| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: more he grew discontented with the narrow little stream in which he
lived, and all his companions there; and wanted to get out into the
wide wide world, and enjoy all the wonderful sights of which he was
sure it was full.
And once he set off to go down the stream. But the stream was very
low; and when he came to the shallows he could not keep under
water, for there was no water left to keep under. So the sun
burned his back and made him sick; and he went back again and lay
quiet in the pool for a whole week more.
And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw a sight.
He had been very stupid all day, and so had the trout; for they
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: When life is sham'd, and Death reproach's debtor.
'To kill myself,' quoth she, 'alack! what were it,
But with my body my poor soul's pollution?
They that lose half with greater patience bear it
Than they whose whole is swallow'd in confusion.
That mother tries a merciless conclusion
Who, having two sweet babes, when death takes one,
Will slay the other, and be nurse to none.
'My body or my soul, which was the dearer,
When the one pure, the other made divine?
Whose love of either to myself was nearer?
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: when her proposal seemed that of a liberating angel. The fortune and
honor of the merchant, momentarily compromised, required a prompt and
secret succor. La Marana made over to the husband the whole sum she
had obtained of the father for Juana's "dot," requiring neither
acknowledgment nor interest. According to her own code of honor, a
contract, a trust, was a thing of the heart, and God its supreme
judge. After stating the miseries of her position to Dona Lagounia,
she confided her daughter and her daughter's fortune to the fine old
Spanish honor, pure and spotless, which filled the precincts of that
ancient house. Dona Lagounia had no child, and she was only too happy
to obtain one to nurture. The mother then parted from her Juana,
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