Run freely ——A lesson about Courage

One afternoon, many years ago, I went to pick up my mother from work. I got there a little early so I_______ the car by the roadside and waited for her.

As I looked_______ the car window, there was a small park where I saw a little boy, around one and a half to two years old,_______freely on the grass as his mother watched from a short_______. The boy had a big smile on his face _________ he had just been set free from a_______. The boy would then fall to the grass, get up, and without_______ or without looking back at his mother, run as fast as he could, again, still with a _______ on his face, as if nothing had happened.

Kids, when they fall down, they don’t consider their falling down as a failure. _______, they treat it as a learning experience. They feel compelled to try and try again until they________.

Not only was I impressed by the boy’s courage, but I was ________ touched by the manner in which he ran. With each attempt, he looked so________, so natural, without signs of fear, nervousness, or of being disappointed. His only ________ was to run freely and to do it effectively as he could. He was just being a________, just being himself. He was not looking for_________or worrying about whether ________ was watching. He wasn’t concerned about being judged. He didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that maybe someone would see him________and that it would be ________ if he did fall. No, all that________to him was to accomplish the task of activity at hand to the best of his ability, feeling the experience of running fully and freely.

I learned a lot from that observation and ________, and have successfully brought that lesson with me in life.

【推荐3】Many years ago, when I was a little kid, my family was not rich. I would often help do something for the neighbors to _________ a little pocket money.

One day I _________ on the door of an elderly woman and asked _________ she needed me to clean the yard. She asked why I was not in _________ and I showed her my worn _________, which no longer kept me warm. She _________ me to work in the yard. When I finished, she looked at me and said, “I suppose you want to be _________ now.” She then _________ a jar filled with dollar bills and said, “I'm glad you've done a fine job today, _________ that is not something you should be doing again. I want you to __________ new clothes and get back to school. I also want you to come back to __________ me with your report card and I will __________ you when I see you have worked hard and have some good __________. Now reach out your little hands and take out as much __________ as you can.”

I put my hands in the jar and __________ so much money that it was __________ for me to buy what I badly needed. Later, I returned several times to see the woman and she did just as she __________ . She looked at my report card and gave me a handful of dollars and delicious food every time I __________ her that I had an “A”.

I was 12 years old when I moved from that neighborhood. I will never forget the huge __________ this wonderful lady made over my life with her __________. This is something I hope to do myself in this lifetime over and over again.

【推荐2】My philosophy professor was a typical odd philosopher, whose behavior was a bit _________. His disheveled (蓬乱的) appearance was _________ by a well-worn tweed (粗花呢) sport coat and poor-fitting thick glasses, which often _________ on the tip of his nose. Every now and then, as most philosophy professors do, he would dig into one of those existential “what’s the meaning of life” discussions. Many of those discussions got _________, but there were a few that really hit home. This was one of them:

“_________ the following questions by a show of hands,” my professor instructed.

“How many of you can tell me something about your parents?” Everyone’s _________ went up.

“How many of you can tell me something about your grandparents?” About three-fourths of the class raised their hands.

“How many of you can tell me something about your great-grandparents?” Two out of sixty students raised their hands.

“Look around the room,” he said. “In just two short _________ hardly any of us even know who our own great-grandparents were. Oh sure, maybe we have an old photograph stored away in a musty cigar box _________ know the classic family story about how one of them walked five miles to school barefoot. But how many of us really know who they were, what they thought, _________ they were proud of, what they were afraid of, or what they dreamed about? Think about that. Within three generations our ancestors are all but __________. Will this happen to you?”

“Here’s a better question. Look ahead three generations. You are long __________. Then it will be your great-grandchildren __________ you sitting in this room, What will they have to say about you? Will they know about you? Or will you be forgotten, too?”

“Is your life going to be a warning or a(n) __________? What __________ will you leave? The choice is yours. Class is over.”

Nobody __________ from their seats for a good five minutes.

【推荐3】One summer night, my friends and I stole into the Jordans’ backyard and started harvesting their sweet, juicy raspberries (树莓). We were enjoying every bite of the tasty berries _________ Mr Jordan came charging outside all of a sudden.

“What are you boys doing out here?” he yelled as my friends ran off _________ all directions. He attempted to catch one or two as they rushed past him, but they were too _________ for the older gentleman to catch. Within seconds, the boys_________into the dark of the summer night. All except me.

However, speed was never my _________. I took the tongue-lashing(痛骂) that Mr Jordan gave me as he marched me down the block to my house, where my mother took over and scolded me _________. My friends said they could hear every colorful word she spoke from the darkness of our backyard, _________ they had gathered to _________ their escape and to observe my capture.

They teased me about it for days afterwards, while all I could do was complain about how _________ it was that I was the only one who had to pay the price. After about a week of this, I complained to my father about the inequality of the situation. Dad said, “You took raspberries without ____________, and you get exactly the punishment you deserved.”

“But what about the other guys?” I asked. “They didn’t get punished at all!”

“That’s not my concern nor should it be yours,” Dad said. “You can’t ____________ what happens to others. You can only____________________ what happens to you. You made a bad choice that night, and you were punished for it.”

For the duration of the following years, I come to realize there is no guarantee that life will ____________ us fairly. That’s why we can’t ____________ comparing our lives with the lives of others. Like Dad said, that isn’t our ____________.

【推荐1】Moving away from home is both a good and a sad thing. It is every child’s and every parents goal to finally achieve ___ but it is sad when it happens. One Sunday in August, my son and I worked to ___ his car for a journey. He would move across the country after twenty years of ___ under my roof. We started early, ___ our work went slowly into the afternoon.

___ I was carefully packing the baggage, the Sunday baseball game came on. Our hometown Cardinals were playing the Atlanta Braves. ___ unhappy thoughts about his departure (离开), I completely forgot about the game. Just then, my son called, “Dad, come on in. Let’s ___ the rest of the game.” Looking at his red-colored eyes, I ___ realized that he, too, found this to be a ___ passage of time and that he, too, wanted to ____ one last fatherson moment. I led the way to the TV set without ____.

There, ____, we found the Cardinals lose 3-1. “How come they won the champion last season?” He said with doubt. “That’s fine,” I ____ him, wanting so much to keep this last moment before he left. “Let’s watch anyway.”

Then came a ____. The Cardinals took the lead. In that one moment we ____ happiness, excitedly jumping up and down and experiencing a joy that I could ____ imagine happening on that bittersweet afternoon. The ____ of that day was replaced by enjoying an exciting baseball game. It was a wonderful feeling that made the day, the trip, and our life seem so ____. And then he left.

I believe in ____ moments that happen when I least expect them. Such moments appear and then disappear, just like my son as he drove off that afternoon to start a new ____ in his life.

【推荐2】Would you drive around the world on a motorbike? Would you do it with a dog _______ behind you the whole way? Shirley is doing just that with her dog Merlin.

Shirley and Merlin are travelling the world together by _______. Their trip started in March from their home in Guatemala and will _______ them through 90 countries.

Merlin is a German shepherd dog who weighs 34 kilograms and is perfectly _______ on the back of a motorcycle. According to Shirley, it took the dog just a single weekend to learn how to _______. Sitting on the back of the bike in a motorcycle dog carrier, she looks _______ with hot pink goggles (护目镜) to protect her eyes.

Shirley could not _______ leaving home without her beloved dog, so she decided to travel the world with Merlin. Travelling with a dog, _______, has its limits, such as only being _______ by dog-friendly accommodations and attractions.

But according to Shirley, it’s totally ________. “I see Merlin in my mirror ________ . Her head is always right up against my side. Sometimes she even ________ her big nose on my shoulder with her chin up there. It makes me feel so ________ that she’s really experiencing everything.”

One thing Shirley has noticed so far is that no matter which country or area they have gone through, the local people’s reaction to Merlin is ________. “She just puts a big smile on everybody’s face,” Shirley said. “And that’s the part that really ________.”