【推荐1】Everyone who knew anything about animals warned me against getting a rabbit in my early 20s, but I ignored them, and ended up with three. It turns out that all the people who are against rabbits have a point: Rabbits get sick all the time, and there are very few vets who specialize in their care. My years with rabbits have been full of feeding, hurried trips to the vet, sleepless nights and begging for advice on the Internet.

Now that my animals are old and weak now, I clear their waste and clean their legs with a rabbit-friendly shampoo. I spend a lot of time on the floor, because although my rabbits are hard to satisfy socially, they also hate to be picked up.

I am often asked the question: Why rabbits? Why not a dog, or a cat? I try to describe what it’s like to be with them. I had never felt a real duty towards anything until I had my rabbits.

My answers never satisfy anyone. I’m not sure about the question, either it so often implies instrumental value, as if the correct reply might be “They make good companions” or “They’re nice to look at”. I don’t have the right kind of reason. I don’t believe in the use value of any living thing. Like humans, animals just are — that’s it. Usually we do not look at other people and think about how to make them work for us. Yet so much of our way of seeing the world is founded on the assumption that animals are meant to serve a purpose. This seems wrong.

After all these years with my rabbits, the only thing I know is that there is no lesson to be learned or value to be acquired. There’s just an effort to be made, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s what life is.

【推荐3】One day in my class, Maria shared her feelings about money, “Money worries me. I think I want to live without money because I hate it. I HATE MONEY.”We were all touched by Maria’s words as they reminded us of the spiritual burdens that money managing could bring to us. After class I offered to help Maria deal with her financial problems. She hesitated to accept my offer, and I could see from the expression on her face that she was afraid of what it might involve. I quickly promised her that I wouldn’t make her do more than she was able to. I told her frankly that I didn’t enjoy managing my money any more than she did hers and wouldn’t burden her with guilt, judgments, or impossible tasks. All I would ask her to do was let me help her look at her fears and try to make some sense of them.

Maria still resisted my offer, and I can remember the excuses she gave me as they were the repeated complaints I had heard from so many people. “I’ll never understand money,” she said. “My facts are meaningless.” “I don’t deserve to have money.” “I never have enough.” “I have too little to manage.” “My financial position isn’t worth looking at.” And the most devastating one of all, “I just can’t do it.”

Going home that day, I couldn’t get Maria out of my mind：her attitude conveyed the same negativity and fear that I believed annoyed many people. I was sure it was this attitude that prevented people from managing their money effectively. My counseling(咨询) has taught me that these anxieties are inseparably connected to our self-doubts and fear for survival. Many of us are terrified of handling our money because we don’t believe we can do it well, and to do it wrong would put our very existence at risk.

On a deeper level we know that money is not the source of life, but a sense of worth that drives us to act as if it were. It locks us up in self-doubt and prevents us from tapping into the true source of our management power, our spirit.

【推荐3】My husband is more a kid at heart than I am, so he says we need to find souvenirs for the grandkids while on a trip to Savannah.

I can be a kid at heart, too, but I also can be a mathematician — and even cheap, ugly souvenirs add up quickly when you have 11 grandkids.

Children are of one mind on the subject — they like souvenirs and they want them. So we are digging through piles of (成堆的) cheap key fobs (钥匙链), plastic sun hats, chocolate treats that will melt in the heat, and ridiculous T-shirts, finding nothing.

We go with two hats for the boys but are still empty-handed for the nine girls. Then I spot small bracelets (手链) in a rainbow of colors.

“What about these? ” I ask the husband.

He turns one over a couple of times and says, “Nice.”

The bracelets are made of small beads (珠子) shaped like starfish and turtles. They all look like rock candy, which can be eaten and was a popular souvenir when we were kids. We buy nine and make a mental note: tell the girls not to eat them.

As the clerk rings up the bracelets, I remember a souvenir I had as a girl. We had gone to the east coast and could choose one thing in a shop to remember our trip by. My sister and I chose what we liked. Mine was a blue plastic soapbox with the lid (盖子) covered in silver glitter (小闪光物) and topped with a pink flamingo (火烈鸟). It was cheap and tacky (俗气的) and I believed it was the loveliest thing a girl could own. It was too beautiful to put soap inside, so it sat in a dresser drawer year after year, slowly aging, yellowing, the glitter fling off. But it is still a reminder of a family trip long ago.

The girls are married and have families of their own, and those souvenirs are still in the dresser drawers in their old bedrooms.

I have been won over to the idea that even cheap and tacky souvenirs may have worth and value. Tiny trinkets (小饰品) say I was thinking of you even though we were apart. That’s always a good investment (投资).