train.jsonl

{"id": 1, "text": "Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting."}
{"id": 2, "text": "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."}
{"id": 3, "text": "In Marcus we find a man who held the highest and most powerful station in the world—and the universal verdict of the people around him was that he proved himself worthy of it."}
{"id": 4, "text": "We are the rightful heirs to this tradition. It's our birthright. Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?"}
{"id": 5, "text": "That the challenge makes them better than if they'd never faced the adversity at all."}
{"id": 6, "text": "We will see things simply and straightforwardly, as they truly are—neither good nor bad. This will be an incredible advantage for us in the fight against obstacles."}
{"id": 7, "text": "To perceive what others see as negative, as something to be approached rationally, clearly, and, most important, as an opportunity—not as something to fear or bemoan."}
{"id": 8, "text": "Rockefeller is more than just an analogy. We live in our own Gilded Age. In less than a decade, we've experienced two major economic bubbles, entire industries are crumbling, lives have been disrupted. What feels like unfairness abounds. Financial downturns, civil unrest, adversity. People are afraid and discouraged,"}
{"id": 9, "text": "Too often we react emotionally, get despondent, and lose our perspective. All that does is turn bad things into really bad things. Unhelpful perceptions can invade our minds—that sacred place of reason, action and will—and throw off our compass."}
{"id": 10, "text": "We can see disaster rationally. Or rather, like Rockefeller, we can see *opportunity* in every disaster, and transform that negative situation into an education, a skill set, or a fortune. Seen properly, everything that happens—be it an economic crash or a personal tragedy—is a chance to move forward."}
{"id": 11, "text": "Carter did not have much power, but he understood that that was not the same thing as being powerless. Many great figures, from Nelson Mandela to Malcolm X, have come to understand this fundamental distinction."}
{"id": 12, "text": "We decide what we will make of each and every situation. We decide whether we'll break or whether we'll resist. We decide whether we'll assent or reject. No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of."}
{"id": 13, "text": "Regardless of how much actual danger we're in, stress puts us at the potential whim of our baser—fearful—instinctual reactions."}
{"id": 14, "text": "When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures, ignore rules. They deviate from the plan. They become unresponsive and stop thinking clearly. They just react—not to what they need to react to, but to the survival hormones that are coursing through their veins."}
{"id": 15, "text": "In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulation."}
{"id": 16, "text": "Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand?"}
{"id": 17, "text": "Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check—if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate."}
{"id": 18, "text": "The Greeks had a word for this: *apatheia*. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank *you.* I can't afford to *panic.*"}
{"id": 19, "text": "This is the skill that must be cultivated—freedom from disturbance and perturbation—so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them."}
{"id": 20, "text": "As Gavin de Becker writes in The Gift of *Fear,* \"When you worry, ask yourself, 'What am I choosing to not see right now?' What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?\""}
{"id": 21, "text": "Another way of putting it: Does getting upset provide you with more options?"}
{"id": 22, "text": "Sometimes it does. But in *this* instance? No, I suppose not. Well, then. If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one."}
{"id": 23, "text": "Real strength lies in the *control* or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the *domestication* of one's emotions, not in pretending they don't exist."}
{"id": 24, "text": "You can always remind yourself: I am in control, not my **emotions.** I see what's really going on here. I'm not going to get **excited** or upset."}
{"id": 25, "text": "Try having that conversation with yourself and see how those extreme emotions hold up. They won't last long, trust that."}
{"id": 26, "text": "After all, you're probably not going to die from any of this. It might help to say it over and over again whenever you feel the anxiety begin to come on: I am not going to die from this. I am not going to die from this. I am not going to die from *this.*"}
{"id": 27, "text": "Or try Marcus's question: Does what happened keep you from acting with **justice,** generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, **humility,** straightforwardness?"}
{"id": 28, "text": "And the answer—like it is for astronauts, for soldiers, for doctors, and for so many other professionals—must be: No, **because** I practiced for this situation and I can control *myself.* Or, No, *because* I caught myself and I'm able to realize that that doesn't add **anything** constructive."}
{"id": 29, "text": "In our own lives, how many problems seem to come from applying judgments to things we don't control, as though there were a way they were *supposed* to be? How often do we see what we think is there or should be there, instead of what actually is there?"}
{"id": 30, "text": "Having steadied ourselves and held back our emotions, we can see things as they really are. We can do that using our observing eye."}
{"id": 31, "text": "\"When you worry, ask yourself, 'What am I choosing to not see right now?' What important things are you missing because you chose worry over introspection, alertness or wisdom?\""}
{"id": 32, "text": "Our understanding of the world of business is all mixed up with storytelling and mythology. Which is funny because we're missing the real story by focusing on individuals."}
{"id": 33, "text": "To harness the same power, recovering addicts learn the Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."}
{"id": 34, "text": "This is our playing field, so to speak. Everything there is fair game. What is not up to us? Well, you know, everything else. The weather, the economy, circumstances, other people's emotions or judgments, trends, disasters, et cetera."}
{"id": 35, "text": "To argue, to complain, or worse, to just give up, these are choices. Choices that more often than not, do *nothing* to get us across the finish line."}
{"id": 36, "text": "Focusing exclusively on what is in our power magnifies and enhances our power. But every ounce of energy directed at things we can't actually influence is wasted—self-indulgent and selfdestructive. So much power—ours, and other people's—is frittered away in this manner."}
{"id": 37, "text": "A good person dyes events with his own color . . . and turns whatever happens to his own benefit."}
{"id": 38, "text": "That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger."}
{"id": 39, "text": "Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood."}
{"id": 40, "text": "We forget: In life, it doesn't matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you've been given. And the only way you'll do something spectacular is by using it all to your advantage."}
{"id": 41, "text": "People turn shit into sugar all the time—shit that's a lot worse than whatever we're dealing with. I'm talking physical disabilities, racial discrimination, battles against overwhelmingly superior armies. But those people didn't quit. They didn't feel sorry for themselves. They didn't delude themselves with fantasies about easy solutions. They focused on the one thing that mattered: applying themselves with gusto and creativity."}
{"id": 42, "text": "No one wants to be born weak or to be victimized. No one wants to be down to their last dollar. No one wants to be stuck behind an obstacle, blocked from where they need to go. Such circumstances are not impressed by perception, but they are not indifferent—or rather immune—from action. In fact, that's the only thing these situations will respond to."}
{"id": 43, "text": "Grant's story is not the exception to the rule. It is the rule. This is how innovation works."}
{"id": 44, "text": "As we butt up against obstacles, it is helpful to picture Grant and Edison. Grant with a cigar clenched in his mouth. Edison on his hands and knees in the laboratory for days straight. Both unceasing, embodying cool persistence and the spirit of the line from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem about that other Ulysses, \"to strive, to seek, to find.\" Both, refusing to give up. Turning over in their minds option after option, and trying each one with equal enthusiasm. Knowing that eventually—*inevitably*—one will work. Welcoming the opportunity to test and test and test, grateful for the priceless knowledge this reveals."}
{"id": 45, "text": "What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better."}
{"id": 46, "text": "In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way."}
{"id": 47, "text": "We can take a breath, do the immediate, composite part in front of us—and follow its thread into the next action."}
{"id": 48, "text": "When action is our priority, vanity falls away."}
{"id": 49, "text": "Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving."}
{"id": 50, "text": "How you do anything is how you can do everything. We can always act right."}
{"id": 51, "text": "Duty is beautiful, and inspiring and empowering."}
{"id": 52, "text": "Every situation is different, obviously. We're not inventing the next iPad or iPhone, but we are making something for someone—even if it's just our own résumé."}
{"id": 53, "text": "In every situation, life is asking us a question, and our actions are the answer. Our job is simply to answer well."}
{"id": 54, "text": "Right action—unselfish, dedicated, masterful, creative—that is the answer to that question. That's one way to find the meaning of life. And how to turn every obstacle into an opportunity."}
{"id": 55, "text": "If you see any of this as a burden, you're looking at it the wrong way."}
{"id": 56, "text": "Because all we need to do is those three little duties—to try hard, to be honest, and to help others and ourselves. That's all that's been asked of us. No more and no less."}
{"id": 57, "text": "What mattered was that you got it done and it *worked*."}
{"id": 58, "text": "Think progress, not perfection."}
{"id": 59, "text": "Gandhi's extensive satyagraha campaign and civil disobedience show that action has many definitions. It's not always moving forward or even obliquely. It can also be a matter of positions. It can be a matter of taking a stand."}
{"id": 60, "text": "Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi's lead, told his followers that they would meet \"physical force with soul force.\" In other words, they would use the power of opposites. In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil."}
{"id": 61, "text": "The great philosopher Søren Kierkegaard rarely sought to convince people directly from a position of authority. Instead of lecturing, he practiced a method he called \"indirect communication.\""}
{"id": 62, "text": "You don't convince people by challenging their longest and most firmly held opinions. You find common ground and work from there. Or you look for leverage to make them listen."}
{"id": 63, "text": "What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster."}
{"id": 64, "text": "We must prepare for adversity and turmoil, we must learn the art of acquiescence and practice cheerfulness even in dark times."}
{"id": 65, "text": "True will is quiet humility, resilience, and flexibility; the other kind of will is weakness disguised by bluster and ambition."}
{"id": 66, "text": "Lincoln's personal challenges had been so intense that he came to believe they were destined for him in some way, and that the depression, especially, was a unique experience that prepared him for greater things."}
{"id": 67, "text": "The nation called for a leader of magnanimity and force of purpose—it found one in Lincoln, a political novice who was nevertheless a seasoned expert on matters of will and patience."}
{"id": 68, "text": "We are prepared for failure and ready for success."}
{"id": 69, "text": "The Fates guide the person who accepts them and hinder the person who resists them."}
{"id": 70, "text": "You know you're not the only one who has to accept things you don't necessarily like, right? It's part of the human condition."}
{"id": 71, "text": "After you've distinguished between the things that are up to you and the things that aren't (ta eph'hemin, ta ouk eph'hemin), and the break comes down to something you don't control . . . you've got only one option: acceptance."}
{"id": 72, "text": "My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it."}
{"id": 73, "text": "To do great things, we need to be able to endure tragedy and setbacks. We've got to love what we do and all that it entails, good and bad. We have to learn to find joy in every single thing that happens."}
{"id": 74, "text": "As the Stoics commanded themselves: Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones. Who knows where Edison and Johnson learned this epithet, but they clearly did."}
{"id": 75, "text": "Learning not to kick and scream about matters we can't control is one thing. Indifference and acceptance are certainly better than disappointment or rage. Very few understand or practice that art. But it is only a first step. Better than all of that is love for all that happens to us, for every situation."}
{"id": 76, "text": "And we can find it and be cheerful because of it."}
{"id": 77, "text": "A man's job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul."}
{"id": 78, "text": "Shared purpose gives us strength."}
{"id": 79, "text": "The desire to quit or compromise on principles suddenly feels rather selfish when we consider the people who would be affected by that decision."}
{"id": 80, "text": "Help your fellow humans thrive and survive, contribute your little bit to the universe before it swallows you up, and be happy with that. Lend a hand to others. Be strong for them, and it will make you stronger."}
{"id": 81, "text": "Memento mori, the Romans would remind themselves. Remember you are mortal."}
{"id": 82, "text": "Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn't indulge himself with attempts at the impossible, he doesn't waste time complaining about how he'd like things to be."}
{"id": 83, "text": "Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective."}
{"id": 84, "text": "The obstacle becomes the way, becomes the way. Forever and ever and ever. Yes, it's unlikely that anyone is going to make an armed run at our throne anytime soon. But people will make pointed remarks. They will cut us off in traffic. Our rivals will steal our business. We will be hurt. Forces will try to hold us back. Bad stuff will happen."}
{"id": 85, "text": "The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds. Understanding our problems for what's within them and their greater context. To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly."}
{"id": 86, "text": "Philosophy was never what happened in the classroom. It was a set of lessons from the battlefield of life."}
{"id": 87, "text": "Man's Search for *Meaning*. New York: Touchstone, 1984."}
{"id": 88, "text": "Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises *from* Socrates to *Foucault.* Translated by Arnold Davidson. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995."}
{"id": 89, "text": "What Is Ancient *Philosophy?* Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004."}
{"id": 90, "text": "The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epictetus, Lucretius, Marcus *Aurelius*. New York: Random House, 1940."}
{"id": 91, "text": "Seneca, Lucius Annaeus. Stoic Philosophy of Seneca: Essays and Letters. Translated by Moses Hadas. New York: W. W. Norton, 1968."}
{"id": 92, "text": "His book Philosophy as a Way of *Life* explains how philosophy has been wrongly interpreted as a thing people *talk* about rather than something that people do."}
{"id": 93, "text": "In Marcus's words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. To act with \"a reverse clause,\" so there is always a way out or another route to get to where you need to go. So that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us."}
{"id": 94, "text": "Great individuals, like great companies, find a way to transform weakness into strength. It's a rather amazing and even touching feat. They took what should have held them back—what in fact might be holding you back right this very second—and used it to move forward."}
{"id": 95, "text": "What blocks us is clear. Systemic: decaying institutions, rising unemployment, skyrocketing costs of education, and technological disruption. Individual: too short, too old, too scared, too poor, too stressed, no access, no backers, no confidence. How skilled we are at cataloging what holds us back!"}
{"id": 96, "text": "An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before. To them, the idea that no one has ever done this or that is a good thing. When given an unfair task, some rightly see it as a chance to test what they're made of—to give it all they've got, knowing full well how difficult it will be to win. They see it as an opportunity because it is often in that desperate nothing-to-lose state that we are our most creative."}
{"id": 97, "text": "The Blitzkrieg strategy was designed to exploit the flinch of the enemy—he must collapse at the sight of what appears to be overwhelming force. Its success depends completely on this response. This military strategy works because the set-upon troops see the offensive force as an enormous obstacle bearing down on them."}
{"id": 98, "text": "Psychologists call it adversarial growth and post-traumatic growth. \"That which doesn't kill me makes me stronger\" is not a cliché but fact."}

{"id": 99, "text": "So focus on that—on the poorly wrapped and initially repulsive present you've been handed in every seemingly disadvantageous situation. Because beneath the packaging is what we need—often something of real value. A gift of great benefit."}

{"id": 100, "text": "He could see through bullies and stare down fear. In struggling with his unfortunate fate, Demosthenes found his true calling: He would be the voice of Athens, its great speaker and conscience. He would be successful precisely because of what he'd been through and how he'd reacted to it. He had channeled his rage and pain into his training, and then later into his speeches, fueling it all with a kind of fierceness and power that could be neither matched nor resisted."}

{"id": 101, "text": "We must be willing to roll with the punches and respond to life's challenges with strength and flexibility."}

{"id": 102, "text": "We will be tested by life's adversity, but we can choose to respond with courage and composure."}

{"id": 103, "text": "We must accept that there are some things in life that we cannot control, but we can control our own thoughts and actions."}

{"id": 104, "text": "We must be willing to take action in the face of life's obstacles, no matter how daunting they may seem."}

{"id": 105, "text": "The event is in the hand of God."}

{"id": 106, "text": "Everything we could think of have been done, the troops are fit everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods."}

{"id": 107, "text": "Man proposes but God disposes."}

{"id": 108, "text": "Amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it . . . but love it."}

{"id": 109, "text": "He learned how to assert himself without ever being overbearing the way he'd been in the past."}

{"id": 110, "text": "Nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed."}

{"id": 111, "text": "You're robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs, (b) you can't do anything about it anyway, and (c) you're looking at a big-enough picture and long-enough time line that whatever you have to accept is still only a negligible blip on the way to your goal."}

{"id": 112, "text": "Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones."}

{"id": 113, "text": "In Marcus's words is the secret to an art known as turning obstacles upside down. To act with \"a reverse clause,\" so there is always a way out or another route to get to where you need to go. So that setbacks or problems are always expected and never permanent. Making certain that what impedes us can empower us."}

{"id": 114, "text": "They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control."}

{"id": 115, "text": "Well, far too many gave up. But a few didn't. They took \"twice as good\" as a challenge. They practiced harder. Looked for shortcuts and weak spots. Discerned allies among strange faces. Got kicked around a bit. Everything was an obstacle they had to flip."}

{"id": 116, "text": "Problems become opportunities."}

{"id": 117, "text": "On the path to successful action, we will fail—possibly many times. And that's okay. It can be a good thing, even. Action and failure are two sides of the same coin. One doesn't come without the other. What breaks this critical connection down is when people stop acting—because they've taken failure the wrong way."}

{"id": 118, "text": "When failure does come, ask: What went wrong here? What can be improved? What am I missing? This helps birth alternative ways of doing what needs to be done, ways that are often much better than what we started with. Failure puts you in corners you have to think your way out of. It is a source of breakthroughs."}

{"id": 119, "text": "An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority. Whether it's the most glamorous or highest paying is irrelevant. Each project matters, and the only degrading part is giving less than one is capable of giving."}

{"id": 120, "text": "But a desire to help? No harshness, no deprivation, no toil should interfere with our empathy toward others. Compassion is always an option. Camaraderie as well. That's a power of the will that can never be taken away, only relinquished."}

{"id": 121, "text": "And so, if even our own mortality can have some benefit, how dare you say that you can't derive value from each and every other kind of obstacle you encounter?"}

{"id": 122, "text": "It is so much better to be this way, isn't it? There is a lightness and a flexibility to this approach that seem very different from how weand most people—choose to live. With our disappointments and resentments and frustrations."}

{"id": 123, "text": "We can see the \"bad\" things that happen in our lives with gratitude and not with regret because we turn them from disaster to real benefit—from defeat to victory."}

{"id": 124, "text": "Fate doesn't have to be fatalistic. It can be destiny and freedom just as easily."}

{"id": 125, "text": "To be sure, no one is saying you've got to do it all at once."}

{"id": 126, "text": "In mastering these three disciplines we have the tools to flip any obstacle upside down. We are worthy of any and every challenge."}

{"id": 127, "text": "Of course, it is not enough to simply read this or say it. We must practice these maxims, rolling them over and over in our minds and acting on them until they become muscle memory."}

{"id": 128, "text": "So that under pressure and trial we get better—become better people, leaders, and thinkers. Because those trials and pressures will inevitably come. And they won't ever stop coming."}

{"id": 129, "text": "But don't worry, you're prepared for this now, this life of obstacles and adversity. You know how to handle them, how to brush aside obstacles and even benefit from them. You understand the process."}

{"id": 130, "text": "You are a person of action. And the thread of Stoicism runs through your life just as it did through theirs—just as it has for all of history, sometimes explicitly, sometimes not."}

{"id": 131, "text": "The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds. Understanding our problems for what's within them and their greater context. To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly."}

{"id": 132, "text": "Philosophy was never what happened in the classroom. It was a set of lessons from the battlefield of life."}

{"id": 133, "text": "The Latin translation for the title of *Enchiridion*—Epictetus's famous work—means \"close at hand,\" or as some have said, \"in your hands.\" That's what the philosophy was meant for: to be in your hands, to be an extension of you. Not something you read once and put up on a shelf. It was meant, as Marcus once wrote, to make us boxers instead of fencers—to wield our weaponry, we simply need to close our fists."}

{"id": 134, "text": "Now you are a philosopher and a person of action. And that is not a contradiction.Ryan brings philosophy out from the classroom and thrusts it back where it belongs, in our daily lives, helping anyone approaching any problem address it with equanimity and poise."}

{"id": 135, "text": "Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle is the Way decants in concentrated form the timeless techniques for self-mastery as employed to world-conquering effect by philosophers and men of action from Alexander the Great to Marcus Aurelius to Steve Jobs."}

{"id": 136, "text": "Inspired by Marcus Aurelius and concepts of Stoicism, Ryan Holiday has written a brilliant and engaging book, well beyond his years, teaching us how to deal with life's adversities and to turn negatives into positives."}

{"id": 137, "text": "Ryan Holiday teaches us how to summon our best selves. Most of us spend our lives dodging the hard stuff. Holiday exposes the tragic fallacy of this approach to living and offers us instead the philosophy of the Stoics, whose timeless lessons lead us out of fear, difficulty, and paralysis to triumph."}

{"id": 138, "text": "Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture."}

{"id": 139, "text": "You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader."}

{"id": 140, "text": "Love everything that happens: *AMOR FATI*"}

{"id": 141, "text": "Meditate on your mortality"}

{"id": 142, "text": "And from what we know, he truly saw each and every one of these obstacles as an opportunity to practice some virtue: patience, courage, humility, resourcefulness, reason, justice, and creativity."}

{"id": 143, "text": "He rarely rose to excess or anger, and never to hatred or bitterness."}

{"id": 144, "text": "It turns out that the wisdom of that short passage from Marcus Aurelius can be found in others as well, men and women who followed it like he did."}

{"id": 145, "text": "That struggle is the one constant in all of their lives."}

{"id": 146, "text": "Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?"}

{"id": 147, "text": "It asks: Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you're made of?"}

{"id": 148, "text": "And a rarer breed still has shown that they not only have what it takes, but they thrive and rally at every such challenge."}

{"id": 149, "text": "We're dissatisfied with our jobs, our relationships, our place in the world. We're trying to get somewhere, but something stands in the way."}

{"id": 150, "text": "So we do nothing. We blame our bosses, the economy, our politicians, other people, or we write ourselves off as failures or our goals as impossible. When really only one thing is at fault: our attitude and approach."}

{"id": 151, "text": "There have been countless lessons (and books) about achieving success, but no one ever taught us how to overcome failure, how to think about obstacles, how to treat and triumph over them, and so we are stuck."}

{"id": 152, "text": "What do these figures have that we lack? What are we missing?"}

{"id": 153, "text": "John D. Rockefeller had it—for him it was cool headedness and self-discipline. Demosthenes, the great Athenian orator, had it—for him it was a relentless drive to improve himself through action and practice. Abraham Lincoln had it—for him it was humility, endurance, and compassionate will."}

{"id": 154, "text": "As it turns out, this is one thing all great men and women of history have in common. Like oxygen to a fire, obstacles became fuel for the blaze that was their ambition. Nothing could stop them, they were (and continue to be) impossible to discourage or contain. Every impediment only served to make the inferno within them burn with greater ferocity."}

{"id": 155, "text": "These were people who flipped their obstacles upside down. Who lived the words of Marcus Aurelius and followed a group which Cicero called the only \"real philosophers\"—the ancient Stoics—even if they'd never read them.* They had the ability to see obstacles for what they were, the ingenuity to tackle them, and the will to endure a world mostly beyond their comprehension and control."}

{"id": 156, "text": "The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never *forget,* within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition."}

{"id": 157, "text": "They took \"twice as good\" as a challenge. They practiced harder. Looked for shortcuts and weak spots."}

{"id": 158, "text": "Whether we're having trouble getting a job, fighting against discrimination, running low on funds, stuck in a bad relationship, locking horns with some aggressive opponent, have an employee or student we just can't seem to reach, or are in the middle of a creative block, we need to know that there is a way. When we meet with adversity, we can turn it to advantage, based on their example."}

{"id": 159, "text": "All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path."}

{"id": 160, "text": "Today, most of our obstacles are internal, not external. Since World War II we have lived in some of the most prosperous times in history. There are fewer armies to face, fewer fatal diseases and far more safety nets. But the world still rarely does exactly what we want."}

{"id": 161, "text": "Our generation needs an approach for overcoming obstacles and thriving amid chaos more than ever. One that will help turn our problems on their heads, using them as canvases on which to paint master works."}

{"id": 162, "text": "Overcoming obstacles is a discipline of three critical steps."}

{"id": 163, "text": "It begins with how we look at our specific problems, our attitude or approach; then the energy and creativity with which we actively break them down and turn them into opportunities; finally, the cultivation and maintenance of an inner will that allows us to handle defeat and difficulty."}

{"id": 164, "text": "It's three interdependent, interconnected, and fluidly contingent disciplines: Perception, Action, and the Will."}

{"id": 165, "text": "WHAT IS PERCEPTION? It's how we see and understand what occurs around us—and what we decide those events will mean. Our perceptions can be a source of strength or of great weakness. If we are emotional, subjective and shortsighted, we only add to our troubles."}

{"id": 166, "text": "To prevent becoming overwhelmed by the world around us, we must, as the ancients practiced, learn how to limit our passions and their control over our lives."}

{"id": 167, "text": "It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear."}

{"id": 168, "text": "Rockefeller immediately put those insights to use. At twenty-five, a group of investors offered to invest approximately $500,000 at his direction if he could find the right oil wells in which to deploy the money. Grateful for the opportunity, Rockefeller set out to tour the nearby oil fields. A few days later, he shocked his backers by returning to Cleveland empty-handed, not having spent or invested a dollar of the funds. The opportunity didn't feel right to him at the time, no matter how excited the rest of the market was—so he refunded the money and stayed away from drilling."}

{"id": 169, "text": "It was this intense self-discipline and objectivity that allowed Rockefeller to seize advantage from obstacle after obstacle in his life, during the Civil War, and the panics of 1873, 1907, and 1929. As he once put it: He was inclined to see the opportunity in every disaster. To that we could add: He had the strength to resist temptation or excitement, no matter how seductive, no matter the situation."}

{"id": 170, "text": "Within twenty years of that first crisis, Rockefeller would alone control 90 percent of the oil market. His greedy competitors had perished. His nervous colleagues had sold their shares and left the business. His weak-hearted doubters had missed out."}

{"id": 171, "text": "For the rest of his life, the greater the chaos, the calmer Rockefeller would become, particularly when others around him were either panicked or mad with greed. He would make much of his fortune during these market fluctuations—because he could see while others could not."}

{"id": 172, "text": "Oh, how blessed young men are who have to struggle for a foundation and beginning in life."}

{"id": 173, "text": "I shall never cease to be grateful for the three and half years of apprenticeship and the difficulties to be overcome, all along the way."}

{"id": 174, "text": "You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, how we react to them, and whether we keep our composure."}

{"id": 175, "text": "Where one person sees a crisis, another can see opportunity."}

{"id": 176, "text": "Where one is blinded by success, another sees reality with ruthless objectivity. Where one loses control of emotions, another can remain calm."}

{"id": 177, "text": "Desperation, despair, fear, powerlessness—these reactions are functions of our perceptions. You must realize: Nothing *makes* us feel this way; we *choose* to give in to such feelings."}

{"id": 178, "text": "And it is precisely at this divergence—between how Rockefeller perceived his environment and how the rest of the world typically does—that his nearly incomprehensible success was born."}

{"id": 179, "text": "We can learn to perceive things differently, to cut through the illusions that others believe or fear. We can stop seeing the \"problems\" in front of us as problems. We can learn to focus on what things really are."}

{"id": 180, "text": "Our brains evolved for an environment very different from the one we currently inhabit. As a result, we carry all kinds of biological baggage. Humans are still primed to detect threats and dangers that no longer exist—think of the cold sweat when you're stressed about money, or the fight-or-flight response that kicks in when your boss yells at you. Our safety is not truly at risk here—there is little danger that we will starve or that violence will break out—though it certainly feels that way sometimes."}

{"id": 181, "text": "We have a choice about how we respond to this situation (or any situation, for that matter). We can be blindly led by these primal feelings or we can understand them and learn to filter them. Discipline in perception lets you clearly see the advantage and the proper course of action in every situation—without the pestilence of panic or fear."}

{"id": 182, "text": "There are a few things to keep in mind when faced with a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We must try: To be objective To control emotions and keep an even keel To choose to see the good in a situation To steady our nerves To ignore what disturbs or limits others To place things in perspective To revert to the present moment To focus on what can be controlled This is how you see the opportunity within the obstacle. It does not happen on its own. It is a process—one that results from selfdiscipline and logic."}

{"id": 183, "text": "Choose not to be harmed—and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed—and you haven't been."}

{"id": 184, "text": "In his remarkable declaration, he told them, in so many words, \"I know you had nothing to do with the injustice that brought me to this jail, so I'm willing to stay here until I get out. But I will not, under any circumstances, be treated like a prisoner—because I am not and never will be *powerless.*\""}
{"id": 185, "text": "Instead of breaking down—as many would have done in such a bleak situation—Carter declined to surrender the freedoms that were innately his: his attitude, his beliefs, his choices."}
{"id": 186, "text": "Was he angry about what happened? Of course. He was furious. But understanding that anger was not constructive, he refused to rage. He refused to break or grovel or despair."}
{"id": 187, "text": "He would learn and read and make the most of the time he had on his hands. He would leave prison not only a free and innocent man, but a better and improved one."}
{"id": 188, "text": "No one can force us to give up or to believe something that is untrue (such as, that a situation is absolutely hopeless or impossible to improve). Our perceptions are the thing that we're in complete control of."}
{"id": 189, "text": "They can throw us in jail, label us, deprive us of our possessions, but they'll never control our thoughts, our beliefs, our *reactions*."}
{"id": 190, "text": "Carter did not have much power, but he understood that that was not the same thing as being powerless. Many great figures, from Nelson Mandela to Malcolm X, have come to understand this fundamental distinction. It's how they turned prison into the workshop where they transformed themselves and the schoolhouse where they began to transform others."}
{"id": 191, "text": "In fact, if we have our wits fully about us, we can step back and remember that situations, by themselves, cannot be good or bad. This is something—a judgment—that we, as human beings, bring to them with our perceptions."}
{"id": 192, "text": "\"Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,\" as Shakespeare put it."}
{"id": 193, "text": "There is no good or bad without us, there is only perception."}
{"id": 194, "text": "There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means."}
{"id": 195, "text": "Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn't mean you have to agree."}
{"id": 196, "text": "Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn't mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves. Or whether we will tell one at all."}
{"id": 197, "text": "That's a man who has steadied himself properly. That's a man who has a job to do and would bear anything to get it done. That's nerve."}
{"id": 198, "text": "There is always a countermove, always an escape or a way through, so there is no reason to get worked up."}
{"id": 199, "text": "If your nerve holds, then nothing really did 'happen'—our perception made sure it was nothing of consequence."}
{"id": 200, "text": "When people panic, they make mistakes. They override systems. They disregard procedures, ignore rules. They deviate from the plan."}
{"id": 201, "text": "Welcome to the source of most of our problems down here on Earth. Everything is planned down to the letter, then something goes wrong and the first thing we do is trade in our plan for a good ol' emotional freak-out."}
{"id": 202, "text": "Uncertainty and fear are relieved by authority. Training is authority."}
{"id": 203, "text": "It's a release valve. With enough exposure, you can adapt out those perfectly ordinary, even innate, fears that are bred mostly from unfamiliarity."}
{"id": 204, "text": "We defeat emotions with logic, or at least that's the idea. Logic is q"}
{"id": 205, "text": "No, because I practiced for this situation and I can control myself. Or, No, because I caught myself and I'm able to realize that that doesn't add anything constructive."}
{"id": 206, "text": "The phrase \"This happened and it is bad\" is actually two impressions. The first—\"This happened\"—is objective. The second—\"it is bad\"—is subjective."}
{"id": 207, "text": "Musashi understood that the observing eye sees simply what is there. The perceiving eye sees more than what is there."}
{"id": 208, "text": "To paraphrase Nietzsche, sometimes being superficial—taking things only at first glance—is the most profound approach."}
{"id": 209, "text": "In the writings of the Stoics we see an exercise that might well be described as Contemptuous Expressions. The Stoics use contempt as an agent to lay things bare and \"to strip away the legend **that** encrusts *them.*\""}
{"id": 210, "text": "Epictetus told his students, when they'd quote some great thinker, to picture themselves observing the person having sex. It's funny, you should try it the next time someone intimidates you or makes you feel insecure."}
{"id": 211, "text": "That promotion that means so much, what is it really? Our critics and naysayers who make us feel small, let's put them in their proper place. It's so much better to see things as they truly, actually are, not as we've made them in our minds."}
{"id": 212, "text": "Objectivity means removing \"you\"—the subjective part—from the equation."}
{"id": 213, "text": "Take your situation and pretend it is not happening to you. Pretend it is not important, that it doesn't matter. How much easier would it be for you to know what to do? How much more quickly and dispassionately could you size up the scenario and its options? You could write it off, greet it calmly."}
{"id": 214, "text": "Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant."}
{"id": 215, "text": "Perspective is everything. That is, when you can break apart something, or look at it from some new angle, it loses its power over you."}
{"id": 216, "text": "We choose how we'll look at things. We retain the ability to inject perspective into a situation. We can't change the obstacles themselves—that part of the equation is set—but the power of perspective can change how the obstacles appear."}
{"id": 217, "text": "It's your choice whether you want to put I in front of something (I hate public speaking. I screwed up. I am harmed by *this*). These add an extra element: you in relation to that obstacle, rather than just the obstacle itself."}
{"id": 218, "text": "The way we look out at the world changes how we see these things. Is our perspective truly giving us *perspective* or is it what's actually causing the problem? That's the question."}
{"id": 219, "text": "What we can do is limit and expand our perspective to whatever will keep us calmest and most ready for the task at hand."}
{"id": 220, "text": "Small tweaks can change what once felt like impossible tasks. Suddenly, where we felt weak, we realize we are strong. With perspective, we discover leverage we didn't know we had."}
{"id": 221, "text": "George Clooney spent his first years in Hollywood getting rejected at auditions. He wanted the producers and directors to like him, but they didn't and it hurt and he blamed the system for not seeing how good he was."}
{"id": 222, "text": "Everything changed for Clooney when he tried a new perspective. He realized that casting is an obstacle for producers, too..."}
{"id": 223, "text": "In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choices."}
{"id": 224, "text": "The difference between the right and the wrong perspective is everything."}
{"id": 225, "text": "How we interpret the events in our lives, our perspective, is the framework for our forthcoming response—whether there will even be one or whether we'll just lie there and take it."}
{"id": 226, "text": "Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective."}
{"id": 227, "text": "It's an almost superhuman accomplishment. But he was able to do it because he got really good at asking himself and others, in various forms, one question over and over again: Is there a chance? Do I have a shot? Is there something I can do?"}
{"id": 228, "text": "All he ever looked for was a yes, no matter how slight or tentative or provisional the chance. If there was a chance, he was ready to take it and make good use of it—ready to give every ounce of effort and energy he had to make it happen. If effort would affect the outcome, he would die on the field before he let that chance go to waste."}
{"id": 229, "text": "Even in the chaos of the emergency room, with doctors convinced that the boy probably wouldn't survive, John reminded his family that whether it took one year or ten years, they wouldn't give up until there was absolutely nothing left that they could do."}
{"id": 230, "text": "He used to tell coaches that he would die on the field before he quit."}
{"id": 231, "text": "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change The courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference."}
{"id": 232, "text": "Behind the Serenity Prayer is a two-thousand-year-old Stoic phrase: \"ta eph'hemin, ta ouk *eph'hemin.\"* What is up to us, what is not up to us."}
{"id": 233, "text": "And what is up to us? Our emotions Our judgments Our creativity Our attitude Our perspective Our desires Our decisions Our determination This is our playing field, so to speak."}
{"id": 234, "text": "If what's up to us is the playing field, then what is not up to us are the rules and conditions of the game. Factors that winning athletes make the best of and don't spend time arguing against (because there is no point)."}
{"id": 235, "text": "rucial distinction to make: the difference between the things that are in our power and the things that aren't. That's the difference between the people who can accomplish great things, and the people who find it impossible to stay sober—to avoid not just drugs or alcohol but all addictions."}
{"id": 236, "text": "In its own way, the most harmful dragon we chase is the one that makes us think we can change things that are simply not ours to change. That someone decided not to fund your company, this isn't up to you. But the decision to refine and improve your pitch? That is. That someone stole your idea or got to it first? No. To pivot, improve it, or fight for what's yours? Yes."}
{"id": 237, "text": "To see an obstacle as a challenge, to make the best of it anyway, that is also a choice—a choice that is up to us."}
{"id": 238, "text": "They had a job they wanted to do, a great idea they believed in or a product they thought they could sell. They knew they had payroll to meet."}
{"id": 239, "text": "Yet in our own lives, we aren't content to deal with things as they happen."}
{"id": 240, "text": "We have to dive endlessly into what everything \"means,\" whether something is \"fair\" or not, what's \"behind\" this or that, and what everyone else is doing."}
{"id": 241, "text": "Then we wonder why we don't have the energy to actually deal with our problems."}
{"id": 242, "text": "Or we get ourselves so worked up and intimidated because of the overthinking, that if we'd just gotten to work we'd probably be done already."}
{"id": 243, "text": "Our problem is that we're always trying to figure out what things mean—why things are the way they are. As though the why matters. Emerson put it best: \"We cannot spend the day in explanation.\" Don't waste time on false constructs."}
{"id": 244, "text": "It doesn't matter whether this is the worst time to be alive or the best, whether you're in a good job market or a bad one, or that the obstacle you face is intimidating or burdensome. What matters is that right now is right now."}
{"id": 245, "text": "The implications of our obstacle are theoretical—they exist in the past and the future. We live in the *moment.* And the more we embrace that, the easier the obstacle will be to face and move."}
{"id": 246, "text": "Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There's no other definition of it."}
{"id": 247, "text": "F. SCOTT FITZGERALD"}
{"id": 248, "text": "Steve Jobs was famous for what observers called his \"reality distortion field.\" Part motivational tactic, part sheer drive and ambition, this field made him notoriously dismissive of phrases such as \"It can't be done\" or \"We need more time.\""}

{"id": 249, "text": "Having learned early in life that reality was falsely hemmed in by rules and compromises that people ha"}

{"id": 250, "text": "Our perceptions determine, to an incredibly large degree, what we are and are not capable of. In many ways, they determine reality itself."}

{"id": 251, "text": "He knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment. But a high aim could, if things went right, create something extraordinary."}

{"id": 252, "text": "So many people in our lives have preached the need to be realistic or conservative or worse—to not rock the boat."}

{"id": 253, "text": "For instance, think of artists. It's their unique vision and voice that push the definition of \"art\" forward. What was possible for an artist before Caravaggio and after he stunned us with his dark masterpieces were two very different things. Plug in any other thinker or writer or painter in their own time, and the same applies."}

{"id": 254, "text": "This is why we shouldn't listen too closely to what other people say (or to what the voice in our head says, either). We'll find ourselves erring on the side of accomplishing nothing."}

{"id": 255, "text": "Be open. Question. Though of course we don't *control* reality, our perceptions do influence it."}

{"id": 256, "text": "Jobs refused to tolerate people who didn't believe in their own abilities to succeed. Even if his demands were unfair, uncomfortable, or ambitious."}

{"id": 257, "text": "Jobs learned to reject the first judgments and the objections that spring out of them because those objections are almost always rooted in fear."}

{"id": 258, "text": "Well, what if the \"other\" party is wrong? What if conventional wisdom is too conservative?"}

{"id": 259, "text": "An entrepreneur is someone with faith in their ability to make something where there was nothing before."}

{"id": 260, "text": "A great leader answered that question. Striding into the conference room at headquarters in Malta, General Dwight D. Eisenhower made an announcement: He'd have no more of this quivering timidity from his deflated generals. 'The present situation is to be regarded as opportunity for us and not disaster,' he commanded. 'There will be only cheerful faces at this conference table.'"}

{"id": 261, "text": "Only then were the Allies able to see the opportunity *inside* the obstacle rather than simply the obstacle that threatened them."}

{"id": 262, "text": "It's our preconceptions that are the problem. They tell us that things should or need to be a certain way, so when they're not, we naturally assume that we are at a disadvantage or that we'd be wasting our time to pursue an alternate course. When really, it's all fair game, and every situation is an opportunity for us to act."}

{"id": 263, "text": "As Laura Ingalls Wilder put it: \"There is good in everything, if only we look for it.\" Yet we are so bad at looking. We close our eyes to the gift."}

{"id": 264, "text": "If you mean it when you say you're at the end of your rope and would rather quit, you actually have a unique chance to grow and improve yourself."}

{"id": 265, "text": "A unique opportunity to experiment with different solutions, to try different tactics, or to take on new projects to add to your skill set."}

{"id": 266, "text": "You can study this bad boss and learn from him—while you fill out your résumé and hit up contacts for a better job elsewhere."}

{"id": 267, "text": "With this new attitude and fearlessness, who knows, you might be able to extract concessions and find that you like the job again."}

{"id": 268, "text": "Note the fact that they also keep you alert, raise the stakes, motivate you to prove them wrong, harden you, help you to appreciate true friends, provide an instructive antilog—an example of whom you don't want to become."}

{"id": 269, "text": "Blessings and burdens are not mutually exclusive. It's a lot more complicated. Socrates had a mean, nagging wife; he always said that being married to her was good practice for philosophy."}

{"id": 270, "text": "The struggle against an obstacle inevitably propels the fighter to a new level of functioning. The extent of the struggle determines the extent of the growth. The obstacle is an advantage, not adversity. The enemy is any perception that prevents us from seeing this."}

{"id": 271, "text": "We can fight it the entire way. The result is the same. The obstacle still exists. One just hurts less. The benefit is still there below the surface. What kind of idiot decides not to take it?"}

{"id": 272, "text": "When people are: —rude or disrespectful: They underestimate us. A huge advantage."}

{"id": 273, "text": "—critical or question our abilities: Lower expectations are easier to exceed."}

{"id": 274, "text": "—lazy: Makes whatever we accomplish seem all the more admirable."}

{"id": 275, "text": "It's a huge step forward to realize that the worst thing to happen is never the event, but the event and losing your head."}

{"id": 276, "text": "The proper perception—objective, rational, ambitious, clean—isolates the obstacle and exposes it for what it is."}

{"id": 277, "text": "A clearer head makes for steadier hands."}

{"id": 278, "text": "But *boldness* is acting anyway, even though you understand the negative and the reality of your obstacle."}

{"id": 279, "text": "We must be sure to act with deliberation, boldness, and persistence. Those are the attributes of right and effective action. Nothing else—not thinking or evasion or aid from others."}

{"id": 280, "text": "None of it was fair, none of it was right. Most of us, were we in his position, would have given up right then and there. But Demosthenes did not."}

{"id": 281, "text": "It inspired and challenged Demosthenes, weak, beaten on, powerless, and ignored; for in many ways, this strong, confident speaker was the opposite of him."}

{"id": 282, "text": "So he did something about it. To conquer his speech impediment, he devised his own strange exercises."}

{"id": 283, "text": "To ensure he wouldn't indulge in outside distractions, he shaved half his head so he'd be too embarrassed to go outside."}

{"id": 284, "text": "In struggling with his unfortunate fate, Demosthenes found his true calling: He would be the voice of Athens, its great speaker and conscience."}

{"id": 285, "text": "He had channeled his rage and pain into his training, and then later into his speeches, fueling it all with a kind of fierceness and power that could be neither matched nor resisted."}

{"id": 286, "text": "Character says everything about us. And it's sad that so many of us fail—opting away from action."}

{"id": 287, "text": "We don't act like Demosthenes, we act frail and are powerless to make ourselves better."}

{"id": 288, "text": "We forget: In life, it doesn't matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you've been given."}

{"id": 289, "text": "No one wants to be born weak or to be victimized. No one wants to be down to their last dollar. No one wants to be stuck behind an obstacle, blocked from where they need to go."}

{"id": 290, "text": "Because each obstacle we overcome makes us stronger for the next one."}

{"id": 291, "text": "No one is coming to save you. And if we'd like to go where we claim we want to go—to accomplish what we claim are our goals—there is only one way. And that's to meet our problems with the right action."}

{"id": 292, "text": "Therefore, we can always (and only) greet our obstacles with energy, with persistence, with a coherent and deliberate process, with iteration and resilience, with pragmatism, with strategic vision, with craftiness and savvy and an eye for opportunity and pivotal moments"}

{"id": 293, "text": "We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out."}

{"id": 294, "text": "But none of that would have happened had she turned up her nose at that offensive offer or sat around feeling sorry for herself."}

{"id": 295, "text": "Life can be frustrating. Oftentimes we know what our problems are. We may even know what to do about them."}

{"id": 296, "text": "And you know what happens as a result? Nothing. We do nothing. Tell yourself: The time for that has passed. The wind is rising. The bell's been rung. Get started, get moving."}

{"id": 297, "text": "For some reason, these days we tend to downplay the importance of aggression, of taking risks, of barreling forward. It's probably because it's been negatively associated with certain notions of violence or masculinity."}

{"id": 298, "text": "We talk a lot about courage as a society, but we forget that at its most basic level it's really just taking action—whether that's approaching someone you're intimidated by or deciding to finally crack a book on a subject you need to learn."}

{"id": 299, "text": "He knew there was a weak spot somewhere. He'd find it or he'd make one."}

{"id": 300, "text": "We will not be stopped by failure, we will not be rushed or distracted by external noise."}

{"id": 301, "text": "At Vicksburg, Grant learned two things. First, persistence and pertinacity were incredible assets and probably his main assets as a leader."}

{"id": 302, "text": "In persistence, he'd not only broken through: In trying it all the wrong ways, Grant discovered a totally new way—the way that would eventually win the war."}

{"id": 303, "text": "And, of course, he eventually found it—proving that genius often really is just persistence in disguise."}

{"id": 304, "text": "As we butt up against obstacles, it is helpful to picture Grant and Edison. Grant with a cigar clenched in his mouth. Edison on his hands and knees in the laboratory for days straight. Both unceasing, embodying cool persistence and the spirit of the line from the Alfred Lord Tennyson poem about that other Ulysses, \"to strive, to seek, to find.\""}

{"id": 305, "text": "The thing standing in your way isn't going anywhere. You're not going to outthink it or outcreate it with some world-changing epiphany. You've got to look at it and the people around you, who have begun their inevitable chorus of doubts and excuses, and say, as Margaret Thatcher famously did: \"You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.\""}
{"id": 306, "text": "Once you start attacking an obstacle, quitting is not an option. It cannot enter your head. Abandoning one path for another that might be more promising? Sure, but that's a far cry from giving up. Once you can envision yourself quitting altogether, you might as well ring the bell. It's done."}
{"id": 307, "text": "Consider this mind-set. never in a hurry never worried never desperate never stopping short Remember and remind yourself of a phrase favored by Epictetus: \"persist and resist.\" Persist in your efforts. Resist giving in to distraction, discouragement, or disorder."}
{"id": 308, "text": "Because when you play all the way to the whistle, there's no reason to worry about the clock. You know you won't stop until it's over—that every second available is yours to use. So temporary setbacks aren't discouraging. They are just bumps along a long road that you intend to travel all the way down."}
{"id": 309, "text": "It's okay to be discouraged. It's not okay to quit. To know you want to quit but to plant your feet and keep inching closer until you take the impenetrable fortress you've decided to lay siege to in your own life—that's persistence."}
{"id": 310, "text": "In other words: It's supposed to be hard. Your first attempts aren't going to work. It's goings to take a lot out of you—but energy is an asset we can always find more of. It's a renewable resource. Stop looking for an epiphany, and start looking for weak points. Stop looking for angels, and start looking for angles."}
{"id": 311, "text": "When people ask where we are, what we're doing, how that \"situation\" is coming along, the answer should be clear: We're working on it. We're getting closer. When setbacks come, we respond by working twice as hard."}
{"id": 312, "text": "But it's no joke. Failure really can be an asset if what you're trying to do is improve, learn, or do something new. It's the preceding feature of nearly all successes. There's nothing shameful about being wrong, about changing course. Each time it happens we have new options. Problems become opportunities."}
{"id": 313, "text": "In a world where we increasingly work for ourselves, are responsible for ourselves, it makes sense to view ourselves like a start-up—a start-up of one."}
{"id": 314, "text": "This is why stories of great success are often preceded by epic failure—because the people in them went back to the drawing board. They weren't ashamed to fail, but spurred on, piqued by it."}
{"id": 315, "text": "Even though we know that there are great lessons from failurelessons we've seen with our own two eyes—we repeatedly shrink from it. We do everything we can to avoid it, thinking it's embarrassing or shameful."}
{"id": 316, "text": "Be glad to pay the cost. There will be no better teacher for your career, for your book, for your new venture."}
{"id": 317, "text": "The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you hav"}
{"id": 318, "text": "Don't think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time."}
{"id": 319, "text": "And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn't panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts."}
{"id": 320, "text": "Envision, for a second, a master practicing an exceedingly difficult craft and making it look effortless. There's no strain, no struggling. So relaxed. No exertion or worry. Just one clean movement after another. That's a result of the process."}
{"id": 321, "text": "When it comes to our actions, disorder and distraction are death. The unordered mind loses track of what's in front of it—what matters —and gets distracted by thoughts of the future."}
{"id": 322, "text": "The process is order, it keeps our perceptions in check and our actions in sync."}
{"id": 323, "text": "Being trapped is just a position, not a fate. You get out of it by addressing and eliminating each part of that position through small, deliberate actions—not by trying (and failing) to push it away with superhuman strength."}
{"id": 324, "text": "How often do we compromise or settle because we feel that the real solution is too ambitious or outside our grasp? How often do we assume that change is impossible because it's too big?"}
{"id": 325, "text": "They're brilliant, sure, but they rarely execute. They rarely get where they want and need to go."}
{"id": 326, "text": "We want to have goals, yes, so everything we do can be in the service of something purposeful. When we know what we're really setting out to do, the obstacles that arise tend to seem smaller, more manageable. When we don't, each one looms larger and seems impossible. Goals help put the blips and bumps in proper proportion."}
{"id": 327, "text": "The process is the voice that demands we take responsibility and ownership. That prompts us to act even if only in a small way."}
{"id": 328, "text": "Subordinate strength to the process. Replace fear with the process. Depend on it. Lean on it. Trust in it."}
{"id": 329, "text": "The process is about doing the right things, right now. Not worrying about what might happen later, or the results, or the whole picture."}
{"id": 330, "text": "Whatever is rightly done, however humble, is noble."}
{"id": 331, "text": "Within just one year of starting at the school he was a professor teaching a full course load in addition to his studies. By his twenty sixth birthday he was the dean."}
{"id": 332, "text": "These men went from humble poverty to power by always doing what they were asked to do—and doing it right and with real pride. And doing it better than anyone else. In fact, doing it well because no one else wanted to do it."}
{"id": 333, "text": "Everything we do matters—whether it's making smoothies while you save up money or studying for the bar—even after you already achieved the success you sought."}
{"id": 334, "text": "Only self-absorbed assholes think they are too good for whatever their current station requires."}
{"id": 335, "text": "Wherever we are, whatever we're doing and wherever we are going, we owe it to ourselves, to our art, to the world to do it well."}
{"id": 336, "text": "An artist is given many different canvases and commissions in their lifetime, and what matters is that they treat each one as a priority."}
{"id": 337, "text": "Some are prestigious, some are onerous, none are beneath us."}
{"id": 338, "text": "How they each responded to this problem was defined by their company's organization and ethos."}
{"id": 339, "text": "This is *pragmatism* embodied. Don't worry about the \"right\" way, worry about the *right* way."}
{"id": 340, "text": "We spend a lot of time thinking about how things are supposed to be, or what the rules say we should do. Trying to get it all perfect. We tell ourselves that we'll get started once the conditions are right, or once we're sure we can trust this or that. When, really, it'd be better to focus on making due with what we've got. On focusing on results instead of pretty methods."}
{"id": 341, "text": "You've got your mission, whatever it is. To accomplish it, like the rest of us you're in the pinch between the way you wish things were and the way they actually are (which always seem to be a disaster). How far are you willing to go? What are you willing to do about it?"}
{"id": 342, "text": "Scratch the complaining. No waffling. No submitting to powerlessness or fear. You can't just run home to Mommy. How are you going to solve this problem? How are you going"}
{"id": 343, "text": "Sometimes that requires ignoring some outdated regulations or asking for forgiveness from management later rather than for permission (which would be denied) right now."}
{"id": 344, "text": "But if you've got an important mission, all that matters is that you accomplish it."}
{"id": 345, "text": "With the stakes this high, you better be willing to bend the rules or do something desperate or crazy."}
{"id": 346, "text": "Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility."}
{"id": 347, "text": "Think progress, not perfection. Under this kind of force, obstacles break apart. They have no choice. Since you're going around them or making them irrelevant, there is nothing for them to resist."}
{"id": 348, "text": "Instead, do the best with what you've got. Not that pragmatism is inherently at odds with idealism or pushing the ball forward."}
{"id": 349, "text": "Start thinking like a radical pragmatist: still ambitious, aggressive, and rooted in ideals, but also imminently practical and guided by the possible."}
{"id": 350, "text": "In a study of some 30 conflicts comprising more than 280 campaigns from ancient to modern history, the brilliant strategist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart came to a stunning conclusion: In only 6 of the 280 campaigns was the decisive victory a result of a direct attack on the enemy's main army."}
{"id": 351, "text": "From the psychological. From drawing opponents out from their defenses. From the untraditional. From anything but . . ."}
{"id": 352, "text": "When you're at your wit's end, straining and straining with all your might, when people tell you you might pop a vein . . ."}
{"id": 353, "text": "If we're starting from scratch and the established players have had time to build up their defenses, there is just no way we are going to beat them on their strengths. So it's smarter to not even try, but instead focus our limited resources elsewhere."}
{"id": 354, "text": "Being outnumbered, coming from behind, being low on funds, these don't have to be disadvantages. They can be gifts. Assets that make us less likely to commit suicide with a head-to-head attack."}
{"id": 355, "text": "Kierkegaard would write under pseudonyms, where each fake personality would embody a different platform or perspectivewriting multiple times on the same subject from multiple angles to convey his point emotionally and dramatically."}
{"id": 356, "text": "He would rarely tell the reader \"do this\" or \"think that.\" Instead he would *show* new ways of looking at or understanding the world."}
{"id": 357, "text": "You aren't just throwing your weight around and hoping it works. You're not wasting your energy in battles driven by ego and pride rather than tactical advantage."}
{"id": 358, "text": "Sometimes you overcome obstacles not by attacking them but by withdrawing and letting them attack you. You can use the actions of others against thems"}
{"id": 359, "text": "Weak compared to the forces he hoped to change, Gandhi leaned into that weakness, exaggerated it, exposed himself."}
{"id": 360, "text": "He was provoking them—What are you going to do about it? *There* is nothing wrong with what we're *doing*—knowing that it placed authorities in an impossible dilemma: Enforce a bankrupt policy or abdicate."}
{"id": 361, "text": "Martin Luther King Jr., taking Gandhi's lead, told his followers that they would meet \"physical force with soul force.\""}
{"id": 362, "text": "In the face of violence they would be peaceful, to hate they would answer with love—and in the process, they would expose those attributes as indefensible and evil."}
{"id": 363, "text": "It is, however, time to acknowledge that some adversity might be impossible for you to defeat—no matter how hard you try. Instead, you must find some way to use the adversity, its *energy,* to help yourself."}
{"id": 364, "text": "So instead of fighting obstacles, find a means of making **them** defeat *themselves.*"}
{"id": 365, "text": "When we want things too badly we can be our own worst enemy."}
{"id": 366, "text": "In our eagerness, we strip the very screw we want to turn and make it impossible to ever get what we want."}
{"id": 367, "text": "We get so consumed with moving forward that we forget that there are other ways to get where we are heading."}
{"id": 368, "text": "When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstance revert at once to yourself and don't lose the rhythm more than you can help. You'll have a better grasp of harmony if you keep going back to it."}
{"id": 369, "text": "As a tennis player, Arthur Ashe was a beautiful contradiction. To survive segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, he learned from his father to mask his emotions and feelings on the court."}
{"id": 370, "text": "All the energy and emotion he had to suppress was channeled into a bold and graceful playing form. While his face was controlled, his body was alive—fluid, brilliant, and all over the court."}
{"id": 371, "text": "And yet we feel like going to pieces when the PowerPoint projector won't work (instead of throwing it aside and delivering an exciting talk without notes). We stir up gossip with our coworkers (instead of pounding something productive out on our keyboards). We act out, instead of *act.*"}
{"id": 372, "text": "But think of an athlete \"in the pocket,\" \"in the zone,\" \"on a streak,\" and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that fall in the face of that effortless state. Enormous deficits collapse, every pass or shot hits its intended target, fatigue melts away. Those athletes might be stopped from carrying out this or that action, but not from their goal. External factors influence the path, but not the direction: forward."}
{"id": 373, "text": "To be physically and mentally tight? That's called anxiety. It doesn't work, either. Eventually we snap. But physical looseness combined with mental restraint? That is powerful."}
{"id": 374, "text": "It's a power that drives our opponents and competitors nuts. They think we're toying with them. It's maddening—like we aren't even trying, like we've tuned out the world."}
{"id": 375, "text": "The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged chance, conquered the chance, and made chance the servitor."}
{"id": 376, "text": "If you think it's simply enough to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in your life, you will fall short of greatness. Anyone sentient can do that. What you must do is learn how to press forward precisely when everyone around you sees disaster."}
{"id": 377, "text": "It's at the seemingly bad moments, when people least expect it, that we can act swiftly and unexpectedly to pull off a big victory. While others are arrested by discouragement, we are not. We see the moment differently, and act accordingly."}
{"id": 378, "text": "Ignore the politics and focus on the brilliant strategic advice that Obama's adviser Rahm Emanuel, once gave him. \"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. [A] crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.\""}
{"id": 379, "text": "You always planned to do something. Write a screenplay. Travel. Start a business. Approach a possible mentor. Launch a movement."}
{"id": 380, "text": "Ordinary people shy away from negative situations, just as they do with failure. They do their best to avoid trouble. What great people do is the opposite. They are their best in these situations. They turn personal tragedy or misfortune—really anything, everything—to their advantage."}
{"id": 381, "text": "Life speeds on the bold and favors the brave."}
{"id": 382, "text": "At certain moments in our brief existences we are faced with great trials. Often those trials are frustrating, unfortunate, or unfair. They seem to come exactly when we think we need them the least."}
{"id": 383, "text": "If you don't *take* that, it's on you. Napoleon described war in simple terms: Two armies are two bodies that clash and attempt to frighten each other. At impact, there is a moment of panic and it is that *moment* that the superior commander turns to his advantage."}
{"id": 384, "text": "Great commanders look for decision points. For it is bursts of energy directed at decisive points that break things wide open. They press and press and press and then, exactly when the situation seems hopeless—or, more likely, hopelessly deadlocked—they press once more."}
{"id": 385, "text": "In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune's habit of behaving just as she pleases."}
{"id": 386, "text": "What we can't do is control the world around us—not as much as we'd like to, anyway. We might perceive things well, then act rightly, and fail anyway."}
{"id": 387, "text": "All creativity and dedication aside, after we've tried, *some* obstacles may turn out to be impossible to overcome. Some actions are rendered impossible, some paths impassable. Some things are bigger than us."}
{"id": 388, "text": "He learned to endure all this, articulate it, and find benefit and meaning from it."}
{"id": 389, "text": "His own experience with suffering drove his compassion to allay it in others."}
{"id": 390, "text": "He found purpose and relief in a cause bigger than himself and his personal struggles."}
{"id": 391, "text": "As crafty and ambitious and smart as he was, Lincoln's real strength was his will: the way he was able to resign himself to an onerous task without giving in to hopelessness, the way he could contain both humor and deadly seriousness, the way he could use his own private turmoil to teach and help others, the way he was able to rise above the din and see politics philosophically."}
{"id": 392, "text": "\"This too shall pass\" was Lincoln's favorite saying, one he once said was applicable in any and every situation one could encounter."}
{"id": 393, "text": "To live with his depression, Lincoln had developed a strong inner fortress that girded him."}
{"id": 394, "text": "Over four years, the war was to become nearly incomprehensibly violent, and Lincoln, who'd attepted at first to prevent it, would fight to win justly, and finally try to end it with \"malice towards none.\""}
{"id": 395, "text": "Clearheadedness and action are not always enough, in politics or in life. Some obstacles are beyond a snap of the fingers or novel solution. It is not always possible for one man to rid the world of a great evil or stop a country bent toward conflict. Of course, we trybecause it can happen. But we should be ready for it not to. And we need to be able to find a greater purpose in this suffering and handle it with firmness and forbearance."}
{"id": 396, "text": "This was Lincoln: always ready with a new idea or innovative approach (whether it was sending a supply boat instead of reinforcements to the troops besieged at Fort Sumter, or timing the Emancipation Proclamation with a Union victory at Antietam to back it with the appearance of strength) but equally prepared for the worst. And then prepared to make the best of the worst."}
{"id": 397, "text": "Leadership requires determination and energy. And certain situations, at times, call on leaders to marshal that determined energy simply to endure. To provide strength in terrible times. Because of what Lincoln had gone through, because of what he'd struggled with and learned to cope with in his own life, he was able to lead. To hold a nation, a cause, an effort, together."}
{"id": 398, "text": "Will is fortitude and wisdom—not just about specific obstacles but about life itself and where the obstacles we are facing fit within it. It gives us ultimate strength."}
{"id": 399, "text": "Schooled in suffering, to quote Virgil, Lincoln learned \"to comfort those who suffer too.\""}
{"id": 400, "text": "Lincoln's words went to the people's hearts because they came from his, because he had access to a part of the human experience that many had walled themselves off from."}
{"id": 401, "text": "Acknowledge the pain but trod onward in your task. Had the war gone on even longer, Lincoln would have lead his people through it. Had the Union lost the Civil War, he'd have known that he'd done everything he could in pursuit of victory."}
{"id": 402, "text": "Providing an example for others, in victory or in defeat—whichever occurred."}
{"id": 403, "text": "One needs only to look at history to see how random and vicious and awful the world can be. The incomprehensible happens all the time."}
{"id": 404, "text": "Certain things in life will cut you open like a knife. When that happens—at that exposing moment—the world gets a glimpse of what's truly inside you."}
{"id": 405, "text": "The will is what prepares us for this, protects us against it, and allows us to thrive and be happy in spite of it. It is also the most difficult of all the disciplines."}
{"id": 406, "text": "It's what allows us to stand undisturbed while others wilt and give in to disorder."}
{"id": 407, "text": "It's much easier to control our perceptions and emotions than it is to give up our desire to control other people and events. It's easier to persist in our efforts and actions than to endure the uncomfortable or the painful. It's easier to think and act than it is to practice wisdom."}
{"id": 408, "text": "These lessons come harder but are, in the end, the most critical to wresting advantage from adversity. In every situation, we can Always prepare ourselves for more difficult times. Always accept what we're unable to change. Always manage our expectations. Always persevere. Always learn to love our fate and what happens to us. Always protect our inner self, retreat into ourselves. Always submit to a greater, larger cause. Always remind ourselves of our own mortality. And, of course, prepare to start the cycle once more."}
{"id": 409, "text": "It's going to be hard drudgery and I think you have the determination to go through with it."}
{"id": 410, "text": "His response, using what would become his trademark cheerful grit, was to look at his father and say with determination: \"I'll make my *body.*\""}

{"id": 411, "text": "That gym work prepared a physically weak but smart young boy for the uniquely challenging course on which the nation and the world were about to embark. It was the beginning of his preparation for and fulfillment of what he would call \"the Strenuous Life.\""}

{"id": 412, "text": "We craft our spiritual strength through physical exercise, and our physical hardiness through mental practice (mens sana in corpore sano—sound mind in a strong body)."}

{"id": 413, "text": "This approach goes back to the ancient philosophers. Every bit of the philosophy they developed was intended to reshape, prepare, and fortify them for the challenges to come."}

{"id": 414, "text": "Many saw themselves as mental athletes—after all, the brain is a muscle like any other active tissue. It can be built up and toned through the right exercises."}

{"id": 415, "text": "This is strikingly similar to what the Stoics called the Inner Citadel, that fortress inside of us that no external adversity can ever break down. An important caveat is that we are not born with such a structure; it must be built and actively reinforced. During the good times, we strengthen ourselves and our bodies so that during the difficult times, we can depend on it. We protect our inner fortress so it may protect us."}

{"id": 416, "text": "You'll have far better luck toughening yourself up than you ever will trying to take the teeth out of a world that is—at best—indifferent to your existence. Whether we were born weak like Roosevelt or we are currently experiencing good times, we should always prepare for things to get tough."}

{"id": 417, "text": "No one is born a gladiator. No one is born with an Inner Citadel. If we're going to succeed in achieving our goals despite the obstacles that may come, this strength in will must be built."}

{"id": 418, "text": "To be great at something takes practice. Obstacles and adversity are no different."}

{"id": 419, "text": "The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher. We can't afford to shy away from the things that intimidate us. We don't need to take our weaknesses for granted."}

{"id": 420, "text": "Because these things *will* happen to you. No one knows when or how, but their appearance is certain. And life will demand an answer. You chose this for yourself, a life of doing things. Now you better be prepared for what it entails."}

{"id": 421, "text": "Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don't have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish."}

{"id": 422, "text": "Your plan and the way things turn out rarely resemble each other."}

{"id": 423, "text": "What you think you deserve is also rarely what you'll get. Yet we constantly deny this fact and are repeatedly shocked by the events of the world as they unfold."}

{"id": 424, "text": "A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then he would go over, in his head (or in writing), the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening: a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates."}

{"id": 425, "text": "\"Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation,\" he wrote to a friend. \". . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans.\""}

{"id": 426, "text": "Always prepared for disruption, always working that disruption into our plans. Fitted, as they say, for defeat or victory. And let's be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one."}

{"id": 427, "text": "What if . . . Then I *will* . . . What if . . . Instead I'll *just* . . . What if . . . No problem, we can always . . . And in the case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to d"}

{"id": 428, "text": "You have to make concessions for the world around you. We are dependent on other people. Not everyone can be counted on like you can (though, let's be honest, we're all our own worst enemy sometimes)."}

{"id": 429, "text": "The only guarantee, ever, is that things **will** go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation. Because the only variable we control completely is ourselves."}

{"id": 430, "text": "Common wisdom provides us with the maxims: Beware the calm before the storm. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. The worst is yet to come. It gets worse before it gets better."}

{"id": 431, "text": "The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It's far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard."}

{"id": 432, "text": "Then, the real reason we won't have any problem thinking about bad luck is because we're not afraid of what it portends. We're prepared in advance for adversity—it's other people who are not."}

{"id": 433, "text": "You know what's better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life."}

{"id": 434, "text": "With anticipation, we have time to raise defenses, or even avoid them entirely. We're ready to be driven off course because we've plotted a way back. We can resist going to pieces if things didn't go as planned. With anticipation, we can endure."}

{"id": 435, "text": "Jefferson just wasn't a public speaker—that doesn't make him less of a man for acknowledging it and acting accordingly."}

{"id": 436, "text": "It doesn't always feel that way but constraints in life are a good thing. Especially if we can accept them and let them direct us. They push us to places and to develop skills that we'd otherwise never have pursued."}

{"id": 437, "text": "That channeling requires consent. It requires acceptance. We have to allow some accidents to happen to us."}

{"id": 438, "text": "Yet this is exactly what life is doing to us. It tells us to come to a stop here. Or that some intersection is blocked or that a particular road has been rerouted through an inconvenient detour. We can't argue or yell this problem away. We simply accept it."}

{"id": 439, "text": "When the cause of our problem lies outside of us, we are better for accepting it and moving on. For ceasing to kick and fight against it, and coming to terms with it. The Stoics have a beautiful name for this attitude. They call it the Art of Acquiescence."}

{"id": 440, "text": "It takes toughness, humility, and will to accept them for what they actually are. It takes a real man or woman to face necessity."}

{"id": 441, "text": "All external events can be equally beneficial to us because we can turn them all upside down and make use of them. They can teach us a lesson we were reluctant to otherwise learn."}

{"id": 442, "text": "Think of George Washington, putting everything he had into the American Revolution, and then saying, \"The event is in the hand of God.\" Or Eisenhower, writing to his wife on the eve of the Allied invasion at Sicily: \"Everything we could think of have been done, the troops are fit everybody is doing his best. The answer is in the lap of the gods.\" These were not guys prone to settling or leaving the details up to other people—but they understood ultimately that what happened would happen. And they'd go from there."}

{"id": 443, "text": "It's time to be humble and flexible enough to acknowledge the same in our own lives. That there is always someone or something that could change the plan. And that person is not us. As the saying goes, \"Man proposes but God disposes.\""}

{"id": 444, "text": "Look: If we want to use the metaphor that life is a game, it means playing the dice or the chips or the cards where they fall. Play it where it lies, a golfer would say."}

{"id": 445, "text": "The way life is gives you plenty to work with, plenty to leave your imprint on. Taking people and events as they are is quite enough material already. Follow where the events take you, like water rolling down a hill—it always gets to the bottom eventually, doesn't it?"}

{"id": 446, "text": "Because (a) you're robust and resilient enough to handle whatever occurs, (b) you can't do anything about it anyway, and (c"}

{"id": 447, "text": "We're indifferent and that's not a weakness. As Francis Bacon once said, nature, in order to be commanded, must be obeyed."}

{"id": 448, "text": "As he told a reporter the next day, he wasn't too old to make a fresh start. \"I've been through a lot of things like this. It prevents a man from being afflicted with ennui.\""}
{"id": 449, "text": "Loving whatever happens to us and facing it with unfailing cheerfulness."}
{"id": 450, "text": "We put our energies and emotions and exertions where they will have real impact."}
{"id": 451, "text": "Should he hate them for hating him? Bitterness was their burden and Johnson refused to pick it up."}
{"id": 452, "text": "As the Stoics commanded themselves: Cheerfulness in all situations, especially the bad ones."}
{"id": 453, "text": "Learning not to kick and scream about matters we can't control is one thing."}
{"id": 454, "text": "Indifference and acceptance are certainly better than disappointment or rage."}
{"id": 455, "text": "Better than all of that is love for all that happens to us"}
{"id": 456, "text": "We don't get to choose what happens to us, but we can always choose how we feel about it. And why on earth would you *choose* to feel anything but good? We can choose to render a good account of ourselves. If the event must occur, Amor *fati* (a love of fate) is the response."}
{"id": 457, "text": "It's important to look at Johnson and Edison because they weren't passive. They didn't simply roll over and tolerate adversity. They accepted what happened to them. They *liked* it."}
{"id": 458, "text": "It's a little unnatural, I know, to feel gratitude for things we never wanted to happen in the first place. But we know, at this point, the opportunities and benefits that lie within adversities. We know that in overcoming them, we emerge stronger, sharper, empowered. There is little reason to delay these feelings. To begrudgingly acknowledge later that it was for the best, when we could have felt that in advance because it was inevitable."}
{"id": 459, "text": "How did he get through it? How did the hero make it home despite it all?"}
{"id": 460, "text": "But a ten-year voyage of trials and tribulations. Of disappointment and mistakes without giving in."}
{"id": 461, "text": "Life is not about one obstacle, but *many*. What's required of us is not some shortsighted focus on a single facet of a problem, but simply a determination that we *will* get to where we need to go, somehow, someway, and nothing will stop us."}
{"id": 462, "text": "We will overcome every obstacle—and there will be many in lifeuntil we get there. Persistence is an action. Perseverance is a matter of will. One is energy. The other, *endurance*."}
{"id": 463, "text": "Perseverance. Force of purpose. Indomitable will. Those traits were once uniquely part of the American DNA. But they've been weakening for some time."}
{"id": 464, "text": "If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined."}
{"id": 465, "text": "If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life."}
{"id": 466, "text": "We're crushed when what we were \"promised\" is revoked—as if that's not allowed to happen."}
{"id": 467, "text": "And with it, Emerson said, \"with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear.\""}
{"id": 468, "text": "To quote Beethoven: \"The barriers are not erected which can say to aspiring talents and industry, Thus far and no farther.\""}
{"id": 469, "text": "Our actions can be constrained, but our will can't be."}
{"id": 470, "text": "But belief in ourselves? No matter how many times we are thrown back, we alone retain the power to decide to go once more."}
{"id": 471, "text": "Determination, if you think about it, is invincible. Nothing other than death can prevent us from following Churchill's old acronym: KBO. Keep Buggering On."}
{"id": 472, "text": "Despair? That's on you. No one else is to blame when you throw in the towel."}
{"id": 473, "text": "But we control ourselves—and that is sufficient."}
{"id": 474, "text": "The true threat to determination, then, is not what happens to us, but us ourselves. Why would you be your own worst enemy?"}
{"id": 475, "text": "The first thing he did was throw out any idealistic notions about what happens to a soldier when asked to give up information under hours of torture."}
{"id": 476, "text": "He would not disgrace them or their sacrifice by allowing himself to be used as a tool against their common cause."}
{"id": 477, "text": "He could change *that* situation and not let history repeat itself—this would be his cause, and he would help his men and lead them."}
{"id": 478, "text": "We're in this *together,* he told them. He gave them a watchword to remind them: U.S.—Unity over Self."}
{"id": 479, "text": "But their cause was their men. They cared about their fellow prisoners and drew great strength by putting their well-being ahead of their own."}
{"id": 480, "text": "It is in this moment that we must show the true strength of will within us."}
{"id": 481, "text": "When we focus on others, on helping them or simply providing a good example, our own personal fears and troubles will diminish. With fear or heartache no longer our primary concern, we don't have time for it. Shared purpose gives us strength."}
{"id": 482, "text": "If I can't solve this for myself, how can I at least make this better for other people?"}
{"id": 483, "text": "Stop making it harder on yourself by thinking about I, I, I. Stop putting that dangerous \"I\" in front of events. I did this. I was so smart. I had that. I deserve better than this. No wonder you take losses personally, no wonder you feel so alone. You've inflated your own role and importance."}
{"id": 484, "text": "Start thinking: Unity over Self. We're in this *together.* Even if we can't carry the load all the way, we're going to take our crack at picking up the heavy end. We're going to be of service to others. Help ourselves by helping them. Becoming better because of it, drawing purpose from it."}
{"id": 485, "text": "Whatever you're going through, whatever is holding you down or standing in your way, can be turned into a source of strength—by thinking of people other than yourself. You won't have time to think of your own suffering because there are other people suffering and you're too focused on them."}
{"id": 486, "text": "Death doesn't make life pointless, but rather purposeful."}
{"id": 487, "text": "In Montaigne's essays, we see proof of the fact that one can meditate on death—be well aware of our own mortality—without being morbid or a downer."}
{"id": 488, "text": "This is encouraging: It means that embracing the precariousness of our own existence can be exhilarating and empowe"}
{"id": 489, "text": "Our fear of death is a looming obstacle in our lives. It shapes our decisions, our outlook, and our actions."}
{"id": 490, "text": "Part of the reason we have so much trouble with acceptance is because our relationship with our own existence is totally messed up."}
{"id": 491, "text": "We may not say it, but deep down we act and behave like we're invincible."}
{"id": 492, "text": "We forget how light our grip on life really is."}
{"id": 493, "text": "But thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency. It doesn't need to be depressing. Because it's invigorating."}
{"id": 494, "text": "Reminding ourselves each day that we will die helps us treat our time as a gift. Someone on a deadline doesn't indulge himself with"}
{"id": 495, "text": "Life is a process of breaking through these impediments—a series of fortified lines that we must break through."}
{"id": 496, "text": "Each time, you'll learn something. Each time, you'll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective."}
{"id": 497, "text": "As the Haitian proverb puts it: Behind mountains are more mountains."}
{"id": 498, "text": "Elysium is a myth. One does not overcome an obstacle to enter the land of no obstacles."}
{"id": 499, "text": "Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important."}
{"id": 500, "text": "Passing one obstacle simply says you're worthy of more."}
{"id": 501, "text": "Late in his reign, sick and possibly near death, Marcus Aurelius received surprising news. His old friend and most trusted general, Avidius Cassius, had rebelled in Syria. Having heard the emperor was vulnerable or possibly dead, the ambitious general had decided to declare himself Caesar and forcibly seize the throne."}
{"id": 502, "text": "Marcus should have been angry. History would have forgiven him for wanting to avenge this enemy. To crush this man who had betrayed him, who threatened his life, his family, and his legacy. Instead, Marcus did nothing—going as far as to keep the news secret from his troops, who might have been enraged or provoked on his behalf—but waited to see if Cassius would come to his senses."}
{"id": 503, "text": "They would capture Cassius and endeavor not to kill him, but \". . . forgive a man who has wronged one, to remain a friend to one who has transgressed friendship, to continue faithful to one who has broken faith.\""}
{"id": 504, "text": "Marcus had controlled his perceptions. He wasn't angry, he didn't despise his enemy. He would not say an ill word against him. He would not take it personally. Then he acted—rightly and firmlyordering troops to Rome to calm the panicking crowds and then set out to do what must be done: protect the empire, put down a"}
{"id": 505, "text": "As he told his men, if there was one profit they could derive from this awful situation that they had not wanted, it would be to \"settle this affair well and show to all mankind that there is a right way to deal even with civil wars.\""}
{"id": 506, "text": "The Stoics liked to use the metaphor of fire. Writing in his journal, Marcus once reminded himself that \"when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material.\""}
{"id": 507, "text": "Marcus would now forgive essentially everyone involved. He wouldn't take any of it personally. He'd be a better person, a better leader for it."}
{"id": 508, "text": "I implore you, the senate, to keep my reign unstained by the blood of any senator. May it never happen."}
{"id": 509, "text": "We can turn even this to our advantage. Always. It is an opportunity. Always."}
{"id": 510, "text": "Something stands in someone's way. They stare it down, they aren't intimidated. Leaning into their problem or weakness or issue, they give everything they have, mentally and physically."}
{"id": 511, "text": "Not everyone looks at obstacles—often the same ones you and I face—and sees reason to despair. In fact, they see the opposite. They see a problem with a ready solution. They see a chance to test and improve themselves."}
{"id": 512, "text": "With this triad, they: First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is. Perceive things as they are, leave no option unexplored, then stand strong and transform whatever can't be changed."}
{"id": 513, "text": "The philosopher and writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb defined a Stoic as someone who \"transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation and desire into undertaking.\""}
{"id": 514, "text": "You are schooled in the art of managing your perceptions and impressions. Like Rockefeller, you're cool under pressure, immune to insults and abuse. You see opportunity in the darkest of places."}
{"id": 515, "text": "You are able to direct your actions with energy and persistence."}
{"id": 516, "text": "Like Demosthenes, you assume responsibility for yourself—teaching yourself, compensating for disadvantages, and pursuing your rightful calling and place in the world."}
{"id": 517, "text": "You are iron-spined and possess a great and powerful will. Like Lincoln, you realize that life is a trial. It will not be easy, but you are prepared to give it everything you have regardless, ready to endure, persevere, and inspire others."}
{"id": 518, "text": "To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school . . . it is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."}
{"id": 519, "text": "They were nothing special, nothing that we are not just as capable of being."}
{"id": 520, "text": "See things for what they are. Do what we can. Endure and bear what we must."}
{"id": 521, "text": "The writer Ambrose Bierce, decorated Civil War veteran and contemporary of Mark Twain and H. L. Mencken, used to recommend Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus to aspiring writers who wrote to him, saying they'd teach them \"how to be a worthy guest at the table of the gods.\""}
{"id": 522, "text": "The political thinker John Stuart Mill wrote of Marcus Aurelius and Stoicism in his famous treatise On Liberty, calling it \"the highest ethical product of the ancient mind.\""}
{"id": 523, "text": "The Percys, the famous Southern political, writing, and planting dynasty (LeRoy Percy, United States senator; William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the Levee; and Walker Percy, The *Moviegoer*) who saved thousands of lives during the flood of 1927, were well-known adherents to the works of the Stoics, because, as one of them wrote, \"when all is lost, it stands fast.\""}
{"id": 524, "text": "Eighty or so years after Goddard's donation, the Soviet poet, dissident, and political prisoner Joseph Brodsky wrote in his famous essay on the original version of that same statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome that \"if *Meditations* is antiquity, it is we who are the ruins.\""}
{"id": 525, "text": "And as he parachuted from his plane, Stockdale said to himself \"I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.\""}

{"id": 526, "text": "The essence of philosophy is action—in making good on the ability to turn the obstacle upside down with our minds."}

{"id": 527, "text": "To see things *philosophically* and act accordingly."}

{"id": 528, "text": "I want to thank Samantha, my girlfriend, whom I love more than anyone."}

{"id": 529, "text": "Thank you for coming on the many walks with me where I thought out loud."}

{"id": 530, "text": "I want to thank my dog, Hanno—not that she is reading this—because she is a constant reminder of living in the present and of pure and honest joy."}

{"id": 531, "text": "Thanks to Aaron Ray and Tucker Max, who showed me that a philosophic life and a life of action were not incompatible."}

{"id": 532, "text": "Tucker, you're the one who encouraged me to read (and the one who told me to follow up Epictetus with Marcus Aurelius."}

{"id": 533, "text": "I very much see this book as a collection of the thoughts and actions of people better and smarter than me."}

{"id": 534, "text": "I hope you read it the same way and attribute any credit deserved accordingly."}

{"id": 535, "text": "Montaigne, Michel de. The Essays: A *Selection*. Translated by M. A. Screech. New York: Penguin, 1994."}

{"id": 536, "text": "Musashi, Miyamoto. The Book of Five *Rings*. Translated by Thomas Cleary. Boston: Shambhala, 2005."}

{"id": 537, "text": "Plutarch. On Sparta (Penguin *Classics)."}

{"id": 538, "text": "Sellars, John. *Stoicism*. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006."}

{"id": 539, "text": "Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior"}

{"id": 540, "text": "The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms"}

{"id": 541, "text": "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder"}

{"id": 542, "text": "Stoicism is perhaps the only \"philosophy\" where the original, primary texts are actually cleaner and easier to read than anything academics have written afterward."}

{"id": 543, "text": "Of the big three, Epictetus is the most preachy and least fun to read. But he will also from time to time express something so clearly and profoundly that it will shake you to your core."}

{"id": 544, "text": "His interpretation of Marcus Aurelius in the book The Inner Citadel—that Marcus was not writing some systemic explanation of the universe but creating a set of practical exercises the emperor was actually practicing himself—was a huge leap forward."}

{"id": 545, "text": "Heraclitus Plutarch Socrates Cicero Montaigne Arthur Schopenhauer Penguin Random House published this book, but even if it hadn't, I would recommend starting with the Penguin Classics."}

{"id": 546, "text": "Each month I distill what I read into a short e-mail of book recommendations, which I send to my network of friends and connections."}

{"id": 547, "text": "All in all, I've recommended, discussed and chatted more than a thousand books with these fellow readers in the last five years."}

{"id": 548, "text": "It was just your typical kind of life. I graduated from college, landed a job at a sort-of-big general contractor outfit, and with my older brother taking care of our parents for me, I was currently enjoying all the myriad benefits of the bachelor-pad life. Age thirty-seven. No significant other. I wasn't exactly short or frumpy or hideous or anything. But when it came to the opposite sex, apparently I had nothing to offer."}

{"id": 549, "text": "And I was a virgin. Imagine that. Floating off to meet my maker in completely unused condition… My manhood was probably crying its single eye out right then. Sorry I couldn't make you a real grown-up. If there's such a thing as reincarnation, I'm gonna go on the attack next time—I promise. I'll hit up everyone I see, stalking my prey before I go in for the kill… Okay, not like that, but…"}

{"id": 550, "text": "I mean, here I was, lookin' at forty without ever losing my virginity. Like an old sage meditating in the mountains. Another few years, and I probably could've been the great sage of celibacy. Not the road I wanted to take in life, but there you go."}

{"id": 551, "text": "For the first time in a while, I was thrown. That sounded like kind of an incredible ability. Not exactly the kind of thing slimes were known for. At least not the ones I knew."}

{"id": 552, "text": "And here I thought that voice was just screwing with me. Now it was the best partner I had. Hope that keeps up. Hell, anything would have been fine at that point. As long as it helped smooth out the endless solitude I was preparing myself for."}

{"id": 553, "text": "For all I knew, this \"voice\" was something my mind had crafted to keep my marbles intact. It was fine by me. For the first time in ages, I could feel a burden lifting from my heart."}

{"id": 554, "text": "I suppose that had a lot to do with how for ninety days in a row, I never ran into any other creatures. No danger to my life whatsoever. But either way, I had let my guard down."}

{"id": 555, "text": "I was always like that. Getting cocky, then screwing it all up in the end. I'd proclaim to a customer, \"Oh, absolutely! That won't be any problem at all!\" and then have hell to pay. It had happened over and over. I still remember the spiteful looks the rest of my team gave me for it."}
{"id": 556, "text": "Too bad I didn't think to stop myself in time. What kind of idiot runs off into parts unknown when they can't even see? If I survived this, I was gonna give myself what for. Of course, given my personality, I doubted I'd learn anything from it."}
{"id": 557, "text": "It is the rare one, indeed, that ever leaves its habitat."}
{"id": 558, "text": "Some monsters do, and some do not, you see."}
{"id": 559, "text": "They are known as \"visitors,\" or \"otherworlders,\" and they bear knowledge of things that do not exist in this world."}
{"id": 560, "text": "Their memories from the past are burned into their souls, due to a powerful will."}
{"id": 561, "text": "Luck is on your side, truly."}
{"id": 562, "text": "What rights would one possibly expect in this, of all worlds? Do not entertain such fantasies in this realm, little one. The only law that reigns here is survival of the fittest. Might, as they say, makes right."}
{"id": 563, "text": "Perhaps she hails from the same area as you. Oh? I dunno... Where I come from, nobody's that strong, you know? Perhaps, but many otherworlders come here bearing special powers."}
{"id": 564, "text": "Something I picked up on as we spoke was that this dragon... I think he really liked humans. He kept calling them 'wimps' and 'garbage' and such, but from the way he put it, he never deliberately killed anyone who attacked him."}
{"id": 565, "text": "To tell the truth, I do not need any core at all... You can keep a secret, I trust?"}
{"id": 566, "text": "No worries about Veldora dissipating away in my stomach. I was starting to think this could actually work."}
{"id": 567, "text": "Seeing him gone suddenly made me feel very small and very solitary."}
{"id": 568, "text": "If we could have them deploy even one of their paladins, the Empire wouldn't be so quick to move... Not needing to prepare for monster attacks would buy us some time, at least."}
{"id": 569, "text": "They cannot help everyone, nor even their own flock."}
{"id": 570, "text": "I reminded myself of a jellyfish, kind of."}
{"id": 571, "text": "Ah... Is this where I'm going to die...?"}
{"id": 572, "text": "Help me, Mom..."}
{"id": 573, "text": "You called for me, you gave up on me... I can't believe you ignored me! That's cruel!"}
{"id": 574, "text": "I don't want to die! Not yet! But...I can't... I can't let my old self disappear!"}
{"id": 575, "text": "I can't take it anymore. It's too scary; it's too hot. Help me, Mom..."}
{"id": 576, "text": "Damn it. It's not letting me off the hook! We didn't need to exchange any words"}
{"id": 577, "text": "Should I fight it? I had this killer finisher that I'd spent the last week training for, didn't I? It's just that…you know, fighting a monster like this would take a bit of an…extra oomph. In other words, I was crapping my pants."}
{"id": 578, "text": "But hang on. Get a hold of yourself. Thinking about it, I've been through scarier stuff before. Remember Veldora? Compared to that dragon, this guy… Hell, maybe it's not so scary after all. Maybe this is all gonna work out!"}
{"id": 579, "text": "What kind of idiot gets himself lost in the very first cave? That first easy-peasy cave's supposed to be a springboard that helps you dive into the experience, isn't it?"}
{"id": 580, "text": "Survival of the fittest and all."}
{"id": 581, "text": "These supersonic waves were so useful. I thought I remembered reading something about a weapon that used sound waves."}
{"id": 582, "text": "A wise man keeps away from danger, as they say."}
{"id": 583, "text": "Not that I minded being left alone. Getting a wolf's sense of smell would be neat, though."}
{"id": 584, "text": "But will they understand me? I focused my thoughts on my still-newborn voice and gingerly tried a few words."}
{"id": 585, "text": "I was impressed that plain old Japanese worked on these guys. With all the politeness they gave me, I figured I should return the favor—but given how terrified some of them were, I might as well show off the confidence they thought I had."}
{"id": 586, "text": "At the same time, I tried to find a way to extinguish the mystical aura around me, futzing around with the surrounding magic to try to push it back in."}
{"id": 587, "text": "Might've been a rude question, there. Upon further questioning, the named goblin they'd lost turned out to be both the elder's son and the older brother of the scouting party."}
{"id": 588, "text": "That's how a feared monster should rightly act!"}
{"id": 589, "text": "I reflected on my past life. When someone asked me to do something, I always did it. Even if I bitched and moaned about it at first, even if the guys at the office yelled at me about it, I was never able to say no to my manager or clients."}
{"id": 590, "text": "Even if they fled the village right now, they'd practically starve before the day was through."}
{"id": 591, "text": "I wanted to bring some swagger into this, and now I'm gonna!"}
{"id": 592, "text": "The strongest creature in the world, after all, is a human being with a little intelligence!"}
{"id": 593, "text": "Yesterday's enemy is today's friend, and all that. They had to learn that the hard way, but at least everyone was on board."}
{"id": 594, "text": "That which does not kill me makes me stronger"}
{"id": 595, "text": "Back in their regular goblin days, they'd eked out a living off fruits, nuts, edible plants, and whatever monsters and animals they could hunt down."}
{"id": 596, "text": "I had the ears of everyone in the audience. Looks like that worked well enough. I was sure some of them wouldn't listen to reason, but it's best to try to nip these things in the bud, anyway."}
{"id": 597, "text": "It felt as though my mind belonged to someone else. The terror was unbearable. But… In another moment, it all fixed itself. Ifrit's consciousness filled my soul anew, bottling up my anxieties and my fear."}
{"id": 598, "text": "My entire body surged with maddening regret and sadness—and then, like nothing had happened, I was serene. No tears spilled from my eyes, even though I wanted to cry. No madness overtook me, even though I wanted to lose myself in it. No voice escaped my throat, even though I wanted to scream."}
{"id": 599, "text": "Did the magic-born titan take over my mind, too? My heart was buried in a swell of terror, and then instantly, the calmness came back. I was no longer even a person. No matter how much I wanted it, I would never attain the kind of happiness others were entitled to."}
{"id": 600, "text": "From that day forward, I stopped crying. I had already cried all my tears out anyway. There was nothing left to shed. I had lost something far too important to myself on that day. And Leon, my demon lord, simply looked on coldly. Quietly. Never punishing me."}
{"id": 601, "text": "No place in the world boasted as many weaponsmiths and merchants, and yet it sounded like the farthest point in the universe from any kind of conflict. A bit ironic, maybe."}
{"id": 602, "text": "I supposed that even in this world, you could afford to be neutral only if you had the muscle to back it up."}
{"id": 603, "text": "Compassion is its own best reward, and all that. I'll get karma back for it someday."}
{"id": 604, "text": "Really, though, what was that? I was completely undamaged. Was that skill name just for show?"}
{"id": 605, "text": "I looked down at them, wondering how they were ever going to clean up their undergarments after this—trying to keep my new reality at bay for just a few more moments."}
{"id": 606, "text": "Curse that damned minister! He rubbed his forehead as he imagined himself taking a hammer to the man and sighed. A lot of sighing lately."}
{"id": 607, "text": "They seemed to prefer letting other people use them instead. That was how they wound up entrusting their shop to someone who stole it from them, falling into the trap of an apprentice jealous of their natural talent, getting bullied by the government after they botched a ministerial request…"}
{"id": 608, "text": "Mildo, the taciturn third brother, had denied a request from Vester to build a house for him. The minister had taken it personally, badgering him about it to the point that Mildo had had to go into exile with Kaijin. Sounded like a stupid grudge to have."}
{"id": 609, "text": "Promises are made to be kept."}
{"id": 610, "text": "Honestly, it was getting a little frightening. No way they could've known, but...what if they had? Or was that just my paranoid, lower-middle-class upbringing coming out?"}
{"id": 611, "text": "Why did I have to be so mean to people all the time? Not even my death and rebirth had cured me of that habit."}
{"id": 612, "text": "You create a lot of problems for yourself otherwise. All the bravado in the world wasn't going to solve them, was it?"}
{"id": 613, "text": "As far as the minister was concerned, Kaijin could make a comeback in the military and threaten his position at any time. That kind of thing. Didn't he deserve the death penalty, really? Maybe not, but..."}
{"id": 614, "text": "I concluded that it must've been a coincidence."}
{"id": 615, "text": "I was a tad nervous about that as I opened the door to his punishment room."}
{"id": 616, "text": "Being king around here seemed like a terribly lonely job to have."}
{"id": 617, "text": "Fear, pure fear, dominated Vester's head."}
{"id": 618, "text": "When did I go wrong? When I grew jealous of Kaijin, or before...?"}
{"id": 619, "text": "He didn't know. All he knew was that he had betrayed the king's trust."}
{"id": 620, "text": "Food one can look forward to is one of the first steps toward an advanced culture."}
{"id": 621, "text": "I wondered how much he had to sacrifice to maintain that ideal in reality. In a way, it was frightening. It took a lot of spirit, I'm sure, to be a leader like that."}
{"id": 622, "text": "I wanted to be the sort of person who could manage that."}
{"id": 623, "text": "But it was true—having someone take an interest in me and listen to my story made me happy. It left incontrovertible evidence that I had been alive all this time. I could throw out my chest and proclaim to the world that I had lived, even if it was just in someone's memory."}
{"id": 624, "text": "The droplets slipping down from behind the mask must have been my imagination. I made myself believe it was true as I watched her leave. Because I know I'll see you again... The thought made me want to grow stronger than ever before."}
{"id": 625, "text": "If I abandoned them, I would be no different from my demon lord. So I worked as hard as I could to be an ally to the weak."}
{"id": 626, "text": "Rose-colored glasses would just get in the way when you were leading a pack of monsters. You had to keep a cool head around them."}
{"id": 627, "text": "It was amazing how I could think about killing people as if I were wondering where to go for lunch, though. It came as a surprise, but—hell—it beat hemming and hawing over every life decision I made. Kept it simple."}
{"id": 628, "text": "Helping out someone in need is a nice thing, you know?"}
{"id": 629, "text": "Pardon us, I guess. I just didn’t expect we’d be saved by a monster tribe."}
{"id": 630, "text": "They were, after all, growing by leaps and bounds. I wasn’t expecting every diplomatic effort to go perfectly with these hobgobs. Settling down back in my tent, I began patiently waiting."}
{"id": 631, "text": "Was building this town near the cave mouth a mistake?"}
{"id": 632, "text": "These guys were a lot more good-natured than I gave them credit for at first."}
{"id": 633, "text": "No country had any legal right to this land, so it wasn’t as if anyone could force us out."}
{"id": 634, "text": "Well, what if I told you that there used to be loads of it…and I swallowed it all up?"}
{"id": 635, "text": "What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them."}
{"id": 636, "text": "I was a bit concerned about the wood and other supplies we had piled up, but there wasn’t much I could do for it now."}
{"id": 637, "text": "Whether that theory was right or not didn’t matter right now. The problem was the force behind those attacks."}
{"id": 638, "text": "It was just that— It had been several years since I'd retired from the adventurer life. I was a full-fledged teacher, leading the next generation of our trade as I helped out the society with its work."}
{"id": 639, "text": "I figured that I should believe in her. That her iron will could clear the darkness in her soul and transform her into a great woman."}
{"id": 640, "text": "All I could do was pray for Hinata's continued safety."}
{"id": 641, "text": "For someone charged with training new recruits, nothing could have made me happier."}
{"id": 642, "text": "The world I was born in had almost been razed to the ground by war. Had it recovered to the point where it could create people like him—people who never seemed to have a care in the world?"}
{"id": 643, "text": "I felt the satisfaction of a job well done."}
{"id": 644, "text": "Hopefully he was willing to forgive this one final act of selfishness."}
{"id": 645, "text": "I had never heard of anything like it on this planet. It was a bizarre settlement. But it was bursting with energy. The residents, despite being monsters, truly seemed to enjoy working on it."}
{"id": 646, "text": "Still, there was something inviting about the space this slime created. The strange creature somehow made me recall memories of my own hometown. My heart felt full."}
{"id": 647, "text": "Ifrit had been waiting for this moment. I could feel his will taking over mine. It's happening… I'm going to ruin all of this, too… If only, one last time, I could just—"}
{"id": 648, "text": "Thus, the girl was reunited with her mother. It marked the end of what had been a long, long journey."}
{"id": 649, "text": "And if I didn't need to reproduce—I was still fuzzy on that, but if I didn't, then why bother with genitals at all?"}
{"id": 650, "text": "Was I letting myself get in such a panic? I'd just have to accept the truth about what happened down there."}
{"id": 651, "text": "But to Gobta, it was just another day."}
{"id": 652, "text": "Having a full stomach did wonders for Gobta's spirits."}
{"id": 653, "text": "In the end, he decided to pick up a tree branch he found at the side of the river, let it fall to the ground, and travel the way it pointed."}
{"id": 654, "text": "Nothing could have made him happier."}
{"id": 655, "text": "When it came to romance, goblins never took things slow."}
{"id": 656, "text": "Concepts like beauty and ugliness would normally be dependent on the race or species one belonged to. There were no absolutes."}
{"id": 657, "text": "It was with that new goal in life that Gobta spent his single night in the Dwarven Kingdom."}
{"id": 658, "text": "Gobta was too busy trying to widen the gap to care."}
{"id": 659, "text": "Maybe I shouldn't have tried to act all cool back there— There was no point regretting it now."}
{"id": 660, "text": "He felt as if he heard a voice that rang like bells. That he heard that voice, that he *could* hear that voice, felt like salvation to him more than anything else, so—"}
{"id": 661, "text": "I guess if I keep this up, it's no different from locking myself up in my room back home."}
{"id": 662, "text": "With a knife involved, fighting was out of the question. No matter how you might train yourself, if you were stabbed, it was all over. All things in life are transient."}
{"id": 663, "text": "Oh, so there are rats in this world, too, Subaru thought. I hope they aren't big, like monster rats or anything."}
{"id": 664, "text": "It wasn't fear that overwhelmed him; it was more the feeling of emptiness that this would all end without him accomplishing anything."}
{"id": 665, "text": "In the midst of this overwhelming despair, feeling as if he had been abandoned by everyone and everything..."}
{"id": 666, "text": "That's an otherworldly fantasy for you. Everyone has quite the severe view on the concept of empathy."}
{"id": 667, "text": "Am I just going to be abandoned here in this alley? was the negative take. Well, I suppose I was going to die, and now I'm not, so I should be super grateful, was a more positive thought."}
{"id": 668, "text": "You can't do anything about what you don't know."}
{"id": 669, "text": "If you live like that, you're just going to keep losing until there's nothing left."}
{"id": 670, "text": "She's cute when she's stubborn, but it's foolish to let your stubbornness get the best of you and make you lose sight of your goals."}
{"id": 671, "text": "I mean, it didn't look like they were dangerous or anything."}
{"id": 672, "text": "It was only safe because I had them under control. If you had done that to an inexperienced spirit mage, it would have been awful. In the worst case, the spirits could have gone berserk and… BAM."}
{"id": 673, "text": "Well, to put it one way, I may look pretty cute… but it would only take two seconds for me to turn you into a pile of dust."}
{"id": 674, "text": "I would never use Puck for something like that. If I were going to be violent with you, I'd handle you myself… Ugh, it really looks like they aren't going to answer me anymore."}
{"id": 675, "text": "So you don't know where you are, you don't have any money, you can't read, and you have no one you can count on. I'm starting to think you're worse off than I am…"}
{"id": 676, "text": "Taking another look at you, you actually look like you're in pretty good shape. Um… Uh… Subaru."}
{"id": 677, "text": "I don't really get what you mean by 'cooped up in your room,' but you're from a high-ranking family, aren't you?"}
{"id": 678, "text": "If I'm wrong, just tell me I'm wrong. If you don't, it's just going to be more embarrassing for me."}
{"id": 679, "text": "You don't have to think that hard about it, you know? If it's something you can't talk about, I won't question you any further."}
{"id": 680, "text": "Let's just calm down a minute."}
{"id": 681, "text": "You know, that kindness of yours is a great virtue, and given the fact that I myself was saved by that kindness I really don't want to say this, but do you have any idea what situation you're in right now?"}
{"id": 682, "text": "But don't you see, Subaru? Look at her, she's crying."}
{"id": 683, "text": "If you don't want to stick around with me, that's just fine. Thanks for everything you've done, Subaru. I'll figure this out on my own…after I help that little girl."}
{"id": 684, "text": "Even if we got my badge back, I'm sure I would have regretted not helping that girl. Don't you think it is better to both help the girl and get my badge back?"}
{"id": 685, "text": "Now we can be in a good mood as we continue to search."}
{"id": 686, "text": "If we run around without some sort of plan, we won't get any results."}
{"id": 687, "text": "\"So in other words you don't want to be in front. That would really, really make it easier on me, though.\" Satella sighed yet again in the face of Subaru's energetic readiness to flee."}

{"id": 688, "text": "\"All right! Let's do this! It's about time I do something to show you what I'm made of!\""}

{"id": 689, "text": "\"What are you so excited about all of a sudden? I can see up your nostrils.\""}

{"id": 690, "text": "However, this little episode had a different ending than the last few."}

{"id": 691, "text": "\"I'm sorry for pushing you so hard, Puck. I'll do my best from here on out, so you just get some rest.\""}

{"id": 692, "text": "At her core, Satella was too direct and honest herself. If something was twisted or bent, she couldn't help but try to set it right."}

{"id": 693, "text": "This was a girl who could not bring herself to lie for any reason."}

{"id": 694, "text": "After all...it was just night a minute ago, wasn't it?"}

{"id": 695, "text": "It was enough to make him feel like he was going crazy."}

{"id": 696, "text": "The feeling of guilt was even stronger than the feeling of pain he had felt when he himself was attacked."}

{"id": 697, "text": "Subaru thought back to Puck's words right before he disappeared. The promise Subaru made with that cat certainly wasn't a joke."}

{"id": 698, "text": "At the very least, he didn't want them to be."}

{"id": 699, "text": "In this world, evil never triumphs!"}

{"id": 700, "text": "Last time we came here I was talking with Satella, and my eyes were on her most of the time, so I guess it's no surprise I don't remember the way very well, damn it,"}

{"id": 701, "text": "Don't be scared. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. Are you an idiot? …Well, of course I am, but do you think I'm really going to come all this way and then go back empty-handed?"}

{"id": 702, "text": "But still, you should be proud of yourself! That was good form there! So how about it? Do you feel like letting any of that stuff inside you out now?"}

{"id": 703, "text": "Tsk-tsk-tsk. It's true, I may not have any money. However! In this world, you do not necessarily need money to obtain things. There's this wonderful system called 'barter'—haven't you heard?"}

{"id": 704, "text": "I want to pay someone back. I'm someone who always feels like they have to return a favor. I'm one of those modern kids who can't handle the feeling of being indebted to someone. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. So, even if I have to take a big loss, I'm going to take back that badge."}

{"id": 705, "text": "I want to take a loss. Isn't it obvious? I want to pay someone back. I'm someone who always feels like they have to return a favor."}

{"id": 706, "text": "Why does everybody have to insult the drinks?! I'm showing you some kindness here...!"}

{"id": 707, "text": "I've come here prepared to have everything taken from me. Just watch me as I lose it all."}

{"id": 708, "text": "I see, I see. If that's the case, then why not? If this mitia can sell for more than this badge, then I couldn't be happier."}

{"id": 709, "text": "It wouldn't be right just to judge everyone based on the actions of a few bad eggs."}

{"id": 710, "text": "I don't mind, even if that's the way it is. ...Actually, it'd be best if it were that way."}

{"id": 711, "text": "I can't just let myself be in a position to be talked down on price, you know? It's the wisdom of the weak."}

{"id": 712, "text": "Elsa silently opened the mouth of the bag, and turned it over. What came tumbling out were several shining blessed gold coins. Felt's eyes sparkled as she saw the coins layer on top of one another, and even Rom made a sound in his throat."}

{"id": 713, "text": "Elsa placed her white fingers on top of the bag she had placed on the table."}

{"id": 714, "text": "Elsa shrugged but did not look all that displeased herself."}

{"id": 715, "text": "Elsa bowed once gracefully toward the body, as if paying her respects."}

{"id": 716, "text": "As Elsa said this, she twirled the kukri around and pretended as if she were practicing the proper cuts to butcher Felt."}

{"id": 717, "text": "Elsa's ecstatic smile suddenly turned, and her eyes were filled with hatred as her arm bent back."}

{"id": 718, "text": "In this aroused state, his breathing abnormal, Subaru launched another mindless attack…but he was again struck back."}

{"id": 719, "text": "As Subaru looked down he could see the blood flowing out of his abdomen and staining the floor bright red."}

{"id": 720, "text": "With his hand still grabbing at her ankle, Elsa knelt down beside Subaru and looked him in the eyes."}

{"id": 721, "text": "Subaru could feel Elsa's voice vibrating his eardrums, torturing him, savoring him, pitying him, affectionate for him, loving him."}

{"id": 722, "text": "In this space, not knowing exactly when the light of his life would be extinguished, Subaru could not separate himself from the fear of death."}

{"id": 723, "text": "When will I die? When will I die? Am I still alive? Am I not already dead?"}

{"id": 724, "text": "How do you define life? Can you even say that I'm alive in this state, lesser than any insect? What is life? *What* is death?"}

{"id": 725, "text": "Why is dying so frightening? Is it really necessary to live? No? I'm scared. I'm scared. I'm scared."}

{"id": 726, "text": "As an absolute and unconditional death grew ever closer, Subaru's mind instinctively rejected it."}

{"id": 727, "text": "At the end, that rejection filled everything that Subaru was, and as his vision whited out, he thought… Ah…I'm *dead.*"}

{"id": 728, "text": "Subaru felt as if all of the other sounds had disappeared…but that was no illusion."}

{"id": 729, "text": "The reason why Subaru thought Satella would be upset and the real reason she was upset were different."}

{"id": 730, "text": "Subaru had absolutely no idea what was going on. He couldn't understand what she was saying."}

{"id": 731, "text": "If Subaru called her name again, he would simply be making the same mistake twice."}

{"id": 732, "text": "Even small-time villains like this had a sense of pride, he thought."}

{"id": 733, "text": "All of the wounds on Subaru's body had disappeared; the rips and bloodstains on his tracksuit were gone as well. In Subaru's hands, inside that plastic convenience store back were his unopened chips, waiting for Subaru to eat them."}

{"id": 734, "text": "So, it's one of those things, huh... Whenever I die, I start back at square one in my initial state. At least, that's the way it seems."}

{"id": 735, "text": "When you do the same thing three times, there are a couple of things that you begin to understand. Well, more like after three times you'd have to be incredibly stupid not to understand those things. I may be a little stupid, but not that stupid."}

{"id": 736, "text": "There's probably a pattern here. Some kind of inevitability. No matter how many times you do something over, at least a few things will never change. Or at least there's some sort of strong force that tries to keep things that way."}

{"id": 737, "text": "I guess I really am a product of the modern age. Even though I always used to make fun of people like this when I sat in front of a computer screen..."}

{"id": 738, "text": "But you know, I hate it. It feels terrible. I know those two are far from being saints, but knowing that someone you know is going to be killed...that's just impossible to ignore."}

{"id": 739, "text": "Buddha only has the patience to save you three times."}

{"id": 740, "text": "For the majority of people, the risk of interfering when thugs like those are involved is too great."}

{"id": 741, "text": "If someone like that was walking around in the capital, there was a good chance that Reinhard, a guard, had noticed."}

{"id": 742, "text": "It had been over ten minutes since Subaru had started his lookout, and it had already been nearly an hour since he had started his fourth run."}

{"id": 743, "text": "In the end, I've really got to cling to life as long as I can. Well, I suppose that goes without saying, though."}

{"id": 744, "text": "No sense in worrying about things that can't be helped. This is where Subaru's decisiveness shone."}

{"id": 745, "text": "When people are afraid, they smell afraid. Right now you are afraid…and also angry, it seems…at me."}

{"id": 746, "text": "If I don't do this, I'd have to sell my body. Anyway, so what's it going to be? Or do you have some other business for me?"}

{"id": 747, "text": "Despite that, he seems to be quite doting on a certain foulmouthed young girl, always giving her milk and all…"}

{"id": 748, "text": "What did Felt really mean when she said she'd leave everything to Rom? Rom treated Felt like she was a cute granddaughter of his, and he felt so strongly about her that he was ready to lay down his life for her. But how did Felt feel about Rom? Subaru didn't want to think that that bald old man, whom he couldn't bring himself to hate, was just being used by her."}

{"id": 749, "text": "Felt said if she were \"going alone,\" she might be able to make it. This meant that she had someone else in the slums she couldn't leave behind. For Felt, who held such a feeling of animosity toward the people of the slums, there could only be one person she could feel that way about."}

{"id": 750, "text": "Everything suddenly made sense to him. The second time around, Felt and Rom seemed to treat each other like family. Both were killed by Elsa, but even as they were dying they must have been thinking of each other. Plus, Felt had saved Subaru's life in the nick of time once before as well. If Subaru felt indebted to Not-Satella, then he should feel indebted to Felt as well."}

{"id": 751, "text": "He would change the fates of not just Not-Satella, but Felt and Rom as well…all of the people who had moved his heart."}

{"id": 752, "text": "Life has its limits. You've got to treat every second of it as precious, and it's a shame to waste any—"}

{"id": 753, "text": "In reality, it's two against one,"}

{"id": 754, "text": "From my perspective, most people I deal with are like babies to me."}

{"id": 755, "text": "However, it was clear that if one hit, it would do far more damage than if a stone were thrown."}

{"id": 756, "text": "But while Subaru was kind of hurt by her nonserious reaction, with spit flying, he shouted one more time."}

{"id": 757, "text": "Compared with Subaru's shouting and stomping, Puck's voice was aloof and detached."}

{"id": 758, "text": "As a popular male, it really is tough on me. I can never put the girls to sleep. However, you know if you stay up too late it's bad for your skin."}

{"id": 759, "text": "My foot… As soon as Elsa tried to take a step, she fell forward, catching herself with her hands on the ground. Elsa's right foot had been frozen to the floor."}

{"id": 760, "text": "You don't have the determination or power to fight. You should have just cowered in the corner like a good little girl."}

{"id": 761, "text": "To be honest, that's exactly what I want to do right now. I don't want to stay another second in this violent space."}

{"id": 762, "text": "You're fifteen and I'm seventeen. Out of all of us, you're probably the youngest one here. So it's the right thing to do to give you the highest possibility of getting out of here alive. It's what's only natural."}

{"id": 763, "text": "Without even looking back, Elsa swung her blade and broke the ice to pieces. 'I've started to get tired of this little game… Are you sure you'll be able to keep me entertained?' asked Elsa in a low voice, with her smile the color of blood."}

{"id": 764, "text": "As Subaru gazed at her smile, he felt a shiver run down his spine, and looked over at Not-Satella to make eye contact."}

{"id": 765, "text": "In one way, Not-Satella looked as though she was just about ready to give up; at the same time she looked ready to accept the fact that Subaru was weak and wouldn't help much."}

{"id": 766, "text": "To Subaru, Not-Satella was someone who, no matter how tough things got, would never look down and give up."}

{"id": 767, "text": "Because that was the way she was, Subaru had worked so hard to see her smile. Subaru had died several times and come this far in order to save her."}

{"id": 768, "text": "The red-haired young man Reinhard turned to face Subaru, who was still toppled over on the ground, with a slight apologetic smile."}

{"id": 769, "text": "People don't tend to lie to people who've saved their life."}

{"id": 770, "text": "If I lose my fangs, I'll fight with my nails. If I lose my nails, I'll fight with my bones. If I lose my bones, I'll fight with my life."}

{"id": 771, "text": "In that case, I'll just have to have you forsake your ideals."}

{"id": 772, "text": "Because I'm using spirit magic, he can't fight full force. At least not until I finish my healing."}

{"id": 773, "text": "Forget a corpse, I don't even see any trace of her left… This is all just from one swing of your sword?"}

{"id": 774, "text": "The way you say that, it sounds like you had experienced all of that at one time."}

{"id": 775, "text": "She was simply smiling because she was happy. That was all there was to it."}

{"id": 776, "text": "As Subaru closed his eyes in silence, the girl looked as though she wanted to say something, but before she could open her mouth, Subaru pointed a finger up to the heavens."}

{"id": 777, "text": "Emilia then stood up and nodded. \"I'm done treating him. He's probably made it past the worst of it.\""}

{"id": 778, "text": "Well, that might have happened if things were as they were before, but I don't feel like I have it in me anymore. So while only a little bit, I'll forgive you for his sake,"}

{"id": 779, "text": "Just so you know, I'm only returning this to you this time because I owe my life to you all. I don't think I did anything wrong, and I have no plans to stop."}

{"id": 780, "text": "Emilia seemed to realize this as well, and after lowering her eyes for a few moments, she stuck out her hand without another word. Understood. …I was asking for too much."}

{"id": 781, "text": "Listen, Hikigaya. What was the homework I assigned you in class?"}

{"id": 782, "text": "That's right. So why does this sound like the prelude to a school massacre? Are you a terrorist? Or just an idiot?"}

{"id": 783, "text": "Do you have any friends?"}

{"id": 784, "text": "I see! So you don't after all! Just as I thought. I could tell the minute I saw those rotten, sordid eyes of yours."}

{"id": 785, "text": "This is Hachiman Hikigaya from Class 2-F. Um…hey. What do you mean, 'join the club'?"}

{"id": 786, "text": "\"I refuse. Seeing those lewd eyes of his brimming with ulterior motives, I feel a threat to my person.\""}

{"id": 787, "text": "Haves giving things to Have-nots out of the goodness of their hearts is known as volunteering. Giving aid to developing nations, running soup kitchens for the homeless, and letting unpopular guys talk to girls... Lending a helping hand to people in need. That is what this club does."}

{"id": 788, "text": "Indeed. There's nothing you can do about them at this point, anyway."}

{"id": 789, "text": "You're right. That was a mean thing to say. Your parents are surely suffering the most."}

{"id": 790, "text": "Now your practice conversation with an actual person is complete. If you can speak with a girl like me, you should be able to speak to most ordinary people."}

{"id": 791, "text": "Oh, so you're aware that you're a pimple?"}

{"id": 792, "text": "The problem is he isn't even aware of his own issues,"}

{"id": 793, "text": "From what I can see, you are markedly lacking in humanity. You don't want to change"}

{"id": 794, "text": "I would only be changing to escape reality. Who's the one running now? If you're really not running, then you wouldn't change. You'd make a stand right there. Why can't I affirm who I am at present and who I was in the past?"}

{"id": 795, "text": "If that were true, then no worries could be solved and no one could be saved."}

{"id": 796, "text": "You can't move forward if you don't change."}

{"id": 797, "text": "Life isn't just about fun. If it were, there wouldn't be any sad Hollywood movies. There is such a thing as finding pleasure in tragedy, you know."}

{"id": 798, "text": "You kids really are twisted after all. There are parts of you that I don't think will conform well to society, and that worries me."}

{"id": 799, "text": "No matter how far you go, in the end, people can never really understand one another."}

{"id": 800, "text": "Well, it's not like I don't see your point. You can have fun on your own. I'm actually disgusted by the idea that a person can't be alone."}

{"id": 801, "text": "You're alone because you want to be, so it's irritating when people pity you for it."}

{"id": 802, "text": "Do you even know what it's like, having people like you?"}

{"id": 803, "text": "See? You would attempt to exclude that individual, wouldn't you? Just like an irrational animal…no, inferior to one, even."}

{"id": 804, "text": "In the world we live in, the greater a person is, the more difficult his or her life becomes. Don't you find that strange?"}

{"id": 805, "text": "She never lies to herself. I can respect that. Because I'm the same way."}

{"id": 806, "text": "We've desperately endeavored to create a society where you don't have to work, so it's completely absurd to be saying things like, 'You have to work!' or 'There's no jobs!'"}

{"id": 807, "text": "That's not something you need to be embarrassed about. At your age, being a virg—"}

{"id": 808, "text": "Whether or not your wishes are granted depends on you."}

{"id": 809, "text": "It's the difference between giving a starving person a fish and teaching them how to fish. Volunteer efforts are, at their core, about putting that ideal into practice, and not just about producing results."}

{"id": 810, "text": "Perhaps the best way to describe it is that we encourage self-reliance."}

{"id": 811, "text": "Words relating life and death, in particular, can be particularly impactful."}

{"id": 812, "text": "If you aren't prepared to take someone's life with your own hands, then you should never say you will."}

{"id": 813, "text": "Yukinoshita's words were both sharp and so utterly correct that they allowed no counterargument."}

{"id": 814, "text": "Effort is a great solution if it's done right. Those who fail do so only because they cannot imagine the effort it takes to be successful at achieving their goals."}

{"id": 815, "text": "Yuigahama's voice caught in her throat. She'd probably never been slapped in the face with such a sound case before."}

{"id": 816, "text": "In other words, she lacked the courage to risk loneliness in order to be herself."}

{"id": 817, "text": "Put simply, Yukinoshita had talent, but because of her talent, she didn't have the slightest understanding of how the talentless felt."}

{"id": 818, "text": "No matter how many times you do it over, you can't shore up that deficit."}

{"id": 819, "text": "If you have love…love is okay!"}

{"id": 820, "text": "The goal of hurdling is not to jump over the hurdles. It's to reach the finish line with the best time. There's no rule saying you have to jump to get there."}

{"id": 821, "text": "If you set the bar too high, you'll never betray yourself if you put in effort, but you may end up betraying your dreams."}

{"id": 822, "text": "Even if you do make an effort, your dreams won't necessarily come true. It's actually more likely that they won't. But the fact that you tried alone is comforting."}

{"id": 823, "text": "You aren't betraying yourself if you put in effort, even if you end up betraying your dreams."}

{"id": 824, "text": "Everyone should pamper themselves more. If everyone's a failure, then no one's a failure."}

{"id": 825, "text": "As man is a thinking reed, he ponders things without even realizing. And precisely because the loner does not expend mental resources thinking about other people, his thoughts become that much deeper."}

{"id": 826, "text": "This means that loners come to have different thought patterns than more social types, and sometimes that leads them to unique ideas that ordinary people wouldn't come up with."}

{"id": 827, "text": "I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Computers aren't just for sending e-mails. There's also the Internet and Photoshop. What I'm saying is, don't judge people based on that sole trait."}

{"id": 828, "text": "It was just like the kind of hollow laughter you hear on a variety show laugh track. It was awfully loud, as if they'd just been cued to [laugh here] by the teleprompter."}

{"id": 829, "text": "Hey, hey, that looked really rough. What is this, a feudal society? If you *have* to tiptoe around like that in order to become a normie, I'm fine being a *loner* forever."}

{"id": 830, "text": "Her voice sounded like a stifled sob leaking out, stuttering along haltingly. With each word, Yukinoshita's shoulders twitched, her eyes opening very slightly to glance into the classroom."}

{"id": 831, "text": "It was even more awkward than usual. Before long, most of the students started formulating excuses like they were thirsty or had to go to the bathroom or whatever and left."}

{"id": 832, "text": "The only people who remained in the end were Hayama and Miura's clique and some curious rubberneckers."}

{"id": 833, "text": "I had no choice but to jump on the big wave rushing out of the room. Or rather, I should say that had it gotten any tenser, I'd have found myself unable to breathe."}

{"id": 834, "text": "He was surprised, but he was waiting for me? What was that supposed to mean? I was the surprised one here."}

{"id": 835, "text": "I guessed this was the kind of thing high school students were supposed to do, though."}

{"id": 836, "text": "High schoolers take part in a broader range of activities than middle schoolers do, showing interest in clothing and cuisine and the like."}

{"id": 837, "text": "His trench coat fluttered vigorously, rustling as he stretched his chubby face into an exaggeratedly handsome expression and turned to face me."}

{"id": 838, "text": "He was completely in character with the Master Swordsman General identity he'd created. Just watching him made my head throb."}

{"id": 839, "text": "Actually, it hurt my soul more than it did my head, and Yukinoshita's and Yuigahama's daggerlike stares hurt even more than that."}

{"id": 840, "text": "When you're used to getting insulted and abused, you just get good at striking back, or rather, compartmentalizing it. What a sad skill. I'm crying right now."}

{"id": 841, "text": "Well, originally, there were seven gods in the world. Three gods of creation —Garan, the Wise Emperor; Methika, Goddess of War; Hearthia, Protector of Souls—three gods of destruction—Olto, the Foolish King; Rogue of the Lost Temple; Lai-Lai the Paranoid—and the eternally missing god, the Nameless God. These seven gods are eternally repeating cycles of prosperity and decline. This is the seventh time they've remade the world, and to make certain that this time they can prevent its destruction, the Japanese government is looking for the reincarnations of these gods."}

{"id": 842, "text": "Everyone, at one point or another, lies in bed at night and imagines they have some kind of hidden powers and that one day those powers will suddenly awaken—entangling them in a battle to determine the fate of the world—and keeps a Diary of the Celestial Realm in preparation for the time that will come, and writes a quarterly report for the government about it, right? You don't?"}

{"id": 843, "text": "I've also outgrown training with self-defense weapons made from rubber bands and aluminum foil. I've stopped cosplaying with my dad's long coat and my mom's fake fur scarf."}

{"id": 844, "text": "It is indeed reasonable to want to give shape to the things you've continually yearned for. It's also perfectly normal to think, *Well,* I daydream a lot, so I can *write!* Furthermore, if you can make a living doing what you love, that's a very fortuitous thing."}

{"id": 845, "text": "Even if it's twisted, childish, or wrong, if you can commit to it, it has to be right. If having someone deny your ability is enough to make you change, then it isn't your dream, and it isn't you."}

{"id": 846, "text": "With youth, there comes walls. Speaking of walls, why is the slang term for a girl with small breasts *nurikabe*? I wonder. According to one theory, *nurikabe* are actually magically transformed tanuki—you know, the wild Japanese raccoon dog—and the barrier spirit is actually the tanuki's balls stretched out wide. What kind of wall is that? Certainly a surprisingly soft one! And doesn't that means that, paradoxically, that small-breasted girls being belittled as *nurikabe* are actually really soft? QED, proof complete. Stupid. At any rate, that wasn't the kind of thing Hayama could figure out. That miraculous hypothesis was only made possible by my extraordinary sensibilities."}

{"id": 847, "text": "No, you don't. I stand out like a field of glittering stars against the night sky."}

{"id": 848, "text": "Let's take a little break."}

{"id": 849, "text": "I see. They're in the same class, so it's obvious they would go together, huh. That sort of thing always left an impression on me."}

{"id": 850, "text": "I think it's something that often happens with tiny clubs. A weak club couldn't scrape together enough members, and a club without enough members would have no competition to make it to the slot of a regular."}

{"id": 851, "text": "We were pretty far apart, so his voice was drawn out and slow."}

{"id": 852, "text": "Yes. In middle school, I returned from abroad to Japan. Of course, I was transferring in, and all the girls in the class, or rather, the whole school, were desperate to eliminate me."}

{"id": 853, "text": "If you just can't beat someone no matter how hard you try, it's no surprise you would try to hold them back and drag them down."}

{"id": 854, "text": "Depending on how you interpreted that remark, it could have meant something disparaging, like So you can't do it? Unfortunately, there was someone in that very room who would take it that way."}

{"id": 855, "text": "Agh, Yuigahama had flipped that weird switch in Yukinoshita's brain. Yukino Yukinoshita would accept any challenge head-on and beat it down with all she had."}

{"id": 856, "text": "At the end of the day, all this community known as the Service Club did was scrape together a bunch of weaklings, and all these weaklings were doing was doze off inside that little walled garden."}

{"id": 857, "text": "If what ailed us was something that could be wiped away through such a shoddy effort, none of us would have been sick in the first place."}

{"id": 858, "text": "If that troublesome process was what they called youth, then I didn't need any of it. Enjoying yourself among some tepid community is basically just stroking your own ego. It's deceit. The worst sort of evil."}

{"id": 859, "text": "In the end, we were made to do pushups for the whole lunch hour, and I writhed around in bed late that night in muscle pain."}

{"id": 860, "text": "Agh, here come the stupid curls again. Are your brain cells twisted up"}

{"id": 861, "text": "I just wanted to prove this one thing: that loners are not pitiful people, and that being a loner does not make you inferior. I was completely enlightened by the knowledge this was purely for the sake of my own ego. I was superenlightened. So enlightened I could teleport and breathe fire and stuff. But I didn't want to deny the validity of who I was then or who I was in the past. I would never say that my time spent alone was a sin or that being alone was evil. And that was why I would fight in order to prove the truth of my justice."}

{"id": 862, "text": "Agh...what a mess. As I was coming to my wits' end, a certain someone tossed a rude and irritated remark at me."}

{"id": 863, "text": "The things she said might be incredibly cruel, but they were always true. So she honestly wasn't doing it for me. That doesn't necessarily mean that she didn't like me, so I was okay with that."}

{"id": 864, "text": "If you feel like you want to get better, you"}

{"id": 865, "text": "But if you can master anything from the start, you would never even practice in the first place, and naturally, you would never build up any staying power."}

{"id": 866, "text": "You couldn't get how scary it is every time there's a test and you have no one to ask what's on it; you just silently study and then face your results head-on."}

{"id": 867, "text": "You guys lie, deceive, and distract yourselves from it all by chattering It's so hot and It's so cold and No way with your friends, but I endured that all on my own."}

{"id": 868, "text": "Yuigahama mumbled, barely opening her mouth. I couldn't hear her at all. Speak properly, come on. You're acting like me when a clerk at a clothing store tries to talk to me."}

{"id": 869, "text": "And for people"}

{"id": 870, "text": "But I had fun. Diligently going to the library to finish brick-sized fantasy novels, listening rapturously to radio personalities speaking when I happened to switch on the radio in the middle of the night, fishing for heartwarming articles within the wide electronic ocean ruled by text… I found all of that, encountered all of those things, precisely because I spent my days alone. I was grateful and moved by every single one of those experiences, and though they brought me to tears, they weren't tears of lamentation."}

{"id": 871, "text": "People like me or Yukinoshita or Yuigahama or Zaimokuza. I'm sure things like friendship and love and dreams and so forth are wonderful to many people. Even feelings of skittishness or anxiety can be seen in a positive light, I'm sure. That very outlook is what they call youth. But at the end of the day, that's exactly why contrary sorts like me wonder if maybe people just enjoy being enraptured by the buzz of youth or whatever."}

{"id": 872, "text": "Real youth is when two guys stop by a fast-food joint like Saizeriya after school and loiter around until evening, surviving only on fountain drinks and focaccia, desperately bad-mouthing people and complaining about school to kill time. Stuff like that. That is the real teen experience. I've gone through it myself, so it's absolutely true. But that kind of experience wasn't so bad. Mixing melon soda and orange juice and calling it melonge and getting excited about it, going on field trips and playing mah-jongg in a brutal atmosphere with three other guys, seeing the girl I had a crush on with her boyfriend and me suddenly going quiet… Now I consider those good memories."}

{"id": 873, "text": "Thinking that naughty, rage-inducing girl's a tsundere… Tsundere is a Japanese term that combines the terms tsun-tsun (\"prickly\") and dere-dere (\"bashful\"). It refers to a character who is prickly and irritable on the outside but secretly sentimental."}

{"id": 874, "text": "She's like something out of Alcatraz or Cassandra. Why couldn't a Savior of Century's End show up right about now? Alcatraz is one famous prison, but Cassandra is another—at least, in the manga series Fist of the North Star. Its hero, Kenshiro, is known as the Savior of the Century's End."}

{"id": 875, "text": "Maybe you're so twisted up, it reversed all your meridians. Another Fist of the North Star reference, this time to Souther, a villain whose internal organs are positioned in a mirror image from normal anatomy. One of his villainous projects is the construction of the Holy Emperor Cross Mausoleum, a pyramid built by child slave labor."}

{"id": 876, "text": "You have a full-blown case of second-year head swell. Second-year head swell (kounibyou*, literally, \"second year of high school disease\") is a term Ms. Hiratsuka invents here to tease Hikigaya. However, it's based on an existing term, chuunibyou (literally, \"second year of middle school disease, translated in this book as \"M-2 syndrome\")."}

{"id": 877, "text": "I miss the purity of the Muromachi era… In Japanese history, the Muromachi period refers to the time between the mid-1300s to the mid1500s, during which Japan was ruled by the Muromachi shogunate. The period ended with the collapse of Japan into smaller factions, a violent era known as the Sengoku or \"warring states\" era, to which Zaimokuza is referring here."}

{"id": 878, "text": "I think he's just taking the name Hachiman and thinking of the Bodhisattva Hachiman. Hachiman is a god of war in the Shinto tradition; with the arrival of Buddhism in Japan he was integrated into that faith as a bodhisattva, a human who has attained Buddhahood."}

{"id": 879, "text": "The Seiwa Genji clan zealously worshipped him as a god of war. The Seiwa Genji were a powerful line of the Minamoto clan of Japanese nobility for hundreds of years, tracing their lineage back to the Emperor Seiwa. The Kamakura and Ashikaga shogunates were both descended from the Seiwa Genji, and the Tokugawa shogunate claimed the lineage as well."}

{"id": 880, "text": "Being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none. To strike a match to light up the void. To show us a possibility for a better world—not a better world we want to exist, but a better world we didn't know could exist. To take a situation where everything seems to be absolutely fucked and still somehow make it good."}

{"id": 881, "text": "Bravery is common. Resilience is common. But heroism has a philosophical component to it. There's some great \"Why?\" that heroes bring to the table—some incredible cause or belief that goes unshaken, no matter what."}

{"id": 882, "text": "We are a culture in need not of peace or prosperity or new hood ornaments for our electric cars. We have all that. We are a culture and a people in need of hope."}

{"id": 883, "text": "Heroism isn't just bravery or guts or shrewd maneuvering. These things are common and are often used in unheroic ways. No, being heroic is the ability to conjure hope where there is none."}

{"id": 884, "text": "Hope is the fuel for our mental engine. It's the butter on our biscuit. It's a lot of really cheesy metaphors. Without hope, your whole mental apparatus will stall out or starve."}

{"id": 885, "text": "If we don't believe there's any hope that the future will be better than the present, that our lives will improve in some way, then we spiritually die. After all, if there's no hope of things ever being better, then why live—why do anything?"}

{"id": 886, "text": "The opposite of happiness is not anger or sadness. If you're angry or sad, that means you still give a fuck about something. That means something still matters. That means you still have hope."}

{"id": 887, "text": "Hopelessness is a cold and bleak nihilism, a sense that there is no point, so fuck it—why not run with scissors or sleep with your boss's wife or shoot up a school? It is the Uncomfortable Truth, a silent realization that in the face of infinity, everything we could possibly care about quickly approaches zero. Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all."}

{"id": 888, "text": "All meaning, everything we understand about ourselves and the world, is constructed for the purpose of maintaining hope. Therefore, hope is the only thing any of us willingly dies for. Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it, we believe we are nothing."}

{"id": 889, "text": "To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. \"Control\" means we feel as though we're in control of our own life, that we can affect our fate. \"Values\" means we find something important enough to work toward, something better, that's worth striving for. And \"community\" means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working toward achieving those things."}

{"id": 890, "text": "Without a community, we feel isolated, and our values cease to mean anything. Without values, nothing appears worth pursuing. And without control, we feel powerless to pursue anything. Lose any of the three, and you lose the other two. Lose any of the three, and you lose hope."}

{"id": 891, "text": "His inner world no longer possessed lightness and darkness but was instead an endless gray miasma."}

{"id": 892, "text": "We've all had the experience of knowing what we should do yet failing to do it."}

{"id": 893, "text": "The truth is that the human mind is far more complex than any \"secret.\" And you can't simply change yourself; nor, I would argue, should you always feel you must."}

{"id": 894, "text": "We cling to this narrative about self-control because the belief that we're in complete control of ourselves is a major source of hope."}

{"id": 895, "text": "You get to control the meaning of your impulses and feelings. You get to decipher them however you see fit. You get to draw the map."}

{"id": 896, "text": "The problem isn't that we don't know how not to get punched in the face. The problem is that, at some point, likely a long time ago, we got punched in face, and instead of punching back, we decided we deserved it."}

{"id": 897, "text": "Pain causes moral gaps. And it's not just between people. If a dog bites you, your instinct is to punish it. If you stub your toe on a coffee table, what do you do? You yell at the damn coffee table."}

{"id": 898, "text": "Sadness is a feeling of powerlessness to make up for a perceived loss. Anger is the desire to equalize through force and aggression. Happiness is feeling liberated from pain, while guilt is the feeling that you deserve some pain that never arrived."}

{"id": 899, "text": "Our Feeling Brain creates our values around our experiences of pain. Experiences that cause us pain create a moral gap within our minds, and our Feeling Brain deems those experiences inferior and undesirable. Experiences that relieve pain create a moral gap in the opposite direction, and our Feeling Brain deems those experiences superior and desirable."}

{"id": 900, "text": "If someone hits us and we're never able to hit him back, eventually our Feeling Brain will come to a startling conclusion: We deserve to be hit. After all, if we didn't deserve it, we would have been able to equalize, right? The fact that we could not equalize means that there must be something inherently inferior about us, and/or something inherently superior about the person who hit us."}

{"id": 901, "text": "Whether you feel as though you're better than the rest of the world or worse than the rest of the world, the same thing is true: you're imagining yourself as something special, something separate from the world."}

{"id": 902, "text": "Without a little bit of that narcissistic delusion, without that perpetual lie we tell ourselves about our specialness, we'd likely give up hope."}

{"id": 903, "text": "Our narratives about ourselves and the world are fundamentally about (a) something or someone's value and (b) whether that something/someone deserves that value."}

{"id": 904, "text": "Our values aren't just collections of feelings. Our values are stories."}

{"id": 905, "text": "The values we pick up throughout our lives crystallize and form a sediment on top of our personality."}

{"id": 906, "text": "The stories of our past define our identity. The stories of our future define our hopes. And our ability to step into those narratives and live them, to make them reality, is what gives our lives meaning."}

{"id": 907, "text": "He realized that he valued no one—not even himself—and this brought him an overwhelming sense of loneliness and grief, because no amount of logic and calculation could ever compensate for the gnawing desperation of his Feeling Brain’s never-ending struggle to find hope in this world."}

{"id": 908, "text": "And there, on the frontiers of intellectual discovery, he tossed his findings aside to a musty and forgotten corner of a cramped study, in a remote backwater village a day’s ride north of London. And there, his discoveries would remain, hidden to the world, collecting dust.48"}

{"id": 909, "text": "You don’t know. Inertia simply makes it easier to sit there and keep watching than to get up and go to bed. So, you watch."}

{"id": 910, "text": "And best of all, they become highly suggestible. Paradoxically, it’s only in a group environment that the individual has no control, that he gains the perception of perfect self-control."}

{"id": 911, "text": "People who lose faith in their spiritual God will look for a worldly God. People who lose their family will give themselves away to their race, creed, or nation."}

{"id": 912, "text": "Because it's easy to get people riled up and angry about nothing—the news media have created a whole business model out of it. But to have hope, people need to feel that they are a part of some greater movement, that they are about to join the winning side of history."}

{"id": 913, "text": "Evidence and science are based on past experience. Hope is based on future experience. And you must always rely on some degree of faith that something will occur again in the future."}

{"id": 914, "text": "Evidence serves the interests of the God Value, not the other way around. The only loophole to this arrangement is when evidence itself becomes your God Value."}

{"id": 915, "text": "Spiritual religions draw hope from supernatural beliefs, or belief in things that exist outside the physical or material realm. These religions look for a better future outside this world and this life."}

{"id": 916, "text": "Ideological religions draw hope from the natural world. They look for salvation and growth and develop faith-based beliefs regarding this world and this life."}

{"id": 917, "text": "Interpersonal religions draw hope from other people in our lives. Examples of interpersonal religions include romantic love, children, sports heroes, political leaders, and celebrities."}

{"id": 918, "text": "Each family is its own mini-church, a group of people who, on faith, believe that being part of the group will give their lives meaning, hope, and salvation."}

{"id": 919, "text": "Common enemies create unity within our religion. Some sort of scapegoat, whether justified or not, is necessary to blame for our pain and maintain our hope."}

{"id": 920, "text": "Us-versus-them dichotomies give us the enemies we all desperately crave. After all, you need to be able to paint a really simple picture for your followers."}

{"id": 921, "text": "People are either near the top of the value hierarchy or at the bottom; there are no in-betweeners in our religion."}

{"id": 922, "text": "The more fear, the better. Lie a little bit if you have to—remember, people instinctually want to feel as though they’re fighting a crusade, to believe that they are the holy warriors of justice and truth and salvation."}

{"id": 923, "text": "Humans are actually horribly guilt-ridden creatures."}

{"id": 924, "text": "If you believe God gave it to you, then, holy shit! Do you owe Him big time!"}

{"id": 925, "text": "This is the constant, yet unanswerable question of the human condition, and why the inherent guilt of consciousness is the cornerstone of almost every spiritual religion."}

{"id": 926, "text": "The sacrifices that pop up in ancient spiritual religions were enacted to give their adherents a feeling of repaying that debt, of living that worthwhile life."}

{"id": 927, "text": "You could even say that that’s really all prayer is: miniature episodes of guilt alleviation."}

{"id": 928, "text": "We all struggle with the sense that we deserve to be loved."}

{"id": 929, "text": "Religious beliefs and their constituent tribal behaviors are a fundamental part of our nature.43 It’s impossible not to adopt them."}

{"id": 930, "text": "If you think you’re above religion, that you use logic and reason, I’m sorry to say, you’re wrong: you are one of us.44"}

{"id": 931, "text": "If you think you’re well informed and highly educated, you’re not: you still suck.45"}

{"id": 932, "text": "We all must have faith in something. We must find value somewhere. It’s how we psychologically survive and thrive."}

{"id": 933, "text": "It’s how we find hope."}

{"id": 934, "text": "To realize any dream, we need support networks, for both emotional and logistical reasons."}

{"id": 935, "text": "It takes an army."}

{"id": 936, "text": "Religions compete in the world for resources, and the religions that tend to win out are those whose value hierarchies make the most efficient use of labor and capital."}

{"id": 937, "text": "As it wins out, more and more people adopt the winning religion’s value hierarchy, as it has demonstrated the most value to individuals in the population."}

{"id": 938, "text": "These victorious religions then stabilize and become the foundation for culture.46"}

{"id": 939, "text": "But here’s the problem: Every time a religion succeeds, every time it spreads its message far and wide and comes to dominate a huge swath of human emotion and endeavor, its values change."}

{"id": 940, "text": "The religion’s God Value no longer comprises the principles that inspired the religion in the first place."}

{"id": 941, "text": "Its God Value slowly shifts and becomes the preservation of the religion itself: not to lose what it has gained."}

{"id": 942, "text": "And this is where the corruption begins."}

{"id": 943, "text": "When the original values that defined the religion, the movement, the revolution, get tossed aside for the sake of maintaining the status quo, this is narcissism at an organizational level."}

{"id": 944, "text": "This corruption of the religion’s original values rots away at the religion’s following, thus leading to the rising up of newer, reactionary religions that eventually conquer the original one."}

{"id": 945, "text": "In this sense, success is in many ways far more precarious than failure."}

{"id": 946, "text": "First, because the more you gain the more you have to lose, and second, because the more you have to lose, the harder it is to maintain hope."}

{"id": 947, "text": "But more important, because by experiencing our hopes, we lose them."}

{"id": 948, "text": "We see that our beautiful visions for a perfect future are not so perfect, that our dreams and aspirations are themselves riddled with unexpected flaws and unforeseen sacrifices."}

{"id": 949, "text": "Because the only thing that can ever truly destroy a dream is to have it come true."}

{"id": 950, "text": "Nietzsche filled them all with hope, and they took turns caring for this deteriorating, broken man, hopeful that the next book, the next essay, the next polemic, would be the one that broke open the floodgates."}

{"id": 951, "text": "For all of the progress and wealth and tangible benefits that ideological religions produce, they lack something that spiritual religions do not: infallibility."}

{"id": 952, "text": "The sources of hope that give our lives a sense of meaning are the same sources of division and hate."}

{"id": 953, "text": "Hope is, therefore, destructive. Hope depends on the rejection of what currently is."}

{"id": 954, "text": "Amor fati, for Nietzsche, meant the unconditional acceptance of all life and experience: the highs and the lows, the meaning and the meaninglessness."}

{"id": 955, "text": "And then act despite it. This is our challenge, our calling: To act without hope. To not hope for better. To be better. In this moment and the next. And the next. And the next."}

{"id": 956, "text": "You and I and everyone we know will die, and little to nothing that we do will ever matter on a cosmic scale."}

{"id": 957, "text": "It means that there's no reason to not love ourselves and one another. That there's no reason to not treat ourselves and our planet with respect. That there's no reason to not live every moment of our lives as though it were to be lived in eternal recurrence."}

{"id": 958, "text": "She would liberate and free more human beings than Nietzsche and most other \"great\" men, yet she would do this from the shadows, from the backstage of history."}

{"id": 959, "text": "Indeed, today, she is known mostly for being the friend of Friedrich Nietzsche—not as a star of women's liberation, but as a supporting character in a play about a man who correctly prophesized a hundred years of ideological destruction."}

{"id": 960, "text": "Like a hidden thread, she would hold the world together, despite being barely seen and quickly forgotten."}

{"id": 961, "text": "She would go on, though. She knew she would. She must go on and attempt to cross the abyss, as we all must do; to live for others despite still not knowing how to live for herself."}

{"id": 962, "text": "Kant believed that there was a clear right and wrong, a value system that transcended and operated outside any human emotions or Feeling Brain judgments."}

{"id": 963, "text": "He gazed into the abyss with nothing but logic and pure reason; who, armed with only the brilliance of his mind, stood before the gods and challenged them"}

{"id": 964, "text": "Adulthood is the realization that sometimes an abstract principle is right and good for its own sake, that even if it hurts you today, even if it hurts others, being honest is still the right thing to do."}

{"id": 965, "text": "Becoming an adult is therefore developing the ability to do what is right for the simple reason that it is right."}

{"id": 966, "text": "The principled values of adulthood are unconditional—that is, they cannot be reached through any other means. They are ends in and of themselves."}

{"id": 967, "text": "The most precious and important things in life are, by definition, nontransactional. And to try to bargain for them is to immediately destroy them."}

{"id": 968, "text": "It requires good parents and teachers not to succumb to the adolescent’s bargaining. The best way to do this is by example, of course, by showing unconditionality by being unconditional yourself."}

{"id": 969, "text": "Consciousness is able to take a problem, a system of a certain amount of complexity, and conceive and generate greater complexity."}

{"id": 970, "text": "Kant argued that the most fundamental moral duty is the preservation and growth of consciousness, both in ourselves and in others."}

{"id": 971, "text": "The Formula of Humanity states, \"Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.\""}

{"id": 972, "text": "To transcend the transactional realm of hope, one must act unconditionally."}

{"id": 973, "text": "Self-love and self-care are therefore not something you learn about or practice. They are something you are ethically called to cultivate within yourself, even if they are all that you have left."}

{"id": 974, "text": "The most dangerous extremists know how to dress up their childish values in the language of transaction or universal principle."}

{"id": 975, "text": "Developmental psychology has long argued something similar: that protecting people from problems or adversity doesn't make them happier or more secure; it makes them more easily insecure."}

{"id": 976, "text": "A young person who has been sheltered from dealing with any challenges or injustices growing up will come to find the slightest inconveniences of adult life intolerable, and will have the childish public meltdown to prove it."}

{"id": 977, "text": "Material progress and security do not necessarily relax us or make it easier to hope for the future. On the contrary, it appears that perhaps by removing healthy adversity and challenge, people struggle even more."}

{"id": 978, "text": "They become more selfish and more childish. They fail to develop and mature out of adolescence. They remain further removed from any virtue."}

{"id": 979, "text": "Pursuing happiness is a value of the modern world. Do you think Zeus gave a shit if people were happy? Do you think the God of the Old Testament cared about making people feel good?"}

{"id": 980, "text": "The philosophers of antiquity didn't see happiness as a virtue. On the contrary, they saw humans' capacity for self-denial as a virtue, because feeling good was just as dangerous as it was desirable."}

{"id": 981, "text": "Pain is the universal constant of the human condition. Therefore, the attempt to move away from pain, to protect oneself from all harm, can only backfire."}

{"id": 982, "text": "Trying to eliminate pain only increases your sensitivity to suffering, rather than alleviating your suffering."}

{"id": 983, "text": "The pursuit of happiness is a toxic value that has long defined our culture. It is self-defeating and misleading."}

{"id": 984, "text": "Living well does not mean avoiding suffering; it means suffering for the right reasons."}

{"id": 985, "text": "The human mind operates on the same principle. It can be fragile or antifragile depending on how you use it."}

{"id": 986, "text": "When we avoid pain, when we avoid stress and chaos and tragedy and disorder, we become fragile."}

{"id": 987, "text": "Meditation is, at its core, a practice of antifragility: training your mind to observe and sustain the never-ending ebb and flow of pain and not to let the \"self\" get sucked away by its riptide."}

{"id": 988, "text": "The adult understands that life, in order to be meaningful, requires pain, that nothing can or necessarily should be controlled or bargained for, that you can simply do the best you can do, regardless of the consequences."}

{"id": 989, "text": "Pain is the currency of our values. Without the pain of loss (or potential loss), it becomes impossible to determine the value of anything at all."}

{"id": 990, "text": "When we pursue pain, we are able to choose what pain we bring into our lives. And this choice makes the pain meaningful—and therefore, it is what makes life feel meaningful."}

{"id": 991, "text": "To numb ourselves to our pain is to numb ourselves to anything that matters in the world."}

{"id": 992, "text": "Money is itself a form of exchange used to equalize moral gaps between people. Money is its own special, universal mini-religion that we all bought into because it makes our lives a little bit easier. It allows us to convert our values into something universal when we're dealing with one another."}

{"id": 993, "text": "Technological progress is just one manifestation of the Feelings Economy. For instance, nobody ever tried to invent a talking waffle. Why? Because that'd be fucking creepy and weird, not to mention probably not very nutritious."}

{"id": 994, "text": "Having an errant racist thought? Well, there's a whole forum of racists two clicks away, with a lot of convincing-sounding arguments as to why you shouldn't be ashamed to have such leanings."}

{"id": 995, "text": "The only true form of freedom, the only ethical form of freedom, is through self-limitation. It is not the privilege of choosing everything you want in your life, but rather, choosing what you will give up in your life."}

{"id": 996, "text": "Real freedom is the conscious decision to live with less. Fake freedom is addictive: no matter how much you have, you always feel as though it's not enough. Real freedom is repetitive, predictable, and sometimes dull."}

{"id": 997, "text": "Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their own."}

{"id": 998, "text": "When that day comes, when an AI can essentially spawn better versions of itself, at will, then buckle your seatbelt, amigo, because it's going to be a wild ride and we will no longer have control over where we're going."}

{"id": 999, "text": "AI will reach a point where its intelligence outstrips ours by so much that we will no longer comprehend what it's doing."}

{"id": 1000, "text": "These algorithms make our lives better. They make our lives more efficient. They make us more efficient. That's why, as soon as we cross over, there's no going back."}

{"id": 1001, "text": "Evolution rewards the most powerful creatures, and power is determined by the ability to access, harness, and manipulate information effectively."}

{"id": 1002, "text": "It's like that brutal advice you sometimes hear, that the only thing all your fucked-up relationships have in common is you."}

{"id": 1003, "text": "Our Feeling Brains are antiquated, outdated software. And while our Thinking Brains are decent, they're too slow and clunky to be of much use anymore."}

{"id": 1004, "text": "We are a self-hating, self-destructive species. That is not a moral statement; it's simply a fact."}

{"id": 1005, "text": "What if the machines realize we'd be much happier being freed from our cognitive prisons and having our perception of our own identities expanded to include all perceivable reality?"}

{"id": 1006, "text": "Nietzsche said that man was a transition, suspended precariously on a rope between two ledges, with beasts behind us and something greater in front of us."}

{"id": 1007, "text": "Nietzsche envisioned a humanity that transcended religious hopes, that extended itself \"beyond good and evil,\" and rose above the petty quarrels of contradictory value systems."}

{"id": 1008, "text": "It is the Final Religion, the religion that lies beyond good and evil, the religion that will finally unite and bind us all, for better or worse."}

{"id": 1009, "text": "To enshrine the virtues of autonomy, liberty, privacy, and dignity not just in our legal documents but also in our business models and our social lives."}

{"id": 1010, "text": "To encourage antifragility and self-imposed limitation in each of us, rather than protecting everyone's feelings."}

{"id": 1011, "text": "Don't hope. Don't despair, either. In fact, don't deign to believe you know anything."}

{"id": 1012, "text": "Don't hope for better. Just be better. Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined."}

{"id": 1013, "text": "I dare to hope that people will stop suppressing either their Thinking Brain or their Feeling Brain and marry the two in a holy matrimony of emotional stability and psychological maturity;"}

{"id": 1014, "text": "I dare to hope that one day the online advertising business model will die in a fucking dumpster fire;"}

{"id": 1015, "text": "We will have evolved into a great unknowable entity. We will transcend the limitations of our own value-laden minds."}

{"id": 1016, "text": "Perhaps then, we will not only realize but finally embrace the Uncomfortable Truth: that we imagined our own importance, we invented our purpose, and we were, and still are, nothing."}

{"id": 1017, "text": "Each of these is true, by the way."}

{"id": 1018, "text": "My three-part definition of hope is a merging of theories on motivation, value, and meaning."}

{"id": 1019, "text": "As a result, I've kind of combined a few different academic models to suit my purposes."}

{"id": 1020, "text": "The first is self-determination theory, which states that we require three things to feel motivated and satisfied in our lives: autonomy, competence, and relatedness."}

{"id": 1021, "text": "I've merged autonomy and competence under the umbrella of \"self-control\" and, for reasons that will become clear in chapter 4, restyled relatedness as \"community.\""}

{"id": 1022, "text": "What I believe is missing in self-determination theory—or, rather, what is implied but never stated—is that there is something worth being motivated for, that there is something valuable in the world that exists and deserves to be pursued."}

{"id": 1023, "text": "That's where the third component of hope comes in: values."}

{"id": 1024, "text": "For a sense of value or purpose, I've pulled from Roy Baumeister's model of \"meaningfulness.\""}

{"id": 1025, "text": "In this model, we need four things to feel that our life is meaningful: purpose, values, efficacy, and self-worth."}

{"id": 1026, "text": "Again, I've put \"efficacy\" under the \"self-control\" umbrella."}

{"id": 1027, "text": "The other three, I've put under the umbrella of \"values,\" things we believe to be worthwhile and important and that make us feel good about ourselves."}

{"id": 1028, "text": "Kant actually argued that reason was the root of morality and that the passions were more or less irrelevant."}

{"id": 1029, "text": "To Kant, it didn't matter how you felt, as long as you did the right thing."}

{"id": 1030, "text": "But we'll get to Kant in chapter 6."}

{"id": 1031, "text": "See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (1785; repr. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993)."}

{"id": 1032, "text": "One study found that the WHO's global vaccination campaign in the 1980s likely prevented more than twenty million cases of dangerous diseases worldwide and saved $1.53 trillion in health care costs."}

{"id": 1033, "text": "The only diseases ever eradicated entirely were eradicated due to vaccines."}

{"id": 1034, "text": "This is part of why the antivaccination movement is so infuriating."}

{"id": 1035, "text": "See Walter A. Orenstein and Rafi Ahmed, \"Simply Put: Vaccinations Save Lives,\" PNAS 114, no. 16 (2017): 4031–33."}

{"id": 1036, "text": "Some scholars believe that Plato wrote The Republic as a response to the political turbulence and violence that had recently erupted in Athens."}

{"id": 1037, "text": "See The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p. xi."}

{"id": 1038, "text": "Christendom borrowed a lot of its moral philosophy from Plato and, unlike many ancient philosophers such as Epicurus and Lucretius, preserved his works."}

{"id": 1039, "text": "According to Stephen Greenblatt, in The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2012), early Christians held on to the ideas of Plato and Aristotle because the two believed in a soul that was separate from the body."}

{"id": 1040, "text": "This idea of a separate soul gibed with Christian belief in an afterlife."}

{"id": 1041, "text": "It's also the idea that spawned the Classic Assumption."}

{"id": 1042, "text": "Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature, pp. 4–18."}

{"id": 1043, "text": "The comment about chopping off someone's nuts is my own flourish, of course."}

{"id": 1044, "text": "Ibid., pp. 482–488."}

{"id": 1045, "text": "The oft-repeated motto of Woodstock and much of the free-love movement of the 1960s was \"If it feels good, do it!\""}

{"id": 1046, "text": "This sentiment is the basis for a lot of New Age and countercultural movements today."}

{"id": 1047, "text": "An excellent example of this self-indulgence in the name of spirituality is depicted in the Netflix original documentary Wild Wild Country (2018), about the spiritual guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (aka Osho) and his followers."}

{"id": 1048, "text": "The best analysis I've seen of this tendency among twentieth-century spiritual movements to mistake indulging one's emotions for some greater spiritual awakening came from the brilliant author Ken Wilber."}

{"id": 1049, "text": "He called it the Pre/Trans Fallacy and argued that because emotions are pre-rational, and spiritual awakenings are post-rational, people often mistake one for the other—because they're both nonrational."}

{"id": 1050, "text": "See Ken Wilber, Eye to Eye: The Quest for a New Paradigm (Boston, MA: Shambhala, Inc., 1983), pp. 180–221."}

{"id": 1051, "text": "A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema, and S. Schweizer, \"Emotion-Regulation Strategies Across Psychopathology: A Meta-analytic Review,\" Clinical Psychology Review 30 (2010): 217–37."}

{"id": 1052, "text": "Olga M. Slavin-Spenny, Jay L. Cohen, Lindsay M. Oberleitner, and Mark A. Lumley, \"The Effects of Different Methods of Emotional Disclosure: Differentiating Post-traumatic Growth from Stress Symptoms,\" Journal of Clinical Psychology 67, no. 10 (2011): 993–1007."}

{"id": 1053, "text": "Great thinkers have cut the human mind into two or three pieces since forever."}

{"id": 1054, "text": "My \"two brains\" construct is just a summary of the concepts of these earlier thinkers."}

{"id": 1055, "text": "Plato said that the soul has three parts: reason (Thinking Brain), appetites, and spirit (Feeling Brain)."}

{"id": 1056, "text": "David Hume said that all experiences are either impressions (Feeling Brain) or ideas (Thinking Brain)."}

{"id": 1057, "text": "Freud had the ego (Thinking Brain) and the id (Feeling Brain)."}

{"id": 1058, "text": "Most recently, Daniel Kahneman and Amon Tversky had their two systems, System 1 (Feeling Brain) and System 2 (Thinking Brain), or, as Kahneman calls them in his book Thinking: Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), the \"fast\" brain and the \"slow\" brain."}

{"id": 1059, "text": "The \"willpower as a muscle\" theory of willpower, also known as \"ego depletion,\" is in hot water in the academic world at the moment."}

{"id": 1060, "text": "A number of large studies have failed to replicate ego depletion."}

{"id": 1061, "text": "Some meta-analyses have found significant results for it while others have not."}

{"id": 1062, "text": "Damasio, Descartes' Error, pp. 128–30."}

{"id": 1063, "text": "Kahneman, Thinking: Fast and Slow, p. 31."}

{"id": 1064, "text": "Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 2–5."}

{"id": 1065, "text": "Haidt says he got the elephant metaphor from the Buddha."}

{"id": 1066, "text": "This silly Clown Car analogy actually works well for describing how toxic relationships between selfish narcissists form."}

{"id": 1067, "text": "Anyone who is psychologically healthy, whose mind is not a Clown Car, will be able to hear a Clown Car coming from a mile away and avoid contact with it as much as possible."}

{"id": 1068, "text": "But if you are a Clown Car yourself, your circus music will prevent you from hearing the circus music of other Clown Cars."}

{"id": 1069, "text": "They will look and sound normal to you, and you will engage with them, thinking that all the healthy Consciousness Cars are boring and uninteresting, thus entering toxic relationship after toxic relationship."}

{"id": 1070, "text": "In philosophy, this is known as Hume's guillotine: you cannot derive an \"ought\" from an \"is.\""}

{"id": 1071, "text": "You cannot derive values from facts."}

{"id": 1072, "text": "You cannot derive Feeling Brain knowledge from Thinking Brain knowledge."}

{"id": 1073, "text": "Hume's guillotine has had philosophers and scientists spinning in circles for centuries now."}

{"id": 1074, "text": "Some thinkers such as Sam Harris try to rebut it by pointing out that you can have factual knowledge about values—e.g., if a hundred people believe suffering is wrong, then there is factual evidence of their physical brain state about their beliefs about suffering being wrong."}

{"id": 1075, "text": "But the decision to take that physical representation as a serious proxy for philosophical value, is itself a value that cannot be factually proven."}

{"id": 1076, "text": "Thus, the circle continues."}

{"id": 1077, "text": "This is an example of \"intrinsic motivation,\" when the simple pleasure of doing an activity well, rather than for an external reward, motivates you to continue doing that activity."}

{"id": 1078, "text": "See Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan, Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), pp. 5–9."}

{"id": 1079, "text": "You could say that negative emotions are rooted in a sense of losing control, while positive emotions are rooted in a sense of having control."}

{"id": 1080, "text": "Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, pp. 13–14."}

{"id": 1081, "text": "Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 27–54."}

{"id": 1082, "text": "This also comes from David Hume, \"Of the Association of Ideas,\" section 3 in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Eric Steinberg, 2nd ed. (1748; repr. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Classics, 1993); and Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 2: Of the Passions, parts 1 and 2 (Mineola, NY: Dover Philosophical Classics, 2003)."}

{"id": 1083, "text": "This technique is known as the Premack principle, after psychologist David Premack, to describe the use of preferred behaviors as rewards."}

{"id": 1084, "text": "See Jon E. Roeckelein, Dictionary of Theories, Laws, and Concepts in Psychology (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), p. 384."}

{"id": 1085, "text": "For more about \"starting small\" with behavioral changes, see \"The Do Something Principle,\" from my previous book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life (New York: HarperOne, 2016), pp. 158–63."}

{"id": 1086, "text": "One way to think about \"guardrails\" for your Consciousness Car is to develop implementation intentions, little if/then habits that can unconsciously direct your behavior."}

{"id": 1087, "text": "See P. M. Gollwitzer and V. Brandstaetter, \"Implementation Intentions and Effective Goal Pursuit,\" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73 (1997): 186–99."}

{"id": 1088, "text": "We're not being harmed because we suck; we're being harmed because we're great! So, the narcissist goes from feeling that the self deserves nothing to feeling that the self deserves everything."}

{"id": 1089, "text": "The Treaty of Versailles decimated Germany economically and was responsible for many of the internal struggles that allowed Hitler to rise to power."}

{"id": 1090, "text": "Real-life Newton was actually a raging, vindictive asshole. And yes, he was a loner, too. He apparently died a virgin. And records suggest that he was probably quite proud of that fact."}

{"id": 1091, "text": "Real-life Newton's Laws of Motion also sat collecting dust for about twenty years before he dug them out and showed them to anyone."}

{"id": 1092, "text": "The superiority/inferiority of a person can easily flip-flop because what remains constant is the intensity of our emotional reaction to them, caused by the size of the moral gap that is felt."}

{"id": 1093, "text": "Spiritual experiences are often perceived as love, as they involve surrendering one's ego-identity and unconditional acceptance of a greater entity, a 'melding' with someone else or the universe."}

{"id": 1094, "text": "As countries industrialize, their religiosity drops precipitously."}

{"id": 1095, "text": "Humanism could be seen as worshipping the 'in-betweenism' of all people - that there are no inherently good or evil people, and that the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."}

{"id": 1096, "text": "The Buddhist concept of dukkha, or craving, suggests that human cravings can never be satiated, and that we generate suffering in our constant quest to fulfill those cravings."}

{"id": 1097, "text": "The ancient Greek concept of hope, as represented by Pandora's box, could also be translated as 'deceptive expectation,' suggesting that hope can lead to destruction."}

{"id": 1098, "text": "If you are willing to treat humanity as a means to gain greater freedom or equality, then you will inevitably destroy freedom and equality."}

{"id": 1099, "text": "We all require a \"Goldilocks\" amount of pain to mature and develop. Too much pain traumatizes us—our Feeling Brain becomes unrealistically fearful of the world, preventing any further growth or experience. Too little pain, and we become entitled narcissists, falsely believing the world can (and should!) revolve around our desires."}

{"id": 1100, "text": "Growth requires engaging the pain, as we'll see in chapter 7."}

{"id": 1101, "text": "There's one last component to this harebrained theory that I still haven't spoken about: inequality. During periods of prosperity, more and more economic growth is driven by diversions. And because diversions scale so easily—after all, who doesn't want to post selfies on Instagram?—wealth becomes extremely concentrated in fewer hands."}

{"id": 1102, "text": "The long-term trend is toward pain reduction through innovation. But in times of prosperity, people indulge more and more in diversions, demand fake freedoms, and become more fragile."}

{"id": 1103, "text": "A decline in maturity in the population will be reflected in worse elected representatives, who were Plato's \"demagogues,\" politicians who promise everything and deliver nothing. These demagogues then dismantle the democratic system while the people cheer its dismantling, as they come to see the system itself, rather than the poorly selected leadership, as the problem."}

{"id": 1104, "text": "This world is filled with flaws."}

{"id": 1105, "text": "Is this what the advancement of civilization has lead to?! Urban life weeding out and killing the weak?! It's appalling!"}

{"id": 1106, "text": "It is your job to save people who are in trouble, not to trample them beneath your feet."}

{"id": 1107, "text": "Do you think to do nothing when you see a fellow human crying?!"}

{"id": 1108, "text": "Because danger is hovering above this school. . .and all mankind. That is why I have emerged."}

{"id": 1109, "text": "There is a devil nesting in this school. It's hidden among you now, but it poses a very real threat. It has barely begun to stir, but once it does, it will mean the end of the world."}

{"id": 1110, "text": "The human psyche is open to the possibilities of both good and evil. In my opinion, multiple personality disorder occurs when one of these possibilities, suppressed by societal pressures, declares independence and begins to fight to exist."}

{"id": 1111, "text": "Every person needs help when they're suffering."}

{"id": 1112, "text": "When you have no dream, when you can't imagine a future, that means something in this world is flawed."}

{"id": 1113, "text": "You and Miyashita Touka have your job to do, just as I have my duty. You two have to make your own world."}

{"id": 1114, "text": "Suddenly, I felt a great affection for her."}

{"id": 1115, "text": "She looked up at me seriously, and I bit my tongue."}

{"id": 1116, "text": "Everyone wants to believe that the runaways were killed by an assassin that wanders in the shadows, fleeting as the morning mist...instead of running off to Tokyo or some other grim reality. Reality is always rather dreary. When people vanish from it, it's natural to want to connect them to some sort of fantasy, to some other world."}

{"id": 1117, "text": "Even if I did say that, it was just an example,"}

{"id": 1118, "text": "It was like... like she was dressed for combat?!) No normal high school girl would ever dress like that. Not even a gang member. She looked more like a hitman."}

{"id": 1119, "text": "But I didn't like that. Five years ago, things had all happened without me knowing about them. I only found out when everything was finished. My own will played no part in the matter. If there was danger, I wanted to see it. That's why I had chased after Boogiepop, even though there was clearly no such thing. It was all the same to me. I didn't care what it was...I just wanted to confront something. (No more blissful ignorance for me.)"}

{"id": 1120, "text": "When I sat there in silence, Kirima thrust a phone at me. Not one on the house' s line, but undoubtedly one taken out in her name and paid for out of her own pocket."}

{"id": 1121, "text": "Her oddball behavior might be her way of preparing for her next fight, but to the casual onlooker, she just seemed insolent."}

{"id": 1122, "text": "He had to stop the Manticore's slaughter. The Manticore was made from him. It was his child. She had the power of communication that even he lacked, not to mention the powers that let him blend in with this planet's ecological system."}

{"id": 1123, "text": "That was a creepy type of megalomania, in which you believed yourself to be some sort of savior."}

{"id": 1124, "text": "If the suspect had truly been innocent, the whole thing was a tragedy based on absurd principles, but if he had been guilty, then it was a tragedy in which justice had been utterly defeated by evil."}

{"id": 1125, "text": "Yes. That was it. Justice might well prevail in the end, but ordinary people like me had no guarantee of surviving that long."}

{"id": 1126, "text": "Sadly, I couldn't imagine how she would respond."}

{"id": 1127, "text": "Hmm, let me see. . .for the moment, let' s put you in school. There's a card reader at the gate to get in, but I think I know a back way in."}

{"id": 1128, "text": "Me? My name's Kamikishiro. Kamikishiro Naoko. I'm a senior at Shinyo Academy. You?"}

{"id": 1129, "text": "Don't worry. I know this kooky girl named Nagi. Anytime there's trouble, we talk to her and she usually takes care of it. Assuming you aren't a bad guy, Echoes,"}

{"id": 1130, "text": "She felt like there was a big, gaping hole in her heart, but she had no way of telling that her will and spirit were swiftly vanishing."}

{"id": 1131, "text": "Her brain is shrinking, and she can't be bothered to make decisions on her own."}

{"id": 1132, "text": "He wanted to be killed by something much more powerful than him. Even with Kirima Nagi, he had not really wanted to date her; he had wanted her to kill him."}

{"id": 1133, "text": "And more importantly, she had always been alone. She'd been cloned as an 'experiment' and had no family of her own. The only person who had ever told her 'I love you' was Saotome Masami, whom normal society would classify as a crazed lunatic."}

{"id": 1134, "text": "lt may have been twisted, but they were unmistakably in love."}

{"id": 1135, "text": "Why don’t we just kill her?”"}

{"id": 1136, "text": "“Not yet. I don’t know how much she knows or how she: found out. we need to know that at least.’’"}

{"id": 1137, "text": "“Is that the only reason you won’t kill Kirima Nagi? There’s another reason, isn’t there?”"}

{"id": 1138, "text": "“You’re normal, and you shouldn’t have anything to do with this.”"}

{"id": 1139, "text": "It was this sort of impression that had made him fall in love with her in the first place."}

{"id": 1140, "text": "Humans just aren't that great. However much our civilization advances, we can't seem to do anything to make ourselves happier."}

{"id": 1141, "text": "He was sent here to test humans and see if they would be nice to him."}

{"id": 1142, "text": "Isn't niceness the best motivation that someone can have?"}

{"id": 1143, "text": "They're farther away than our lives."}

{"id": 1144, "text": "Because the story you told me leaves us no salvation."}

{"id": 1145, "text": "Truth is, I'm pretty sure she never thought twice about me."}

{"id": 1146, "text": "Wasn't that enough? That's all the reason I needed to love her for the rest of my life. No matter how much I fell in love with some other girl, she will always live inside of me in the way that she was then-impossible to understand, and more than a little crazy."}

{"id": 1147, "text": "Life is brief, young maiden, fall in love."}

{"id": 1148, "text": "I couldn't help but ask, 'Tanaka-kun, were you and Naoko-san...?'"}

{"id": 1149, "text": "It just occurred to me, but maybe we should use the PA system to summon Kirima Nagi. He had confirmed the presence of Echoes, and he knew that Echoes was presumably moving with Kirima Nagi. It was time to move the plan forward to stage two."}

{"id": 1150, "text": "There was a sweet, strange smell in the room. The smell had been enough to knock Nakayama Haruo out, but the long, black haired, beautiful girl did not even raise an eyebrow. Of course not. She was the source of the smell."}

{"id": 1151, "text": "The only reason he had survived was by the whim of a killer, the fleeting thought that perhaps she had killed too many people already."}

{"id": 1152, "text": "'It's a trap?' Nagi said. She knew it too. Echoes nodded. 'That's why we have to go,' Nagi said quietly. 'We don't play into this trap and it'll change its face and make a run for it. It'll leave the school. We'll never catch it then.'"}

{"id": 1153, "text": "'Stop whispering cryptically at each other! And you! You aren't even a student here! I've never seen you before in my life!' I'm not bragging, but if you're on gate duty often enough, you do end up knowing everyone at school."}

{"id": 1154, "text": "'I told you to explain yourself! How am I supposed to just forget a thing like this?' 'Well, well, well. I guess we see how you became committee president,' Nagi said, glaring at me. She looked like a yakuza. 'But you need to keep quiet about this.'"}

{"id": 1155, "text": "Nagi and this Echoes guy led us out of the lecture hall. 'Go straight home,' Nagi insisted. 'I have to give the key back,' I said sullenly. I wasn't finished sulking about not getting an explanation."}

{"id": 1156, "text": "'Looking back, I'm glad you rejected me. If I had been with you, then when I met her, I would've been her enemy.' He sighed, almost happily. Nagi frowned. 'When you met who? What are you talking about?' She seemed confused."}

{"id": 1157, "text": "Which is it...? He wondered inside. But only Kamikishiro Naoko could answer, and sadly, she was gone."}

{"id": 1158, "text": "But the people who had saved him, the cloaked boy in the black hat, Kamikishiro Naoko, and Kirima Nagi, were all human too. Which is it? Which is the truth?"}

{"id": 1159, "text": "The face of someone that had lost something that they valued more than their own life. As if half of her body had been torn away. As if her capacity for joy had been pulled up by the roots."}

{"id": 1160, "text": "She looked as if she could no longer perceive any meaning, like there was nothing left for her."}

{"id": 1161, "text": "It can't be-?!\" I shouted. There was a figure there, leaning backwards, pulling on the wire with black gloves. It wore a cape and a black hat shaped like a pipe."}
{"id": 1162, "text": "I couldn’t figure out what I should say to her other lover, Kimura Akio. We would probably never speak to each other. If someday someone were to tell him, that would be- But we all had to return to our daily routine, just exactly as things had been before."}
{"id": 1163, "text": "She had to say that. She couldn’t let her friend’ s death be in vain. But I couldn’t smile. Nagi hadn’t seen the end of Echoes. But I had. Clearly. That light had made it as if Saotome Masami had never existed in the first place. It had turned the nearly immortal Manticore into a burnt crisp. That was no biotechnological experiment. It had beamed itself into space, but if something like that were fired at the earth over and over again."}
{"id": 1164, "text": "It’s one of many, but this “what did I do in school?” question is a pretty big trauma for me. It’s like my first love that I never asked out. Augh! I was a dirty little angst-ridden idiot without a single thought for love."}
{"id": 1165, "text": "Ultimately, school is a place where you have to be with others. That’ s all. It ends without you ever really understanding much about each other, but even so, you bump into a lot of people and a lot of thoughts, and you still come back for more. Sadly, schools are not exactly set up to preserve that diversity."}
{"id": 1166, "text": "I can’t help but think that’ s a crying shame, but the entire world seems to work that way, and school isn’t that unique of a place in the world. That’s why, in my dreams, I’m always thinking, “God, I really hated that guy, but now I wish I’d known him a little better.” And I do all this while sitting there in the corner of the room."}
{"id": 1167, "text": "Mariko-san, there's nothing in this world that is truly decided. Birds sometimes fall out of the air, and sometimes it snows in April. Everything is uncertain, nothing is 'unnatural.'"}
{"id": 1168, "text": "If you jump now, you will not end up where she has gone."}
{"id": 1169, "text": "Simple. You are about to end your life of your own free will. But Minahoshi Suiko did not. If there is such a thing as heaven, you will surely end up in a different place than her."}
{"id": 1170, "text": "But it just isn’t healthy to get obsessed with it, you know? At this rate, you’re just going to get overwhelmed by the pressure and be in no condition to actually sit there and take the test."}
{"id": 1171, "text": "All they’d ever done was study, and they didn’t know how to just let go and enjoy themselves. So they’d go off to try and pass the civil servants exam or something. They were just pointlessly limiting their options for a. . .I dunno, a decent future. They meet the person they were supposed to fall in love with, but they don't recognize how valuable they would be, and without even noticing, they wind up missing out on the most important things in life."}
{"id": 1172, "text": "The reason this child was beautiful was because he had a rose within his heart."}
{"id": 1173, "text": "His job at the cram school finished, he walked back to his apartment along a bustling shopping street. He couldn’t help but notice the flaws on everyone’s chests. It annoyed him, occasionally. Human effort was entirely devoted to making up for this flaw. He knew this. But he also knew that what they lacked was never in them to begin with, and it was something that could never be obtained."}
{"id": 1174, "text": "Even now, she deeply recalled the feelings she had at the time. Familiar sights had flames all around them; people she knew had turned into silent corpses. A world coming to an end. A closed world. A thankless world. A world that was harsh, senseless, and brought nothing but pain. Even so, she reached out with her hand, moved her fingers, quivered her lips, and pleaded. After all, while it was a world beyond saving, it was still the only one she had."}
{"id": 1175, "text": "She wanted to abruptly tear down that wall; squint at the broad, dazzling world before her; and carve into her unopened eyes the color of sunbaked skin, the color and smell of burned meat, the color of the beautiful \"horns\" that danced in the sky— Here was the world about to end, and what was she thinking about?"}
{"id": 1176, "text": "For even then, she could still remember the feelings she had at the time— Thereafter, she devoted each and every day to expunging her guilt over those feelings above all else."}
{"id": 1177, "text": "Kenichi once said, life must be lived . That’s what I think, too."}
{"id": 1178, "text": "I thought maids were supposed to dress modestly…but I think I’m a fan!"}
{"id": 1179, "text": "This is terrible, Sister. Right now, in Dear Guest’s head, you are the subject of obscene, degrading thoughts."}
{"id": 1180, "text": "This is dreadful, Rem. Right now, Dear Guest’s head has become filled with completely disgusting thoughts about you."}
{"id": 1181, "text": "Please forgive me, Dear Guest. Let me go and defile Sister instead."}
{"id": 1182, "text": "Please stop this, Dear Guest. Let me go and humiliate Rem instead."}
{"id": 1183, "text": "I get it! Whoever chose this, I get what they were thinking!"}
{"id": 1184, "text": "…I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to, but I’m veeery disappointed that I know it’s something meaningless."}
{"id": 1185, "text": "You, ah…remember all about me, right?"}
{"id": 1186, "text": "Please listen, Lady Emilia. This person was terribly humiliating. For Sister, that is."}
{"id": 1187, "text": "Hear this, Lady Emilia. This man has trapped and violated girls. Rem, that is."}
{"id": 1188, "text": "I should be the one thanking you. You risked your life for mine when you barely knew me. Healing your wounds was the least I could do."}
{"id": 1189, "text": "Do I really need a younger brother this weird?"}
{"id": 1190, "text": "Watching her from the side, Subaru cracked his neck slightly at being addressed."}
{"id": 1191, "text": "Subaru wanted nothing more than to put his hands on his cheeks and give thanks to Mother Nature, but he abstained."}
{"id": 1192, "text": "Subaru was struck senseless by the happy, carefree scene as Emilia walked over with a teasing smile."}
{"id": 1193, "text": "Subaru laughed, finding it cute how Emilia tapered her lips in a pout at being outdone in their verbal jousting."}
{"id": 1194, "text": "Subaru, feeling bad at how Emilia was genuinely worried, reflected upon his own behavior."}
{"id": 1195, "text": "A kingdom must have a king."}
{"id": 1196, "text": "It is thought that a person who cannot protect a single small badge cannot be entrusted with a responsibility as grave as an entire land."}
{"id": 1197, "text": "A man should make no excuses. No reneging on his word."}
{"id": 1198, "text": "You don't understand how grateful I feel. I can't repay you at all for saving my life and more, if you ask for so little!"}
{"id": 1199, "text": "It's not just the thing with Puck, okay? It's like when you asked me my name back in the royal capital."}
{"id": 1200, "text": "At the time, I wanted to know your name. I think being in a new, uncertain land with no idea what would come the next day, if I'd stopped to think about it, there were lots of things I could've considered— But I'm a man who can't lie to himself."}
{"id": 1201, "text": "My request to Rozchi's like that, too. Right now, I'm completely, totally broke. Sure, I could ask for a pile of gold, but why not set myself up so I can make a living long-term?"}
{"id": 1202, "text": "Which one's more your type, I wonder…Ram or Rem?"}
{"id": 1203, "text": "All that said, being the guardian of an archive of forbidden books… The sound of it really tickles a guy's mind."}
{"id": 1204, "text": "That feeling made Subaru admit he had lost this—"}
{"id": 1205, "text": "Maybe it was some kind of twin \"sympathy\" they talked about on those supernatural investigation shows; that thing where they could read the other even when apart."}
{"id": 1206, "text": "Precisely because they were twins, he wanted to see some individuality , the essence of human emotion."}
{"id": 1207, "text": "Subaru thought he was just indulging in his individuality—but with such thoughts on his mind, three voices sounded as one."}
{"id": 1208, "text": "Her statement, that she couldn't treat him as a simple coworker because they stood apart, stuck in his ears."}
{"id": 1209, "text": "People are petty like that."}
{"id": 1210, "text": "He was scared that Ram's gossipy statement would make sparks fly with Emilia in short order."}
{"id": 1211, "text": "Women are happy when they're pursued."}
{"id": 1212, "text": "There is beauty in enthusiasm."}
{"id": 1213, "text": "I'm genuinely grateful and you joke about it like that...?"}
{"id": 1214, "text": "Having said all that...it's nice that you're trying hard, but how'd you get your hand all beat up like that, anyway?"}
{"id": 1215, "text": "But it might be troublesome for you to have me with you like..."}
{"id": 1216, "text": "The two laughing like that announced that their rendezvous for that night had come to an end."}
{"id": 1217, "text": "Watching Subaru's self-satisfied look, a charming smile came over Emilia as she let out a little sigh."}
{"id": 1218, "text": "He was looking forward to their at least engaging in the cold verbal abuse to which he was accustomed."}
{"id": 1219, "text": "Subaru linked his fantasy Puck to the real one, letting his memory of the fluffy feline lead him to a happy place."}
{"id": 1220, "text": "As Subaru hung his head in shame, the sisters called out with voices of concern."}
{"id": 1221, "text": "The silence descended upon the room."}
{"id": 1222, "text": "One after the other, after another…he desperately took deep big breaths. As Subaru gasped like a fish out of water, a scornful voice spoke from within the archive."}
{"id": 1223, "text": "It’s all deceits and conceits to the very end. This is why I can’t hold a conversation with your kind."}
{"id": 1224, "text": "He spitefully looked at the sun rising in the low sky of the east. This and four more and he’d be right at the appointed hour."}
{"id": 1225, "text": "He shook a fist toward the sky and declared war to no one in particular. It was Subaru’s first declaration of open defiance at the “summons” and “loop” that had brought him to that world."}
{"id": 1226, "text": "Subaru sank into the bathtub, put his thoughts in order without a breath of oxygen, and poked his head out of the bathtub once more."}
{"id": 1227, "text": "In every sense, it was clear which twin sister had the superior ability at domestic work. Rem had first-rate skills across the board while Ram would have needed to work hard to come close to second-rate. Normally, that setup would give Ram an inferiority complex, but..."}
{"id": 1228, "text": "You might say that it was his bad habit to get on other people's nerves. At Subaru's reply, Roswaal closed his right eye and looked up at the ceiling with his yellow left eye alone."}
{"id": 1229, "text": "Roswaal seemed to see a rare dazzle in Subaru's youth as he nodded."}
{"id": 1230, "text": "Yes, it's Dark. Your connection to the other four elements is quite weak. Put differently, though, this is exceedingly rare..."}
{"id": 1231, "text": "It was partly pure physical beauty, but also the beauty of each and every action."}
{"id": 1232, "text": "He’d surrendered to his sudden impulse, opened his mouth wide and yawned."}
{"id": 1233, "text": "Time is limited to one hour."}
{"id": 1234, "text": "Subaru was basically an amateur at all the chores of the mansion."}
{"id": 1235, "text": "Having said that, I think taking someone for granted from the get-go is a little different… Ram’s really good at that, though."}
{"id": 1236, "text": "It's really distracting."}
{"id": 1237, "text": "Like possessed, except by a demon instead of a divine spirit."}
{"id": 1238, "text": "Subaru remembered the image of the Red Demon and the Blue Demon hugging each other as they laughed themselves silly, when he suddenly realized there was a definite smile carved upon Rem’s face."}
{"id": 1239, "text": "scars, in a way, were a good thing."}
{"id": 1240, "text": "The presence or absence of scars was a great way to tell if he’d done a Return by Death or not."}
{"id": 1241, "text": "No one lives as prettily as on the day they were born."}
{"id": 1242, "text": "Besides that, I’ve cut my hand lots of times in front of you before, so why offer to heal me all of a sudden?"}
{"id": 1243, "text": "Feelings are real important here. I want my renewed hard work to completely provoke those two sisters!"}
{"id": 1244, "text": "Certainly, Subaru's statement had been very frivolous, but Emilia brushed it off like it had nothing to do with her. The fact that she clearly didn't see herself as the target of Subaru's affections gave him no route to follow up."}
{"id": 1245, "text": "Emilia, perhaps set off by his probing the deeper meaning of her actions, remarked, \"It's nothing !\" as she left the window and cutely strode past Subaru."}

{"id": 1246, "text": "Responsibility, or perhaps duty—Subaru was driven by an emotion he couldn't put into words."}

{"id": 1247, "text": "But having thought that far, Subaru clutched his head. He'd come to understand there'd be an attack on Emilia and the others. That much was a success."}

{"id": 1248, "text": "You could say that the problem with Return by Death was that you had no way to explain the information you got before you died."}

{"id": 1249, "text": "Subaru himself wondered why he felt such tranquility there when Beatrice truly thought of him as nothing more than that."}

{"id": 1250, "text": "He'd died a total of five times so far, but he most certainly wasn't used to it. Quite the opposite; the more times he died, the more the accumulated experience made his knees quiver from his raw fear of experiencing death again."}

{"id": 1251, "text": "I think Rem fertilized that flower bed with manure yesterday..."}

{"id": 1252, "text": "Well, just think of it as: When bad luck is with you, good luck is not far away."}

{"id": 1253, "text": "Emilia's already in Consolation Mode!"}

{"id": 1254, "text": "Ugh...could you not mention something I really don't want to talk about?"}

{"id": 1255, "text": "She should just be honest with herself. That's a cute thing about Lia, though...don't you think, Subaru?"}

{"id": 1256, "text": "Now Subaru's teasing me... And what is that 'tan'? Where did that come from?"}

{"id": 1257, "text": "F-fine. I'll accept that. Hey, don't look at me like that!"}

{"id": 1258, "text": "My leading lady's easy!"}

{"id": 1259, "text": "I just want to reach an agreement on E M P (Emilia-tan's Majorly Pretty)."}

{"id": 1260, "text": "My keywords are magic and chain...but that doesn't tell me anything yet."}

{"id": 1261, "text": "To be honest, I don't like picking a plan that's giving up from the start..."}

{"id": 1262, "text": "For that, I had to tell Puck under the table to keep Emilia safe."}

{"id": 1263, "text": "I made things pretty vague, but he seems genuinely protective of Lia."}

{"id": 1264, "text": "After all, he'd given Subaru's pushy suggestion a warm reception."}

{"id": 1265, "text": "He could now assume that Emilia would be relatively safe."}

{"id": 1266, "text": "It wasn't much, but it did relieve a bit of the burden on his shoulders."}

{"id": 1267, "text": "That being said, he had to do whatever he could."}

{"id": 1268, "text": "If possible, he wanted Ram and Rem, and of course Roswaal and Beatrice as well, to get through those four days safely."}

{"id": 1269, "text": "He had his reasons for not running no matter how formidable the challenge."}

{"id": 1270, "text": "Dear Guest, you are the manner of houseguest known as a freeloader."}

{"id": 1271, "text": "If it tastes bad, it tastes bad. I just can't think of it as anything but black tea. Tastes like...plant."}

{"id": 1272, "text": "Does calling myself that tick you off that much?"}

{"id": 1273, "text": "That's why I love this story and hate this story. The Blue Demon's self-sacrifice was super cool, but he was an idiot beyond saving, too. I like to think I can save myself through putting in the effort..."}

{"id": 1274, "text": "If the Red Demon truly wanted to be friends with the humans, he should have gone to live in the village, even if it meant cutting off his horn. He should have done that long before the Blue Demon left."}

{"id": 1275, "text": "Making the Blue Demon pay for something he wants is unforgivable. If the Red Demon wants it, the Red Demon should pay the price. The Blue Demon robbing him of that chance is a problem, too."}

{"id": 1276, "text": "What an uninteresting reply."}

{"id": 1277, "text": "So you're the type who understands neither his position nor that of others... When distance grows, your type gets left behind by both."}

{"id": 1278, "text": "Distance, huh. Why not just tell people how you feel while they're still close? The Red Demon's not a bad guy for wanting to get along, and the Blue Demon's not a bad guy for wanting to help him, either. I'm the type who likes demons, not the type to just drive 'em off the island at the drop of a hat."}

{"id": 1279, "text": "I believe it is best if others can carry it with her. However, sooner or later, Lady Emilia must be seen to climb that summit herself."}

{"id": 1280, "text": "Everyone was born with a role to play and the responsibility to live up to it."}

{"id": 1281, "text": "This was his punishment, the natural price to pay for what he had done. It was a cross to bear that Subaru, having formed a plan premised on losing something, could not shirk."}

{"id": 1282, "text": "He had to carry both the sweet and the bitter thoughts with him. Subaru had spent those thrown-away four days prying open that raw wound, enduring pain like that of having his flesh gouged and his bones broken, all so that he would remember it."}

{"id": 1283, "text": "Subaru had to continue to crave a happy ending until the last possible moment. No one had the right to decide that Emilia and the others were no more than bubbles on the edge of the time stream."}

{"id": 1284, "text": "Why do you girls hate me that much? Even...that promise... I've always..."}

{"id": 1285, "text": "I've always lo--"}

{"id": 1286, "text": "Why'd everyone leave me behind...! What did I do to you...! Tell me what I did to you...!"}

{"id": 1287, "text": "What's wrong with me?"}

{"id": 1288, "text": "Subaru lived with the shame of having already died six times since arriving in that world. They were most certainly not peaceful deaths. Each death came with its own commensurate sense of loss. You didn't get used to the pain and suffering of it. Though he picked himself up each time, no one could understand the loneliness, the desolation, the anguish he felt."}

{"id": 1289, "text": "He'd resolve that no matter what pickle he might find himself in, his heart, at least, would not falter. But that resolve had been shattered by his latest Return by Death. His sense of loss, of despair, of loneliness, gouged Subaru just as deeply as the bonds formed over the days before. There was no way he could recover. He didn't have the strength to recover."}

{"id": 1290, "text": "Emilia was the only oasis Subaru had in an uncertain world. Subaru, having lost everything else he'd set his heart upon, had nowhere else to turn."}

{"id": 1291, "text": "He didn't know if it meant anything or not—but he thought it was worth a shot."}

{"id": 1292, "text": "Perhaps there is a reason someone is after you?"}

{"id": 1293, "text": "In the first place, I do not want to bring discord to this manor. This manor is a place that, to me, I must not lose, I suppose."}

{"id": 1294, "text": "That is quite a sentiment coming from someone trying to make it another's problem?"}

{"id": 1295, "text": "Disgusting. Perhaps you are an unsalvageable deviant who delights in self-harm?"}

{"id": 1296, "text": "Could you protect me until sunrise on the fifth da-- The morning after tomorrow?"}

{"id": 1297, "text": "That is a rather vague statement. Perhaps there is a reason someone is after you?"}

{"id": 1298, "text": "He wondered if Rem, who'd killed him by her own hand, and the shaman were connected somehow. But if that was the case, Rem being killed this time around made no sense whatsoever from the shaman's point of view."}

{"id": 1299, "text": "He'd thought that it would all be swept aside and things would be better someday. No, he thought they'd become better already. --And the moment he thought it, this happened."}

{"id": 1300, "text": "He didn't know what to do anymore. What he did know was that Ram shouted behind him like she was spitting blood—"}

{"id": 1301, "text": "Suddenly greeted by another world, he'd had no choice but to live within it."}

{"id": 1302, "text": "He was weak. He was fragile, unable to do anything."}

{"id": 1303, "text": "Only his knees moved—to shake."}

{"id": 1304, "text": "Subaru realized it was possible he knew nothing of Ram and Rem, not their true faces, their feelings, or the bond between them, just as Beatrice had stated."}

{"id": 1305, "text": "Subaru wondered what he really had learned about them during those first three lives. What was the point of Subaru feeling such loss and despair when he didn't truly know anything about them?"}

{"id": 1306, "text": "Was everything Subaru had seen simply a dream, the time he'd spent there a mere illusion?"}

{"id": 1307, "text": "Subaru's heart, too, shattered. Lying on his back, Subaru put his palms to his face and wailed at his own powerlessness."}

{"id": 1308, "text": "Had it all been a utopia beyond his reach from the beginning?"}

{"id": 1309, "text": "Subaru looked like he was about to break out in tears when Beatrice called to him."}

{"id": 1310, "text": "Within the darkness covering his eyes, the memories of the days he'd spent at the manor broke apart, one by one, into dust."}

{"id": 1311, "text": "Truly, thank you very much. I hope to see you again in a couple of months when Volume 3 comes out to resolve the cliff-hanger."}

{"id": 1312, "text": "Such a naughty girl you are, Betty. Well, the third volume finishes the Mansion Story arc."}

{"id": 1313, "text": "Heh-heh, you're actually worried about him, aren't you, Betty? Such a good girl. The third volume gives a few glimpses into your kindness. I wonder when it goes on sale?"}

{"id": 1314, "text": "That is both pragmatic and calculated-another wonderful thing about Puckie, I suppose?"}

{"id": 1315, "text": "How you raised your paw at the end... Ahh, Puckie, your fur is the bestest fur ever..."}