The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by M. Scott Peck, M.D.

A young, intelligent, artistic and "bohemian" couple with whom I once attempted to work had a four-year marriage marked by almost daily screaming, dish-throwing and face-clawing quarrels, along with weekly casual infidelity and monthly separations. Shortly after we began our work they each correctly perceived that therapy would lead them toward increasing self-discipline, and consequently to a less disorderly relationship. "But you want to take the passion out of our relationship," they said. "Your notions of love and marriage leave no room for passion." Almost immediately thereafter they quit therapy, and it has been reported to me that three years later, after several bouts with other therapists, their daily screaming matches and the chaotic pattern of their marriage continue unchanged, as well as the unproductivity of their individual lives.

There is no doubt that their union is, in a certain sense, a highly colorful one. But it is like the primary colors in the paintings of children, splashed on the paper with abandon, occasionally not without charm, but generally demonstrating the sameness that characterizes the art of young children. In the muted, controlled hues of Rembrandt one can find the color, yet infinitely more  richness, uniqueness and meaning. Passion is feeling of great depth. The fact that a feeling is uncontrolled is no indication whatsoever that it is any deeper than a feeling that is disciplined. To the contrary, psychiatrists know well the truth of the old proverbs "Shallow brooks are noisy" and "Still waters run deep." We must not assume that someone whose feelings are modulated and controlled is not a passionate person.

While one should not be a slave to one´s feelings, self-discipline does not mean the squashing of one´s feelings into nonexistence. I frequently tell my patients that their feelings are their slaves and that the art of self-discipline is like that art of slave-owning. First of all, one´s feelings are the source of one´s energy; they provide the horsepower, or slave power, that makes it possible for us to accomplish the tasks of living. Since they work for us, we should treat them with respect. There are two common mistakes that slave-owners can make which represent opposite and extreme forms of executive leadership. One type of slave-owner does not discipline his slaves, gives them no structure, sets them no limits, provides them with no direction and does not make it clear who is the boss. What happens, of course, is that in due time his slaves stop working and begin moving into the mansion, raiding the liquor cabinet and breaking the furniture, and soon the slave-owner finds that he is the slave of his slaves, living in the same kind of chaos as the aforementioned character-disordered "bohemian" couple.

Yet the opposite style of leadership, which the guilt-ridden neurotic so often exerts over his feelings, is equally self-destructive. In this style the slave-owner is so obsessed with the fear that his slaves (feelings) might get out of control and so determined that they should cause him no trouble that he routinely beats them into submission and punishes them severely at the first sign of any potency. The result of this style is that in relatively short order the slaves become less and less productive as their will is sapped by the harsh treatment they receive. Or else their will turn more and more toward covert rebellion. If the process is carried out long enough, one night the owner´s prediction finally comes true and the slaves rise up and burn down the mansion, frequently with the owner inside. Such is the genesis of certain psychoses and overwhelming neuroses.

The proper management of one´s feelings clearly lies along a complex (and therefore not simple or easy) balanced middle path, requiring constant judgment and continuing adjustment. Here the owner treats his feelings (slaves) with respect, nurturing them with good food, shelter and medical care, listening and responding to their voices, encouraging them, inquiring as to their health, yet also organizing them, limiting them, deciding clearly between them, redirecting them and teaching them, all the while leaving no doubt as to who is the boss. This is the path of healthy self-discipline.

The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor

SMILES IN THE BRAIN

I begin most of my lectures by asking the audience to break up into pairs. Then I say something like the following:

Over the course of your life, you have excelled in part because of your impressive self-discipline. You have used it to study so you could pass the classes you needed to, apply to the schools and jobs you needed to, and be successful enough that you are in this room to hear this lecture today. I want you to take all of that self-discipline you´ve been cultivating for the past couple decades to do the following. For the next seven seconds, no matter what your partner says or does, I want you to show absolutely no emotional reaction. Do not get angry, sad, or frustrated, and do not smile or laugh. Go completely blank. Show no emotion, no matter what.

I then ask each Person #2 to simply look their partner in the eyes and smile at them genuinely. I have done this experiment hundreds of times in corporate settings across the world, with everyone from nervous newbies to cantankerous lifers. The result is always the same. Virtually no one can refrain from returning their partner´s smile, and most break into laughter almost immediately. It doesn´t matter if I do this experiment during a week of massive layoffs or on a day when the stock market has plunged 600 points, I still see the same involuntary explosion of smiles. Even in parts of the world where smiling is less of a social norm, 80 to 85 percent of the participants cannot stop themselves from smiling.

If you think about this, it´s really pretty incredible. After all, if these people have the self-discipline and focus to work 10- to 16-hour days, lead global teams, and manage multimillion dollar projects, surely they can handle a task as simple as controlling their facial expression for mere seven seconds, right? But the fact is, they can´t. Because something is going on in their brains that they aren´t even consciously aware of. This mysterious force is the foundation of the ripple effect.

Shoot Me, I'm Already Dead by Julia Navarro

Mohammed listened to Samuel's confession in silence. He did not need to say what he knew in words, but he understood Samuel's need to express the infinite tenderness he had felt for Dina. He needed to express it as well, but to whom? He felt alone and would feel alone for the rest of his life, because that is the sadness that comes when you lose your parents. The father is the roof, the mother is the floor, and when both are gone, the countdown to one's own disappearance begins, and there is nothing supporting you. You are left alone in thin air.

In this House of Brede by Rumer Godden

When you are in trouble,' Abbess Catherine told herself, 'think of a bird caught under a net; the more it struggles and makes a flutter, the more it gets enmeshed; if it is still and looks about for a hole, keeping its strength, it has a chance of escape.'

Fast Times in Palestine by Pamela Olson

When I was fifteen years old, I had picked up a copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which led to the collapse of my Bible-centric view of the world. Since then I'd prided myself on being the most skeptical of skeptics, the most left-brained of left-brainers. I studied physics in large part because it seemed like the least dogmatic subject, the furthest possible thing from faith.

But eventually I realized there were limits to scientific inquiry. Life, after all, wasn't a controlled experiment. It was just one chaotic iteration of infinite potential, utterly unique in all of creation. Choosing how best to spend it would take more than the methods of science employed over the span of a lifetime. It fundamentally required a leap of faith in one direction or another, whether you realized you were taking it or not.

My initial, unconscious 'faith' had been to organize my life around societal measures of success. That had collapsed after I graduated from college. My new version of faith, which I was slowly piecing together, accepted what my senses and intellect offered and then kept going, trying to stay open to the world and to the vague impulses that quietly directed my actions and seemed to recognize truth better than I could. You could call the source of these impulses God, the Tao, the muse, Allah, the collective unconscious, or a by-product of evolution as it blindly followed the laws of subatomic interactions. But labeling it wouldn't get me any closer to understanding its nature or intentions, blind or otherwise.

Whatever it was, I was pleased with the results so far. Sitting under a thunderstrom on a porch in the West Bank with a seeker like Yusif was better than anything I could have thought up on my own, much less bought and paid for. I supposed I could only be grateful and hope the uiverse knew what it was doing. For now I had no better ideas.

"I've just been following my nose," I said, "waiting for inspiration to strike."
"I think you're looking for light," he said matter-of-factly. "And you shouldn't worry. When you're following your destiny, the whole world conspires to help you."

I smiled. People had been more helpful lately than I had any right or reason to expect. Nothing in my upbringing had prepared me for this level of kindness from strangers.

White Dog Fell from the Sky by Eleanor Morse

What does that mean to avenge a death - kill once, twice, three times more? Where does it end?

***

"Please don't go. I'm sorry about last night." 
Her eyes flashed. "You might have been describing a cow heading for the Meat Commission. I thought you were a different sort of man. If I'd known that's how you felt, I wouldn't have wasted a minute with you."

"That's not how I feel. Roger wanted to know what you looked like."

"And how would Roger even know I existed if Roger hadn't been told?"

"He wouldn't have. You were on my mind."

Something crossed her face, swiftly replaced by rage. Her voice shook. "You said it like an auctioneer. 'The woman's American, recently divorced.' The woman. As though you don't even know me. Gray hair. Already over the hill. Oh, nice body. But big bones. A lady wrestler. Or maybe an orangutan. And then your old boy laughter. You and Roger, whoever the hell that was, yucking it up at my expense. You're a royal prick, you know that?"

She'd already turned to leave when he said, "I know that. Worse than that. I'm an insensitive lout, a cad, a muttonhead, a piss poor specimen of a man, a foul-mouthed and calumnious knave. If I were a dog, I'd have me put down."

"Good. Now leave me alone." He thought a hint of a smile had flitted over her lips. Her footsteps departed, and he watched her climb into the Land Rover.

Paula by Isabel Allende

My fellowship was part of a program for Congolese, to whom Belgium was indebted for many years of brutal colonization. I was the single exception, a light-skinned woman among thirty black males. After suffering a week of humiliations, I came to the conclusion that I was not willing to run such a gauntlet, and offered to withdraw, even though we would be badly strapped without the fellowship money.

The director asked me to explain my sudden departure to the class, and I had no choice but to face that united front and in my lamentable French tell them that in my country men did not enter the women's bathroom unzipping their fly, did not shove women aside to go through a door first, did not knock each other down for a place at the table or to get on a bus, and that I felt badly mistreated and was leaving because I was not used to such foul behavior.

A glacial silence greeted my peroration. After a long pause, one of them spoke to say that in his country no decent woman publicly exhibited her need to go to the bathroom, nor did she try to go through a door before the men but in fact walked several steps behind, and that his mother and his sisters never sat at the table with him, they ate what the men left. He added that they felt permanently insulted by me, that they had never seen a person with such bad manners, and, as I was a minority in the group, I would just have to make the most of it.

"It is true that I am a minority in this course, but you are a minority in this country," I replied. "I am willing to make concessions, but you must do that, too, if you want to avoid problems here in Europe." It was a solution worthy of Solomon; we agreed upon certain basic rules, and I stayed on.

They never wanted to sit with me at the table or on the bus, but they stopped bursting into the bathroom and physically shoving me. During that year, my feminism got lost in the shuffle: I walked a modest two meters behind my companions, never looked up or raised my voice, and was the last one through the door.