| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Common Sense by Thomas Paine: are all (and we may say always) in peace. Holland and Switzerland
are without wars, foreign or domestic: Monarchical governments,
it is true, are never long at rest; the crown itself is a temptation
to enterprising ruffians at HOME; and that degree of pride and insolence
ever attendant on regal authority, swells into a rupture with foreign powers,
in instances, where a republican government, by being formed on more
natural principles, would negotiate the mistake.
If there is any true cause of fear respecting independence,
it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out--
Wherefore, as an opening into that business, I offer the following hints;
at the same time modestly affirming, that I have no other opinion
Common Sense |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: their goods, where they sold what they brought, and went immediately
away; and this encouraged the country people greatly-to do so, for
they sold their provisions at the very entrances into the town, and even
in the fields, as particularly in the fields beyond Whitechappel, in
Spittlefields; also in St George's Fields in Southwark, in Bunhill
Fields, and in a great field called Wood's Close, near Islington.
Thither the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and magistrates sent their officers
and servants to buy for their families, themselves keeping within
doors as much as possible, and the like did many other people; and
after this method was taken the country people came with great
cheerfulness, and brought provisions of all sorts, and very seldom got
A Journal of the Plague Year |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: retracing our steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk,
perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return--
prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our
desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother,
and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never
see them again--if you have paid your debts, and made your will,
and settled all your affairs, and are a free man--then you are
ready for a walk.
To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I
sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves
knights of a new, or rather an old, order--not Equestrians or
Walking |
