【推荐3】The tough challenge of a six-month, 3,200-kilometer walk across the South Pole, in the long darkness of the Antarctic winter when temperatures can fall to -90℃, proved irresistible to the experienced British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

Fiennes’s hero, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, wrote “great God, this is an awful place” when he reached the South Pole a century ago, before freezing and starving to death with his team on the return journey.

That journey was made in summer. Nobody before has attempted to cross the pole in winter. In a statement, Fiennes said, “This will be my greatest challenge to date. We will stretch the limits of human endurance.”

However, Fiennes could not explain why anyone should consider such a venture, still less a man aged 68 who has survived cancer, heart surgery and the loss of most of the frozen fingertips on one hand. “It’s what I do,” he said, looking slightly puzzled at the question.

Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer, according to the Guinness Book of Records — was the first to cross the Antarctic continent unsupported; the first to cross both polar ice caps; and the first to travel across the globe from pole to pole.

Fiennes admitted his wife, Louise, and their six-year-old daughter were not thrilled. “But I’ve never done anything else; it’s how I earn my living. And you’re much more likely, statistically, to die on the roads than on the polar ice,” he said.

After training in the Swedish Arctic in a relatively balmy -40℃, Fiennes’ team will set sail from London on Dec. 6 on a South African research ship. The ice trek will begin on Mar. 21, the spring equinox (春分) that marks the official start of the polar winter, from the Russian base of Novolazareskaya. Fiennes and his five team members must then climb more than 3,000 meters on to the inland plateau, walk for several hundred kilometers using an ice tractor to pull all the supplies and equipment they need, descend another 3,000 meters and finally reach the Ross Sea. If they reach Captain Scott’s old base at McMurdo Sound by the spring equinox six months later, they will still have to wait for months until the sea ice backs off enough for their ship to collect them.

【推荐1】A few years ago, I moved to a window office and sent an email letting everyone know. In the email, I jokingly invited everyone to come by for a “tour” of the new space.

I was in a meeting that morning and when I got back to my office, I saw a box on my desk. There was a note on it, saying, “Happy new office!” The person didn’t sign it. I was so happy with that. I didn’t feel like I should help anyone or that someone was trying to get something from me. In fact, I found myself thanking everyone in the office. It was completely different from what I did on the beach the other day.

The water was coming in. Two nice chairs were about to be taken out by the waves. The owners were nowhere to be seen, so I moved the chairs again and again as the waves rose. When the couple who owned the chairs showed up. I couldn’t help myself. I went over, pointed to the waves, and said. “A couple of hours ago, your chairs were out there.”

“Oh, thanks so much for pulling them in,” said the guy. “We just realized they were out here and thought they had probably gotten washed away.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, as I walked away. Then these words came to my mind, “You have your reward.”

Then I realized when I went over to the couple, I was looking for something. If they hadn’t shown anything after I told what I had done, it would have upset me. In our life, people who show their good deeds are always looking for a reward and they resent those who don’t celebrate their generosity.

However, when we experience the pleasure of giving without letting the other know, we do more than show kindness. We’re just giving to communicate an invaluable message, “You’re loved. You’re important to someone and it has nothing to do with what you can give in return.”

【推荐2】Clara Daly was seated on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles when a flight attendant asked an urgent question over the loudspeaker: Does anyone on board know American Sign Language?” She knew she needed to help.

Clara, 15 at the time, pressed the call button. The flight attendant came by and explained the situation. “We have a passenger on the plane who's blind and deaf,” she said. The passenger seemed to want something, but he was traveling alone and the flight attendants couldn't understand what he needed, according to PEOPLE magazine.

Clara had been studying ASL for the past year to help with her, dyslexia and knew she'd be able to spell on the man's palm by finger. So she unbuckled her seat belt, walked toward the front of the plane, and knelt by the aisle seat of Tim Cook, then 64. Gently taking his hand, she signed, “How are you? Are you OK?” Cook asked for some water. When it arrived, Clara returned to her seat. She came by again a bit later because he wanted to know the time. On her third visit, she stopped and stayed for a while.

“He didn't need anything. He was lonely and wanted to talk,” Clara said. So for the next hour, that was what they did. She talked about her family and her plans for the future (she wants to be a politician). Cook told Clara how he had gradually become blind over time and shared stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn't see her, she “looked attentively at his face with such kindness”, a passenger reported.

“Clara was amazing,” a flight attendant told Alaska Airlines in a blog interview. “You could tell Cook was very excited to have someone he could speak to, and she was such a warm-hearted girl.” Cook's reaction: “Best trip I've ever had.”

Looking for ways to offer help? Start with this random act of kindness that can change someone's life right now.

【推荐3】Nearly 96, when most are lonely and in poor health, Olga Murray, full of energy, has been eagerly planning a trip to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. How can she be in such good shape? Is it her good genes? (Her mother lived to 98.) Or her daily salads and three-times-a-week workouts?

Scientists increasingly are finding that the answer — living with purpose — can be a particularly healthy pursuit, which can improve the quality of those final years. Murray offers a vivid example of how to create a sense of meaning.

Murray’s story began in 1984, after she had worked 37 years as a lawyer and was starting to think about retirement (退休). At 59, while traveling in Nepal, Murray found herself amazed by the children there. “They were poor beyond anything I had ever experienced,” she recalled in a self-published memoir (自传) years later. “Yet they were the most joyful little kids anywhere on earth.” She wanted to put the rest of her life into helping educate Nepalese children.

Returning to Nepal the next year, she met Allan Aistrope, then a volunteer English teacher at the country’s only orphanage (孤儿院). The two began with organizing college scholarships for four of the orphans. After another five years, they had started the Nepal Youth Foundation, which by then was supporting several hundred scholarship students and raising 60 homeless children. In 1994, they hired Som Paneru, a former scholarship student, as executive director. She handed over the presidency to Paneru in 2012. Now, she is busy as usual, leading lots of fundraising campaigns.