absorbed

Some humans are so consumed with trying to control the outcomes of their own lives that they don__ have any idea the part they play in the outcome of someone else__.

Little Maiden Encounters FearDeepest regions walked she therelittle maiden sweet and fairventured far from the pathnever a whispernever a laugh...

I know an alcoholic is the worse, but sometimes I wonder if it's better to have a drinking father that lives at home, or a drinking father, that never comes around.

Too often we only identify the crucial points in our lives in retrospect. At the time we are too absorbed in the fetid detail of the moment to spot where it is leading us. But not this time. I was experiencing one of my dad__ deafening moments. If my life could be understood as a meal of many courses (and let__ be honest, much of it actually was), then I had finished the starters and I was limbering up for the main event. So far, of course, I had made a stinking mess of it. I had spilled the wine. I had dropped my cutlery on the floor and sprayed the fine white linen with sauce. I had even spat out some of my food because I didn__ like the taste of it.__ut it doesn__ matter because, look, here come the waiters. They are scraping away the debris with their little horn and steel blades, pulled with studied grace from the hidden pockets of their white aprons. They are laying new tablecloths, arranging new cutlery, placing before me great domed wine glasses, newly polished to a sparkle. There are more dishes to come, more flavors to try, and this time I will not spill or spit or drop or splash. I will not push the plate away from me, the food only half eaten. I am ready for everything they are preparing to serve me. Be in no doubt; it will all be fine._ (pp.115-6)

When anyone is going wrong, it is a mistake to warn him not to go further. It is also a mistake to leave him alone. The proper course is to call his attention to something better, and frame our conversation in such a way that he becomes wholly absorbed in the better. He will then forget his old mistakes, his old faults and his old desires, and will give all his life and power to the building of that better which has engaged his new interest.

Don't be carried away by beauty, for the faeces also stays in the rectum of ravishing faces, and their private life is not beautiful as their public life...fear beauty!