| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: What he saw was not what he expected. Near the door was a boom box,
playing very lively but not overly loud classical music. Directly
in front of him across the room he saw the young woman, barefoot and
wearing, instead of her business attire, purple sweatpants and a
torn green sweatshirt. Worse than this, she was turning cartwheels
and saying what sounded to him like, "Put it in the lake, dip it,
water proof it, French dip it, soak it, drench it, pinch it, wrench
it." When she stopped to attend to his interruption, he noticed that
her hair was rubber banded into a vertical column on top of her head.
The young man was sitting off to one side, wearing jeans and a
T-shirt printed with the words, "None of the Above." Nearby was an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been inside
one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.
Though we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live
in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to
accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention
and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this,
boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily
obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient
quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak
understandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted
with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
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