 Syrian refugees at their reception party in the southern city of Kilis near the Syrian border. Fethullah Uzumcuoglu and his bride Esra Polat borrowed a food truck from a local charity and pooled money they received as wedding gifts to pay for the feast. Still in suit and gown, the newlyweds spent much of their party handing out meals to the grateful refugees. “Seeing the happiness in the eyes of the Syrian children is just priceless,” said the groom. “We started our journey to happiness by making others happy. That’s a great feeling.”

The Week Magazine, August 21, 2015 issue

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