We had an ancient Russian acting coach at my drama school who said the worst offense you could commit was to let your subtext show. That is the point of acting, is to be saying one thing and not be allowed by society or your predicament to show what you're really feeling. In a way, I think that's why the therapy generation has killed script writing, because all you ever get is people going, "Hi, I'm feeling really angry right now. "
For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one’s predicament into a human achievement.
At the end of the day, we're defined by our predicament, not by the sides of town.
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experiences of nearly forty years at sea, I merely say uneventful. I have never been in an accident of any sort worth speaking about. . . . I never saw a wreck and have never been wrecked, nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.
predicament, n. The wage of consistency.
Two things are to blame for our predicament, one a corollary of the other. The first reason is that we did not have enough troops in Samarra. The skill and courage of 150 American soldiers prevented chaos, but was never enough to fully secure a city of 120,000 people or maintain the rule of law [. . . ] Second, because of a lack of troops, American military leaders are forced to make a choice between mission objectives and self-preservation.
Life is a predicament which precedes death.
Everywhere, the ethical predicament of our time imposes itself with an urgency which suggests that even the question Have we anything to eat? will be answered not in material but in ethical terms.
Life is adventure, not predicament.
In the Middle East, bread is so essential to everyday life that word for it in Egyptian Arabic is aish, which means life. It's always been the staple grain. But the predicament is that the Fertile Crescent, where wheat cultivation began, has now become the part of the world most dependent on imported wheat.
I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, "Judge not lest you be judged. "
Now when I hear about someone's illness, no matter what dire their predicament seems to be, I know that if they're willing to do the mental work of releasing and forgiving, almost anything can be healed. The word incurable, which is so frightening to so many people, really only means that the particular condition cannot be cured by 'outer' methods and that we must go within to effect the healing. The condition came from nothing and will go back to nothing.
The real nature of our predicament is completely opaque to us.
I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I'm in discussions with, if I'm working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament.
Ageing is a privilege not a predicament.
I saw one of my primary tasks was to do what I could to restore confidence, to ensure that people knew and cared about their predicament and that governments were committed to helping. Equally an optimism had to be engendered, a belief that not only would they recover but would emerge 'bigger, brighter and better than ever. '
Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit. . . So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don't have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.
We are not angels, we are merely sophisticated apes. Yet we feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, craving transcendence and all the time trying to spread our wings and fly off, and it's really a very odd predicament to be in, if you think about it.
At last, however, he began to think -- as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too. . .
The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.
