【推荐1】Believe it or not, a foodie friend of mine asked me whether I’d seen the TV series Chef’s Table. Of course, I hadn’t because I’m not that into food. But I do get hungry for adventure sometimes, so I decided to watch the show.

This is when I was introduced to the chef Francis Mallmann. He makes choices; he doesn’t plan. When he was young, he looked for instructors and experiences, not books or paths. He honored his roots but enjoyed the world and sought things and places he didn’t know. He doesn’t cling to one lifestyle and he doesn’t bend to expectations.

This made me wonder: Aren’t we supposed to assess risks, have a plan and then make our move? I grew up thinking I had to have a plan and have long-term stability in front of me. When I saw Mallmann doing what makes him happy, everything changed.

I thought to myself, “That’s how we’re supposed to live.” Being true to myself. I have already reconciled (和解) with the shame of being inspired by a TV show. Mallmann is inspired by nature, food and language. Me? My life-changing moment came from watching Netflix with my dollar store reading glasses on. No wonder I felt slightly unfulfilled.

After watching Mallmann, I felt as if I’d stood up from a cozy fireplace and the blanket of my life just fell to the ground.

I submitted my leave of absence application to my employer less than a month later. I’m now full of excitement. I’m leaving my job and a good salary, and I’m going to do things that feed my soul.

Michael Kernis and Brian Goldman, psychologists at Clayton State University in Georgia, studied the benefits of authenticity (真实性) and being true to yourself. Some of the benefits of following your inner voice include enjoying a strong sense of purpose in life, greater confidence, healthier relationships and strong skills to deal with change or difficulty.

So, if you’re out there living an interesting life and you meet Mallmann, throw one of his burnt potatoes at him for me. And then tell him I say thank you. I might soon be hungrier and poorer than I was before, but at least I’ll be staying true to who I am. I have Mallmann to thank for that.

【推荐2】After giving a talk at a high school, I was asked to pay a visit to a special student. An illness had kept the boy home, but he had expressed an interest in meeting me, and it would mean a great deal to him. I agreed.

During the nine-mile drive to his home, I found out something about Matthew. He had muscular dystrophy(肌肉萎缩症). When he was born, the doctor told his parents that he would not live to see five, then they were told he would not make it to ten. Now he was thirteen. He wanted to meet me because I was a gold-medal power lifter, and I knew about overcoming obstacles and going for my dreams.

I spent over one hour talking to Matthew. Never once did he complain or ask, “Why me?” He spoke about winning and succeeding and going for his dreams. Obviously, he knew what he was talking about. He didn’t mention that his classmates had made fun of him because he was different. He just talked about his hopes for the future, and how one day he wanted to lift weight with me.

When we finished talking, I went to my briefcase and pulled out the first gold medal I won and put it around his neck. I told him he was more of a winner and knew more about success and overcoming obstacles than I ever would. He looked at it for a moment, then took it off and handed it back to me. He said, “You are a champion. You earned that medal. Someday when I get to the Olympics and win my own medal, I will show it to you.”

Last summer I received a letter from Matthew’s parents telling me that Matthew had passed away. They wanted me to have a letter he had written to me a few days before:

My mom said I should send you a thank-you letter for the picture you sent me. I also want to let you know that the doctors tell me that I don’t have long to live anymore. But I still smile as much as I can.

I told you someday I was going to the Olympics and win a gold medal. But I know now I will never get to do that. But I know I’m a champion, and God knows that too. When I get to Heaven, God will give me my medal and when you get there, I will show it to you. Thank you for loving me.

Yours,

Matthew

【推荐3】Last night I was driving from Harrisburg to Lewisburg, a distance of about eighty miles. It was late. Several times I got stuck behind a slow-moving truck on a narrow road with a solid white line on my left, and I became increasingly impatient.

At one point along an open road, I came to a crossing with a traffic light. I was alone on the road by now, but as I drove near the light, it turned red and I made a stop. I looked left, right and behind me. Nothing. Not a car, no suggestion of car lamps, but there I sat, waiting for the light to change, the only human being for at least a mile at any direction.

I started wondering why I refused to run the light. I was not afraid of being caught, because there was clearly no policeman around, and there certainly would have been no danger in going thorough it.

Much later that night, the question of why I’d stopped for that light came back to me. I think I stopped because it’s part of a contract (契约) we all have with each other. It’s not only the law, but it’s an agreement we have, and we trust each other to honor it: we don’t go through red lights.

Trust is our first inclination (倾向). Doubting others does not seem to be natural to us. The whole construction of our society depends on mutual (互相) trust, not distrust.We do what we say we’ll do; we show up when we say we’ll show up;and we pay when we say we’ll pay. We trust each other in these matters, and we’re angry or disappointed with the person or organization that breaks the trust we have in them.

【推荐1】When it comes to generation gap (代沟), we usually think of different tastes in music, or pastimes. But now the generation gap is handwriting. After one teacher in Tennessee discovered that she had students who couldn’t read what she was writing on the board, she posted it on the Internet saying that handwriting should be taught in schools.

Others who are against it claim that handwriting has become out of time in our modern world. Typed words have become a main form of communication. Once a practical skill, handwriting is no longer used by most of Americans. It is no longer taught in schools, and some claim that the time that it would take to teach it could be put to better use, for example, by teaching the technical skills.

But even in today’s world there are still plenty of reasons to pick up a pen and write on the paper. In America, signatures (签字) by hand are still often required, for example, signing for a registered letter and buying a house. And original signatures are much more difficult to fake (伪造).

There is also strong evidence that writing by hand is good for the mind. It makes a different part of the brain active and improves fine moving skills in young children. People are also more likely to remember what they write by hand than what they type, and the process of writing by hand has been shown to stimulate ideas. Not only those, studies have shown that kids who write by hand learn to read and spell earlier than those who don’t.

Yes, we live in a modern world, but we live in a modern world of basic and important values.

【推荐2】We’ve been there: in a lift, in line at the bank or on an airplane, surrounded by people who are, like us, deeply focused on their smartphones or, worse, struggling with the uncomfortable silence.

What’s the problem? It is possible that we all have compromised conversational intelligence. It’s more likely that none of us start a conversation because it’s awkward and challenging, or we think it’s annoying and unnecessary. But the next time you find yourself among strangers, consider that small talk is worth the trouble. Experts say it’s an important social practice that results in big benefits.

Dismissing small talk as unimportant is easy, but we can’t forget that deep relationships wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for casual conversation. Small talk is the grease (润滑剂) for social communication, says Bernardo Carducci. “Almost every great love story and each big business deal begins with small talk,” he explains. “The key to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.”

In a 2014 study, Elizabeth Dunn, Associate Professor of psychology at UBC, invited people on their way into a coffee shop. One group was asked to seek out an interaction (互动) with its waiter; the other, to speak only when necessary. The results showed that those who chatted with their server reported significantly higher positive feelings and a better coffee shop experience. “It’s not that talking to the waiter is better than talking to your husband,” says Dunn. “But interactions with peripheral (边缘的) members of our social network matter for our well-being also.”

Dunn believes that people who reach out to strangers feel a significantly greater sense of belonging, a bond with others. Carducci believes developing such a sense of belonging starts with small talk. “Small talk is the basis of good manners,” he says.

【推荐3】Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our friends and family. But we rarely consider that everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know. Conversely(相反地), our friends and family serve as conduits(渠道) for us to be influenced by hundreds or even thousands of other people. In a kind of social chain reaction, we can be deeply affected by events we do not witness that happen to people we do not know. As part of a social network, we go beyond ourselves, for good or ill, and become a part of something much larger.

Our connectedness carries with it fundamental implications(影响) for the way we understand the human condition. Social networks have value precisely because they can help us to achieve what we could not achieve on our own. Yet, social­network effects are not always positive. Depression, obesity, financial panic, and violence also spread. Social networks, it turns out, tend to magnify(放大) whatever they are seeded with.

Partly for this reason, social networks are creative. And what these networks create does not belong to any one individual—it is shared by all those in the network. In this way, a social network is like a commonly owned forest: We all stand to benefit from it, but we also must work together to ensure it remains healthy and productive. While social networks are fundamentally and distinctively human, and can be seen everywhere, they should not be taken for granted.

If you are happier or richer or healthier than others, it may have a lot to do with where you happen to be in the network, even if you cannot recognise your own location. And it may have a lot to do with the overall structure of the network, even if you cannot control that structure at all. And in some cases, the process feeds back to the network itself. A person with many friends may become rich and then attract even more friends. This rich­get­richer dynamic means social networks can dramatically reinforce two different kinds of inequality in our society: situational inequality and positional inequality.

Lawmakers have not yet considered the consequences of positional inequality. Still, understanding the way we are connected is an essential step in creating a more just society and in carrying out public policies affecting everything from public health to the economy. We might be better off vaccinating(接种疫苗) centrally located individuals rather than weak individuals. We might be better off helping interconnected groups of people to avoid criminal behaviour rather than preventing or punishing crimes one at a time.

If we want to understand how society works, we need to fill in the missing links between individuals. We need to understand how interconnections and interactions between people give rise to wholly new aspects of human experience that are not present in the individuals themselves. If we do not understand social networks, we cannot hope to fully understand either ourselves or the world we inhabit.