face those failures

Public Speaking is a great example. Any chance you get to

speak in public runs you the risk of embarrassment. You

might say something stupid. The audience might not like

your speech. But if you don't face those failures, it's

impossible to deliver a fantastic speech.

4. Staying Inside Your Comfort Zone

The only way to have a bad failure is to stay put. If you

are constantly experimenting and pushing beyond your

daily routine, any result is a good result. Avoiding the

things that scare you doesn't make you safe, it makes you

weaker.

A Sky Angel

In 1978, I became a flight attendant for a major airline. Earning my wings was the culmination of a childhood dream that I had set for myself after my first plane ride at the age of five. Like so many others before me, I fell in love with the romance of airplanes, adventure and helping others.

I have flown hundreds of flights since graduation, but one stands out among the many.

We were flying from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C, when I answered a lavatory call light in the coach cabin. There I found a young mother struggling with her infant. Everything was a mess, to say the least, and the mother, who was near hysterics, told me she had no more diapers or other clothing onboard the aircraft.

Through her tears, she informed me that they had missed their flight the previous night in Los Angeles and because she had very little money, she and her son had spent the night on the airport floor. Since she hadn't expected to miss the flight, she was forced to use up most of her supplies and whatever money she had to feed them.

With the saddest eyes I have ever seen she continued. She told me she was on her way to New Hampshire to deliver her son to the family that was adopting him. She could no longer support the two of them.

As she stood in front of me, crying, holding her beautiful son, I could see the despair and hopelessness on her face. And, as a mother of three beautiful daughters, I could feel her pain.

I immediately rang the flight attendant call button and asked for assistance from the other flight attendants. They brought cloth towels from first class to assist in cleaning up both mom and the infant. I ran and got my suitcase; because this woman and I were about the same size, I gave her a sweater and a pair of pants I had brought for my layover. Then I asked several families if they could spare extra diapers, formula and clothes for the child. After the young mother and her son had changed their clothes and the baby had gone to sleep, I sat with her, holding her hand, trying to provide some support and comfort for the remainder of the flight.

Once we landed, I walked them to their next flight, which would take them to their final destination; separation. I briefed the gate agent and the new flight attendant crew on the situation and asked them to give her special attention.

With tears in my eyes I gave her a hug and told her, "You have shown me the true meaning of courage and a mother's love. I will never forget you."

As she thanked me for all I had done she said softly, "You're not the flight attendant, you're a sky angel." Touching my flight attendant wings, she continued, "And those are your angel wings."
With those words she turned and walked down the jetway, her child in her arms, and boarded the plane for New Hampshire.

Though I am no longer a flight attendant, my "angel wings" are still on prominent display in my office. And each time I see them, I am reminded of that young woman, her infant son and the gift that she gave me on that special day - that we truly are all spiritual beings traveling in human form.

the drawing board

I was wrong. So it was back to the drawing board, telephoning agents. In Norwich there is an

area euphemistically called the Golden Triangle. The only thing golden in this part of the

city is the lining of the private landlords’ pockets.

We found a two-bedroom terrace house, rather grubby and in need of a coat of paint but

otherwise sound. We did not have to pay for July, which was a bonus, but we did get stung

for 75 per cent of the rent for August and the whole amount of £600 for September, even

though the house was not occupied until the end of the month. There was also a further £600

deposit to stump up and we had to sign a contract until the end of June, when, no doubt,

some other poor student will be forced to take on a 12-month lease to make sure of having

somewhere to stay for the following term.

I hope that in future, when applications drop — and I believe they will because of the

sheer expense — universities will respond by shortening their courses and trying to control

the spiralling costs of having somewhere to live.

Until then, how many other individuals will fall prey to private landlords and experience

the frustration of having to pay through the nose for their children to live in sub-standard

digs?

My dear, dear daughters

AM IN THE fortunate, or unfortunate, position of having twin daughters at university. Fortunate to have them; unfortunate in that everything comes at double cost.
This includes paying rent for their accommodation. We have only just managed, yet again, to find them somewhere to live for their final year.

It is the third year in a row that I am being ripped off by greedy landlords who line their pockets at the expense of students desperate for somewhere to live.

Both daughters are doing a four-year course — one at Reading, the other in Norwich — with a year in France. For the year abroad, one was offered accommodation that resembled a prison cell block. For the other daughter no accommodation was available and we had to rent a studio. We did not just have to rent it for the academic year, but for 12 months at approximately £350 a month with two months’ deposit up front. When French students come to my daughter’s university here, they are given places in hall; it is odd how rarely reciprocal agreements exist.

During their first year they stayed in hall, as is customary. During their second year we had to pay inflated rent for a room in a rundown house in Norwich, and for a room in a more upmarket house in Reading.

But I thought, after the rent we paid in Paris, that was the end of it. We were home and dry. I had expected both daughters to go back into hall for their final year and just pay residence fees by the term, meaning that I was not paying deposits, or rent for July and August and for Christmas and Easter holidays.

When we two parted

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this!

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow-
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me-
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee
Who knew thee too well:
long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met-
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After ling year,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

time is reckoned

Here, then, is the problem which I present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race1 or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term 'mankind' feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity' And so they hope that perhaps war may be allowed to continue provided modern weapons are prohibited. I am afraid this hope is illusory. Whatever agreements not to use hydrogen bombs had been reached in time of peace, they would no longer be considered binding in time of war, and both sides would set to work to manufacture hydrogen bombs as soon as war broke out, for if one side manufactured the bombs and the other did not, the side that manufactured them would inevitably be victorious...

As geological time is reckoned, Man has so far existed only for a very short period one million years at the most. What he has achieved, especially during the last 6,000 years, is something utterly new in the history of the Cosmos, so far at least as we are acquainted with it. For countless ages the sun rose and set, the moon waxed and waned, the stars shone in the night, but it was only with the coming of Man that these things were understood. In the great world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom, Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable. In art and literature and religion, some men have shown a sublimity of feeling which makes the species worth preserving. Is all this to end in trivial horror because so few are able to think of Man rather than of this or that group of men? Is our race so destitute of wisdom, so incapable of impartial love, so blind even to the simplest dictates of self-preservation, that the last proof of its silly cleverness is to be the extermination of all life on our planet? - for it will be not only men who will perish, but also the animals, whom no one can accuse of communism or anticommunism.

I cannot believe that this is to be the end. I would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that, if they will allow themselves to survive, there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past. There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal, as a human being to human beings: remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death.

Shall we choose death?

I am speaking not as a Briton, not as a European, not as a member of a western democracy, but as a human being, a member of the species Man, whose continued existence is in doubt. The world is full of conflicts: Jews and Arabs; Indians and Pakistanis; white men and Negroes in Africa; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between communism and anticommunism.

Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but I want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings for the moment and consider yourself only as a member of a biological species which has had a remarkable history and whose disappearance none of us can desire. I shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it. We have to learn to think in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves not what steps can be taken to give military victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no longer are such steps. The question we have to ask ourselves is: What steps can be taken to prevent a military contest of which the issue must be disastrous to all sides?

The general public, and even many men in positions of authority, have not realized what would be involved in a war with hydrogen bombs. The general public still thinks in terms of the obliteration of cities. It is understood that the new bombs are more powerful than the old and that, while one atomic bomb could obliterate Hiroshima, one hydrogen bomb could obliterate the largest cities such as London, New York, and Moscow. No doubt in a hydrogen-bomb war great cities would be obliterated. But this is one of the minor disasters that would have to be faced. If everybody in London, New York, and Moscow were exterminated, the world might, in the course of a few centuries, recover from the blow. But we now know, especially since the Bikini test, that hydrogen bombs can gradually spread destruction over a much wider area than had been supposed. It is stated on very good authority that a bomb can now be manufactured which will be 25,000 times as powerful as that which destroyed Hiroshima. Such a bomb, if exploded near the ground or under water, sends radioactive particles into the upper air. They sink gradually and reach the surface of the earth in the form of a deadly dust or rain. It was this dust which infected the Japanese fishermen and their catch of fish although they were outside what American experts believed to be the danger zone. No one knows how widely such lethal radioactive particles might be diffused, but the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with hydrogen bombs is quite likely to put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many hydrogen bombs are used there will be universal death - sudden only for a fortunate minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration...