My Pass

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 1 The Divided Self For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.   —ST. PAUL, GALATIANS 5:171 If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1,2 I FIRST RODE A HORSE in 1991, in Great Smoky National Park, North Carolina. I’d been on rides as a child where some teenager led the horse by a short rope, but this was the first time it was just me and a horse, no rope. I wasn’t alone—there were eight other people on eight other horses, and one of the people was a park ranger—so the ride didn’t ask much of me. There was, however, one difficult moment. We were riding along a path on a steep hillside, two by two, and my horse was on the outside, walking about three feet from the edge. Then the path turned sharply to the left, and my horse was heading straight for the edge. I froze. I knew I had to steer left, but there was anothe...

Introduction: Too Much Wisdom  WHAT SHOULD I DO , how should I live, and whom should I become? Many of us ask such questions, and, modern life being what it is, we don’t have to go far to find answers. Wisdom is now so cheap and abundant that it floods over us from calendar pages, tea bags, bottle caps, and mass e-mail messages forwarded by well-meaning friends. We are in a way like residents of Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel—an infinite library whose books contain every possible string of letters and, therefore, somewhere an explanation of why the library exists and how to use it. But Borges’s librarians suspect that they will never find that book amid the miles of nonsense.      Our prospects are better. Few of our potential sources of wisdom are nonsense, and many are entirely true. Yet, because our library is also effectively infinite—no one person can ever read more than a tiny fraction—we face the paradox of abundance: Quantity undermines the quality of o...

The Alchemist Paulo Coelho Translated by Alan R. Clarke. Published 1992. ISBN 0-7225-3293-8. PART ONE The boy's name was Santiago. Dusk was falling as the boy arrived with his herd at an abandoned church. The roof had fallen in long ago, and an enormous sycamore had grown on the spot where the sacristy had once stood. He decided to spend the night there. He saw to it that all the sheep entered through the ruined gate, and then laid some planks across it to prevent the flock from wandering away during the night. There were no wolves in the region, but once an animal had strayed during the night, and the boy had had to spend the entire next day searching for it. He swept the floor with his jacket and lay down, using the book he had just finished reading as a pillow. He told himself that he would have to start reading thicker books: they lasted longer, and made more comfortable pillows. It was still dark when he awoke, and, looking up, he could see the stars through the half- destroye...