| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: sky, changeless monuments of the perishable glory and the
imperishable hope of man. He looked up into the face of the
crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to read the meaning of the
calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed, the mockery of
all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said--the cruel
jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can
succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in
that inscrutable smile--a promise that even the defeated
should attain a victory, and the disappointed should discover a
prize, and the ignorant should be made wise, and the blind should
see, and the wandering should come into the haven at last?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: "Well, what in all get-out are you doing around here, Emma?"
He tried to be jovial and easy. She turned to the aproned man
with whom she had been dealing and smiled.
"What am I doing here, Joe?"
Joe grinned, waggishly. "Nothin'; only beatin' every man on the
street at his own game, and makin' so much money that----"
But she stopped him there. "I guess I'll do my own
explaining." She turned to Ben again. "And what are you doing
here in Chicago?"
Ben passed a faltering hand across his chin. "Me? Well,
I'm--we're living here, I s'pose. Livin' here."
One Basket |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: SOCRATES: The reason why I am thus precise is, because I want to know
whether, when we perceive black and white through the eyes, and again,
other qualities through other organs, we do not perceive them with one and
the same part of ourselves, and, if you were asked, you might refer all
such perceptions to the body. Perhaps, however, I had better allow you to
answer for yourself and not interfere. Tell me, then, are not the organs
through which you perceive warm and hard and light and sweet, organs of the
body?
THEAETETUS: Of the body, certainly.
SOCRATES: And you would admit that what you perceive through one faculty
you cannot perceive through another; the objects of hearing, for example,
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