【推荐1】There is always a lot of talk about what is fair, and what is not.     1     Yet, some of the 99% seem to believe life has somehow treated them unfairly, and some of the 1% feel life hasn’t treated them fairly enough. My questions are these: What is fairness? Is life fair? Should life be fair?

We definitely have no choice about how we come into this world. We have little choice early in life. But as we grow older, choices exist around. I have long believed that while we have no control over the beginning of our life, the majority of us have the ability to influence the outcomes we attain. Fairness is a state of mind, and most often, an unhealthy state of mind. Our state in life cannot, or at least should not, be blamed on our parents, our teachers, or our society.     2    

I agree that challenges exist. I agree that many have an uphill battle due to the challenges they face.     3     Rules and orders don’t create fairness, but people’s desire and determination can work around most life challenges.

    4     A friend of mine came to this country from Africa in his late teens, barely spoke the language, drove a cab while working his way through college, and is now the president of a technology services firm.     5     They do, however, demonstrate blindness to the mindset of the fairness.

【推荐2】The United States seems to have become extremely enthusiastic about competition. The famous Scripps National Spelling Bee — an annual spelling contest — now allows kids who lost in regional competitions but whose parents agree to pay an entry fee along with their own food and accommodation to compete. And while some kids are working for what they call a “spelling career”, others are approaching chess competitions, dance competitions, cooking or other passions (爱好) that previous generations developed somewhat later in life.

I’m disturbed by the phenomenon, which seems to be getting worse and more intense (激烈的).

My teacher always warned us that competition is a destructive quality; that the goal is never to beat anyone else. I think he’ll be cheered by author Peggy Noonan’s idea that a lot of us are running our own races, trying to rise to the occasion and beat some past and limited conception of ourselves by doing something great.

I heartily agree. Instead of paying attention to the accomplishments or possessions of others, we need to focus on our own potential, our own growth and take pleasure in our own particular set of circumstances. The battle for life is not against anyone else but against the darkness inside that tries to bring us down. I wish you only well. Your good doesn’t reduce mine. Your bad gives me no pleasure.

Ms. Noonan also suggests that “you’re running your own race alongside others running theirs, and in the same direction. You’re doing something great together.” If we stop worrying about what our neighbor is earning or driving, the size of his house, the success of his marriage, the accomplishments of his children, we can sit back and enjoy our own lives. And if we all focus on what we each can achieve, regardless of anyone else, we have a chance of working as one, of actually being united.

Competition divides us. There’re winners and losers. But that’s a very limited picture of reality. It may apply to spelling bees and soccer matches and even in some college classes, but life isn’t about triumphing (战胜) over someone else; it’s about triumphing over ourselves. The only acceptable competition is one where we encourage each other to be the best human being possible, and that’s the only game where “everyone’s a winner”.

【推荐3】I was traveling with my husband and three teenage sons in the United States. We ordered our food at a fast-food place, and with my meal I also wanted a blueberry pie. My husband is the chatty one in the family and likes to socialize, so he started a conversation about the place where blueberries grow with the waitress. She answered, with some anxiety, “They grow on trees.”

The whole family’s jaws dropped! How could this girl not know where blueberries grow? We tried not to embarrass her, and just took the opportunity to teach her a little about how blueberries grow, on small shrubs (灌木) on the ground. She seemed to appreciate learning something new. We can’t know all the same things, as you'll see from the next thing I'm going to tell you.

In 2002 our family made a short trip to a coffee plantation. The road to the plantation was narrow, filled with sharp bends. I worried about hitting another car. We didn’t, lucky us! When we finally got to our destination, we learned a lot about the plantation and coffee production, but we didn’t see any coffee plants. Where were they? We decided to ask one of the people working there. “So where are the coffee plants? We can’t see them anywhere.”

She reached out her arm and caught a twig (细枝) right next to us and explained, “This is the coffee plant and these little things will be coffee beans.” I looked around in embarrassment, as we were surrounded by coffee plants! She explained that coffee plants aren’t big and that they have to grow in the shade of other bigger plants. I appreciated her lesson.

We love our coffee, but I’m sure most of my countrymen would not be able to recognize a coffee plant among other tropical plants if asked. Our jaws can drop at different things, depending on geographical locations, at what we know and don’t know. Never take anything for granted!

【推荐1】My family and I belonged to a country club located across the street from the Long Island Sound. Each summer, the big attraction for us was the pool. I learned how to swim and joined the swimming team but was never really a good swimmer. However, swimming in my younger days was a way to keep cool, and swimming on a team gave me identity and a sense of belonging. It also became invaluable many years later.

Fast-forward (快进) to 1973 — I was married, pregnant and had a home. What made our little home even more wonderful was when I discovered that four blocks away was Rath Park Pool! For the next 30 years, most of our summer days were spent around that pool.

Each of my five kids took swimming lessons and learned all the different swimming strokes     (姿势). They later joined the swim team and competed in meets. My daughter even became a lifeguard at the town pool. I sat back and happily took it all in!

As much as I would have liked to have life stand still, it doesn’t. My children outgrew their pool days and moved on. But the pool was still four blocks from my home, so I began to take up swimming again. And it was far better than I ever could have imagined. I got so much out of it that I joined the local pool so I could swim year-round. Whenever I swam, I would always come out feeling physically and mentally refreshed. I often felt that if I looked hard enough, I would be able to see all of the worries and problems I’ve had in life, sitting at the bottom of the pool!

What has swimming taught me? I’ve learned that balance is the key to being a good swimmer. If you are balanced in the water, you have no resistance. Working on staying balanced made me realize the similarities between life in and out of the swim lane (泳道). If you work on keeping yourself balanced, you will be able to swim right through the stress and problems life throws at you!

【推荐2】The long story started four years ago. My dad knew about Barkley long before he met him. “My son, you know, Barkley has a big personality,” he told me. “He’s a top-50 player in the history of the NBA. For many years, he was the number two guy, right after Michael Jordan.”

Whenever we attended dinner parties, my dad would talk about his friend Charles Barkley. The first time my dad told the story, I didn’t pretend to know who this person was. Basketball has never been my thing. I googled Charles Barkley. He seemed pretty famous and definitely not like anyone who would be friends with my dad. But, as a modern young man, I knew that people have very loose definitions of the word friend.

My dad showed me their texts and photos. I began to think that either my dad was one of the luckiest basketball fans ever or this whole thing was just a joke. But I was wrong. The friendship was real. One day Barkley came to my home to visit my father. Then I know how the relationship began.

“It was, like, one of the most random things,” Barkley recalled with a laugh.

“I was on a business trip,” my dad said, “and was walking in the hotel lobby, and I saw Charles Barkley.”

“I was in Sacramento speaking at a charity event,” Barkley said.

“So I just went to say hi and take a picture with him,” my dad said.

“I was just sitting at the bar,” Barkley said. “And we were the only two people there. We just sat down and started talking.”

“He’s a super-nice guy.”

“And before we know it, we looked at each other like, ‘Yo, man, I’m hungry. Let’s go to a restaurant, Barkley said. “It turned into a two-hour dinner. And then we actually went back to the bar and just sat there and talked about for another couple of hours.”

【推荐3】My kids sit in Gee’s living room and lift age-old Christmas ornaments (装饰品) out of a well-loved box. Gee stands beside them, quietly explaining each treasure. She tells me that she and Tom built their collection piece by piece during each year’s after-Christmas sale. She smiles as we leave with the box. Her precious collections, gathered over a lifetime, have found a new home.

We first met Tom and Gee in the early days of our marriage. Someone had been returning our garbage cans to the garage each garbage day, and Jim and I had wondered who. Then one day we spotted him: an elderly man who lived across the street. I made cookies and left them on a table outside the garage with a thank-you note. When we got home from work that day, a typed letter had replaced the gift. The letter was from Tom and explained how he had come to walk the neighborhood on garbage day, returning cans for people he barely knew. Back when he’d been fighting a war, his young wife, Gee, had found herself living alone. Neighbors had taken the time to handle her garbage cans so she didn’t have to, and he never forgot. Now he paid it forward by doing the same for all of us.

A few years after we’d moved in, Tom died. We copied that letter and attached it to one of our own for Gee. We told her how special Tom had been to us and how thankful we were to have known him.

These days, we’re piling up boxes of our own. We’re planning a move. The house that seemed so huge six years ago is filled to capacity (容纳能力) with furniture and books and toys and, of course, people. We know it’s time to go, but when we think of Tom and Gee, we are reluctant to stick the “House For Sale” sign up on the grass. Gaining a third bedroom and maybe an office sometimes seems like an awful trade for what we will lose.

The moving boxes are still neatly packed in our basement, but Jim and I agree to wait until January. This Christmas, we’ll decorate our tree with Gee’s ornaments, out of the box that is labeled in Tom’s handwriting. Maybe I’ll talk to him just as Gee still does. Thank you, I’ll say, for teaching us what it means to be a neighbor.

【推荐1】Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all the time. How do you do it?” Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood.”

“Yeah, right, but it’s not that easy,” I protested. “Yes, it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line it’s your choice how to live life.”

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers While trying to open the safe, the robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found immediately and sent to the local hospital. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him about the incident, he replied, “Wanna see my scars?” I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that came into my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices I could choose to live, or choose to die. I choose to live.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.

【推荐2】My friend and I were at a restaurant in Berkeley for an evening snack when suddenly we decided to do a small act of kindness — to use the smile card to make someone’s day.

Being at the restaurant, we decided to pay for someone else anonymously (匿名地) . We both got excited about the idea and decided to do that. We looked around for which table we should pay for, and then settled on this table — it seemed like an immigrant family with a few children, enjoying their cocktails at that time. I could sense a family bond between them and that they were having a nice time together. We called in the waitress to explain the idea to her.

As soon as we told her we wanted to pay for another table and showed her the smile card, she got super excited! She said she already had goosebumps! It made us further enthusiastic. Next, she came and told us that the waitress for that table was moved to tears when she heard about this.

Soon after, we left — feeling excited, energized and grateful to get an opportunity to spread smiles. It is hard to explain how it felt at that moment, but it definitely felt special — not because I was “helping” someone, but because I felt connected to various people whom I didn’t even know — the waitresses and the family. It also, in some form, melted me, to see how people respond to generosity, which has become so rare in today’s commercial lifestyle. I felt like something inside me changed.

I don’t know what happened next, how the family felt and reacted or how the waitresses experienced the situation, but I am sure it brought a few smiles to a few people.