2 . Last week the electricity in my flat went out. I had just got home from work and was ________ making my tea, when all of a sudden the power was off. I was surrounded by complete ________. The lights had gone out, the oven had stopped working and my phone was no longer ________. My flatmates and I tried to ________ it but we soon realised that we couldn’t. We would have to wait for a(n) ________ to come in the morning. This left me a whole night without any ________. My typical evening is spent watching TV and looking through social media. Tonight this wasn’t ________. Due to the lack of lights I couldn’t even read a book. We weren’t prepared with candles or matches. We just rely too much on electricity, expecting that it will ________.

So for me it was an early night to sleep. And I couldn’t help but think, do we ________ electricity too much? That night, losing our electricity felt like losing a basic ________, as basic as running water. But really, electricity is a luxury (奢侈品) that we’ve grown to ________ for granted. I use electricity all the time, even when it’s not really necessary. I use it to ________ my phone when I have to wait for even just a minute, for example when waiting for friends.

Our overuse of electricity is a big ________. It contributes to global warming, which is something that we really should be worried about. It is harming our environment and we need to do what we can to stop it. How would we ________ in a world without electricity? Cutting back on our use of electricity would save energy resources so that they could last for longer. I know ________ that I can cut down on my use of electricity.

3 . Eight years ago, I determined to start my first job — training horses in different countries. Now here I am, my connection with horses have taught me a lot. Let me share two ________ with you.

We can manage ________ through cultural sharing connection. Horse riding is the only sport in the Olympics where men and women ________ equally. In India, as the only woman ________ in the riding club, I had to teach some uneducated males who had a ________ understanding of horsemanship. People believe horse riding is a man’s sport. As a woman, I had to ________ my right. I often trained difficult to ride horses as well as ________ the entire riding club. I worked hard, eventually ________ over those men, who were eager to learn horsemanship training techniques.

The second lesson is that we are never too old to learn. Riding can be learned at any ________. My husband, Christian, had never ridden a horse before but had always ________ it. When moving to England, we invested in a young horse named Lilly, as a ________ project. At the age of 30, my husband started to learn horse riding, and now, the two can’t be ________. Lilly follows him everywhere. Christian finally realized his dream.

I never realized how many doors of ________ horses would open up for me. Because of horses, I ________ the world, I help others, and I’ve watched them heal souls and ________ with people.

4 . A calligrapher (书法家) said to a man who was practicing calligraphy (书法) with waste newspapers, “If you write with the best paper, you may do it better.”

The man asked why. The calligrapher smiled without_________, only writing one word “Compel (强迫)”. He suddenly realized that this was compelling him to cherish (珍惜) his own paper to write it better._________ a boy, when I practiced calligraphy, I would hear the teacher _________ it, but I felt it boring and couldn’t understand. Looking back suddenly, I came to know its _________ .

I remember there is_________a proverb, “If you want to climb over a wall, please throw your hat _________” Because your hat is on the other side of the wall, you have already had no choice but to find ways to climb over it. It is with such a pressure that you will make every effort to exert (发挥)_________. Many times, we always put our _________ in the future, feeling that our life has many drafts (草稿). In fact, the drafts of life that _________ us are extremely limited.

For life, the most important is ____________to write the best words on the limited paper rather than how much paper you used.

5 . At the age of 12, I withdrew into my bedroom with my guitar. I had neither musical talent — many_______music lessons had proved that — nor musical training. My fingers ached as I tried to press down on the strings without making them buzz (发出嗡嗡声). _______, I worked my way through 2-, 3- and even 5-chord (和旋) songs and discovered the _______ thrills of these musical notes. No one _______ me to do this. I did this myself and of my own free will for a week, and the sense of happiness－ true happiness _______ in absorption in something － has _______ me. Fifty years later, that week’s self-directed practice became a model and _______ for almost every meaningful thing I have done since. It makes me understand the _______ between achievement and accomplishment.

The world favors achievement while _______ accomplishment. The former is the completion of the task imposed (强加) from the outside — the ________ being a path to the next task. The latter is the end point of an activity we have chosen, whose bonus is the sudden ________ of happiness.

The seeking of accomplishment always ________ people. I learned so long ago in that ________ week that simply lifting one finger from the guitar’s C chord, you should get the most moving ________ in tune. I didn’t know then it was a major 7th chord, a favorite of some masters’. I just ________ accomplishment. That’s real human “achievement”.

6 . When I was a very small child, I started skiing and enjoyed being different. While the other children in my group were unwilling to ________ , I was busy rolling down the small slope.

Since my many layers of clothing made me just about as wide as I was tall, it was ________ to somersault (翻滚) . I soon ________ the basic skills of turning. I remember falling once and ________ that the snow was taller than I was.

When I was seven, I wanted to take my skiing to the ________ level and join a team. There were two ________ : racing, a popular event for ________ , and free skiing, an event heavily dominated (支配) by boys. Seeing free skiers flying and spinning through the air, I ________ knew which team I wanted to join. In our world today, men are more likely to find careers or ________ in sports than women. Many people claimed that this was just because men’s muscles were stronger. So over time, stereotypes (刻板印象) ________ negatively to define female athletes. Females were often ________ fewer athletic opportunities because of their gender.

Traditionally, women are seen as stay-at-home and mothering ________ . People rarely connect the words   “athletic” or “independent” with women. And people don’t accept that women can make their won choices. But if we can change it, we are just one step closer to ________ rights between men and women.

Although being a girl in a male-dominated sport can be difficult, I’m actually _________ that I had those experiences, which have made me more persistent and have taught me to meet ________ in life with open arms.

9 . When I was 15 or 16 years old, I used to enjoy staring out of my bedroom window at night, at the sky and other houses. After a few minutes of focused attention, I would always reach a point where my vision shifted. The clouds would suddenly look different, stranger and more real. They weren’t “clouds” anymore, but different magical animal shapes that moved through space. The houses weren’t “houses” anymore-they were strange geometric structures made up of jigsaw (拼图) patterns of bricks.

It’s difficult to describe the shift in my vision, but it always felt exciting, as if I was seeing through to the heart of things, beneath a layer of familiarity.

In most situations, our perception is automatic. We see the familiar world, surrounded by objects and phenomena that we perceived thousands of times before and don’t pay real attention to. In addition, we perceive the world through filters (过滤器) of concepts. We have a conceptual label (or name) for everything we see. We label floating shapes in the sky as clouds; we label a masive variety of natural forms with spreading roots and branches as trees. Through filters of familiarity and concepts, our perception of the world is like a faded black-and-white image compared to a three-dimensional colour image.

This is why it always makes sense to side-step our normal familiar perception and perceive the world with fresh vision, free of concepts and expectations, looking at objects as if they had never been seen before, or as if they were other things.

We can see this in great artists. They go beyond familiarity and find a new way of seeing things. Familiar everyday objects like fruit and flowers and bottles are filled with freshness and beauty in the great still-life paintings of artists like Cezanne or Matisse. To look at paintings by Vincent van Gogh, such as Sunflowers, Irises or Van Gogh’s Chair, makes you feel as if an extra dimension of reality has been revealed.

And of course, this is the reason why we love to go to art galleries to see such paintings. To look at them is like going on vacation to a strange foreign country, a reminder of the raw beauty and wonder of the world, hidden beneath our normal automatic vision.

10 . Warm and loving relationships are essential for living a happy life. I didn’t get a true taste of happiness until I quit my decade-long career as an academic, _______ all I’d need for many months onto a bicycle, and began my way to Bhutan, where I would learn more about _______ . That’s not to _______ knowledge acquired through books. Yet there’s a lot to be said for actually getting _______ experience in life.

As an academic, I saw how important relationships were for happiness in the data. But like many, I _______ realizing them in reality. We’re not taught that way and often think people will only love us when we _______ certain criteria, rather than _______ for who we are.

Goals bring directions and happiness in our day-to-day lives. When I was _______ to Bhutan, I wondered about it many times, and through doing so I ensured my journey remained _______ and enjoyable. And, when I did arrive, beautiful as Bhutan was, exhaustion and homesickness ________ . If we’re not happy along the way or have no goals, then we ought to ________ whether it’s worth going at all.

What shocked me most on my cycle journey was people’s ________ . People would invite me into their lives, offering me food or a place to stay, even when they owned ________ . When I set off, I was either suspicious of this kindness or racing too quickly onwards to consider ________ . But with time, I learned to let people in, and this led to deeper ________ and more happiness.