"You felt terror at the prospect of failure, of mistakes, of the criticism of others. So you became dependent on others and lost your freedom. Others now have the power to make you happy or miserable. And much as you now hate the suffering this involves, you find yourself completely helpless."
- Anthony De Mello. The Way to Love: The Last Meditations of. Image Books,1991. pg 139
"Reading can be part of an ongoing life program, empowering the reader to rethink present coping strategies, to try out new behaviours, new moves."
- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 99
Reading empowers all of us. We can see how characters have dealt with situations and what consequences sprang forth from their decisions. Thus, in the future, if we come across a similar situation or predicament, we have already had a little bit of a rehearsal in how to deal with it. That is only one way that reading can help us.
Gold thinks that we should read to also help us cope with things that have already happened. We can identify with characters and thus be removed from our own situation slightly.
As you can see from the label cloud on the sidebar, I have extensively quoted Joseph Gold here. His ideas about story and literature really speak to human experience and I am glad that I can share them with you here.
"Worst come to worst my peoples come first worst...come.....to worst worst come to worst my peoples come first worst come...to...worst worst come to worst my peoples come first"
(Evidence)
"Yo, some people got good friends, at night I live my life right Intense, on the edge On the wild, I'm from the group where friction leads to fire Stack your bricks, the time is take your pick Do or don't, the track - Alchemist My life is good, I got my peeps in the mix, so..."
"worst come to worst my people come first"
(Iriscience)
"I got worldwide family all over the earth And I worry about 'em all for whatever it's worth From the birth to the hearse, the streets, the guns burst Words I disperse are here to free minds And if mine are needy I need to feed mine"
"when worst come to worst..."
(Evidence)
"Set up shop and write a verse Actually 'what?', that's best come to best My lyrics take care of me, they therapy Get sh*t off my chest Extra stress, three-four over the score Different patterns of rhyming prepare me for war So next time you see us we'll be deadly on tour"
"worst come to worst my peoples come first"
(Guru)
"Word up, if worst comes to worst, I make whole crews disperse You know it's family first Gifted Unlimited with Dilated Peoples Babu, Evidence, Iriscience And a shout out to my man Alchemist on the trizzack"
"worst come to worst my peoples come first"
(Iriscience)
"I'm a glutton for the truth, even though truth hurts I've studied with my peoples on streets and in church We make it hard when we go on first Long road, honor of the Samurai Code These California streets ain't paved with gold"
"worst come to worst my people come first"
(Evidence)
"Uh, I got them back, at the end of the day We could go our seperate ways but the songs remains, it won't change Got my target locked at range I might switch gears but first I switch lanes Without my people I got nothing to gain That's why"
"worst come to worst my people come first"
(Iriscience)
Special victims unit, catalyst for movement Creates to devastate, since '84 show improvement Definitely dilated peoples comes first Cross-training spar, we raise the bar And we put it in your ear no matter who you are
(DJ Babu) "worst come to worst my peoples come first" "worst....come...worst my peoples come first" "worst...worst....worst....come to worst my peoples come first" "...my..my...my peoples come first "oh, when you need me"
- Dilated Peoples "Worst Comes to Worst" from the album Expansion Team
"Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls."
