Lazy days reading in Parisian cafés, peppered with those bursts of excitement and adventure I love so well. Our desire for anything is always in proportion to the difficulty which attends the attainment of it. Ethical disagreements often follow cultural lines. The cultural tradition is a prime source of the individual’s views and most disagreements in ethics among individuals arise from differences of innate constitution or personal history between the individuals. It is always right to do what will make all affected at least as happy as they could be made by any other possible action. It follows from this principle that in some situations it will be right to lie (for instance, to tell a man that he is not mortally ill when one knows he is, if he cannot bear the truth) and that in other situations it will be wrong to lie. Thus, the rightness of an act is relative to the circumstances because sometimes all people need to survive, recover, or feel good is a little faith. Genius is the activity which repairs the decay of things. #RyanPhillippe 1 of 7

Suppose we think that the only reasonable way to correct a person’s ethical appraisal is to show him or her that it does not coincide with the appraisal one would make if one were vividly informed about all the relevant facts and were impartial in one’s judgment. Some people are simply left cold by the ideal of equality of welfare and others may view it as a basic human right, when both groups have exactly the same beliefs about what equality of welfare is and what its consequences would be. I finished reading the “The Mouse King’s Cheese,” to my niece, who jumped up and down and cried, “’Gain! Read it ‘gain” If I can inspire a similar response in you, I will be satisfied. Our great grandfather fought near the end of the Civil War, and we grew up listening to his stories. That man could spin a tale! No one else could make war sounds unlike war. He enthralled even my son, such that he pasted on a fake mustache and played Rough Riders with me all Summer. I have some things on my mind that I do not want to share. Cheerier thoughts certainly are needed. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 7

Whatever the number of a person’s friends, there will be times in life when one has too few; but if one has only one enemy, one is lucky indeed is one has not one too many. When amicable relations between two people happen to be in jeopardy, there is at least danger of ensuring quarrel if the friendly intercourse has been of the artificial growth. You know, the nights are the worst. I sit by the fire, listening to music or holding an unread book on my lap, and I cannot stop my mind from racing, cannot stop my ears from hearing the tweaker upstairs constantly doing laps in his apartment. I try to go to bed early, so that I do not have to think and feel alone, but I just cannot fall asleep. I admit, I have been pulling out all of your old letters and rereading them, sometimes falling asleep covered in your words. It makes me feel that you are really here and that I am not alone. I can imagine we are talking. By the way, do you realize how pretentious you sounded in your early letters to me? You must have really wished to impress me. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 7

Man has a need of perfection—that is, the fulfillment of both his intellectual and his emotional powers, which indeed are not existentially separate. The more adequate an idea, the more it is pleasing, liberating, and intrinsically human. The culmination of the ethical life—that is, the life devoted to freedom of the intellect—is found in the intellectual love of God. Some people actually recognize the evil of loving. Love drives men and women to suicide, madness, and extremes of sacrifice. Some people enjoy love not for the sake of their beloved, but for the sake of their own self-centered pleasure. It is like a loathing that invades them while satisfying their passion. However, through self-knowledge, people learn to look upon the eternal light and ultimately come to the complete love of God. The fruit of love is knowledge of the divine. My new life is filled with someone guiding me through paradise. Sometimes I seem to be writing in the vein of courtly love, sometimes in the mystical vein, but in both cases love represents a force that attracts people to a nobler life. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 7

However, to suffer because of love appears to be analogous to the sufferings of the martyrs—an abnegation of the self for a value that transcends egoism. Love has the power to free the soul from its bodily prison. Why is it that I am always at a loss for words when you need them the most? If my thoughts of you right now could be put into words so easily, then you would be getting the firmest of epistolary embraces. There are no constrains on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect. Courage is a door that can only be opened from the inside. Father, thank you. You are the God who is more than enough. This is my year to go to a new level. This is my year to see a supernatural increase. I am making room for your far-and-beyond favor. I am positioned under the open windows of Heaven with my heart, mind, body, and soul to be filled by your love. Do a new work in me, take me beyond the barriers of the past, and help me to step into the abundance you have in store. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 7

God has a mansion of blessings stored up for us. Do not let a limited mind-set hold one back. Although we cannot see how it will happen, God has a way. Take off the limits and make room for him to do something new, we will go beyond the barriers of the past and step into the abundance God has in store. When God puts a promise in our hearts, we have to come to the place where we believe that promise so strongly no one and no circumstance can move us.  A medical report may say there is no way one will get well. It may look like one will never have enough money. All the circumstances may indicate that one will never accomplish one’s dreams, never meet the right person, or never see your family restored. However, deep down you have got to have this unshakable confidence—a knowing that God is on the Throne working on our behalf, so that we go out each day with passion, with expectancy, and looking for the great things God has in store. If you consider only the negatives, you will be discouraged and doubt will creep in, keeping you from God’s best. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 7

Do not focus on the negative things in life that experts or one’s mind are saying. Do not worry about how big your problems are. Instead, focus on how big my God is. He spoke the World into existence. He flung the stars into space. He is not limited by the natural. He has supernatural power. With the love that moves the Sun and the other stars, identify that with your own lobe and with the love that the cosmos has for its Creator. When we focus on God instead of on our circumstances, doubt, fear, anxiety, and negativity do not have a chance. Make God bigger than the problems of life and they will become smaller. When we magnify God instead of magnifying our difficulties, faith rises in our hearts. That faith will keep us fully persuaded that God will make a way, even though we cannot see a way. And the beauty is that God will show us amazing things. Neither fighting nor being alone is how I hope to spend my Christmas this year. When we touch hands across the miles, at the stroke of midnight, it will make it all more bearable. I will close my eyes and stand still as I try to remember just how your fingers press on my shoulder, how your hair tickles my chin, how your body measures the length of mine. I caught the faint smell of flowers and has the wild thought that perhaps it worked, that, for a brief moment, our spirits had somehow transcended the distance between us. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 7