'+title); } function inspiration1() { // Put contents in the paragraph array a_par[1]="Not long ago, I came to one of those bleak periods that many of us encounter from time to time, a sudden drastic dip in the graph of living when everything goes stale and flat, energy wanes, enthusiasm dies. The effect on my work was frightening. Every morning I would clench my teeth and mutter: “ Today life will take on some of its old meaning. You’ve got to break through this thing.” But the barren days went by, and the paralysis grew worse. The time came when I knew I needed aid."; a_par[2]='The man I turned to was a doctor. Not a psychiatrist just a doctor. He was older than I, and under his surface gruffness lay great wisdom and compassion. “ I seem to have come to a dead end,” I told him miserably. “ Can you help?” “ I don’t know,” he said slowly. He leaned back, crossed his arms and gaze at me thoughtfully. Then, abruptly, he asked, “ Where were you happiest as a child?” “ As a child?” I echoed. “ Why at the beach, I supposed. We had a summer cottage there. We all loved it.”'; a_par[3]='He looked out the window and watched the October leaves sifting down. “ Are you able to follow instructions for a single day?” “ I think so,” I said, ready to try anything. “ All right, here’s what I want you to do.”'; a_par[4]='He told me to drive to the beach by nine the following morning. I could take some lunch, but I was not to read, write, listen to the radio or talk to anyone. “In addition,” he said, “ I’ll give you a prescription to be taken every three hours.” He tore off four prescription blanks, wrote a few words on each, folded them, numbered them and handed them to me. “Take these at nine, twelve, three, and six.”'; a_par[5]='“Are you serious?” I asked. He gave a short bark of a laugh. “ You wont think I’m jokin when you get my bill!”'; a_par[6]='The next morning, with little faith, I drove to the beach. It was lonely, all right. A northeaster was blowing; the sea looked gray and angry. I sat in the car, the whole day stretching emptily before me. Then I took out the first of the folded slips of paper. On it was written:'; a_par[7]='' + 'Listen carefully.' + '' + 'Why, I thought, the man must be mad. He ruled out the radio and human conversation. What else was there? I raised my head and I did listen. There were no sounds but the steady roar of the sea, the creaking cry of a gull, and the drone of some aircraft overhead.'; a_par[8]='I got out of the car. A gust of wind slammed the door with a sudden clap of sound. Am I supposed, I asked myself, to listen carefully to things like that? I climbed a dune and looked out over the deserted beach. Here the sea bellowed so loudly that all other sounds were lost. And yet, I thought suddenly, there must be sounds beneath sounds- the soft rasp of drifting sand, the tiny wind whisperings in the dune grasses- if the listener got close enough to hear them.'; a_par[9]='On an impulse, I ducked down and feeling faintly ridiculous, I thrust my head into a stump of sea wheat. Here I made a discovery: If you listen intently, there is a fractional moment in which everything seems to pause, wait. In that instant of stillness the racing thoughts halt. For a moment, when you truly listen for something outside yourself, you have to silence the clamorous voices within. The mind rests. I went back to the car and slid behind the wheel. Listen carefully. As I listened again to the deep growl of the sea, I found myself thinking about the immensity of it, the stupendous rhythms of it, the velvet trap it made for moonlight, the white-fanged fury of its storms.'; a_par[10]='I thought of the lessons it taught us as children. A certain amount of patience - you can’t hurry the tides. A great deal of respect- the sea does not suffer fools gladly. An awareness of the vast and mysterious interdependence of things- wind and tide and current, calm and squall and hurricane, all combining to determine the paths of the birds above and the fish below. And the cleanness of it all, with every beach swept twice a day by the great broom of the sea. Sitting there, I realized I was thinking of things bigger than myself- and there was relief in that.'; a_par[11]='Even so, the morning passed slowly. The habit of hurling myself at a problem was so strong that I felt lost without it. Once, when I was wistfully eyeing the car radio, a phrase from some forgotten author jumped into my head: ' + ' ' + '“ Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves….”' + ' '; a_par[12]='By noon the wind had polished the clouds out of the sky, and the sea had a hard merry sparkle. I unfolded the second “prescription.” And again I sat there, half amused and half exasperated. Three word this time: ' + ' ' + 'Try reaching back.' + ' ' + ' Back to what? To the past obviously. But why, when all my worries concerned the present and the future? I left the car and started tramping reflectively along the dunes. The doctor had sent me to the beach because it was a place of happy memories. Maybe that was what I was supposed to reach for: ' + '' + 'the wealth of happiness that lay half-forgotten.' + ''; a_par[13]='I found a sheltered place and lay down on the sun-warmed sand. When I tried to peer into the well of the past, the recollections that came to the surface were happy but not very clear, so I decided to experiment: to work on these vague impressions as a painter would, retouching the colors, strengthening the outlines. I would choose specific incidents and recapture as many details as possible. I would visualize people complete with dress and gestures. I would listen (carefully) for the exact sound of their voices and their laughter.'; // display title, contents, and writer document.write('
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function inspiration2()
{
a_par=new Array;
// Put contents in the paragraph array
a_par[1]='The tide was going out now, but there was still thunder in the surf. So I chose to go back twenty years to the last summer picnic I had with my family. I found now that if I closed my eyes and really tried I could see them with amazing vividness, even the humor and eagerness in their eye that far-off morning.';
a_par[2]='In fact I could see it all: the ivory scimitar of the beach where we were swimming, the eastern sky smeared with sunrise, the great rollers creaming in, stately and slow. I could feel the backwash wind swirl warm around my knees. Piece by piece I rebuilt it, clear and unchanged under the transparent varnish of time. Then it was gone. I sat up slowly. Try reaching back.';
a_par[3]='Happy people were usually assured confident people. If, then, you deliberately reached back and touched happiness, might there not be released little flashes of power, tiny source of strength?';
a_par[4]='The second period of the day went more quickly. As the sun began its long slant down the sky, my mind ranged eagerly through the past, reliving some episodes, uncovering others that had been completely forgotten. For example, when I was around thirteen, my brother ten, father had promised to take us to the carnival and the zoo. But at lunch there was a phone call. Some urgent business required his attention downtown. We braced ourselves for disappointment. Then we heard him say, “ No, I won’t be down. It’ll wait.” When he came back to the table, mother smiled. “The circus keeps coming back, you know.” “ I know,” said father. “ But childhood doesn’t.” Across all the years I remembered this, and knew from the sudden glow and warmth that no kindness is ever really wasted, or ever completely lost.';
a_par[5]='By three o clock the tide was out; the sound of the waves was only a rhythmic whisper, like a giant breathing. I stayed on my sandy nest, feeling relaxed and content – and a little complacent. The doctor’s prescriptions, I thought were easy to take. But I was not prepared for the next one. This time three words were not a gentle suggestion. They sounded more like a command. Reexamine your motives. My first reaction was purely defensive. There’s nothing wrong with my motives, I said to myself. I want to be successful- who doesn’t? I want a certain amount of recognition- but so does everybody. I want more security that I’ve got-and why not?';
a_par[6]='Maybe, said a small voice somewhere inside my head, those motives aren’t good enough. Maybe that’s the reason the wheels have stopped going round. I picked a handful of sand and let it stream between my fingers. In the past, whenever my work went well, there had always been something spontaneous about it, something uncontrived, something free. Lately it had been calculated, competent-and dead. Why? Because I had been looking past the job itself to the rewards I hoped it would bring. The worked had ceased to be an end in itself; it had been merely a means to make money, pay bills. The sense of giving something, of helping people, of making contribution, have been lost in a frantic clutch at security.';
a_par[7]='In a flash of certainty I saw that if one’s motives are wrong, nothing can be right. It makes no difference whether you are a mailman, a hairdresser, a salesman, housewife-whatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well. This is the law as inexorable as gravity.';
a_par[8]='For a long time I sat there. Far out on the bar I heard the murmur of the surf change to a hollow roar as the tide turned. Behind me, the spears of light were almost horizontal. My time at the beach had almost run out, and I felt grudging admiration for the doctor and his prescriptions, he had so casually and cunningly devised. I saw, now, that in them was therapeutic progression that might well be of value to anyone facing any difficulty.';
a_par[9]=' '+ 'Listen carefully: ' + ' ' + 'to calm the frantic mind, shift the focus from inner problems to outer things.';
a_par[10]=' ' + 'Try reaching back: ' + ' ' + 'Since the human mind can hold but one idea at a time, you blot out present worry when you touch the happiness of the past.';
a_par[11]=' ' + 'Reexamine your motives: ' + ' ' + 'this was the hardcore of the “ treatment” this challenge to re-appraise, to bring one’s motives into alignment with one’s capabilities and conscience. But the mind must be clear and receptive to do this – hence the six hours of quiet that went before.';
a_par[12]='The western sky was a blaze of crimson as I took out the last slip of paper. Six words this time. I walked slowly out on the beach. A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again: WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.';
a_par[13]='I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell. Kneeling there under the vault of the sky, I wrote several words on the sand, one above the other. Then I walked away, and did not look back. I had written my trouble on the sand. And the tide was coming in…';
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