In conversation with young adults and experts alike, journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a "best life" has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today, across their personal and professional lives--and how ordinary, meaningful experiences may instead be the foundation of a fulfilled and contented life. Young adulthood: the time of our lives when, theoretically, anything can happen, and the pressure is on to make sure everything does. Social media has long been the scapegoat for a generation of unhappy young people, but perhaps the forces working beneath us--wage stagnation, student debt, perfectionism, and inflated costs of living--have a larger, more detrimental impact on the world we post to our feeds. An Ordinary Age puts young adults at the center as Rainesford Stauffer examines our obsessive need to live and post our #bestlife, and the culture that has defined that life on narrow, and often unattainable, terms. From the now required slate of (often unpaid) internships, to the loneliness epidemic, to the stress of "finding yourself" through school, work, and hobbies--the world is demanding more of young people these days than ever before. And worse, it's leaving little room for young people to ask the big questions about who they want to be, and what makes a life feel meaningful. Perhaps we're losing sight of the things that fulfill us: strong relationships, real roots in a community, and the ability to question how we want our lives to look and feel, even when that's different from what we see on the 'Gram. Stauffer makes the case that many of our most formative young adult moments are the ordinary ones: finding our people and sticking with them, learning to care for ourselves on our own terms, and figuring out who we are when the other stuff--the GPAs, job titles, the filters--fall away.

The incidences narrated here are faced by the common man in India in his day-to-day routine life.He does not have time to react to it. His "no reaction" attitude eventually became known to the perpetrators of the atrocities. His distress, agonies, worries are overshadowed behind his efforts to survive. he is at the receiving end in most of cases. The medical professionals, bureaucrats, politicians, advocates, judiciary, NGOs, social workers, traders, MNCs and others all trying to derive any kind of benefits from him. But his trust in human beings is intact even though he faces various atrocities, his faith still not shaken. His conflicts are usually with other common man or with the other categories of people who knowingly or unknowingly create favorable or unfavorable situation for him.Usually unaware of the strategies hatched out against him, he is a darling of the political system before elections and an ignored one thereafter. He watches the things taking shape, understand their meanings, aware of their repercussions but waits for others to take lead before reacting.Here no imaginary characters narrated, just to give it tale form some changes are made to relate them and convert to tale form.

This vivid portrait of contemporary parenting blends memoir and cultural analysis to explore evolving ideas of disability and human difference. An Ordinary Future is a deeply moving work that weaves an account of Margaret Mead's path to disability rights activism with one anthropologist's experience as the parent of a child with Down syndrome. With this book, Thomas W. Pearson confronts the dominant ideas, disturbing contradictions, and dramatic transformations that have shaped our perspectives on disability over the last century. Pearson examines his family's story through the lens of Mead's evolving relationship to disability—a topic once so stigmatized that she advised Erik Erikson to institutionalize his son, born with Down syndrome in 1944. Over the course of her career, Mead would become an advocate for disability rights and call on anthropology to embrace a wider understanding of humanity that values diverse bodies and minds. Powerful and personal, An Ordinary Future reveals why this call is still relevant in the ongoing fight for disability justice and inclusion, while shedding light on the history of Down syndrome and how we raise children born different.

Taking an intricate look at vitality and health in congregations based on information gathered from the 2001 U.S. Congregational Life Survey, the authors conclude that congregations have ten strengths, and that by building upon these strengths, congregations can transform their futures.

Do you ever wonder, somewhere deep in your heart, if all those things the nuns or your Sunday school teacher taught you are really true? Does doubt ever taunt you, whispering in the silence, "I just don't believe all that stuff anymore "? Do you hold close the unspoken worry of what will really happen to you when you die? It is easy to feel God in the flowers of spring, the solitude of a world blanketed in snow, or the laughter of children at play. It is never hard to imagine the hand of our Creator in the sunrise over the ocean, the majesty of the Rockies, or the billions of stars visible on a clear night in the country. What of the dark times, though? Where is God when your business fails, or you lose your job, or a loved one is injured in an accident or diagnosed with cancer and dies? Is God there when you struggle to make ends meet, when your child is hurt in a fall or, when you think yourself alone and abandoned? When Jesus said, "With God all things are possible," He meant it. We pray that by sharing our ordinary lives, our extraordinary God will bless and encourage you.