An old Spanish proverb states, “Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week”. How many times have we put off our dreams until ________? I’d say, too many. Our dreams should not, and cannot wait. We have to go for them now! Here’s ________.

1. Tomorrow is not ________.

Nobody likes to talk about death, but the ________ is—everybody is going to die at one point. None of us know the day, or the hour. ________, today is all we have. Make the decision to go after every dream, big or small, right now.

2. The world is expecting your gift.

You were born into the world with a ________ gift, which nobody on this earth can copy. Sure, other people may be able to sing, but they’ll never be able to sing ________ like you. Sure, other people can write, but they’ll never be able to write from the same angle(角度) in which you write. Don’t deprive(剥夺) the world of your gift. Thus, it is your responsible to ________ exactly what your gift is, and use it to better your own life and the lives of those ________ you.

3. You can’t let fear win.

One of the biggest dream ________ is fear. Many people could have achieved amazing things if they weren’t afraid. Just think about all the things you’ve wanted to do. Never let fear stop you from achieving your dreams.

“Dad,” I say one day, “let’s take a trip. Why don’t you fly and meet me?”

My father has just retired after 27 years as a manager for IBM. His job filled his day, his thoughts and his life. When he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall in Peru. When he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

My father sees me drifting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

“What is our first stop?” asks my father.

“What time is it?”

“Still don’t have a watch?”

Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite (花岗岩), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of a little boy.

“Unbelievable,” he says, “How was this done?”

A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture(雕像) and then left the final touches to his son.

We stare up and I ask myself, “Would I ever devote my life to anything?”

No directions, no goals. I used to hear those words in my father’s voice. Now I hear them in my own.

The next day we’re at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

“Have you ever travelled with your dad?” I ask.

“Only once,” he says. “I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.”

The last sentence—it’s probably the same thing I’d say about my father. And what I’d want my child to say about me.

In Glacier National Park, my father says, “I’ve never seen water so blue.” I have, in several places of the world. I can keep traveling and I realize—maybe a regular job won’t be as dull as I feared.

Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

“The photos from the trip are wonderful,” he says. “We have got to take another trip like that sometime.”

I tell him I’ve decided to settle down, and I’m wearing a watch.

The oddness (奇妙) of life in space never quite goes away. Here are some examples.

First consider something as simple as sleep. Its position presents its own challenges. The main question is whether you want your arms inside or outside the sleeping bag. If you leave your arms out, they float free in zero gravity, often giving a sleeping astronaut the look of a funny balled dancer. “I’m an inside guy,” Mike Hopkins says, who returned from a six-month tour on the International Space Station. “I like to be wrapped up.”

On the station, the ordinary becomes strange. The exercise bike for the American astronauts has no handlebars. It also has no seat. With no gravity, it’s just as easy to pedal violently. You can watch a movie while you are pedaling by floating a microcomputer anywhere you want. But station residents have to be careful about staying in one place too long. Without gravity to help circulate air, the carbon dioxide you exhale (呼气) has a tendency to form an invisible (隐形的) cloud around your head. You can end up with what astronauts call a carbon-dioxide headache.

Leroy Chiao, 54, an American retired-astronaut after four flights, describes what happens even before you float out of your seat, “Your inner ear thinks you’re falling. Meanwhile your eyes are telling you you’re standing straight. That can be annoying—that’s why some people feel sick.” Within a couple of days—truly terrible days for some astronauts’ brains learn to pay no attention to the contradictory (矛盾的) signals from the inner ear, and space sickness disappears.

Space travel can be so delightful but at the same time invisibly dangerous. For instance, astronauts lose bone mass. That’s why exercise is considered so important that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) puts it right on the workday schedule. The focus on fitness is as much about science and the future as it is about keeping any individual astronaut healthy. NASA is worried about two things: recovery time once astronauts return home, and, more importantly, how to keep strong and fit for the two and a half years or more that it would take to make a round-trip to Mars.