| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: helpless condition.
When Christmas Day dawned the Daemon of Malice was guarding the
prisoner, and his tongue was sharper than that of any of the others.
"The children are waking up, Santa!" he cried. "They are waking up to
find their stockings empty! Ho, ho! How they will quarrel, and wail,
and stamp their feet in anger! Our caves will be full today, old
Santa! Our caves are sure to be full!"
But to this, as to other like taunts, Santa Claus answered nothing.
He was much grieved by his capture, it is true; but his courage did
not forsake him. And, finding that the prisoner would not reply to
his jeers, the Daemon of Malice presently went away, and sent the
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I
put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire
or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I
could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men
as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in
some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and
I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should
endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the
will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between
resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can
resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to
Walden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: tiny bird, called nightingale. He took a knife, for to kill and
eat her; but the nightingale, being given the power of articulate
speech, said to the fowler, `Man, what advantageth it thee to
slay me? for thou shalt not be able by my means to fill thy
belly. Now free me of my fetters, and I will give thee three
precepts, by the keeping of which thou shalt be greatly benefited
all thy life long.' He, astonied at her speech, promised that,
if he heard anything new from her, he would quickly free her from
her captivity. The nightingale turned towards our friend and
said, `Never try to attain to the unattainable: never regret the
thing past and gone: and never believe the word that passeth
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