| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Parmenides by Plato: participate in both? And may not all things partake of both opposites, and
be both like and unlike, by reason of this participation?--Where is the
wonder? Now if a person could prove the absolute like to become unlike, or
the absolute unlike to become like, that, in my opinion, would indeed be a
wonder; but there is nothing extraordinary, Zeno, in showing that the
things which only partake of likeness and unlikeness experience both. Nor,
again, if a person were to show that all is one by partaking of one, and at
the same time many by partaking of many, would that be very astonishing.
But if he were to show me that the absolute one was many, or the absolute
many one, I should be truly amazed. And so of all the rest: I should be
surprised to hear that the natures or ideas themselves had these opposite
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Kidnapped Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum: These little people he had often found very useful in helping him to
distribute his gifts to the children, and when their master was so
suddenly dragged from the sleigh they were all snugly tucked
underneath the seat, where the sharp wind could not reach them.
The tiny immortals knew nothing of the capture of Santa Claus until
some time after he had disappeared. But finally they missed his
cheery voice, and as their master always sang or whistled on his
journeys, the silence warned them that something was wrong.
Little Wisk stuck out his head from underneath the seat and found
Santa Claus gone and no one to direct the flight of the reindeer.
"Whoa!" he called out, and the deer obediently slackened speed and
A Kidnapped Santa Claus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln by Helen Nicolay: tall, capable youth, the line of frontier settlements had been
gradually but steadily pushing on beyond Gentryville toward the
Mississippi River. Every summer canvas-covered moving wagons
wound their slow way over new roads into still newer country;
while the older settlers, left behind, watched their progress
with longing eyes. It was almost as if a spell had been cast over
these toil-worn pioneers, making them forget, at sight of such
new ventures, all the hardships they had themselves endured in
subduing the wilderness. At last, on March 1, 1830, when Abraham
was just twenty-one years old, the Lincolns, yielding to this
overmastering frontier impulse to "move" westward, left the old
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