1 . I used to be anorexic (厌食的). I was skeletal, each of my rib bones jutted out, like ridges on my body; my head, which looked abnormally huge, was barely supported by my backbone.

It would take an hour for me to eat a spoon of food. Should I attempt to eat to please my parents on teachers, I would lock myself in the toilet and throw up the food. I looked pale and weak all the time because of the lack of food. My family members were distressed. They cried a lot.

It all started when a boy in my class called me “fat” I was devastated. I adopted an extremely strict diet and exercise routine. I lost 10kg within three months and continued to lose more weight. I was absolutely obsessed about losing even more weight. One day, my heart rate dropped and I was breathless. I almost lost my life. That was when I decided to turn my life around.

Looking good is extremely important to a teenager. We want to look a certain way so we can be popular and accepted. We are attracted by well-toned and sculpted bodies. Now, with social media, we have access to a pool of photographs of people, whose bodies and appearances we admire. Those images make us envious. We long to be like them.

We're in danger when we start to hate the way we look and take drastic measures to attain the body we dream of having. These measures can lead to eating disorders, unrealistic and unhealthy exercise habits, low self-esteem and depression. Besides affecting the physical health, teenagers who are body conscious can also suffer from mental instability. They may plunge into despair, guilt and hopelessness if they are unable to keep up with their rigid exercise routines or eating habits. They can be emotionally fragile too. They become sensitive to comments made by others. They are ashamed of the way they look. If you are currently experiencing these feelings, seek help before itis too late.

It is important to feel confident and positive about your image and not subscribe to man-made standards of beauty, which will change with time. You are unique.

2 . “I’ll be there in a few minutes. I’m playing a game with a friend, a guy named Snoopy,” my 15-year-old son shouted from his room. “Oh, what is Snoopy’s real name?” I asked. “I have no idea,” he said. “Where is he from?” I continued. He responded, “I think somewhere in Canada. Oh, wait, it doesn’t even matter because Snoopy just left the game and he has been replaced with a robot.” “Your friend is replaced by a robot?” “It doesn’t matter, Dad. It happens all the time! The game continues.” My son doesn’t mind playing with a person or a robot, which is typical of gamers these days. I wonder whether the face-to-face experience of friendship that I grew up with will be lost by our ohildren.

Aristotle, the great Greek thinker and educator. has pointed out that shallow friendship is easily formed but also easily quit because such bonds are weak and uncerturn. Deep friendship, by contrast, is when you care for your friend for his sake, not for any benefit you can get. This is selfless friendship. You can have only a couple of these friends because they require lots of time and effort. You must make sacrifices (牺牲) for each other.

Presence in friendship requires “being with” and “doing for”. Perhaps the most typical feature of deep friendship is “doing for”, as my friend has my back in trouble or brings me soup when I’m sick. Only strong bonds have the power to motivate real sacrifices. But it is unclear why online “friends” would bother to do the hard work of friendship. When I asked my students whether they had people in their lives who would bring them soup when they were sick, they laughed at my Stone Age question and said they’d just order soup online.

Digital life fills and absorbs waking life time so that people do not join in example cases of friendship, like sports, collective arts, free range childhoods, etc. In this way, digital life may produce false friendships.

4 . In a small village there lived a lazy Brahmin Ramdas. He would do nothing but daydream all day. One sunny afternoon, Ramdas was very ______. He said, “What a beautiful day! How I wish I could go back to sleep. But I have to go out and get my food.” After bathing, Ramdas took out a bowl and out to ______. By begging the whole day he managed to get a pot full of ______.

“It is this pot of milk that is going to make me ______,” he thought. “I will use it to make butter. From the butter, I will be ______ to make ghee (酥油). I am really clever! I will then go to the _______ and sell the ghee,” his dream ______. “With the money I get, I will buy a pair of goats. They will have ______ after six months. Soon I would have an entire herd of goats.”

“How ______ I am,” he thought. “The day I become a rich businessman I will build a big house right in the middle of the village. There will be a splendid garden and a swimming pool in front of the house. Early morning I will ______ in the blue waters of the pool.”

Deep in his ______, he struck out with his foot, breaking the ______, and drenching (使湿透) himself with the milk. He saw the situation and cried. He lost whatever he had because of his ______ and daydreaming.

Laziness is the biggest ______ of our life. If you are lazy, then you will not acquire any significant position in your life and will always have nothing. Laziness is a ______ who slowly steals everything from us. If you want to become successful in your life and career, please overcome the devil laziness.

5 . When I first picked up Michelle Zauner’s memoir (自传) “Crying in H Mart”, I was attracted by the familiar name of the local Korean market 10 minutes away from my house. Looking through its pages was no different from looking through an old photo album (相册), reminding me of my old memories. And I wanted to look at each and every photo, up close.

Despite being a struggling artist making up for lost time with a sick mother, Zauner somehow made her unique experiences relatable to her audience. One of the factors that helped make this possible was food. Every food and every aspect of Korean culture she described seemed so familiar to me, as I’m a Korean American. Not only this, we have similar experiences, and have common feelings of being torn apart by two cultures that seem to refuse to accept us just for being who we are. Zauner shone a new light on my attitude to my own identity.

In other ways, this relatability to such a specific target audience can become a weakness. This memoir was obviously meant for a Korean, specifically a Korean American audience. With such a small audience of 0.6% of the United States population in 2019, the story that Zauner wanted to tell would not be received by many.

An avoidable point of the memoir that caused confusion could have been the organization of the timeline. Looking at the book as a whole, there was no specific order in which Zauner organized the events of her life. The most effective way to do this would have been to progress through the book starting with her earliest memories with her mother and ending with her moments of grieving (悲痛).

I felt thankful that I was able to discover such a novel that made me feel understood for the first time in years. And most of all, I felt inspired that there are people like Zauner who make mistakes but try again. Even when the world tells them it’s too late, they try again Even when they feel lost, they try again and find a way. And there was one thing I was sure of after I read the book: I will try again.

8 . Many of us seem to have lives that follow a certain way. From kindergarten all the way to getting married, every stage of our lives seems to be preset (预置). And although this works well for a lot of people, according to British scholar Jay Shetty, there is no “right” schedule to live our lives by.

A few months ago, a video of Shetty’s speech “Before You Feel Pressure” became popular on the Internet across the world. In the video, he sends an important message that we should think “outside of the way” and have the courage to follow our hearts. As Shetty says in the video, we don’t have to get stressed and put ourselves in the race with our peers (同龄人) or judge our lives based on others’. “Everything in life happens according to our time, our clocks,” he says.

In his inspiring speech, Shetty points out that UK author J. K. Rowing got her famous “Harry Potter” series published at age 32, after being turned down by 12 publishers. Shetty also mentions that Chinese businessman Jack Ma didn’t even start the Alibaba Group until he was 35 years old. So we shouldn’t let anyone rush us.

As physicist Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that is counted truly counts. The key to staying on our own tracks is to be patient and keep our own interest.” In Australian nurse Bronnie Ware’s best-selling book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying”, she recorded the dying regrets of her patients, and the top one on the list was: “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the one others expected of me.”

Indeed, we are all unique in our personalities and gifts, and there is no perfect fit for all. We should listen to our inner voices and ignore what the world has taught us, and what we have picked up from people around us. “It is important to allow people to go back to being self-aware of their own interests, needs and concerns”, Shetty told the magazine. “It’s disconnecting from what makes sense to what actually moves you and what makes sense internally (内在的).”

9 . As a child, I think we all admire the idea that there are people in this world who can ________ the impossible things — do things that ________ people cannot. Fictional (虚构的) superheroes are usually ________ as the people having extraordinary or superhuman power and are devoted to ________ the public. But there are real-life heroes ________ there. They don’t have fascinating power that we can only dream of. I am talking about unsung heroes (无名英雄) in our ________: the cashiers at our ________ grocery stores, mechanics who fix our cars, people who cook the food in our local restaurants, those working in the front line of non-profit organizations, and the ________ goes on.

I try to express my ________ every day to the people who make our lives ________, even when we don’t realize it. Just everyone in your community is ________ an unsung hero to someone in their lives.

Life is a ________ at times and each of us has a story to tell. Someone else is thankful for less than what you have. An unsung hero of mine who ________ my day was a lady in the line behind me at the grocery store who said, “It doesn’t matter if the glass is full or empty; Just be ________ that you have a glass.” Having a ________ attitude means showing gratitude towards the people in your life.

10 . It was June a few years ago right around the Summer Solstice(夏至). The first fireflies(萤火虫)had appeared, _______ on and off in the woods around my house. What a(n) _______ it was to see them again! How amazing the natural life was! Their small light made me smile, and I couldn’t help but feel _______ to nature.

As the daylight _______, I saw some children trying to catch the fireflies in the dark. A girl went inside and came back with a clear glass bottle. After several _______ attempts, she went to run after another one instead. _______, she was very happy. Eventually, she caught two fireflies and put them into the bottle.

All the other children including me were very _______. We gathered around, desiring to watch the fireflies’ light inside the bottle. Soon the girl’s mom walked to us and told us it was time to set the fireflies _______. One of the children disagreed. But the girl’s mom explained that the fireflies would die if left in the _______. Then she said something that still stays in my mind now, “Let them go so they can share their ________ with the rest of the world!” Finally, we knew the meaning of life.

I ________ in our childhood, we used to sing the song, “This little light of mine, I’m going to let it shine!” But as adults we find it ________ to do so. We often forget to share.

Don’t ________ your “light”. Don’t keep it in a “bottle”. Share your “light”, no matter how ________ it may be. Let love light up your heart and then give it to the whole world. Learn from the lightening fireflies and let the “light” within you ________ the darkness away.