1 . Several years ago, I spent most of my time at a mental hospital (精神病院) in our town. I found much joy there. At first it was a little scary to be there, but I stayed on, because I had a reason for doing this.

I volunteered in a locked-up (封闭的) environment. To my surprise, I found that a friend of my parents’ was a patient in this hospital. I knew, when I was a baby, this woman wanted to keep me because she had no children. I looked after this woman and showed my old photos to her. Finally, she was able to remember some old things, and she said to me one day, “Dear, you should not come here.” But I wanted to bring something happy into this woman’s life. I learned that because she had no family, she couldn’t leave here and go home. So I brought her to my home twice and I still remembered the happy smile on her face.

I have never forgotten this volunteering experience. This woman later passed away. I can’t see her anymore, but I’m happy that I have done something to make a difference in another person’s life.

2 . Some animals can easily find their way home after a long journey. How do they make it? Scientific research shows that they are born with certain unusual abilities for direction.

A certain kind of ants, for example, can count their steps to avoid getting lost. They can go as far as 110 metres and bring food home. These ants live in the open desert (沙漠), so they have nothing to guide them along the way. It’s like someone walking six kilometres through a dark forest.

Some fish have an unbelievable sense of smell. They can smell even a single drop of their home water in a large sea area. Some sea birds have a similar ability. They are able to make a smell map of their flying area.

Some animals can sense the earth’s magnetic field (磁场), while humans can’t. This magnetic field guides a certain kind of fish when they swim a long way to a place and then back. How can this kind of fish do that? It is still a mystery. Scientists have no good answers yet.

However, animals with such unusual abilities still have difficulty dealing with environmental changes caused by human activities. For example, many birds depend on stars for direction, but they get lost easily at night when city lights are kept on all night. To solve this problem, we can simply turn off some lights at night. Clearly, one small act of humans may mean a lot to animals.

4 . When considering the kind of experience that makes life better, most people first think that happiness depends on experiencing pleasure: good food, good jobs, all the comforts that money can buy. If we couldn’t have these, we might as well sit in front of the television on a quiet evening.

Pleasure is an important part of the quality of life, but by itself it doesn’t bring happiness. When people think further about what makes a worthy life, they tend (倾向于) to move beyond pleasant memories and begin to remember other events, other experiences that overlap (有重叠) pleasurable ones but fall into a group with a separate name: enjoyment. Enjoyable events take place when people have not only satisfied a need or met some earlier expectation, but also achieved something unexpected.

Enjoyment is characterized by a sense of curiosity, of achievement. Playing a tennis game that improves one’s ability is enjoyable, as is reading a book that shows things in a new light, as is having a conversation that leads us to express ideas we didn’t know we had. None of these experiences may be especially pleasurable when they are taking place, but when we think back on them afterwards, we would say, “That really was fun” and wish they would happen again. After an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, and grown.

Experiences that give pleasure can also give enjoyment, but the two feelings are quite different. For example, everybody takes pleasure in eating. However, to enjoys food is more difficult — you have to pay enough attention to a meal, so as to sense and tell its various tastes. As this example suggests, we can experience pleasure without any psychic energy, while enjoyment happens only as a result of full attention. A person can feel pleasure without any effort, as long as certain parts in his brain are stimulated (刺激). But it’s impossible to enjoy a tennis game or a book without full attention. It’s for this reason that pleasure does not last long, nor does it make us grow. Growth requires full attention to goals that are new, that are relatively challenging.

Without enjoyment, life will go on, and it can even be pleasant. But it depends heavily on luck and the external (外部的) environment. To achieve personal control over the quality of experience, however, we need to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out.

5 . Computer scientist Mary has an idea for a new robot to help her work with children. How should it look? The robot should have arms to be able to lift things. And if it is going to communicate with people, it will also need a face. Scientists believe that giving a robot a face can make it seem more friendly. Humans would also like to pay more attention to robots with faces. But what kind?

For Mary, she wants to make sure that her new robot doesn’t look too much like a human. She wants people to just treat it as a machine-person. If it looks more like a human than a machine, she thinks users might find it a bit creepy and feel afraid. Mary also believes that robot faces don’t need to look a lot like ours. Her research shows that we can enjoy communicating with robots whether or not they look like humans, because our brains are able to look for faces. Just put two circles on top of a robot’s body, and we will see a face.

Dave feels differently. He believes that although at first we might be afraid when seeing a robot with a lifelike face, we may soon get used to it. If robots are going to work closely with humans, they should look as much like us as possible. After all, faces are an important part of the way we communicate.

To make his robots look as much like real people as possible, Dave invented a special skin (皮肤) for their faces. With this skin, robots can show human-like expressions and appear to be angry, sad, happy or surprised. Dave’s robots are also programmed to copy expressions. How? Just imagine his robot is looking at you. The cameras in its eyes send pictures of your face to its central computer!

6 . Progress means the act of going forward. Making any kind of progress can make us healthy and happy in life. By setting and actively working towards our goals, we can make progress in our life.

To make more progress in life, start looking at problems in a different way. Whatever happens, if we think positively, it can be useful and helpful. We need to know that problems are part of our life. After we solve problems one after another, we can make more progress and become stronger.

Having confidence (信心) is helpful for us to make progress. Confidence comes from different places, such as proper education, training or having good relationships. We should also stay with people who believe in our success and actively support us. These people can help push us towards progress.

Slow progress is still progress. Just as the old saying goes, “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Progress usually comes a lot more slowly than we expect. Even if progress is slow, try not to be worried. One important thing is that we keep taking steps towards our goals, and another is that we clearly remember what our goals are all the time. The actual speed isn’t important.

The road to progress is not always smooth. Most progress often comes with setbacks along the way. Sometimes, maybe it feels like we’re taking one step forward and three steps back, but it won’t always be like that. Keep going towards our goals and we can much more easily make the progress we want.

Progress doesn’t always happen in a straight line. As long as we keep working, we will achieve higher levels.

8 .

Confucianism (儒家思想) has been followed by Chinese people for more than two thousand years.

To help people understand how to behave towards others, Confucianism teaches the Five Constants (五常). These are ren, yi, li, zhi and xin. They are general virtues (美德) around the world. The most important two are ren and li.

Ren is the feeling of care and love we should have for others. Confucius explained ren could best be understood as loving others. He is famous for teaching people “What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others”. It is quite similar to what is known in the West as the Golden Rule (treat others as you wish to be treated).

While the meaning of ren is easy to understand, li is a little harder to express. It can be thought of as duty or even respect. Generally, li is the way we should connect with people in our everyday life. In Confucian writings, discussions about li include the proper way to drink tea and how to remember ancestors (祖先). While ren is mostly about our opinions and feelings, li is about how we express our opinions and feelings towards others and towards the world around us.

Perhaps the most well-known Confucian virtue is xiao. This is the duty children have to their parents. Xiao means loving, respecting, obeying and taking care of one’s parents in their old age. In Confucianism, xiao is important for a harmonious (和谐的) society: Without it, the whole world would fall into a mess.

9 . We all enjoy being part of a group—there’s no better work than teamwork, right? Actually, I disagree. Teamwork can be hard. In fact, it was so difficult that I left my office job and started working from home on my own. It’s a much better fit for me, and it has made me think about why teamwork can make our jobs harder rather than easier.

Personalities (个性) can make teamwork difficult. There’s often someone on the team that puts their needs first. The team often goes along with this person, whose ideas might not be the best, just the loudest. Just one difficult personality can make teamwork hard. Combine (结合) several challenging personality types, and it’s even harder.

Not having enough time together can also make teamwork challenging. For example, I was once on a team where we never had enough time to meet as a group. To successfully work as a team, you need time together—and lots of it.

A final reason teamwork is difficult is because there’s often no training on how to work on a team. You can’t just put people in a room and expect them to work well with each other. You need to build trust with your team members. Think of football players: They aren’t just given a ball and told to play. They practice, and they train.

Team can be hard, but working alone has its challenges, too. When my computer doesn’t work, I don’t have an IT person to turn to. When I have a great idea, I don’t have anyone to share it with to see if it really is a great idea. Don’t get me wrong—I still like my team of one and enjoy making all of the important decisions myself. But now I realize what was wrong with the teamwork I did in the past and how good teamwork could be if done correctly. And that’s useful information—because one day I might want to turn my ME TEAM into a WE TEAM.

10 . Jerry is a world-famous mountain climber. He has climbed many high mountains in the world. Starting in 2015, he and his friends spent two years on an adventure（探险）in South America, covering 7,800 miles. He was even named Adventure of the Year by a famous geography magazine in 2018.

Although Jerry had achieved great success, he didn’t feel fulfilled. He asked himself, “Is it enough to climb the highest mountains? Am I doing something helpful? How can I turn my adventures into something that can help the world?”

Jerry learned that scientists need plants, rocks and water samples（样本）from the places far away to do research. But scientists can’t get there themselves as such places are hard to reach——only the bravest adventurers can make it. Jerry thought himself could do something to help. He then came up with an idea. He set up a team of top adventures to collect samples for scientists. By studying the samples, scientists could know more about the earth and find ways to protect it.

Recently Jerry and his adventurer friends have discovered a special plant life of Mountain Qomolangma. The samples they brought back have helped scientists how plants live in extreme（极端的）conditions.

For Jerry, this kind of adventure is most satisfying. “Such adventures had made us see life in a different way. Now, being the best climber isn’t important for me, what matters is doing something helpful while climbing the mountains. There is still much more we can do.” Jerry said to a newspaper.