Readings for each day of the week
Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86 to 88; Step Eleven, morning
Friday
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
Saturday
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Sunday
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
Monday
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
Tuesday
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
Wednesday
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Thursday
We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Calendar readings
01 October 2022
Look at children playing in the sand. They make piles of sand and give them labels, calling one pile “my house” and another “my car.” They believe in their labels and grasp on to them, and, when challenged, they argue and fight, as attachment, hatred, and anger arise. Clinging to the eight worldly dharmas, we’re just like children. In fact, we’re completely childish. We cling to actions as if they have meaning, whereas they don’t at all. We chase the meaningless in search of happiness; we believe the essenceless to have essence.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
02 October 2022
Think about how much of your guilt you could let go of if you realised it had no effect. If you think you’re going to be punished, you’ll withhold the truth. If I have fear, I can’t communicate openly. If I knew how to love everyone unconditionally, I wouldn’t have to do the Course.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
03 October 2022
Deliver me, O God...
...from the fear of being humiliated
...from the fear of being despised
...from the fear of suffering rebuke
...from the fear of being forgotten
...from the fear of being wronged
...from the fear of being ridiculed
...from the fear that others may be loved more than I
Adapted (slightly) from a prayer by St John of the Cross
04 October 2022
God, I acknowledge here in your presence that, when separated from you, I am nothing and can do nothing of true worth. Come and dwell in this soul that longs to be a channel for your grace and love. Heal the lurking distemper of my heart and infuse your grace into the wellsprings of my life.
Adapted from the St Augustine’s Prayer Book
05 October 2022
My goal is to be a conduit for love and truth and spirit. I am learning through the Course to let go of everything that would block me from knowing that love.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
06 October 2022
God, grant me the gift of counsel and brilliant light, that, in danger and doubt, I may choose what is right and good, and under your guidance attain a happy end.
Adapted from the St Augustine’s Prayer Book
07 October 2022
The eight worldly dharmas are:
- Craving for material possessions
- Craving to be free from a lack of material possessions
- Craving for happiness and comfort
- Craving to be free from unhappiness and discomfort
- Craving for a good reputation
- Craving to be free from a bad reputation
- Craving for praise
- Craving to be free from criticism
These eight worldly dharmas (also called the eight worldly concerns) are the four desirable objects that we crave to have and the four undesirable objects that we crave to be free from.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
08 October 2022
What is the Kingdom of Heaven? The world that thoughts of love would create. You look at the world outside: that’s the world that is created by fear. When you think you’re a body and you think you’re separate and no longer realise that we’re one: look out; that’s the world you have made with those thoughts. This is the world that fear has made. There is another world you can see.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
09 October 2022
God, grant me the gift of fortitude and comforting light, that I may generously overcome all difficulties, resist all temptations, and soar above all the troubles and trials of this life.
Adapted from the St Augustine’s Prayer Book
10 October 2022
Oh, Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world—hear me—I come before you, one of your children. I am small and weak. I need your strength and wisdom. Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold the red and purple sunset. Make my hands respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice. Make me wise, so that I may know the things you have taught my People, the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock. I seek strength not to be superior to my brothers, but to be able to fight my greatest enemy, myself. Make me ever ready to come to you, with clean hands and straight eyes, so when life fades as a fading sunset, my spirit may come to you without shame.
Prayer by Yellow Hawk, Sioux Chief
11 October 2022
Here’s an experiment. Watch your mind when you meet any of the four desirable objects (craving for material possessions, happiness & comfort, good reputation, and praise). How does it feel at that time? When you look below the surface of the excitement and sense pleasure, you’ll see that it’s never peaceful or relaxed but confused, agitated, disturbed. It’s lifted up but also uptight, as if gripped by an iron glove. When there’s attachment, concentration is impossible because the mind is not free, as it has sunk into the object. We call that tight, agitated mind “happiness” but it’s just a different degree of suffering. By understanding its nature, we can understand clearly how, although we have received what we want, there’s still something missing.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
12 October 2022
The reason you’re not satisfied with this world is because you know you deserve better than what you’re allowing to be done for you in this world. The problem is I’m not thinking only thoughts of God, love, and truth. The rest of your thoughts, which are not so cool, stay with you until the Holy Spirit reinterprets them in the light of love. Your sane self says: I want you to share as many thoughts of truth and love as possible; give the dark thoughts to me instead, so I can transform them, and then you can share with others. Don’t hold back the loving thoughts. Hold back the negative thoughts, and give the negative thoughts to the Holy Spirit. Most people get it backwards; they share the dark thoughts and hold back the good ones.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
13 October 2022
God, grant me the gift of knowledge and discerning light, that I may judge all things according to their true worth and love only what is to be loved.
Adapted from the St Augustine’s Prayer Book
14 October 2022
We have the constant, nagging worry that the four undesirable objects (lack of material possessions, unhappiness & discomfort, bad reputation, blame) are waiting for us just around the corner. They might not exist for us now— we haven’t met the object of dislike yet and might in fact never meet it—but in our mind it’s as if the problem were already there. And when something really happens to an object we cherish—it gets lost or destroyed or our friend leaves us—then the greater our attachment, the greater our suffering. We get incredibly upset, our mood plummets into depression and our whole face completely changes.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
15 October 2022
I want to be a person who either shuts up or says loving things. The thoughts I want to become strong and manifest are the ones I’m going to share. I do not need to deny those negative thoughts: I need to admit and surrender them to the Holy Spirit, and say that I am misperceiving them, then listen for how the Holy Spirit reinterprets those, for instance by seeing others’ behaviour as calls for love. You can feel all the justification you want to attack people, but you’re increasing that attack thought in your own life, so you’re just increasing the anger and upset in your life, so don’t be surprised when you attract those experiences in your life. Instead: let the sane part of you reinterpret those thoughts so they are loving thoughts, and then you can share them.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
16 October 2022
Lord, please do not allow the noise of my intellect, engaged in its search for profound reflections, to intrude on my intimacy with You. Let me realise that a few straws of humility will kindle the fire of Divine love more effectually than any number of logs of learned argument. Let me be near to You and feel the warmth of Your grace.
Teresa of Ávila
17 October 2022
Whenever there’s the thought of the worldly dharmas—clinging to shelter, food, clothing and so forth—there’s worry and fear about losing them. Whenever there’s attachment to comfort, there’s fear of losing it; whenever there’s attachment to receiving material things, there’s fear of not receiving them; whenever there’s attachment to praise, there’s fear of being criticized; whenever there’s attachment to a good reputation, there’s fear of receiving a bad one. That’s the fundamental suffering. Not having the four desirable objects is suffering, but so is having them and, because of attachment, being afraid of losing them.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
18 October 2022
Your understanding is not a powerful contribution to the truth. Your understanding does not make anything true.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
19 October 2022
Lord, let my soul realise that You are so near to it that it need not send messengers, but may speak to You itself, that it need not cry aloud, since You are now so close that it has only to move its lips and You will understand.
Teresa of Ávila
20 October 2022
The amount of disturbance we experience depends on how much clinging we have. When we’re full of needy desire, nothing can ever satisfy us. We’ve all seen people like this. There’s always something missing in their lives, always something wrong. Wherever they stay there’s something wrong; whatever clothes they have or food they eat, nothing ever satisfies them. To a lesser extent, perhaps, this is us; this is samsara. This is the psychology of how mind and object relate to each other. Investigating this is the best way of studying the mind.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
21 October 2022
You have to be what you want to have. If this room is pure love and you’re not, the room is no longer pure love. It’s not 100% safe. Why? Because you’re there. Everything was fine until you came in. Everyone is happy and they just share and extend happiness. And then you walk in. They have no jealousy and no fear. And then you walk in. With your doubt, suspicions, and judgements. So the room is no longer pure love. You have to become that pure love to experience that wherever you go.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
22 October 2022
Lord, let my soul realise that You are doing Your work without any labouring of my intellect, which is merely amazed at seeing You play the part of the Good Gardener. For when You bring my soul to this state, You can do anything. Let me realise I no longer belong to myself and am entirely given to You. Let me delight in the fragrance that the flowers are beginning to give off.
Teresa of Ávila
23 October 2022
If we were less attached to objects, even receiving tasteless food wouldn’t be much of a problem. There’d be no reason to feel upset, no problem of the mind being down. As much as we can lessen our attachment to receiving the four desirable objects, that much can we lessen our unhappiness at not receiving them. By cutting through our attachment, Dharma practice brings peace into our life, frees us from confusion and makes us happy. Whatever happens—comfort, discomfort, praise, criticism or whatever— our mind is always happy, stable and at peace.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
24 October 2022
I used to want to be with people who exemplified the opposite of what I was. I had insecurities and wanted someone who had lots of confidence. But would someone with lots of confidence want someone with all those insecurities? Think of all those things that you want in someone else that you do not have in you. But would someone who has all of those things want you? At night, do they pray for a dysfunctional person to come into their lives? Until you love yourself, that’s what you’ll be delivering. I’ve got enough issues to deal with already before I try and drag someone else along with me in a relationship of growth who does not want to grow.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
25 October 2022
Lord, let me picture myself in Your presence and feel Your love for my humanness. Let me remember that I can always have You with me, talk to You, ask You for what I need, and complain to You of my troubles and rejoice with You in my pleasures, yet never allow these to make me forgetful of You. Let me be carried by You everywhere and make best use of Your company.
Teresa of Ávila
26 October 2022
When we do not renounce attachment—seeking happiness in this life—negative karma, suffering and bad reputation all afflict us at the same time. When we renounce this worldly thought, the sun of real happiness arises in our mind.
Kadampa Geshe Shawo Gangpa
27 October 2022
The reason we don’t have private thoughts is we’re always running our mouths off. People are hearing the way you think by what’s coming out of your mouth. You know the attitude people are taking internally from what they’re saying. Your specialness will tell you you’re different: ‘I know he is condemning his ex and his Mom and Pop, but with me he’s suddenly going to become unconditionally loving.’ If they’re not sharing loving thoughts about others, they’re not going to be creating love with you; they’re going to be creating conflict with you.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
28 October 2022
We must realize that, if God withholds the water of grace, no work is enough. We must consider ourselves as nothing, or less than nothing. In this way, great humility is gained, and then the flowers begin to grow again.
Teresa of Ávila
29 October 2022
Harboring strong attachment is like having a sharp shard of glass stuck in our mind. It’s not a happy mind; it’s suffering. For us, there’s a big difference between receiving a dollar and not receiving one. For the meditator who has renounced the eight worldly dharmas, however, there’s no difference between receiving even a million dollars or not; it doesn’t change his mind. It’s not like receiving is happiness and not receiving is unhappiness. Neither temporal happiness nor temporal suffering mean that much to him.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
30 October 2022
I’m sharing with you in order to be able to hear it myself. If I want to hear thoughts of sanity and love, I have to say them. I’m saying to you what I want to hear. You say to people what you want to hear. Not what they want to hear. Share with people what you want to hear. I want to hear sanity and love, so I’m going to talk to you from a sane, loving place. When people are talking to me, I listen, then answer based on what I want to come to me. No one is ever hearing anything that you’re saying. They’re hearing their interpretation of what you’re saying. They’re hearing the meaning they have given it. If I say I love you, and you believe love means limitation, you will believe I’m saying something about limitation. The important thing, rather than being clear, is sharing what you want to come into your experience. So, before sharing with someone else, ask, ‘What do I want to hear’? I’m going to become the love I want to experience.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
31 October 2022
God, I have fallen into error and darkness. Restore me, God, grant me mercies, as You have been pleased to grant so liberally before, so that, this time too, all who see Your restoration of me will be astonished. Let these mercies draw me out of myself that I may praise You better to others. As long as I am in myself without you, God, I am like cut flowers of the garden; I can do nothing. Do not allow this, God, do not allow my soul, which you have ransomed anew and have snatched from the teeth of the hideous dragon, to be lost, for then I cannot sing.
Teresa of Ávila
01 November 2022
When we’re obsessed with our own comfort and pleasure, we’re easily disturbed. Everything distracts and annoys us—any little noise outside, any tiny insect flying around. Every unwanted thing becomes a huge disturbance to our mind, the cause of great unhappiness. For example, you might have seen certain old people shouting and screaming whenever there’s even a little bit of noise, making themselves and everybody around them unhappy.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
CHECKED TO HERE
02 November 2022
You don’t need to study to get in touch with your eternal nature. You’re love. That’s what you really are. You don’t need to study to acquire that. The problem is you’ve forgotten you’re beautiful and innocent. That’s why you feel guilty and afraid. Stop waiting for other people to want to wake up before you start trying to experience this. Start to become it now, so you can have it. You have it already but you just don’t know it.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
03 November 2022
Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.
Teresa of Ávila
04 November 2022
All of our problems reside in the first three dimensions. Our solution resides in the fourth.
Jay S
05 November 2022
You think you’re the conditioning you got when you were a child. You think you are your past labels and descriptions. You can tell they’re wrong by the way you feel. And you know whether you really feel or experience joy and radiance and happiness right now. You know whether you feel absolute peace, joy, and security. If you don’t, you’re not bad or sinful, you’re just wrong-minded. That’s it. So don’t beat yourself up about it.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
06 November 2022
Strive for the perfect direction, not perfection.
Joe C
07 November 2022
I will never get so sober I can’t get drunk again; but I could get so drunk I can’t get sober again.
Larry T
08 November 2022
If you hate the world, there’s nothing wrong with you, but there’s something wrong with your thinking. When you don’t like how you feel, you hope that you’re wrong. I’ve got to remember that whatever I am telling myself I’m intensifying. How do I know my self-perceptions are wrong? Because they make me feel bad. If they make me feel bad, they’re a lie. That’s the definition of a lie: it brings me unhappiness. It’s not more complicated than that.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
09 November 2022
Don’t complain that AA does not work for you. Are you working for it?
Larry T
10 November 2022
God is not without power. Whilst you’re shaking your clenched fist at the universe saying, ‘God, you gotta help me, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta’, the universe says, ‘go your way’. The most powerful thing to say is ‘I’m done. I do not know how. Send me someone to show me.’
Mildred F
11 November 2022
If you’re in a relationship and all you feel is suspicion and hell, it’s not yet real. The only reason you’re going through the lack is because you don’t realise you’re one [with everyone in truth]. People who know that giving is how you receive give a lot. When it looks like there’s an ebb cycle, that’s when I try and share more. Any idea that I want more of: sharing is how I increase it in my mind. By the mere act of sharing, I am saying I have abundance. I can’t give unless I have in the first place. Every time I give I’m demonstrating I have. There is a way out of everything if you really want to be happy.
Transcribed from a class by Earl Purdy
12 November 2022
I had to be broken. I had to be broken open. I then had to do what I was told.
Mildred F
13 November 2022
Meditation puts the wick in the candle. No wick; no light.
Mildred F
14 November 2022
A mahogany statue is not mahogany and a statue; it is mahogany in the form of a statue; If God is everything, what are you made of?
Mildred F
15 November 2022
Be still (not just quiet) and know that I am God.
Mildred F
16 November 2022
Once you know that God is within, whom are you going to pray to? Just get right with it, and behave.
Pat Y
17 November 2022
I was shy. You call it self-obsession. I prefer shy. It implies I can’t help it.
Pat Y
18 November 2022
If you’re really desperate, if you have the gift of desperation, G-O-D, any Al-Anon meeting would look good to you.
Tom W
19 November 2022
I cannot change the past; I cannot change the truth; and I cannot change you.
Tom W
20 November 2022
I can change my thinking; I can change my behaviour; I can change my attitudes.
Tom W
21 November 2022
God does not help those who help themselves: He helps those who ask.
Tom W
22 November 2022
Know what is going on; talk about it without blame; ask others and God for help; walk through it, not round it.
Tom W
23 November 2022
In Al-Anon, we learn to keep our sails out of everyone else’s wind.
Tom W
24 November 2022
When you are hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, the first response is not to think about it. You cannot handle any of these individually, let alone collectively. Act, and act now. Otherwise, they make you dumb.
Tom W
25 November 2022
I used to think worry was taking action. I also used to think that worry implied intimacy. If I’m worried about you, we must be very close, I would think. Worry is wasting energy I don’t have.
Tom W
26 November 2022
A prayer for worriers: help!
Tom W
27 November 2022
A prayer for the morning: helpmehelpmehelpmehelpmehelpme. A prayer for the evening: thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou.
Tom W
28 November 2022
I cannot fix me, and I sure cannot fix you.
Tom W
29 November 2022
A useful Al-Anon tool: ‘I’ll be right back’.
Tom W
30 November 2022
You know you need an Al-Anon meeting when, on being faced with a difficult person, you instantly work out how near to the top of the stairs they are.
Tom W
01 December 2022
A particular form of crazy: ‘If I’m always busy, no one can criticise me.’ Another form of crazy: ‘good people work; better people work more.’
Tom W
02 December 2022
First things first. People are first. A lot of relationships come first. Not work. People.
Tom W
03 December 2022
Some people work hard at being sick and crazy. And we get to let them.
Tom W
04 December 2022
It is in the present we experience a power greater than ourselves.
Tom W
05 December 2022
I’ve learned how to dread one day at a time. I do not have to dread tomorrow. I can focus on dreading just today.
Tom W
06 December 2022
Even when I’m not looking, God is at work, and I need to leave God the space to do the work.
Tom W
07 December 2022
Pray this: God: heal what needs healing; and reveal what needs revealing. Then duck.
Tom W
08 December 2022
I get to change my attitudes. Old ideas don’t just go away because they’re old, stupid, and half-baked. They go away when I actively go out to recruit new ones.
Tom W
09 December 2022
Keep your big, fat, mouth shut; mind your own business.
Tom W
10 December 2022
Alcoholism is like dancing with a gorilla. You’re not done dancing till the gorilla is done dancing. Except when they first told me this story, they didn’t say ‘dancing’, they said ‘dating’. Except they didn’t say ‘dating’. If you’re sober today, it does not mean you outsmarted the gorilla; all it means is that it is taking a brief nap. Get out of the cage, and do not go back in, even when it starts playing your tune. And do not pet it. We who love alcoholics visit the zoo a lot. In the crocodile pen of the zoo in Burma, it says, ‘do not climb in; they are not asleep; they are waiting for you’. Do not get into the cage. Do not vacuum, dust, rearrange the furniture, or hang up neat, inspirational slogans. It does not work. Do not get between the alcoholic and the gorilla. You will get your arms and legs yanked off, and not just by the gorilla. The Al-Anon programme boils down to: stay out of the cage, even to vacuum, just for today. Instead, go and meet the other vacuumers, perhaps by the giraffes, and rebuild your own life.
Tom W
11 December 2022
I went to the doctor the other day.
Shrugging one shoulder, I said, ‘It hurts when I do that.’
He said, ‘Well, don’t do it, then.’
Tommy Cooper
12 December 2022
One of the things I’ve noticed traveling around the world is that the lives of people in materially developed countries are quite complicated and unstable, whereas the lives of those in primitive countries where there are few modern appliances—sometimes not even matches—seem much more stable. Of course, they have problems—after all, they’re also living in samsara, where just having a body is a problem. But they don’t have problems like people in the West, where it seems that their mood changes minute by minute: up one minute, down the next.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
13 December 2022
People find it easier to get angry than to feel sadness, sorrow, or guilt.
Judge Judy
14 December 2022
Honey, he cain’t get your goat if he don’t know where it’s tied.
Al-Anon saying from West Texas
15 December 2022
Whenever there’s a problem, instead of worrying about it, building it up and giving yourself a nervous breakdown, just see that problem as a dream; you are simply dreaming you are having a problem. You should think about it in the way that Padmasambhava said. You may have a dream that lasts only a few moments, but within the dream itself it seems to last a very long time, maybe a hundred thousand years. You live somewhere and grow from a child to an adult, become middle-aged, then your hair turns white. You see your whole life over many years and during that time there are many pleasures and many problems. Yet the actual duration of the dream is perhaps five minutes. When you wake up you realize it has just been a short time and it’s empty; whatever problem or excitement you had in the dream is empty.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
16 December 2022
You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep others warm
Joan Crawford
17 December 2022
She’s the sort of woman who lives for others—you can always tell the others by their hunted expression.
C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942) no. 26.
18 December 2022
Watch your mind as anger arises. Observe how your mind can change. If that person had praised you, you would have been happy, but as soon as she criticized you, you got really angry. See how changeable your mind is depending on the object and see how this, not the object, is the cause of suffering.
Rinpoche, Lama Zopa. How To Practice Dharma: Teachings on the Eight Worldly Dharmas
19 December 2022
All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.
Mae West
20 December 2022
Say what you mean without saying it mean.
Anonymous
21 December 2022
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde: Lady Windermere’s Fan
22 December 2022
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Anonymous
23 December 2022
Say it once and only once, or it’s nagging.
Anonymous
24 December 2022
Don’t get your help all over people.
Anne Lamott
25 December 2022
Help is the sunny side of control.
Anne Lamott
26 December 2022
We come to meetings to feel better. We do the steps to get better.
An Al-Anon member
27 December 2022
It only hurts when I exist.
Caption from cartoon by B. Kliban
28 December 2022
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
Sylvia Plath
29 December 2022
When I was a boy at school at Shrewsbury, old Mrs. Brown used to keep a tray of spoiled tarts which she sold cheaper. They most of them looked pretty right till you handled them. We are all spoiled tarts.
Samuel Butler
30 December 2022
[Character 1] Richard. I’ve got Dennis on the phone, and he heard the same thing I heard.
[Character 2] Well, one wrong man can always find a friend.
The Gilmore Girls
31 December 2022
How to say ‘no’:
‘Sheldon, I’m working. I can’t take you to the dentist. Also, and I can’t stress this enough, I don’t want to take you to the dentist.’
Stuart, Big Bang Theory
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