No married couple gets everything right. Here, a few pieces of marital wisdom that didn’t make it into Matthew and Rachel’s story.
1. Figure out the money
thing. Different plans work for different people. The key is
to do just that: plan.
2. Figure out which kind
of fight you’re having. Is the fight about what it seems
to be about–money, in-laws, whatever–or is it about feelings and
egos getting wounded? If it’s the latter, deal with the feelings
first. Then circle back to the mother-in-law’s casserole
catastrophe.
3. Make it into a joke.
I hinted at this one several times, but seriously–no, not
seriously–this is funny stuff. Marriage is funny. Kids are
hilarious. If you can laugh even while fighting, resentment and
tension lessen considerably. (The kids will appreciate it, too.)
4. Keep the chores
separate. Yours are yours and theirs are theirs. This
minimizes chore fights and nagging considerably.
5. Figure out
what you can control and what you can’t. Marriage is the
Serenity Prayer all over the place.
6. Use “I”
statements. You’ve heard this before, but it bears
repeating: No matter how unnatural or uncomfortable it feels, make
the negative comments about you. After all, it is about you.
Otherwise you wouldn’t be dealing with it.
7. Don’t punish your
partner. They won’t learn a darn thing through it except
to escalate and solidify their bitterness and anger. No one wants to
feel like the bad guy. Whenever possible, make them into the good guy
and yourself into the good but struggling guy. They’ll become the
person you show them in your mirror.
8. Don’t yell.
Ever. What is the point?
9. Most important, notice
the small resentments and don’t let them grow any bigger. Seeing
a few of my married-couple friends repeatedly pass entire evenings
together barely looking into each other’s eyes caused me to suspect
the discomfort in their relationships. I realized that I never wanted
my marriage to get to a place where we could no longer really look at
each other.
Some of the advice in Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby is pretty standard stuff. Some of it, however, is not. Here, a short Q and A that follows the lessons in the book that might help clarify a few of the more nuanced suggestions.
Lesson: Change Your Story
What if my partner is regularly rude, selfish and impatient? Should I still change my story about him?
What do you mean by regularly? Does your partner treat you well most
of the time? Do you usually feel good when you’re around him? Does he
bring much more happiness than unhappiness to your life? Is he
holding up his end of the bargain? These are the questions you need
to answer. Only you.
But maybe he really is just a bad person.
He’s not a bad person. He’s just a person. Sometimes people
appreciate you, and other times, they get annoyed and look for
someone to blame. When you relax your character judgments, you see
more clearly. You are more able to make decisions about your
relationship based on your needs, your feelings and your mental
health.
Lesson: Don’t Fight. Just Talk Instead.
My husband suffers from chronic depression and anxiety. It isn’t unusual for him to be in a bad mood as soon as he gets home from work. What is the best way to handle a bad temper?
First, don’t be afraid of your husband. Anger is often about control.
Sometimes people yell because they feel out of control of a situation
and want to merely let out the frustration they feel. Other times
they yell as a way to intimidate others into letting them have their
way. This is not a judgment; we all do it, and most of us do it
regularly. However, anger is a sign of weakness. Yelling is the weak
person’s way to feel strong. Know this, and know this with
compassion.
Second, don’t respond to anger. Say nothing—nothing at all. Don’t
apologize for or justify your partner’s temper, either to others or
to yourself. Don’t pretend you agree with his perspective or placate
him. Just let him be. Fully accept, embrace and acknowledge that this
is not a good or justifiable quality, but merely a common one.
Say nothing. Let the silence be not a resentful one, though, but one
that comes from a deep sense of self-respect; a caring, dignified
silence.
A lot of the time, that’s what I do. I just ignore it and let it
go. Other times I engage with him—either to agree with him and make
him feel better or to defend myself, if the anger is directed at me.
No sometimes. Just don’t engage at all in that moment. No response,
other than a blanket statement like, “I hear you,” and that
only if he specifically asks for it. He will be astounded at your
self-control. And self-control trumps an attempt at controlling
others any day.
But then how will anything get solved? How will we work through
the problem?
If the problem is just his problem—his anger problem—there is
nothing at all for you to do other than offer an example of another
way of being, praying for him, and suggesting he get outside help if
needed. If the problem is a family or relationship one, simply wait
to discuss it when neither of you are upset. It’s a lot more fun that
way, and much more productive, too.
What about expressing your anger? Isn’t doing so a hugely
important thing to do for your own mental health?
Admitting your anger to yourself is, I believe, hugely important. But
talking about it with other people is often unnecessary (except in a
self-controlled, reasonable way). Imagine being the kind of person
who is able to deal with all of her negative feelings internally, who
doesn’t blame others for it or play the victim. Do you like that
image of yourself? Maintaining your self-respect is reason enough to
observe your pain in your own quiet heart rather than exploding at
your partner.
One night after dinner I asked my husband to help me with the
dishes. He said he would, then started doing them, but after a little
while he stopped. I finished sweeping the floor, then started getting
the baby ready for her bath. Then I asked my husband if he was going
to finish the dishes. He said, “You said you were going to help
but never did.” I said, “Can’t you see that I’ve been
cooking and cleaning for over an hour?” He never finished the
dishes or apologized. Now I’m mad at him. What do I do?
Why did you ask him to help you with the dishes, if what you really
wanted was for him to do the dishes? Maybe this was just a
communication issue. Say exactly what you want, even if the request
is less attractive that way. If you want, tell him what you will do,
too. Something like, “Can you do the dishes, Hon, so I can
finish sweeping up and get the baby in the bath?”
Your fight wasn’t about whether or not he did the dishes. Your fight
was about your feeling unappreciated or unloved. Know the difference,
and deal with the real issue first. Tell him that you don’t feel
loved in this moment, and ask him to acknowledge all the work you
were doing.
Remember: Always assume his motives are good. Don’t start the inner
monologue about his lack of character. And don’t hear insults where
insults aren’t spoken. Instead, hear need— tiredness, stress,
sadness—or just his desire to feel loved, too.
Lesson: Apologize Every Chance You Get
The other day, I was a jerk. I said some things I regret, and
don’t know how to forgive myself and move on. Any advice?
I know how you feel. There are a handful of slammed doors behind me,
too. Did you ask your partner to forgive you yet? If not, do. Some of
the tenderest moments in relationships come after fights and sincere
apologies.
After that, take apart the argument. Pull the meat from the bone.
What is the important stuff here? What do you need to do differently
next time to avoid the argument? Do you need to renegotiate
something? Time to look forward.
Deanna Mason is an intelligent, highly skilled stay-at-home mother of five. A member of a traditional religion, she frequently surprises me with her insights into energy healing, self-improvement strategies, education and politics.
Mollie: I want to ask you about mindfulness because to me, you have always seemed very present, very able to slow down, take your time and do one thing at a time. My first question for you is: What is it like to be inside your head? Are you normally at peace, or are you full of distracted thoughts, concerns, plans, regrets and the like? In short, do you have mind clutter?
Deanna: This is an interesting question. Thanks for asking!
I do have plenty of thoughts mulling around all the time but they’re not racing. It’s more of a putter. I like to figuratively pick something up and think about it. Then I set it down and think about something else. I often get excited about something and think about it a lot for a while. If there are a lot of things to remember, I will write them down so that I can stop remembering them. I will usually remember them later anyway, but the stress of remembering is gone after writing it down.
I do enjoy pondering things. I wonder about things a lot but it’s
more in observation and awe than worry and stress.
Mollie: Are you often happy?
Deanna: I usually have a lot of hope for my situation and my future. I feel a lot of inspiration in my everyday experiences—things like needing a piece of string to tie up sleeping bags this morning and remembering just where I put the twine two months ago after the kids made bows and arrows out of twigs. Or feeling disgruntled about setting up beds for company arriving late and being reminded that this is a labor of love. Often I will think of taking something with me that doesn’t make a lot of sense and when I get there, I need it: an extra extra change of clothes for the baby, a pen, a book for someone I didn’t know needed it, extra formula that ends up being for someone else’s baby. There are also impressions I hear that are not positive—snarky sorts of comments that I choose to ignore. I believe it is a life’s work to learn to differentiate the good from the bad. I am better at ignoring the negative and listening to the positive than I used to be. I have gotten better at recognizing negative thoughts and rejecting them more quickly.
I do have peace generally and when I don’t, it’s something that I focus on, ponder about and try to solve. I often ask myself “why” a lot. Not “Why did this happen to me?” but “Why do I feel this?” or “Why is this my reaction right now?” Sometimes I will create an image to help resolve the negative feelings. Sometimes a song lyric pops into my head that helps me process things. Sometimes I focus on moving the energy through quickly and not allowing it to linger.
Mollie: It sounds like you’re saying that you flow through your day in a very mindful way, enjoying your thoughts but directing them rather than letting them direct you. How careful are you about this? Is there a conscious decision to be mindful and to check your thinking each day, or is this just your habit?
Deanna: Mostly, it is a habit. I do make a focused effort to express gratitude in my morning prayers. Often I ask if there’s anything that God wants me to do that day. I listen and write down just a couple of things. Sometimes they are obvious, sometimes not; they’re things that come to mind in that moment that feel inspired, such as to call a particular friend or to pay more attention to a particular child or to unpack something that I end up needing later … even just to catch up on dishes. Often, realizing that my mundane tasks are known and important to Him really changes my attitude about accomplishing them. Then, at the end of the day, I report back to God about what I did. I learn a lot from this process. I enjoy getting to be helpful in this way even if my efforts are small. I feel more joy when I am intentional about my priorities and involve God in my real day.
Mollie: Besides refocusing your thoughts, what are your other spiritual practices?
Deanna: I pray and read my scriptures every day. I try to do the work necessary to replenish and feed my spirit. Those things are vital for me to be able to keep my inner peace and stillness so that I can hear the positive influence around me and continue to feel hope. When I miss or get casual, I get cranky more easily. I can stew or worry about things and feel helpless. Those feelings don’t usually last very long, though. I get back on track as quickly as I can after I notice I’m falling off and I am an eternal optimist.
Some of the rules of grammar and punctuation don’t need to be taught; instead, they’re inbued, like social skills. However, as with social skills, a little direct coaching goes a very long way. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you how much more educated you’ll seem when you don’t make simple writing mistakes.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: PUNCTUATION
Comma (,): The symbol used to separate ideas within a sentence to improve readability. It sets off parenthetic expressions, separates items in a list and separates independent clauses. In some cases, its use is a matter of stylistic preference, with no clearly correct or incorrect choice.
Serial comma: The symbol that is sometimes used at the end of a list, right before the or or and, such as in the sentence “The cat likes to play with yarn, cat toys, and clothing.”
Colon (:): The symbol sometimes used to introduce a quotation, explanation, example, or series. It is also sometimes used between sentences instead of a period to show that the second explains or adds directly to the first. Finally, colons can be used for emphasis. An example is: “I have four pairs of boots: one for rain, one for snow and two for fashion.” Another example is: “My sister is beautiful: she has dark hair and a great smile.” A third example is: “Yes, I have a best friend: my sister.”
Semicolon (;): A symbol that is sometimes used between two independent clauses in place of a period, especially when the second clause is closely related to the first, and to separate words and phrases in long lists that already have commas or other internal punctuation in them. An example of the first use is “I was sad; she hurt me on purpose.” An example of the second use is “I own: three black and yellow hats; one long, dark skirt; and one pair of shoes.”
Apostrophe (‘): The symbol used to form contractions or show possession. It is also used as a single quotation mark around a quote that lies within another quote. Some examples are I’ve and Sara’s.
Quotation marks (“): The symbols used around quotations
Slash (/): The symbol used to separate numbers in dates, in website addresses, in fractional numbers, to separate lines in a poem, in the phrase and/or and more
Hyphen (-): The symbol used to join words together to create a compound word, such as “self-esteem”
En dash (–): The symbol used to indicate a range of numbers or dates
Em dash (—): The symbol that is longer than an en dash and used to indicate a break in thought or to emphasize a phrase. An example is: “My dog—who I love—is sweet as heck.”
Parentheses (()): The symbols used to contain additional information that isn’t otherwise grammatically connected to the sentence. An example is “My dog (who I love) is sweet as heck.”
Brackets ([]): The symbols used to add needed information into a quote that does not include it, to enclose editorial comments or corrections, to indicate an ellipsis in a quote, and for other reasons. An example is “He said, ‘She [Ms. Smith] is the new director.'”
Braces ({}): The symbols used to contain two or more lines of text or listed items to show that they are considered as a unit. Used mostly in mathematics and computer programming. An example is: 2{1+[23-3]}=x.
Ellipsis (…): The symbol used to indicate omitted words or a trailing off of thought
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: GRAMMAR
Noun: A person, place, thing or idea
Proper noun: The given name of someone or something in particular, which are always capitalized
Pronoun:A small word used in place of a noun, including she, her, he, him, they, them, we, it, I and you
Verb: An action or state of being word, like have or walk
Helping verb: A verb that helps some main verbs express the action. There are 23 in all: be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being, have, has, had, could, should, must, may, might, must, can, will, would, do, did, and does.
Adjective: A word that describes a noun or pronoun, like pretty or smart
Adverb: A word that describes a verb, an adjective or another adverb, like slowly or carefully
Article: The words a,an, and the
Preposition: A word placed before a noun to form a phrase that, taken as a whole, modifies another word in the sentence. The most common are in, with, by, for, at, in, on, out, to, under, within and without. An example is: “With my dog as company, I can do anything.” Contrary to popular understanding, it’s okay to end a sentence in a preposition; however, choose the wording that is the most clear.
Prepositional phrase: A phrase that is made up of at least one preposition and one noun (the phrase’s object) and that modifies another word in a sentence. An example is the phrase “on the shelf” in the sentence “The book on the shelf is mine.”
Conjunction: A word that joins words, phrases or clauses but are not part of a clause or prepositional phrase. The most common are and, but, therefore, however, so, for, or, nor, yet, since, while, and because. There are several types of these, such as coordinating conjunctions, which connect grammatically equal elements, and subordinating conjunctions, which connect clauses that are not equal (because, although, while, since, etc.).
Interjection: A word used to express emotion, such as oh, wow, and ah
Sentence: A unit of writing consisting of a single main subject and a single main action. An exception is when a semicolon joins two sentences that both convey a similar idea.
Run-on sentence: A grammatically incorrect sentence that contains two or more independent clauses without proper punctuation (such as a period or semicolon) to separate them
Loose sentence: A sentence that starts with an independent clause and also includes one or more dependent clauses. These can give a paragraph breathability and flow, but too many in a row are tiresome. An example is: “My friend Bill is a farmer and often reminds me of the importance of nature, and I often remind him that I am a city kid, to which he replies that no one is truly a city kid.”
Sentence fragment: A group of words that is missing some element needed to make a complete sentences, such as the subject or the verb. Two examples are “Because I need it” and “Good question.”
Topic sentence: The sentence at the beginning of a paragraph that includes the main idea of the paragraph
Verb tense: The form of the verb that denotes the time of the action. There are twelve of these: four main types (simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive) with three subcategories for each type (past, present and future). When writing, it is important to be consistent in this choice.
Present tense: The verb tense used in the phrases “I eat”
Past tense: The verb tense used in the phrase “I ate”
Future tense: The verb tense used in the phrase “I will eat”
Simple tense: The verb tense used in the phrases “I eat,” “I ate,” and “I will eat”
Progressive tense: The verb tense used in the phrases “I am eating”, “I was eating” and “I will be eating”, where action is ongoing
Perfect tense: The verb tense used in the phrases “I have eaten”, “I had eaten” and “I will have eaten”, where action was or will be completed before a specific time
Perfect progressive tense: The verb tense used in the phrases “I have been eating”, “I had been eating” and “I will have been eating”, where action started in the past, continued up to a specific point in time, and may continue in the future
Clause: A group of words that contains both a subject and a verb
Independent clause: A clause that can stand alone (and might or might not do so). An example is “I baked some bread” in the sentence “Because I like bread, I baked some bread.”
Dependent clause: A clause that cannot stand alone. An example is “because I like bread” in the sentence “Because I like bread, I baked some bread.” It should be placed directly after the independent clause to which it refers.
Suffix: A word ending that changes the word’s tense or meaning. An example is -able in the word “readable.”
Prefix: A word beginning that changes the word’s meaning. An example is -un in the word “unhappy.”
Synonyms: Words with the same or approximately the same meaning. Examples are “happy” and “joyful.”
Antonyms: Words with opposite meanings. Examples are “happy” and “sad.”
Homonyms: Words that are spelled and pronounced alike but have different meanings.Examples include “bear” and “bare.”
Homophones: Words that are pronounced alike but different in meaning, origin, or spelling. Examples are “flour” and “flower.”
Dipthong: A combination of two vowels to make a single blended sound. Examples are au and ou.
Digraph: A combination of two letters to make a single sound. Examples are th and ph.
Palindrome: A word or phrase that is spelled the same when read in either direction. An example is “eve.”
Acronym: An abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word. An example is ASAP, which stands for “as soon as possible.”
When I was in school, nonfiction was textbooks. And the encyclopedia and the dictionary, too. What nobody told me is that there’s another kind of nonfiction out there. There’s the kind that’s actually fun to read.
Modern nonfiction is some of the most entertaining, well-written stuff you can find. (After all, if you want to make money writing about neuroscience, for example, you’d better make it relevant, understandable, and full of fascinating anecdotes, right?) It’s stimulating and informative, but that’s not all it is: it’s a road map for becoming a better person. Nonfiction can widen your perspective, give you wisdom, make you stronger . . . maybe even make you a happier person. Nonfiction helps us come up with new goals and ideas about what our lives can encompass–then takes our hands and helps us draw the circles.
It’s such a great time to be a reader, isn’t it?
Of course, the lists below also feature numerous difficult-to-read works, particularly the advanced compilation. Confession: I haven’t read all of these. Instead, somewhere along the way (mostly in philosophy and history classes) I learned about the significance of the texts–the historical context, the main takeaways and the way the text changed people’s thinking. Feel free to do the same.
This summer, I signed a contract with Creativia, an excellent small publisher who is taking on Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby. Working with them has been an awesome experience so far, and guess what? There’s an audiobook version in the works, too. Stay tuned for details on how to get your new, improved version of the book.
Recently, I enjoyed an email exchange with my friend and fellow spirituality blogger Evan Griffith, a person who thinks deeply and is deeply … alive. Just the kind of person I like having around, in other words. I needed some advice about when to say “yes” and when to say “maybe later.” Here is what he generously offered.
Mollie: I am having a hard time deciding which opportunities are yeses … and which are nos. Some are a clear yes or no, while others are just things that come up and either sound good or don’t.
First question: Do I only do the things I have a clear yes or no about? Pray about everything and be ruthless about waiting for a clear yes before moving forward?
Evan: You get to the pithy heart of things, man.
My inclination is to tell you to only engage in the clear yeses.
I say this partly because of what I know of your life, and partly because you need to keep creating books, putting work out there. Only say yes to powerful projects that keenly interest you–and keep diving deep into your self challenges, sharing them with all of us.
Mollie: Second question: If I do decide to only go with the clear yeses, how do I locate new opportunities? Do I seek them out or do I just wait and let them come if they come? I have always thought it was a recipe for mediocrity and small-mindedness to not search and explore; it really, really limits what you are able to do with your life to just the things that, for example, a suburban mom runs across. There’s a whole world of stuff to do, and sometimes I have a nagging suspicion that I’m not doing as much as I could. On the other hand, I have a friend who is never seeking out the next big thing and she is very, very happy and very Zen. Desire is bad, remember? Buddhism? Byron Katie also says she never plans anything, really. She makes day-by-day plans and if they happen, great, and if they don’t, then that’s fine, too.
Evan: My take is that 1) you stay ready to seize new opportunities that you search out, while also 2) not expending a great deal of energy to do so.
Here’s how that might look: You challenge yourself to take on a project that expands you, one that is fully within your personal mission but also stretches your boundaries a bit. In this way you are continuing to create your life’s work–AND at the same time making connections beyond your immediate community. This allows you to reach out and Zen it, too. You can reach out as much or as little as each week allows.
P.S.: I’m in the camp who believes desire is good–that it’s only negative when you attach too strongly to any one particular path. Abraham Hicks/law of attraction ideas are to me a contemporary restating of the Tao– finding the path of least effort to what is most meaningful. This way you get to have desires and soul surf your way there–or to an approximation of there–or even somewhere you didn’t know was there until your soul surfing toward the original there took you there . . .
Mollie: Extra credit question: What about when I felt something was a clear yes, but then it didn’t turn out well at all? Was I wrong?
I often wonder about that, too. There are times when my clear yes worked out swimmingly, and there have been yes pathways taken that seemed to bear no fruit–or worse, sucked!
I don’t have an answer. Except in the sense of kaizen: continuous small changes or improvements toward a goal. In my understanding of kaizen, every undertaking leads you to greater understanding of what works and what doesn’t, what’s right for you and what isn’t. This clarity leads you to better experiments, better improvements, other small changes that can be made toward your ultimate goal.
I would add that enjoying this process like a scientist, where no answer is good or bad but simply an enlightening answer that allows for further inquiry, is the ultimate spiritual mode of living.
Spirituality isn’t something that can be learned in school. However, a basic understanding of world religions and belief systems encourages appreciation and curiosity regarding other cultures. And that doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY
Christianity: The most followed religion in the world, which is based on the Holy Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ. According to this religion, an all-knowing, all-loving, everywhere-present, all-powerful God created the universe. Humans are sinful and in need of redemption. Salvation–that is, eternal life in a place of bliss called Heaven–comes to those who profess faith in Jesus Christ and repent of their sins. Others go to Hell after death. In addition to faith, followers should practice love, humility, morality, prayer, Bible reading, and good works.
The Holy Bible: The religious text upon which Judaism, Christianity and some other religions are based. It includes the Old Testament, which discusses events that occurred prior to the life of Christ, and the New Testament, which discusses the life of Christ and events following it.
The Old Testament: The group of historical and instructional religious texts written by various Hebrew authors, likely from about 1500 BCE to about 400 BCE, that makes up the first part of the Bible. Some of the stories take place during the Hebrews’ time and some are based on ancient oral traditions. Parts of it are thought to be fairly historically reliable.
The New Testament: The group of historical and instructional religious texts written by various Greek authors in the first few centuries CE, largely about the life of Jesus Christ and the development of Christianity
Jesus Christ: A spiritual teacher who lived in the first century CE in the Middle East and became the founder of Christianity. He was born in Bethlehem, taught in Jerusalem, and was executed in Rome for his teachings. His followers believe he was God incarnated and that he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven after three days in the tomb. His teachings included parables and stories that were recorded by his disciples and later formed the first part of the New Testament of the Bible.
Catholicism: The largest branch of Christianity, which started during Roman times and emphasizes the Holy Trinity; the authority of the Pope, the veneration of saints, and the importance of sacraments, such as baptism, the Eucharist, and confession. It is organized into a hierarchical structure, with the Pope at the top, followed by bishops, priests, and deacons.
The Pope: The bishop of Rome, the highest leader of the Catholic Church, and the leader of the Vatican City State. Their responsibilities include leading religious ceremonies, making doctrinal decisions, appointing bishops, and more.
Protestantism: A branch of Christianity that emerged during the Reformation in the 1500s after Martin Luther and others began to reject certain Catholic teachings, such as the authority of the Pope and the practices of the Eucharist and confession. It emphasizes the authority of the Bible in conveying religious truth and is divided into many denominations, each with their own traditions, such as Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and others.
Judaism: One of the oldest religions in the world, which originated in the Middle East over 3,500 years ago among a tribe called the Israelites, later known as the Jews. It is based on the Torah and other sacred texts. Teachings include: monotheism; the importance of avoiding sin; the importance of maintaining purity; and the importance of separateness. Rituals include the study of Jewish Texts, prayer, observation of the Sabbath and other holidays, circumcision, and bar/bat mitzvah ceremonies.
The Torah: The central text of Judaism, which is made up of the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books detail the history, laws, and teachings of the Israelites.
The Talmud: A text upon which Judaism is partly based and which is interpreted by rabbi scholars. It is a large collection of Jewish laws, customs, and traditions. The Midrash, another important Jewish text, is used alongside it to help interpret it.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints/Mormonism: A large branch of Christianity founded in the U.S. by Joseph Smith in the 1830s after he was visited by the angel Moroni and given the Book of Mormon to transcribe. It is based on the Bible, the Book of Mormon and two other books called The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price. It emphasizes the importance of family and has a strong missionary program.
The Book of Mormon: An important religious text upon which Mormonism is partly based. It tells the story of a group of Israelites who migrated to the Americas and received the gospel of Jesus Christ from God. It also contains teachings on faith, repentance, and the importance of following God’s commandments.
Islam: The second-most followed religion in the world, which is based on the Quran. Teachings include the existence of one merciful, all-powerful God, with Muhammad as his final prophet and messenger; the existence of angels; and the existence of a blissful heaven as well as a place of eternal punishment. Rituals include the Five Pillars and more. The religion is divided into two sects, the Sunni and Shia, with the major original difference between them being who should have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad as the leader of the Muslim community.
Muslim: A follower of Islam
The Five Pillars: The five main spiritual practices of Muslims, which include: recitation of the creed; daily prayers; almsgiving; fasting during Ramadan; and making a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime
Muhammad: The founder of Islam who is considered by Muslims to be the final prophet and messenger of God. He is said to have received his first revelation from God through the angel Gabriel in the early 600s CE while meditating in a cave near Mecca. After spreading his message there, then facing persecution from the Meccan leaders, he and his followers migrated to the city of Medina, an event that marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar. Several years later, he negotiated with the Meccan leaders to perform pilgrimages to Mecca, a holy city of Islam, but the peace treaty was broken and battles ensued. Eventually, he and his followers returned to Mecca and established Islam as the dominant religion in the area.
The Quran: The text upon which Islam is based, which was revealed by God to the prophet Muhammad
Sharia law: A comprehensive system of Islamic law that encompasses all aspects of life, including personal, social, economic, and political matters. It is derived from the Quran, the teachings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad, and the interpretations of Islamic scholars throughout history.
Sufism: A mystical branch of Islam that emphasizes the inward search for God and enlightenment through various spiritual practices such as meditation, chanting, and dance. Sufi masters are those who have achieved a high level of spiritual realization and can serve as guides and sources of inspiration for others.
Hinduism: The third most followed religion in the world, which began around 500 BCE in India. It is based on a variety of texts and traditions, none of which are considered authoritative. Teachings include dharma (the path of rightness); samsara (reincarnation); moksha (enlightenment and liberation from the cycle of birth and death); karma (cause and effect); brahman (the ultimate reality); atman (the true self); maya (illusion); non-violence; respect for all life; vegetarianism; tolerance of other religions; the existence one or more gods, depending on the tradition; and more. Rituals include yoga, chanting, meditation and more.
Dharma: The path of rightness, as taught about in Hinduism, Buddhism and other eastern religions. It refers to the one unchanging truth and the universal cosmic order and calls for carrying out one’s religious duty, maintaining moral virtue, and achieving harmony with nature.
The Vedas: The oldest scriptures of Hinduism, composed in India between 1500 BCE to 500 BCE, that were transmitted orally for many centuries before they were written down. They include four main collections of hymns, prayers, and ritual texts, plus a concluding part that was written later: the Rigveda (the oldest part), the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, and the Atharvaveda, and the Upanishads (the concluding part). The Upanishads are considered to be the foundation of Hinduism, as they contain some of the most central teachings
Bhagavad Gita: An important sacred text in Hinduism which was written during the 100s CE. It is a dialogue that takes place between the god Krishna and the warrior Arjuna on a battlefield.There, Krishna provides Arjuna with teachings on duty, dharma, self-realization, the nature of the soul and more.
Avatars: Various earthly incarnations of the same Hindu god
Buddhism: The fourth most followed religion in the world, which is based on the teachings of Buddha, who lived around 500 BCE. Teachings include the Four Noble Truths; the Noble Eightfold Path; meditation; nirvana; reincarnation; karma; balance (called the “middle way”); nonattachment; compassion; the dharma; the sangha (teachers and fellow travelers one shares their earthly life with); and more.
Sutras: Buddhist texts based on the words of Buddha
Tantras: Buddhist texts created by ancient schools and scholars, which often emphasize rituals and symbolism
Siddhartha Gautama: The founder of Buddhism, who lived and taught in India around 500 BCE (though dates are uncertain) and became known as the Buddha. Born to a royal family in Nepal, he was a wealthy but unhappy young man who became enlightened while sitting underneath a Bodhi tree.
The Four Noble Truths: The four central principles of Buddhism, which include: suffering is universal; suffering is caused by desire and attachment; suffering can end; suffering ends through the Noble Eightfold Path
The Noble Eightfold Path: The eight ways to end suffering, which include: right understanding, right thinking, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration
Confucianism: The belief system that is based on the teachings of Confucius, which include the importance of tradition, morals, manners, rituals, loyalty, obedience, self-reflection, moderation, respect for elders and more. It holds no position on the existence of God or an afterlife, so is sometimes considered a philosophical system rather than a religion. It became the official state philosophy during the Han Dynasty.
Confucius: A philosopher who lived and taught around 500 BCE in China and who wrote The Analects of Confucius. He served in minor governmental positions before becoming a teacher and philosopher who sought a just and moral society.
The Analects of Confucius: The text upon which Confucianism is based, written by Confucius around 500 BCE
Taoism/Daoism: The belief system that is based on various Chinese philosophical writings such as the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching. It might have developed as a reaction to the authoritarianism of Confucianism. Teachings include the Dao (the Way–ultimate truth); wu wei (effortless action); yin and yang (opposites to balance each other); virtue; naturalism; the interconnectedness of all things; the existence of various gods, none of whom are supreme; the eternal nature of the soul; a regular afterlife as well as an enhanced afterlife; an more. Rituals include fortune telling, honoring deceased spirits, meditation; and more.
Laozi/Lao Zu: The Chinese philosopher considered to be the author of the Tao Te Ching, though evidence of his existence is mixed
The Tao Te Ching: One of the foundational texts upon which Daoism is based, which was written around 500 BCE. It consists of 81 short chapters that offer wisdom on a range of topics, including the nature of the universe, the meaning of life, and the principles of good governance.
The I Ching: The oldest Chinese classic text and one of the oldest surviving books in the world, which was compiled around 800 BCE and which influenced the Tao Te Ching. Sometimes used as a divination text, it consists of 64 hexagrams, each of which is made up of six lines that can be interpreted to offer guidance and insight on a range of issues.
Shinto: A traditional religion of Japan arising prior to 700 BCE that features the honoring of ancestors and a variety of nature spirits. With no central authoritative religious text, it emphasizes purity, gratitude, reverence for nature and reverence for the past, partly through rituals and festivals.
New Age spirituality/alternative spirituality: A form of spirituality that emerged in the 1960s and that encompasses a wide range of beliefs and practices, partly adopted from eastern religions. Central teachings include the existence of a single unifying life force, sometimes called God, of which all people are a part; essential human goodness; the absence of Hell and eternal judgment; moral relativism; religious tolerance; and the importance of self-mastery. Many followers also believe in reincarnation; the law of attraction; enlightenment and more. Practices include meditation; channeling; astrology; crystals; alternative healing modalities; and more.
Ten years is about the right amount of time to wait for a moment like this. You wouldn’t want it to happen much sooner (it’d spoil the fun of waiting) or much later (when you’re disillusioned).
That’s about how long it’s been since I started writing books and publishing them on Amazon on my own and now, the time has come: Next Chapter has published my first traditionally published work–and I think they probably got my best one. It’s Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby: A Self-Help Story.
After Rachel and Matthew had their first child, they had a couple of fights. Well, okay, more than a couple—they fought for over three years. They fought about schedules. They fought about bad habits. They fought about feeling unloved.
They even fought about the lawn mower.
And besides actually having their child, it was the best thing that could’ve happened.
Chronicling their greatest hits, from the Great Birth Control Debate to the Divorce Joke Showdown, Fights You’ll Have After Having a Baby is a post-partem story with hope. It offers true stories from the field, nitty-gritty advice and, most important, a nuanced understanding of what it takes to be married with children.
Get the Amazon ebook version here. And definitely help a writer out by posting a review as well. Thanks so much.
People like to say that memorizing dates isn’t important, but I have to disagree–with a caveat. Learning approximate dates allows you to place events and eras in context without sidetracking your efforts toward rote learning. Approximate dates allow your brain to properly categorize the information and make the many helpful associations we rely on for thorough understanding.
In most of the history sections of this book, I have grouped terms into their major eras and placed them in approximate chronological order, but have avoided sharing exact dates. I’ve also provided a brief timeline below to serve as an overall framework for your history learning.
In this book historical terms and concepts are chunked into four broad categories: Ancient History, the Middle Ages, Early Modern Times and Modern Times. If you know which of these historical periods an event occurred in, you will often have a “good enough” understanding of its context for casual conversation and application.
Please note that most names of eras, including Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age, Paleolithic Era, Mesolithic Era and Neolithic Era, are rough divisions. Since they’re defined by their technological developments, they started and ended at different times in different places of the world.
Many times I’ve tried to recall the approximate date for the beginning of the universe, or the invention of fire, or the first known appearance of Homo sapiens on the spot but could not. Wondering out loud whether the Earth formed 4 or 6 billion years ago isn’t embarrassing, but not even having some near-miss guess to choose from can be. Print this timeline, place it on your wall and leave it there until this date framework is easily recalled.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: WORLD HISTORY TIMELINE
PREHISTORY
The Beginning of Time
14 billion BCE: The Big Bang occurred
4.5 billion BCE: The Earth formed
4 billion BCE: The first living organisms formed
3.5 billion BCE: LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, formed
7 million BCE: Hominids evolved
The Stone Age
300,000s BCE: Homo sapiens began using stone tools, beginning the Paleolithic Era 12,000s BCE: The Last Ice Age ended
10,000s BCE: Farming began in the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia; the first towns were built; and the Neolithic Era began
8,000s BCE: Farming began in China
6000s BCE: Farming began in the Indus River Valley (India); metalworking began
4000s BCE: Farming began in the Americas
RECORDED HISTORY
Ancient Times (3000 BCE to 500 CE)
3000s BCE: The first civilization (the Sumerian Empire in Mesopotamia) began; the Egyptian Empire began; writing was invented, beginning recorded history 2000s BCE: The Indus River Valley civilization began; the Chinese civilization began on the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers; the Mayan culture began; the Chavin culture began; bronze metalworking began 1600s BCE: The Shang Dynasty began
1500s BCE: The Phoenician people arose
1200s BCE: The Hebrew people arose
900s BCE: The Assyrian Empire claimed much of Mesopotamia
500s BCE: The Roman Republic was founded; the Persian Empire claimed Mesopotamia and beyond; Buddha lived and taught; Muhammad lived and taught
400s BCE: Athens and Sparta were at their cultural height
300s BCE: Alexander the Great created the Macedonian Empire; the Fujiwara Dynasty arose in Japan
200s BCE: The Qin Dynasty took power; the Maya were at their peak power
100 BCE to 100 CE: The Roman Empire replaced the Roman Republic; Jesus Christ lived and taught
400s CE: The Byzantine Empire formed; the Roman Empire came to an end
The Middle Ages (500 CE to 1500 CE)
600s CE: The Tang Dynasty led China’s Golden Age
800s CE: Vikings began exploring and raiding; the Toltec culture arose; the Maori culture arose; the aborigine culture arose
1000s and 1100s CE: The Crusades took place
1200s and 1300s CE: Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan led the Mongolian Empire; the Aztec Empire began
1300s CE: The Ottoman Empire began; the Black Plague occurred
1400s CE: The Gutenberg Press went into use; the Incan Empire began; Constantinople fell, ending the Byzantine Empire; Russia began to unify
Early Modern Times (1500 CE to 1900 CE)
1492 CE: Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas
1500s CE: Amerigo Vespucci landed in South America and created the first map of the New World; the colonization of South America began; the African slave trade greatly increased; the Ottoman Empire was at its peak; the Elizabethan Era began; the Protestant Reformation began; North American exploration began
1600s CE: The Pilgrims settled Plymouth Colony; the colonization of North America began; the Edo Period began in Japan; the steam engine was invented
1700s CE: The Enlightenment began; Peter the Great unified Russia; Australian colonization began; the French Revolution occurred; the Industrial Revolution began
1776 CE: America declared independence from Great Britain by issuing the Declaration of Independence, starting the American Revolution
1800s CE: The South American colonies gained independence from their colonial rulers one by one; the Scramble for Africa (African colonization) occurred; the Victorian Era took place; the Opium Wars occurred; the first transcontinental railroad opened; Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb; the Wright Brothers invented the airplane
The Modern Era (1900 CE to the Present)
1900s CE: Henry Ford invented the Model T; Einstein discovered the Theory of Relativity; the Australian gold rush began; the dynasties ended in China and were replaced with the Republic of China
1914-1918 CE: World War I occurred
1920s CE: The first modern television was invented
1929 CE: The Wall Street crash set off the Great Depression
1933 CE: The Holocaust began
1930s CE: The Spanish Civil War occurred
1939-1945 CE: World War II occurred
1941 CE: The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, spurring the U.S. to join World War II
1945 CE:World War II ended; the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Japan; penicillin was made available to the public
1940s CE: The League of Nations was founded; India gained independence from Britain
1950s CE: The Korean War occurred; the USSR developed atomic weapons and the Cold War began; apartheid began in South Africa; the civil rights movement began; the Vietnam War began; space travel began
1969 CE: People landed on the moon
1970s CE: The Vietnam War ended
1989 CE: Pro-democracy student demonstrations were violently quashed at Tiananmen Square in China; the Berlin Wall fell
1990s CE: The Gulf War occurred
2001 CE: Middle eastern terrorist group Al-Qaeda attacked New York City on September 11
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: WORLD HISTORY OVERVIEW AND PREHISTORY
Prehistory: All history that took place prior to the invention of writing around 3000 BCE. The term is also sometimes used for all history that took place before the rise of cities and civilizations around 10,000 BCE.
Recorded history: All history that took place after the invention of writing around 3000 BCE, including the present day. It includes Ancient Times (including the Bronze Age and the Iron Age) (about 3000 BCE to about 500 CE); the Middle Ages (about 500 CE to about 1500 CE); Early Modern Times (including the Colonial Period, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and more) (about 1500 CE to 1900 CE); the Modern Era (the 1900s); and beyond.
Ancient history: The historical period from the beginning of recorded history (around 3,000 BCE) to the fall of the Roman Empire (around 500 CE)
The Middle Ages: The historical period from the fall of the Roman Empire (around 500 CE) to the discovery of the New World (around 1500 CE)
Early Modern Times: The historical period from the discovery of the new world (around 1500 CE) to 1900 CE
The Modern Era: The historical period of the 1900s, marked by industrialism, globalism, rapid technological advancement and world war
The Stone Age: The prehistoric era that began when early humans began using stone tools (over 2.5 million years ago) and before they engaged in metal work in a widespread manner. The Stone Age encompassed the Paleolithic Era, the Mesolithic Era and part of the Neolithic Eras and ended at roughly the start of ancient times (around 3000 BCE), when the Bronze Age began, though the end came to different places at different times.
The Paleolithic Era: The prehistoric era that began with the evolution of the species Homo sapiens until the Mesolithic Era
The Mesolithic Era: The prehistoric era that lasted from about 10,000 BCE to about 8,000 BCE in the Fertile Crescent, and later in other areas, when people began creating more complex social structures, building semi-permanent settlements, developing art, domesticating animals and making other changes that led to the Neolithic Era
The Neolithic Era: The historical era that began when people started farming (around 10,000 BCE to 8,000 BCE, depending on the area) and, with this location-stable food supply, began to settle into towns, cities and civilizations. The end of the Neolithic Era took place at approximately the beginning of ancient times (around 3,000 BCE).
The Bronze Age: The historical era that began when humans learned how to forge metal, particularly bronze, which was particularly useful in weaponry. It started during prehistoric times and lasted till about 1000 BCE (though dates vary by location).
The Iron Age: The historical era that began when humans began replacing much of their bronze work with iron work instead. This occurred around 1000 BCE in some places in the world. Iron allowed for lighter, cheaper weaponry, which resulted in a more widespread use of it and more battles.
Last Glacial Age/Last Ice Age: The most recent Ice Age (of many throughout the history of the earth). It lasted from about 2.5 million BCE to about 12,000 BCE. During this time, a land bridge formed between Asia and modern-day Alaska, which humans used to cross into the Americas. The land bridge formed because much of the world’s water was locked up in huge ice sheets and could not flow freely. From the Alaska area, humans settled North, Central and South America.
Last universal common ancestor (LUCA): The most recent living organism that survived to evolve into all current life on the planet, which formed around 3.5 bllion BCE
Hominids: The great apes that eventually evolved into humans, the first of whom lived approximately 7 million BCE
Homo habilis: The first human species, which evolved in East Africa from an unknown, extinct great ape around 2.5 million BCE. They were the first great apes to use stone tools and they had larger brains than their ancestors.
Homo erectus: The human species that evolved from Homo habilis around 1.5 million BCE and migrated out of Africa to Asia. These humans walked upright and were the first animal to use fire for cooking (around 1 million BCE). Around 500,000 BCE they started hunting with spears, building shelters and creating more complex tribal communities.
The Neanderthals: One of the most successful groups of the Homo erectus. After evolving in Africa at an unknown date, they migrated across Asia and Europe after the Sahara desert became passable and lived in Europe until around 40,000 BCE. They mated with Homo sapiens.
Homo sapiens: The modern-day human species. They evolved around 200,000 BCE in Africa and were highly successful, migrating across Asia and Europe along with the Neanderthals. They were the first apes to speak in a complex way. They led other related species in the complexity of their societies and technology. Around 25,000 BCE they began performing ritual burials and making clothing, artworks, jewelry, advanced tools, boats, ovens, pottery, harpoons, saws, woven baskets, woven nets and woven baby carriers.
Cro-Magnons: The group of Homo erectus who, around 25,000 BCE, replaced the Neanderthals in Europe. Like the Neanderthals, they mated with Homo sapiens. From them, Homo sapiens inherited larger brains.
Early modern humans: The group of Homo sapiens that evolved around 40,000 BCE and settled that last two habitable continents: Australia (using boats) and North America (using a land bridge connecting modern-day Alaska to Asia)
Cradle of civilization: The various areas of the world in which civilizations arose, largely independently, along important rivers. These include Egypt (along the Nile River); Mesopotamia (along the Tigris River and Euphrates River); the Indus River Valley (along the Indus River); China (along the Yellow River and Yangtze River); the Incan civilization (in modern-day Peru); and, sometimes, the Mayan civilization (in modern-day Mexico–though this civilization arose later than the others, it might have arisen independently, with little or no external influence). The ability to cultivate land and use it as a reliable food source led to a decrease in the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the formation of the first towns. Town-based Mesopotamians built religious sites, smelted copper, developed writing, built irrigation channels, invented the wheel (which was only used for pottery until later) and much more. Just prior to farming, animal husbandry had begun. Some of the most important crops were barley and wheat, but other grains and vegetables were also grown.
The Neolithic Revolution: The move from a nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a town-based, agriculture-based way of life. The revolution occurred at different times in different places throughout the world; however, the change was seen on all continents in the span of several thousand years, despite no known contact between some of them. Note that the Neolithic Revolution is also called the Agricultural Revolution, though the Second Agricultural Revolution of the 1800s that helped bring about the Industrial Revolution is sometimes also called the Agricultural Revolution. Around the same time that the agricultural revolution began, Caucasians settled Europe for the first time.
Linear A: The written language of the Minoans, which was the world’s first written language. It has not been deciphered by modern historians.
Linear B: The written language of the Mycenaeans, which was the world’s second written language and the first to be deciphered by modern historians
Cuneiform: The world’s first complex written language. It was developed and used in Sumer after approximately 3,000 BCE and used pictographs. Its use triggered the beginning of recorded history.
Hieroglyphics: The world’s second complex written language. It was developed and used in Egypt shortly after cuneiform was developed and, like cuneiform, used pictographs.
Did you ever wonder what the best thing in the world is? Well, pay attention, because I know the answer: it’s reading. Reading is the best thing. Here is my list of the best books in the world that aren’t true, besides the ones in my classic children’s literature list.
ESSENTIAL RESOURCES: CLASSIC FICTION: OLDER KIDS AND ADULTS
Classic Poetry
They Flee from Me, Sir Thomas Wyatt (1500s)
Astrophil and Stella, Sir Philip Sidney (1500s)
Idea, Michael Drayton (1600s)
A Passionate Shepherd to His Love, Christopher Marlowe (1500s)
Sonnets, William Shakespeare (1500s)
There Is a Garden in Her Face, Thomas Campion (1600s)
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning, John Donne (1600s)
Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward, John Donne (1600s)
Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God, John Donne (from Holy Sonnets) (1600s)
Song: To Celia (I), Ben Jonson (1600s)
Song: To Celia (II), Ben Jonson (1600s)
Delight in Disorder, Robert Herrick (1600s)
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, Robert Herrick (1600s)
Easter Wings, George Herbert (1600s)
The Pulley, George Herbert (1600s)
When I Consider How My Light Is Spent, John Milton (1600s)
To My Dear and Loving Husband, Anne Bradstreet (1600s)
To His Coy Mistress, Andrew Marvell (1600s)
The Disappointment, Aphra Behn (1600s)
A Description of a City Shower, Jonathan Swift (1700s)
The Lady’s Dressing Room, Jonathan Swift (1700s)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray (1700s)
The Indian Burying Ground, Philip Freneau (1700s)
The Lamb, William Blake (1700s)
The Sick Rose, William Blake (1700s)
The Tyger, William Blake (1700s)
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, William Wordsworth (1800s)
The Nightingale, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1800s) (1700s?)
Kubla Khan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1800s)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1800s)
She Walks in Beauty, Lord Byron (1800s)
The poetry of John Hopkins (1600s)
Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1800s)
Ode to the West Wind, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1800s)
Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats (1800s)
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, John Keats (1800s)
Ode to a Nightingale, John Keats (1800s)
Paul Revere’s Ride, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Song of Hiawatha, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (from Sonnets from the Portugese) (1800s)
Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1800s)
Fra Lippo Lippi, Robert Browning (1800s)
The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear (1800s)
Battle-Hymn of the Republic, Julia Ward Howe (1800s)
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, Clement Clarke Moore (1800s)
The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe (1800s)
Annabel Lee, Edgar Allen Poe (1800s)
Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman (1800s)
My Last Duchess, Robert Browning (1800s)
The Lady of Shalott, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1800s)
The Lotos-Eaters, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1800s)
Crossing the Bar, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1800s)
Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1800s)
Song of Myself, Walt Whitman (1800s)
When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d, Walt Whitman (1800s)
Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold (1800s)
Modern Love, George Meredith (1800s)
(I never lost as much but twice …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(Success is counted sweetest …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(Not one of all the purple Host …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(“Faith” is a fine invention …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(“Hope” is a thing with feathers …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(There’s a certain Slant of light …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(I felt a Funeral, in my Brain …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(The Soul selects her own Society …), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(I heard a Fly buzz–when I died–…), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(The Heart asks Pleasure–first–)…), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(I like to see it lap the Miles–…), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(Because I could not stop for Death–…), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(My Life had stood–a Loaded Gun–…), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
(Tell all the Truth but tell it slant–…), Emily Dickenson (1800s)
Jabberwcky, Lewis Carroll (1800s)
Drummer Hodge, Thomas Hardy (1900s)
The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy (1900s)
God’s Grandeur, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1900s)
Pied Beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1900s)
To an Athlete Dying Young, A. E. Housman (1900s)
Easter 1916, William Butler Yeats (1900s)
The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats (1900s)
Sailing to Byzantium, William Butler Yeats (1900s)
Lapis Lazuli, William Butler Yeats (1900s)
Mending Wall, Robert Frost (1900s)
The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost (1900s)
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Robert Frost (1900s)
Design, Robert Frost (1900s)
The Emperor of Ice-Cream, Wallace Stevens (1900s)
Anecdote of the Jar, Wallace Stevens (1900s)
The Idea of Order at Key West, Wallace Stevens (1900s)
The Red Wheelbarrow, William Carlos Williams (1900s)
Poetry, Marianne Moore (1900s)
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot (1900s)
The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot (1900s)
I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1900s)
Eight Sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1900s)
Anthem for Doomed Youth, Wilfred Owen (1900s)
in Just-, E. E. Cummings (1900s)
“next to of course god america i”, E. E. Cummings (1900s)
“since feeling is first”, E. E. Cummings (1900s)
Dream Variations, Langston Hughes (1900s)
Song for a Dark Girl, Langston Hughes (1900s)
Theme for English B, Langston Hughes (1900s)
The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, Dylan Thomas (1900s)
Do Not Go Gentle into That Green Night, Dylan Thomas (1900s)
A Child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas (1900s)
Howl, Allen Ginsberg (1900s)
Driving into the Wreck, Adrienne Rich (1900s)
The Colossus, Sylvia Plath (1900s)
Lady Lazarus, Sylvia Plath (1900s)
Coal, Audre Lord (1900s)
Digging, Seamus Heaney (1900s)
The Forge, Seamus Heaney (1900s)
Eggs, Susan Wood (1900s)
The Heavy Bear, Delmore Schwartz (1900s)
The poetry of Ezra Pound (1900s)
Intermediate Classic Fiction
The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan (1600s)
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe (1700s)
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe (1700s)
Gulliver’s Travels, Johnathan Swift (1700s)
The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann David Wyss (1700s)
Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott (1800s)
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen (1800s)
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1800s)
Emma, Jane Austen (1800s)
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen (1800s)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving (1800s)
Rip van Winkle, Washington Irving (1800s)
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (1800s)
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas (1800s)
The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas (1800s)
The Hound of Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle (1800s)
Stories of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle (1800s)
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fennimore Cooper (1800s)
The House of Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1800s)
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1800s)
The Professor at the Breakfast Table, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1800s)
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (1800s)
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens (1800s)
A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (1800s)
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (1800s)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1800s)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne (1800s)
A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne (1800s)
From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne (1800s)
Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne (1800s)
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (1800s)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain (1800s)
Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1800s)
The Time Machine, H.G. Wells (1800s)
The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells (1800s)
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (1800s)
Kidnapped, Robert Louis Stevenson (1800s)
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (1800s)
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Howard Pyle (1800s)
The Gift of the Magi, O. Henry (1800s)
Dracula, Bram Stoker (1800s)
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James (1800s)
The Golden Bowl, Henry James (1800s)
The Way of a Pilgrim, Anonymous (1800s)
The Pilgrim Continues His Way, Anonymous (1800s)
Les Miserables, Victor Hugo (1800s)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo (1800s)
Moby Dick, Herman Melville (1800s)
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde (1800s)
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde (1800s)
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1800s)
The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux (1900s)
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (1900s)
Twelve Men, Theodore Dreiser (1900s)
The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford (1900s)
The Call of the Wild, Jack London (1900s)
To Build a Fire, Jack London (1900s)
White Fang, Jack London (1900s)
A Room with a View, E. M. Forster (1900s)
Howard’s End, E.M. Forster (1900s)
A Passage to India, E.M. Forster (1900s)
The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton (1900s)
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1900s)
And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (1900s)
Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (1900s)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie (1900s)
The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck (1900s)
The Lord of the Rings series, J. R. R. Tolkien (1900s)
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien (1900s)
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1900s)
Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley (1900s)
Our Town, Thornton Wilder (1900s)
All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (1900s)
The Once and Future King, T.H. White (1900s)
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell (1900s)
The Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1900s)
The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger (1900s)
Dune, Frank Herbert (1900s)
Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose (1900s)
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1900s)
Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut (1900s)
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut (1900s)
The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut (1900s)
On the Road, Jack Kerouac (1900s)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote (1900s)
Go Tell It on the Mountain, James Baldwin (1900s)
A Separate Peace, John Knowles (1900s)
To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1900s)
The American Dream, Edward Albee (1900s)
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee (1900s)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera (1900s)
The Princess Bride, William Goldman (1900s)
Rabbit, Run, John Updike (1900s)
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (1900s)
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller (1900s)
All My Sons, Arthur Miller (1900s)
The Color Purple, Alice Walker (1900s)
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton (1900s)
Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (1900s)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (1900s)
Walden Two, B.F. Skinner (1900s)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1900s)
The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allen Poe (1900s)
The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe (1900s)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill (1900s)
The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O’Neill (1900s)
Desire Under the Elms, Eugene O’Neill (1900s)
Morning Becomes Electra, Eugene O’Neill (1900s)
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
A Movable Feast, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
Men Without Women, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway (1900s)
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (1900s)
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (1900s)
Anthem, Ayn Rand (1900s)
Beloved, Toni Morrison (1900s)
Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison (1900s)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou (1900s)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams (1900s)
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams (1900s)
The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams (1900s)
The Stranger, Albert Camus (1900s)
Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1900s)
Native Son, Richard Wright (1900s)
The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (1900s)
Advanced Classic Fiction
The Illiad, Homer (700s BCE)
The Odyssey, Homer (700s BCE)
The Oedipus Plays, Sophocles (400s BCE)
The Aeneid, Virgil (20s BCE)
The Metamorphosis, Ovid (10s CE)
Beowulf, Anonymous (1000s)
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1300s)
The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer (1300s)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Anonymous (1300s)
La Morte Darthur, Sir Thomas Malory (1400s)
Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes (1500s)
The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser (1500s)
Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare (1500s)
Hamlet, William Shakespeare (1500s)
Macbeth, William Shakespeare (1500s)
Othello, William Shakespeare (1500s)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare (1500s)
Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare (1500s)
Utopia, Sir Thomas More (1500s)
Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe (1500s)
Faust, Christopher Marlowe (1500s)
Volpone, Ben Jonson (1600s)
The Alchemist, Ben Johnson (1600s)
The Bourgeois Gentleman, Moliere (1600s)
The Misanthrope, Moliere (1600s)
Paradise Lost, John Milton (1600s)
Paradise Regained, John Milton (1600s)
The Beggar’s Opera, John Gay (1700s)
The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope (1700s)
The Dunciad, Alexander Pope (1700s)
Candide, Voltaire (1700s)
Don Juan, Lord Byron (1800s)
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1800s)
The Brothers Karamozov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1800s)
Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1800s)
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1800s)
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (1800s)
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1800s)
The Seagull, Anton Chekhov (1800s)
The Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov (1800s)
Uncle Vanya, Anton Chekhov (1800s)
The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov (1800s)
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (1800s)
Sentimental Education, Gustave Flaubert (1800s)
Vanity Fair, William Thackeray (1800s)
Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope (1800s)
Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev (1800s)
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf (1900s)
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (1900s)
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (1900s)
Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence (1900s)
Women In Love, D. H. Lawrence (1900s)
Lady Chatterly’s Lover, D.H. Lawrence (1900s)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (1900s)
Ulysses, James Joyce (1900s)
Finnegans Wake, James Joyce (1900s)
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (1900s)
The Trial, Franz Kafka (1900s)
The Bald Soprano, Eugene Ionesco (1900s)
The Lesson, Eugene Ionesco (1900s)
Jack, or the Submission, Eugene Ionesco (1900s)
The Chairs, Eugene Ionesco (1900s)
No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre (1900s)
Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre (1900s)
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett (1900s)
Endgame, Samuel Beckett (1900s)
As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner (1900s)
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner (1900s)
Light in August, William Faulkner (1900s)
A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen (1900s)
Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen (1900s)
The Wild Duck, Henrik Ibsen (1900s)
Miss Julie, August Strindberg (1800s)
Androcles and the Lion, George Bernard Shaw (1900s)
Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw (1900s)
Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust (1900s)
Additional Recommended Classic Fiction
The Orestia Trilogy, Aeschylus (400s BCE)
Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus (400s BCE)
Medea, Euripedes (400s BCE)
The Bacchae, Euripedes (400s BCE)
The Trojan Women, Euripedes (400s BCE)
Hippolytus, Euripedes (400s BCE)
Lysistrata, Aristophanes (400s BCE)
The Frogs, Aristophanes (400s BCE)
The Clouds, Aristophanes (400s BCE)
Odes, Horace (20s BCE)
The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Epictetus (100s CE)
Cur Deus Homo, Anselm (1000s)
The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio (1300s)
Mabinogion, Anonymous (1300s)
Orlando Furioso, Ludovico Ariosto (1500s)
The Schoolmaster, Roger Ascham (1500s)
Tamburlaine the Great, Christopher Marlowe (1500s)
The Jew of Malta, Christopher Marlowe (1500s)
The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster (1600s)
Life is a Dream, Calderon de la Barca (1600s)
Pensees, Blaise Pascal (1600s)
Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem, John Dryden (1600s)
Oroonoko: The Royal Slave, Aphra Behn (1600s)
The Bassett Table, Susana Centlivre (1600s)
The Way of the World, William Congreve (1700s)
Pamela, Samuel Richardson (1700s)
Fantomina, Eliza Haywood (1700s)
A Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft (1700s)
Charlotte Temple: A Tale of Truth, Susanna Rowson (1700s)
The Charterhouse of Parma, Stendhal (1800s)
The Red and the Black, Stendhal (1800s)
The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce (1800s)
Looking Backward, Edward Bellamy (1800s)
Two Years Before the Mast, Richard Henry Dana (1800s)
What Every Woman Knows, J.M. Barrie (1900s)
The Petty Demon, Fyodor Sologub (1900s)
The Three-Cornered World, Natsume Soseki (1900s)
Kokoro, Natsume Soseki (1900s)
I Am a Cat, Natsume Soseki (1900s)
The Pastoral Symphony, Andre Gide (1900s)
The Seven Who Were Hanged, Leonid Andreyev (1900s)
The Life of Man, Leonid Andreyev (1900s)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein (1900s)
Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein (1900s)
Giants in the Earth, O.E. Rolvaang (1900s)
The Key, Junichiro Tanizaki (1900s)
The Horse’s Mouth, Joyce Cary (1900s)
The Sea of Grass, Conrad Richter (1900s)
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak (1900s)
Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata (1900s)
The Sound of the Mountain, Yasunari Kawabata (1900s)
Too Late the Philanthrope, Alan Paton (1900s)
God’s Little Acre, Erskine Caldwell (1900s)
Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank (1900s)
The Ox-Bow Incident, Walter van Tillburg Clark (1900s)
The Assistant, Bernard Malamud (1900s)
The Fixer, Bernard Malamud (1900s)
The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk (1900s)
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers (1900s)
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess (1900s)
The Ballad of Peckham Rye, Muriel Spark (1900s)
A Day No Pigs Would Die, Robert Newton Peck (1900s)
Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya (1900s)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard (1900s)
All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren (1900s)
Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler (1900s)
Green Mansions, William Henry Hudson (1900s)
The Country of the Pointed Firs, Sarah Orne Jewett (1800s)
Little Lord Fauntleroy, Frances Hodgson Burnett (1800s)
The Out of the Silent Planet series, C.S. Lewis (1900s)
You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You, John Ciardi (1900s)
No Longer At Ease, Chinua Achebe (1900s)
The Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton (1900s)
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins (1800s)
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins (1800s)
The Egoist, George Meredith (1800s)
The Man Without a Country, Edward Everett Hale (1800s)
Modern Love, George Meredith (1900s)
The Rise of Silas Lapham, W. D. Howells (1800s)
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene (1900s)
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene (1900s)
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter (1900s)
The Light in the Forest, Conrad Richter (1900s)
Black Spring, Henry Miller (1900s)
Johnny Tremain, Ester Forbes (1900s)
Nineteen, Nineteen, John Dos Passos (1900s)
Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther (1900s)
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Ernest J. Gaines (1900s)
The Vicar of Wakefield, Oliver Goldsmith (1900s)
You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe (1900s)
Dangling Man, Saul Bellow (1900s)
Herzog, Saul Bellow (1900s)
Everyman, Anonymous (1900s)
The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler (1900s)
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy (1900s)
The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy (1900s)
The Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1900s)
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder (1900s)
Giant, Edna Ferber (1900s)
Books by Isaac Asimov (1900s)
Lost Horizon, James Hilton (1900s)
Stranger In A Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein (1900s)
The Maltese Falcon, Dashiel Hammett (1900s)
The Citadel, A. J. Cronin (1900s)
Magic, Inc., Robert Heinlein (1900s)
Waldo, Robert Heinlein (1900s)
A Death in the Family, James Agee (1900s)
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, James Agee (1900s)
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes (1900s)
The Tin Drum, Gunter Grass (1900s)
My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potak (1900s)
The Chosen, Chaim Potak (1900s)
The Promise, Chaim Potak (1900s)
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, Hannah Green (1900s)
A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines (1900s)
Summer of My German Soldier, Bette Greene (1900s)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (1900s)
At the Bay, Katherine Mansfield (1900s)
Red Roses for Me, Sean O’Casey (1900s)
The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster (1900s)
Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham (1900s)
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser (1900s)
An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser (1900s)
Main Street, Sinclair Lewis (1900s)
Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis (1900s)
Tom Jones, Henry Fielding (1700s)
Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding (1700s)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Lawrence Stern (1700s)
Sartor Resarus, Thomas Carlyle (1800s)
Pere Goriot, Honore de Balzac (1800s)
Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol (1800s)
The Ball and the Cross, G. K. Chesterton (1900s)
The Innocence of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton (1900s)
The Wisdom of Father Brown, G.K. Chesterton (1900s)
Contributor: Subhan Schenker, who runs the Osho World of Meditation in Seattle.
Mollie: When someone is fully enlightened, do they feel psychological pain?
Subhan: I have heard that enlightened people feel physical pain but not psychological pain. They may have some awareness that there is a mind that has pain, but it’s very far removed; the mind has dropped into the basement.
Mollie: What do you do when the mind makes a judgment and tries to nudge you—sometimes not so gently—to do something, change something, or at the very least, abhor something about yourself or your life, which then separates you from that feeling of connectedness?
In other words: How do we react to the monsters in our heads?
Subhan: You don’t. It’s not about getting rid of anything. It’s about watching, noticing what’s there. Becoming aware of how the mind functions is tremendously helpful. You’ll be able to experience how parts of the mind push and pull you; that there are so many judgments–about you, about everyone else, about everything! This watchfulness becomes more and more available. And the distance between “you” and the thoughts starts to grow.
Mollie: Where do the monsters go?
Subhan: Once this dis-identification starts happening, the thoughts aren’t perceived of as monsters. They are simply the way the mind functions, and they don’t have to be taken too seriously! They lose their power over you.
I can’t explain it. I can’t intellectualize it. You have to try it for yourself. When you have a thought you don’t like, notice it, remind yourself that it’s not you. I tell people to step back just one-twelfth of an inch from the mind. That doesn’t seem too hard, does it?
Mollie: I do that. It doesn’t always work.
Subhan: No, it doesn’t always work. The mind is tremendously powerful. It can process an unbelievable amount of data in a mere second. It is a miracle that we have the ability to step back from it at all. The only reason we are able to is that what is behind it is indestructible. And usually, we only obtain just a flash of true silence. Maybe for ten seconds you are in silence, and those ten seconds can be life-changing.
Mollie: Why is this the way it is? Why is it so hard to detach from mind, from pain? It doesn’t seem fair.
Subhan: Maybe awareness isn’t that cheap. Maybe awareness has to be earned.
The truth is, though, it’s hard because it’s hard. Because this is the nature of the mind. Asking “why?” is a game of the mind, the one it plays a million times a day. Why can’t I have this? Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I be there, feel that way?
D. H. Lawrence was a very intelligent man. One day he was walking with his nephew in the woods when his nephew asked: “Why are the leaves green?” Lawrence didn’t answer right away; instead, he thought about it for a time, wanting to give an answer that was the truth. Finally, he said, “I know the answer, but you are not going to like it. The leaves are green because they’re green.”
Your mind is not happy with this answer. But your inner being is.
The leaves are green because they’re green. Asking “why” leads to a never ending work game!
“They’re green because of chlorophyll.” But why does chlorophyll create GREEN? “Because of the chemical reaction in chlorophyll.” “But why does this chemical reaction create GREEN and not RED?”
(Once a children learn the “why” game, they can keep adults over a barrel forever!) Ultimately the only real answer we can give is that leaves are green…because they’re green…!
Mollie: So what about when you really do want to change something about yourself or your life? Maybe your life is going pretty well, and you already have a lot of what you want, but you would just like to tweak something just a bit. What next?
Subhan: Well, the first thing I’d say is to watch that desire. Notice your perceived need to change things. Ask yourself what this tweaking is all about. That desire is the mind, and by accepting its ideas, you’re identifying yourself with it. But the truth is, you are not your mind. You are much bigger, much grander than it, and within the real you there is no idea of “lacking.”
What is the point in identifying with a lacking? Don’t. Don’t allow there to be a split between the reality of the person you are and the ideal of the person you want to be. Because whenever you have something called the ideal, you will be in conflict with the real. And if you’re in conflict with the real, you will never arrive. There will never be a time when the mind doesn’t want something different, or something more. Never. So, it’s better to sacrifice the ideal for the real!
Mollie: Then how do we ever change anything, do anything, get anything done? If we’re all perfectly content with things just as they are, won’t we end up sitting around and meditating all day like you?
Subhan: I don’t meditate all day. I am in constant contact with people. I do counseling sessions. I write. I teach classes at the college. I lead four meditation sessions a week at our center. I do numerous weekend workshops.
You see, the mind tells us that if we stop listening to it, and stop being in conflict, we won’t get anything done. But all you have to do is look at the great spiritual masters to see that isn’t true. Buddha, Lao Tzu, Christ, Rumi … They all accomplished a lot and many things change around them.
Mollie: How?
Subhan: When I am in acceptance of who I am, Existence does the changing!
Mollie: How? Let me slow down and look at this process you’re talking about because there’s obviously something I’m not getting here. So, there you are in a state of meditation, disidentified with the mind, blissed out. Then the mind comes up with another judgment—say, “My child is misbehaving, and I want him to stop.” This is the moment we’re really talking about—the moment that repeats itself all throughout the day. This is when you decide to either reidentify with the mind and become the one who is judging, or to not accept the judgment, and just notice it instead. But when you decide to just notice the judgment, isn’t that also a decision the mind is making?
Subhan: No. I don’t decide. We are part of an Intelligence so vast our minds are useless compared to it. When we are in a state of meditation, it is not our minds that do the deciding, but this Intelligence within us.
Mollie: But if you don’t use your mind, how do you speak? How do you carry out the instruction of this Intelligence—say, to hug the child, or to correct them, or to comfort them?
Subhan: For verbal and physical responses like these, you do use the mind and body. They are tools that allow us to be part of the physical world—to speak, to move our bodies. The key is to respond rather than to react. When you react to your child rather than responding, you’re not using your mind; it’s using you.
Mollie: Ah, I see. So you can still speak, talk, respond to the situation without using your mind to do so? Maybe we are defining mind differently. So there is the mind that’s the ego, the monster, the monkey, the neuroses, and there is the mind that’s a simple, useful tool, a tool we use to translate what is going on in our larger Intelligence? And so is the body, when we hug the child rather than yelling at him?
Subhan: Yes, that’s right. The mind is a fabulous tool … but a crappy boss!
Mollie: So how does a spiritual seeker, someone who is committed to becoming disidentified with the mind, make this switch? In that moment when the child is so-called misbehaving, how does she learn how not to react as the mind would like and to instead suspend thinking, then receive and act upon Intelligence, all without using her mind? This sounds like quite the skill. How does she learn how to accept a situation she finds unpleasant, without “making it into a problem,” as Eckhart Tolle says?
Subhan: Meditation. Meditation that really works, really functions, allows you to, for a moment, to be completely separated from the mind. This doesn’t happen overnight! So it’s best to start with simpler things and situations. Practice watching the thoughts whenever you remember to do so, in simple settings that aren’t triggering emotions and control issues, etc. You slowly build up the knack of watching – in your meditation, in simple situations, and then, ultimately in more “difficult” situations.
Mollie: Then what?
Subhan: Then, acceptance comes. And wisdom comes, the wisdom that is right for that moment.
Mollie: Then what? I will ask it again: How do we end up getting what we want out of life, if we’re always just listening to Intelligence and doing whatever it tells us to do?
Subhan: We try to force Existence to give us what we want, but this is ridiculous, totally futile. It’s like we’re playing the greatest cosmic joke on ourselves: We are buddhas, capable of extraordinary things, even peace and enlightenment, and instead we’re acting unconsciously. We pretend to have all kinds of self-imposed limitations, including a mind that has no clue what to do most of the time, that’s creating many more problems than it’s solving. It is our nature to be a buddha. Anything else is going against the flow. To paraphrase Osho: “The miracle is not when we obtain enlightenment. The miracle is when we conceal it.”
Mollie: So if we want to be truly happy and free of mind, we have to let Intelligence give us what it deems best for us, no matter what that may be?
Subhan: That sounds like the mind talking, not wanting to give up its control to a higher intelligence that resides within us. One we step back from the mind, it loses its control and the intelligence is THERE, waiting to be of immense service!
I tell people to ask for 100 percent of what they want, then let the Universe decide, because it will!
Mollie: So would you say that the main purpose of meditation is to teach us acceptance of whatever the Universe deems best for us?
Subhan: The purpose of meditation is to disidentify with the mind. Acceptance comes naturally after that.
Mollie: Then what? What happens after acceptance?
Subhan: Acceptance and gratitude, and peacefulness and fulfillment become real once there is the disidentification from the mind. I had an early experience of this before I became a meditator. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had dropped into meditation. When I was a young man I was driving my mother’s car when it slipped on some ice. In the ten seconds between starting to slide and hitting the car in front of me, I had my first experience of the meditative state. The mind understood that there was nothing it could do, no role for it to play in that moment, and it said, “I’m out of here. You’re on your own.” Those ten seconds felt like an hour. They were bliss. And the silence was so serene, so “palpable!”
Then I hit the car, and the mind said, “Oh, I can deal with this.” And it started in again: “What is your mother going to say, how much is this going to cost,” etc. It was much later that I realized that when the mind disappeared, something extraordinary emerged. And later still, it became clear that this space had something to do with an essential nature that is always there, although covered by the minds overthinking.
Mollie: I see. And yes, that bliss is what I want. But should I make it a life goal of mine to obtain it? Should happiness be something I strive for? Because it seems the more you try to get happy, the more neurotic you become.
Subhan: You’re right! Anything you desire is a product of the mind. And it will create misery around it. Do not make happiness a goal. In fact, do not make anything a goal. All goals keep you stuck in the mind. Life will give you what you truly need.
Mollie: So—and I realize that I’m really trying to pin you down here—would you say that if I practice meditation regularly, and practice living in a state of meditation and acceptance, I will certainly become happy?
Subhan: I will say that if you stay with it, there is every possibility that you will have more moments of feeling loving, feeling grateful, feeling at peace. And that’s assuming that you are doing a meditation that works for you. Because as I said, a lot of people are doing meditation techniques that don’t really work for them.
Also, be really careful because the mind that asks that question is more interested in the goal than the process. As long as you have a goal to your meditation it will keep you locked in your mind, evaluating whether or not your meditation session was “successful.” Every time the meditation happens the mind will judge it based on whether or not it has achieved that goal. The mind is very crafty. Instead, be there sincerely, without the notion of getting somewhere.
The mind doesn’t want you to be happy. How many times have you experienced a moment of joy and the mind has tried to throw you out of it, using every complaint, seeing every shortcoming, predicting every future bad result it could?
The mind doesn’t want you to be happy, because if you are it is no longer needed.
Mollie: And how long will it take for me to get there? How much meditation would you recommend that I do?
Subhan: There is no way for anyone to know that. There is no formula to it. It is a quantum leap. But after a while, you will notice that you don’t take life so seriously, that you have moments of greater clarity, and that you even feel more gratitude, just for being alive. These are clues that the meditation process is working.
Mollie: Is just meditating and noticing the workings of the mind enough? Is there anything else I need to do?
Subhan: Watching the mind is essential. But you can also find people on this path of discovery who can share their experiences and understandings with you. They offer workshops and sessions that can be of great assistance to you in coming back to your inner, essential nature!
Mollie: No mantras? I love my mantras.
Subhan: If you enjoy mantras, then use them! Some mantras can help you go deeper inside. Just remember, the point of meditation is to disassociate yourself from the mind.
Just watch the mind. A thought comes, and you watch it. Nothing more. This is the only real meditation. Saying mantras may be a good and helpful practice, but it may not lead you to the state of meditation, which is awareness, relaxation and no judgment.
Now, let me ask you a question. Have you had enough of what you don’t want yet?
Mollie: I would have to give that some thought.
Subhan: If you have to think about it, you haven’t. When someone is being physically tortured, and they’re asked if they’ve had enough yet, there is not a single instant of reflection. The answer is yes.
Mollie: That is true. I am getting there.
Subhan: I would hope you get there as fast as you can.
Recently Matt Kahn agreed to an interview. I know: how lucky am I? I got to ask him anything I wanted–anything at all. So of course I thought of the hardest questions possible. Enjoy.
Mollie: What spiritual practices do you keep up with regularly? How strict are you?
Matt: I am not strict at all. I meditate, breathe, send blessings to humanity, and love my heart on a daily basis, but only when I get the intuitive nudge to do it. I maintain a daily practice not only to continue my life-long exploration, but to practice for those who need it most, but aren’t in a position to open their hearts just yet.
Mollie: Do you practice self-inquiry, such as Byron Katie’s The Work? If so, is this an important practice for you? Do you recommend it?
Matt: I ask very intriguing questions, but only because my exploration is how I download new teachings to offer. Self-inquiry can be very beneficial, but it has a short shelf-life. The best approach to any process, including self-inquiry is to prepare to be without it. If not, you are subconsciously asking life to continually give you things to work out through your inquiry. If you can engage inquiry from the stand point of always moving beyond it, it can offer benefit. Especially knowing, it is not the inquiry that heals you, but the amount of attention you are offering neglected and repressed parts of yourself that represent the true keys to inner freedom. Undivided attention is the grace of love in action. It is life’s eternal liberator. Self-inquiry merely gives you a framework to face yourself directly.
Mollie: I’ve heard you mention the law of attraction and note that at some point we focus less on “moving around the furniture of our lives”–improving our outward circumstances–and more on increasing our inner joy instead. Is this true for you? At some point did you stop striving to improve the outward circumstances of your life, and focus only on internals instead, or do you still do some of both?
Matt: In each and every moment, life shows us exactly what each moment asks of us. If spending too much time waiting for things to be different, we overlook the fact that anything attracted into reality could only be a catalyst of our highest evolution. This is why I wrote, “Everything is Here to Help You”. While we should always envision greater circumstances for ourselves and others, it is our willingness to ask, “how is this circumstance giving me the chance to face my most vulnerable parts and shine even brighter?” that determines the trajectory of our soul’s evolution. Simply put, life only appears to not give you what you want while preparing you to have things beyond your wildest imagination. With faith in life’s cosmic plan and a willingness to love ourselves throughout it all, experiences deeper than loss and gain are given permission to be.
Mollie: I’m a hard worker, a doer by nature. I love lists, plans and goals. You seem more laid-back. How do you feel about striving toward goals? Is this something you recommend we do, given that our goals are healthy and peace-promoting? Or would you rather we wing it and let the universe take us somewhere we might never have planned to go?
Matt: It’s a balance of both. I have goals but I go about them from a peaceful space of being. Out of the being, the doing can be done with gentleness, precision, and ease. When we are solely focused on the outcome, we are not fulfilling each task in alignment with our soul, but attempting to outrun the hands of time to capture what we fear we were never meant to have. If it’s meant to be, it will come, which requires destiny along with our participation in taking inspired deliberate action.
Mollie: Do you listen for divine guidance for your actions–say, when to go wash the car or feed the dog? What is the terminology you use for this?
Matt: My intuition is always active and flowing. For me, there is a perfect time for everything and when I get that message, I follow through without hesitation. Like stomach grumbles that remind you when to eat, my intuition guides my every move without me having to micromanage anything. It’s just the joy of following the flow of each instinct. It’s a visceral flow of inspiration, not a mental calculation of any kind.
I have a basic working Mandarin vocabulary–what I call “traveler’s Chinese.” Though it’s one of my life goals to become fluent or close to it (mostly because it would be so much fun), I also feel that this basic level is extremely valuable in its own right. Once you get past the language basics and talk to some natives who–surprise!–actually understand you, the groundwork has been laid; you become confident. After that, you have fun with it: talk to people you meet, ask them to explain things, practice a bit here and a bit there. A decade or so later, you’re ready to visit the land of your chosen second language and make a lot of progress in a relatively short amount of time.
A note on the list: There are four tones in Mandarin Chinese. Fortunately, they’re not hard to master; just do an Internet search to hear them and practice. One more tip: At first, don’t worry about grammar too much. Get the main verbs, the main short words (“because,” “with,” “and,” “very,” and the time- and distance-related vocabulary) and the whole introductory conversation basics, then move on to your nouns–food, body parts, etc. When you practice, make as many mistakes as you can possibly make, grammar-wise; just get yourself understood. That’s the goal.
Conversational Basics and Common Phrases
Hello: Ni3 hao3 How are you: Ni3 hao3 ma What is your name: Ni3 de ming2 zi jiao4 shen2 me My name is: Wo3 de ming2 zi jiao4 First name: Ming2 zi Family name: Gui4 xing4 How old are you: Ni3 ji1 sui4 le I am __ years old: Wo3 you3 __ nian2 Good morning: Zao3 an1 Good afternoon: Good evening: Wan3 an1 Yes: Shi4 No: Bu4 shi4 Please: Qing2 May I: Ke3 yi3 Thank you: Xie4 xie4 Excuse me/I’m sorry: Dui4 bu4 qi2 You’re welcome/I don’t mind: Mei2 guan4 xi1 No problem/I don’t care: Bu4 yao4 jin3 Where are you from: Ni3 lai2 zai4 na3 li3 I am from: Wo3 lai2 zi4 I speak __: Wo3 shuo1 __ Do you speak __: Ni3 shuo1 __ ma? U.S.A.: Mei3 guo2 American: Mei3 guo2 ren2 English: Ying1 wen2 China: Zhong1 guo2 Chinese (person): Zhong1 guo2 ren2 Chinese (Mandarin language): Pu2 tong2 hua4 Chinese (Cantonese language): Guang3 dong1 hua4 How do you say: Wo3 zem2 me shuo1 What does this mean: Shen2 me yi4 ci2 Say it again: Zai4 shuo1 yi1 ci4 May I ask: Qing2 wen3 Can you please: Ni3 ke3 yi3 Nice to meet you: Hen3 gao1 xin1 jian4 dao4 ni3 Be careful: Xiao4 xin1 (yi1 dian3) Hurry up: Kuai4 yi1 dian3 Wait a moment: Deng3 yi2 xia4 I am ready: Wo3 zhu3 bei4 hao3 le Both are fine: Shen2 me dou1 ke3 yi3
Verbs
To be: Shi4 To go: Qu4 To want: Yao4 To use: Yong4 To need: Xu3 yao4 To know: Zhi1 dao4 To like: Xi3 huan1 To love: Ai4 To live: Zhu4 To be born: Chu1 sheng1 To die: Si2 To sleep/go to bed: Shui4 jiao4 To wake up: Xing3 lai2 To cook: Zuo2 (fan4) To read: Kan4 (shu1) To practice: Lian4 xi3 To make/do: Zuo3 To look at: Kan4 To see: Kan4 dao4 To look for: Zhao3 To walk: Zou3 (lu4) To run: Pao3 (bu4) To go to work: Shang4 ban4 To finish work: Xia4 ban4 To rest: Xiu2 xi3 To play: Wan2 To sing: Chang4 ge1 To smile: Wei1 xiao4 To laugh: Da4 xiao1 To hug: Bao4 To cry: Ai1 hao4; ku1; bei4 qi4 To dance: Tiao4 wu3 To swim: You2 yong3 To take pictures: Zhao4 xiang4 To go shopping: (Qu4) guang4 jie1; gou4 wu4; mai3 dong1 xi1 To go to the bathroom: Shang4 ce4 suo3 To take a shower: Xi3 zao3 To wash hands/face: Xi3 lian2/shou3 To ride (a bike, etc.): Qi2 To ride (a car–no movement): Zuo4 To visit (someone): Bai4 fang3 To visit (something): Can1 guan1 To leave: Zou3 To wait: Deng3 (dai4) To stay (there): Liu2 zai4 (zhe1 li3) To stay home: Dai4 zia4 jia1 li3 To stand up: Zhan4 qi3 lai2 To sit down: Zuo4 xia4 To find: Zhao3 dao4 To pay: Fu4 qian2 To break: Sui4; lan4 To fix: Xiu1 To take: Na2 To listen: Ting1 (shuo1) To lay down (something): Fang4 To lay down (body): Tang3 xia4 To meet (regularly): Peng4 dao4; peng4 tou2 To meet (past or future): Kan4 jian4 To show/indicate: Zhan3 shi3 To mistakenly think: Yi3 wei2 To try: Shi4 yi1 shi4 To taste/experience: Chang2 hang2; chang2 yi1 chang2 To guess: Cai1 yi1 cai1 To translate: Fan1 yi4 To hate: Hen4 To put on/wear: Chuan1; dai4 To change clothes: Huan2 yi4 fu2
Time Words
When: Shen2 me shi2 hou4 How long: Duo1 jiu2 Early: Zao4 Late: Wan2 Soon: Hen3 kuai4 Not soon: Hen3 man4 Always: Zong3 shi4 Never: Cong2 lai2 (mei2 you3) Again: Zai4 Often/usually: Jing1 chang2 Sometimes: You3 shi2 hou4 Still more (time): Hai2 (you3) Daytime: Wan3 shang4 Nighttime: Wan3 shang4 Day: Tian1 Morning: Zao3 shang4 Afternoon: Xia4 wu3 Time: Shi2 jian1 Hour: Xiao3 shi2; zhong1 tou2 Minute: Fen1 zhong1 Second: Miao3 zhong1 This week: Zhe4 zhou1 Next week: Xia4 zhou1 Last week: Shang4 zhou1 Before/earlier: Yi3 qian2; zai4 shi1 qian2 After/later: Yi3 hou4; hou4 lai2; dai1 hui3 At the same time: Tong2 shi2 First: Di1 yi1 Second: Di1 er4 One time: Yi1 ci4 The first time: Di1 yi1 ci4 Midnight: Ban4 ye4 Long (time): Jiu2; chang2 shi2 jian1 A while: Yi2 xia4 Future: Wei4 lai2 Past: Ever: Guo1; ceng2 jing2
Size and Amount Words
How much/how many: Duo1 shao1 More: Bi3 (jiao4) duo1 de; Less: Bi3 (jiao4) shao3 de A little: Yi1 dian3 A little more: Duo1 yi1 dian3 Most: Zui4 Some: Yi1 xie3 de Only: Zhi2 you3 Still more (amount): Hai2 you3 Almost: Cha4 bu4 duo1 Not enough: Bu2 gou4 Not quite: Bu2 tai4 Too (much): Tai4 Size: Da4 xiao3 Short (people): Ai3 Short (stuff): Duan3 Tall (people): Gao1 Long (things): chang2 Wide: Kuan1 kuo4 de Deep: Shen1 de Empty: Kong1 dong4 Amount: Deng3 yu2 Enough: Gou3 le None: Mei2 you3 yi1 ge Both: Liang3 Both/all: Dou1; quan2 bu2 de Another one: Zai4 yi1 ge Equal: Deng3 (yu1) How many?: Ji3 ge Another: Bie2 de One or two: Yi1 liang2 ge Either one: Bu2 lun4 . . . dou1 (hao1) Only: Jiu4 Pound: Bang4 Kilo: Gong1 jin1 1/2 kilo: Jin1 Still more: Hai2 you3 Others: Qi2 ta1 de Every: Mei3 yi1; mei3 ge Each: Mei3 yi1 ge The whole (one): Zheng3 ge4 The whole (time): Suo3 you3 (shi2 jian1) Everything: Yi1 qie4 dou1; shen2 me dou1; suo3 you3 shi4 wu4 Something: Xie1 shi4 Nothing: Mei2 you3 dong1 xi1; mei1 you3 shi4 Everybody: Mei2 ge ren2; ren2 ren2 Anything: Wu2 lun2 shen2 me Somebody: Yi1 ge ren2 Nobody: Mei2 you3 ren2 Anybody: Ren4 he2 ren2; shen2 me ren2 Everywhere: Mei3 ge di4 fang1; dao4 qu4 dou1 Somewhere: Yi1 ge di4 fang1 Nowhere: Mei2 you3 di4 fang1 Anywhere: Ren4 he2 di4 fang1
Direction and Location Words
A direction: Fang1 xiang4 A location: Fang1 wei4 Here: Zher4 There: Nar4 High: Gao1 Low: Di1 Beside: Zai . . . pang2 bian1/lin2 jin4 Between: Zai4 . . . zhi1 jian1/zhong1 jian1 Ahead: Zai . . . qian2 fang1/qian2 mian4 Over/above/on: Zai4 . . . shang4 mian4; gao1 yu2 In: Zai4 . . . li3 bian1 Under: Zai4 . . . xia4 mina4 The top: Zui4 shang4 mian4; zui4 shang4 bian4 The bottom: Di3 bu1; zui4 di3 Side/limit: Bian1 Behind: Zai . . . hou4 mian4 Both sides: Liang3 bian1 This side: Zhe4 bian1 That side: Na4 bian1 Central: Zhong1 yang1 de Inner: Li3 bian1 de Outer: Wai4 bian1 de Right: You3 Left: Zuo3 Center: Zhong1 jian1 Close/near: Jin4 Far away: (Yao2) yuan2 To travel forwards: Ziang4 qian2 zou3 To travel backwards: Ziang4 hou4 zou3 On the corner: Zai4 jiao3 luo4 One block: Yi1 kuai4 zhuan1 To turn right: Xiang4 you4 zhuan3 To turn left: Xiang4 zuo3 zhuan3 To go straight: Zhi2 zou3 North: Bei1 South: Nan2 East: Dong1 fang1 West: Xi1 fang1 Easterner: Dong1 fang1 ren2 Westerner: Xi1 fang1 ren2
Other Small Words
This: Zhe4 ge That: Na4 ge But/nevertheless: Ke3 shi4; dan4 shi4 If: Ru2 guo3; yao4 shi4 Which: Na3 yi1 ge Although/even though: Sui1 ran2 Therefore: Suo3 yi3 Will: Hui4; jiang1 (yao4) Should: Ying1 gai1 Because: Yin1 wei4 Anyway/regardless: Qi2 shi2; bu4 guan3 Also: Ye3; you4 Probably: Huo4 xu3; ke3 neng2 In addition: Ling4 wai4; hai2 you3; chu1 ci3 gi4 wai4 Instead of: Er4 bu2 shi2 Not so: Bu4 ran2 To: Qu4 (location); gei1; zi1 (time) From: Cong2; lai2 zi Of: Shu3 yu2 For: Wei4 (Word at end of a question): Ma (Word at end of a completed statement): Le
“So that’s what stuff is.” That’s an important realization. It could be a breakthrough moment in one’s education. Don’t underestimate young children’s ability to grasp many basic chemistry concepts, either; the earlier they start thinking about the big questions, the more interested and less intimidated they’ll be by them later on.
Like most other subjects, science is best learned through conversation. Experiments are great, too, but they’re not always necessary. If you have little kids who can’t yet handle close proximity to anything magnetic, explosive or filled with water, choose a few scientific concepts to talk about per day, and send the older kid to a more hands-on science class. (Video demonstrations, like those on YouTube, are great, too.)
That said, if you can manage it, there’s a huge number of great science project ideas out there, and hands-on projects are definitely a great memory aid.
ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE: CHEMISTRY
Chemistry: The science of matter, including what it is and how it’s made
Chemical: Any substance made up of two or more atoms. This word is also used to refer to human-synthesized substances; however, this is a colloquial usage.
Matter: Anything that is made of particles, takes up space (has volume), and has mass. It is one of only two “things” in the universe. The other is energy.
Weight: A measure of the force of gravity on something. It changes relative to where in space an object is located; for example, a book weighs less on the moon than on the earth.
Mass: A measure of something’s absolute heaviness (the amount of matter within it). It doesn’t change when the forces (such as the gravitational force) change because it is measured relative to an absolute standard (one kilogram).
Density: The measure of something’s mass per unit of volume. Objects with more of this are heavier than other objects with less that take up the same amount of space.
The three states of matter: Solid, liquid and gas
Solid: A substance with a definite shape and definite volume
Liquid: A substance with definite volume but a varying shape
Gas: A substance without a definite shape or definite volume.
Atoms: The building blocks of molecules and the smallest units of matter that retain the chemical properties of an element. Each is made up of a nucleus containing protons and neutrons and a shell containing electrons that spin around the nucleus. They also contain other subatomic particles and a great deal of empty space. (The space between subatomic particles in an atom is relatively similar to the space between heavenly bodies in the universe.) Molecules are formed when atoms chemically bond together through sharing or transferring electrons. Whereas molecules can be easily split through everyday chemical reactions, atoms require extraordinary amounts of energy to split them. Also note that a sheet of paper is about one million atoms thick.
Subatomic particles: The incredibly tiny pieces of matter that make up atoms. They include protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, and more. They cannot be separated from each other without using extraordinary amounts of energy.
Nucleus: The center part of an atom that holds protons and neutrons
Protons: The positively charged parts of an atom, which are located inside the nucleus. The number of these in an atom corresponds to its element and its atomic number. For example, the oxygen atom has eight of these and its atomic number is eight.
Neutrons: The parts of an atom that contain no charge, are located inside the nucleus and, along with the protons, determine the atom’s mass number. The number of these in an atom is variable, with each possible variation creating a different isotope of the same atom.
Electrons: The negatively charged parts of an atom, which are located outside the nucleus and spin around it, and that enable chemical bonding between atoms
Atomic shells: The layers within an atom that surround the nucleus and contain electrons. They are organized by energy level, with the electrons in the innermost shell having the lowest energy, and those in the outermost shell having the highest energy.
Quarks: Subatomic particles that make up protons and neutrons
Element: A substance that contains only one kind of atom
Isotope: A particular variation of an atom, which is determined by the number of neutrons in that atom. For example, carbon-12 and carbon-13 both have six protons but carbon-12 has six neutrons and carbon-13 has seven neutrons. This means they also have different mass numbers. Also, while there might be some differences in their physical properties, chemically they behave alike.
Molecule: Any chemically bonded group of atoms, whether atoms of the same type, which form an element, or atoms of different types, which form a compound. Theirbonds can only be broken through chemical change.
Compound: A combination of two or more substances that are chemically bonded together. The substances can’t be separated by physical means, only by chemical reactions. An example is water, whose chemical bonds are broken only through chemical reactions.
Mixture: A combination of two or more substances that are not chemically bonded and can, therefore, be separated through physical means. An example is air, which is not a single gas, but a mixture of gases and other particles. The gases aren’t chemically bonded to each other, and can be separated without breaking any chemical bonds.
Periodic Table of the Elements: A chart listing each known element, organized by these elements’ atomic numbers
Atomic number: The number of protons in an atom, which indicates the atom’s chemical properties and, by extension, its element type. The number of protons in an atom is the same as the number of electrons in an atom.
Mass number: The total number of protons and neutrons in an atom
Chemical bonding: The joining of atoms to create molecules
Chemical reaction: The process that occurs when bonds between atoms in a substance are broken and the atoms rearrange to form new substances with different properties. An example is baking a cake: the cake is formed after heat changes the molecular structure of the batter.
Chemical symbol: The letters that represent the atoms of a particular element; for example, C for carbon
Chemical formula: A notation using chemical symbols and numbers to indicate the types and numbers of atoms present; for example, CO2 and H2O
Ion: A positively or negatively charged particle that is formed when an atom or molecule gains or loses one or more electrons. When an atom gains one or more electrons, it becomes negatively charged, and when it loses one or more electrons, it becomes positively charged.
Covalent bond: A chemical bond formed when atoms share electrons. Each atom still has its proper total number, but some of its electrons are attracted to the other atoms and stick there. Most non-metal elements are formed withthis type of bond.
Double bond: A chemical bond formed when two atoms share two electrons each with each other
Ionic bond: A chemical bond formed when one atom loses one or more electrons to another atom. This creates a positively charged ion in one atom and a negatively charged ion in the other, which are attracted to each other.
Metallic bond: A chemical bond between metal atoms formed when the atoms share a pool of electrons, which allow the metals to easily conduct electricity
Hydrogen (H): The most abundant element in the universe, which forms water when it is burned in oxygen and which can form compounds with most other elements
Helium (He): The second most abundant element in the universe, though is not abundant in the earth’s atmosphere due to its low atomic weight and high velocity
Oxygen (O): The third most abundant element in the universe, which helps plants and animals release energy from food through the process of cellular respiration
Carbon (C): The fourth most abundant element in the universe, which is found in all organic compounds and in more compounds overall than any other element
Water (H2O): The most common liquid on earth, one that is a universal solvent and necessary for life, and that is formed when two H2 molecules and one O2 molecule undergo a chemical reaction called combustion, releasing two H2O molecules and energy
Carbon dioxide (CO2): A greenhouse gas produced through plant respiration, decomposition of organic material, the burning of fossil fuels and more
Sodium chloride (NaCl): Table salt, a combination of a metal (sodium) and a non-metal (chlorine)
Carbon monoxide: A poisonous gas formed when fuels burn in a place with limited oxygen, such as an engine
Salt: A chemical compound formed from the reaction of an acid with a base, which usually crystallizes in the form of cubes
Organic compound: Any compound that includes carbon (with a few exceptions)
Soluble: Able to dissolve in a solvent
Insoluble: Unable to dissolve in a solvent
Solution: The combination of a solvent and the substance that is dissolved in it
Metal: An element or an alloy that is shiny in appearance; conducts heat and electricity; and usually remains solid at room temperature. Some, like iron and nickel, are also magnetic. The definition of this term is not exact, and changes as its application changes. Also, some non-metal elements become metals at very high temperatures.
Alloy: A mixture of two or more metals or a metal and a different element to make a substance with enhanced usefulness
Acid: A chemical substance with a pH less than 7 that donates protons or hydrogen ions when dissolved in water, donates electrons to form chemical bonds and tastes sour when found in liquid solutions
Base/alkaline:A chemical substance with a pH greater than 7 that accepts protons from hydrogen ions in liquid solutions. Note that adding this type of substance to an acid helps neutralize the acid and produces water and salts.
pH scale: The 14-point scale used to measure whether a liquid solution is basic, acidic or neutral, with 7 being neutral, higher than 7 showing alkalinity and lower than 7 showing acidity
Corrosion: The damaging chemical reaction that occurs to a substance by its surrounding environment. For example, metal corrosion can occur when oxide forms on the surface of the metal.
Electrolysis: The separating of individual elements in a compound by passing an electric current through it when it is molten or in a solution
Fermentation: The process in which yeast and some bacteria break down sugars or other organic compounds into simpler compounds like carbon dioxide to produce energy without the use of oxygen
Endothermic reaction: A chemical process that absorbs heat
Exothermic reaction: A chemical process that emits heat
Oxidation: A chemical reaction in which a substance loses electrons, often by the addition of oxygen, causing it to change in some way. An example is the presence of iron oxide (rust) in metal exposed to water.
Reduction: A chemical reaction in which a substance gains electrons, often by the removal of oxygen, causing it to change in some way. An example is the conversion of iron oxide (rust) to iron in the presence of a reducing agent, such as hydrogen gas.
Oxidation-reduction (redox) reaction: A chemical reaction in which substance undergoes reduction, causing another to undergo oxidation. This happens because the substance undergoing reduction donates electrons to the other substance.
