5 . One rainy afternoon, I was on a crosstown bus when a young woman jumped on. She had a child with her who must have been about 3 or 4 years old.

The bus was full, bumpy, and it soon got noisy as her kid began crying because he couldn’t sit next to his mother. There were a couple of open seats, but they weren’t together. She was flustered and looked embarrassed.

Then another woman, a little older, stood up and moved so that the mother and child could sit together. The mom smiled as a thank-you. And then three words came out of the older woman’s mouth that elevated the entire energy of that bus ride: “I’ve been there”.

Simple, undramatic and honest. In that moment, it seemed to unite people. Why? Because almost all experiences are shared human experiences. We forget that, as we forge (前进) through life, focused on our own troubles and needs—which are actually less unique than we think. How can these three words create more connection in your life? Ask yourself: “Where am I holding back?

One thing I know for sure is this: Healing others helps heal yourself. I noticed this recently with my friend, Tracy, who took a new friend who had suffered a miscarriage under her wing. Tracy had three of them before having her daughter two years ago. Our intellect needs a doctor to explain the medical side of things, yes. But our souls need human connection to help us along. No one can do that better than someone who has been exactly where you are.

Can the essence of these three words help you make a small difference right now? It can be as simple as volunteering your seat, sharing some helpful advice or even lightening the mood with a joke when you notice that someone’s uncomfortable—because we’re all in this together.

6 . For the first time in my life I have been dumped by a friend. I should have seen it coming: the phone calls not returned, the excuses about ‘not feeling very sociable right now’... Yet the letter suggesting that the time had come for us to move on still came as a shock.

Tula and I had been firm friends for nearly ten years. We met at a singing workshop and took on each other immediately. But life changed for both of us: I got married and she responded to her single status by developing a fresh set of social networks. Then she took a long holiday, reviewed her life and decided what to keep and what to throw out. In her letter she described our friendship as a ‘borderline’ case and suggested it should be time we ‘let each other go’.

I’m all for letting go of bad habits and boxes of old school exercise books. But surely close friends are not consumer goods to be discarded or replaced at the first hint of trouble? We are encouraged to believe that friends will be around forever. ‘You’ve got a friend,’ sang Carole King and ‘I'll be there for you’ promised the theme tune of Friends. Such sentiments have sunk deep into the collective unconsciousness, or into mine, at least.

Certainly, the statistics indicate that we need friends more than ever. Government figures predict that the proportion of married men and women aged from 45 to 54 will fall by a quarter in the next two decades. A recent British survey found that two-thirds of eighteen to 35-year-olds in Britain turn to friends before family for help and advice. Yes, the argument goes, in a fast-moving, ever-changing world, friendship is our rock, the one thing we can truly rely on.

But in his book, The Philosophy of Friendship, Mark Vernon suggests otherwise. He cautions that we place unrealistic burdens on friendship, that it's unreasonable to expect friends to fulfill family members’ roles. Worse still, he says, friendships are becoming harder to maintain. ‘There are lots of obstacles in the way we live today. It’s harder to put time and effort into knowing someone. Mobiles, email and so on, all these are secondary ways of communicating. There’s not the depth.’

So, what did I do with Tula’s letter? I re-read it many times, thinking over where I’d gone wrong. And then I wrote back. ‘Yes, you’re right.’ I wrote, ‘things have changed. But aren’t we good enough friends to hang in there?’ Since then we have exchanged a couple of emails. A walk has been suggested. It would be easy not to make the effort and let this friendship go but, as Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, said: ‘Stay is a charming word in a friend’s vocabulary.’ 1think she's right.

7 . School Clubs or Sports?

bha8102

Asked July 20, 2020

I am a high school freshman. Should I participate in high school clubs or sports? By clubs I mean clubs like Habitat for Humanity or Math Team. I have heard that taking up a sport in 9th grade can help you get into a better college. I am equally interested in both.

Replies

southernbelle16

Answered July 21, 2020

Get involved with extracurricular clubs. Sports don’t matter that much unless you:

a) play one continuously for years;

b) are going to college to play sports.

Clubs that involved academics, volunteer work and leadership are excellent. If you have time to play sports, then do that as well. Colleges want well-rounded people.

thinkingtoohard

Answered July 21, 2020

If you’re looking to get into a highly competitive college, yes! I wish someone had told me freshman year that by the time I was a senior, I should have founded at least one club, been a leader in two others, and done tons of volunteer work. I might be exaggerating a little bit but you get the idea ... check out what students have done to get accepted into their colleges. But make sure that your clubs/sports fit your interests. College admissions officers can easily tell when they’re just fillers.

bha8102

Asked July 22, 2020

I am interested in sports but not good at them. What if I involve myself in a club I am interested in but don’t become officer?   

Replies

@intparent

Answered July 22, 2020

One of my kids got accepted to every place she had applied to two years ago, and she had no “named” leadership positions. However, she was a very strong contributor in some team activities. Leadership isn’t always about standing in front of the room with a title. It can be about leading your team in terms of performance, for example, or in helping younger teammates make progress.

I think the leadership title positions are overrated in the college admissions process. Colleges don’t want “lone wolves” who can’t get along with others. They want students who are sincere, try the best to do the things that are important to them, and perform at a high level in the things that they set their minds to. Pick the things that you love and put a lot of effort into them. If you have good grades and test scores, the rest will follow.

8 . If you are a recent social science graduate who has had to listen to jokes about unemployment from your computer major classmates, you may have had the last laugh. There are many advantages for the social science major because this high-tech “Information Age” demands people who are flexible and who have good communication skills.

There are many social science majors in large companies who fill important positions. For example, a number of research studies found that social science majors had achieved greater managerial success than those who had technical training or pre-professional courses. Studies show that social science majors are most suited for change, which is the leading feature of the kind of high speed, high-pressure, high-tech world we now live in.

Social science majors are not only experiencing success in their long-term company jobs, but they are also finding jobs more easily. A study showed that many companies had filled a large percentage of their entry-level positions with social science graduates. The study also showed that the most sought-after quality in a person who was looking for a job was communication skills, noted as “very important” by 92 percent of the companies. Social science majors have these skills, often without knowing how important they are. It is probably due to these skills that they have been offered a wide variety of positions.

Finally, although some social science majors may still find it more difficult than their technically trained classmates to land the first job, recent graduates report that they don’t regret their choice of study.

9 . Modern medicine’s ability to keep us alive makes it tempting to think human evolution may have stopped. But if we look at the rate of our DNA’s evolution, we can see that human evolution hasn’t stopped – it may even be happening faster than before.

Evolution is a gradual change to the DNA of a species over many generations. It can occur by natural selection, when certain traits created by genetic changes help an organism survive or reproduce. Such genes are thus more likely to be passed on to the next generation, so they increase in frequency in a population. Gradually, these changes and their associated traits become more common among the whole group.

By looking at global studies of our DNA, we can see evidence that natural selection has recently made changes and continues to do so. Though modern healthcare disrupts a key driving force of evolution by keeping some people alive longer, in countries without access to good healthcare, populations are continuing to evolve. Survivors of infectious disease outbreaks drive natural selection by giving their genetic resistance to offspring. Our DNA shows evidence for recent selection for resistance of killer diseases like Lassa fever and malaria. Selection in response to malaria remains in regions where the disease remains common.

Humans are also adapting to their environment. Gene change allowing humans to live at high altitudes have become more common in populations in Tibet, Ethiopia, and the Andes. The spread of genetic changes in Tibet is possibly the fastest evolutionary change in humans, occurring over the past 3,000 years. This rapid increase in frequency of a mutated gene that increases blood oxygen content gives locals a survival advantage in higher altitudes, resulting in more surviving children.

Diet is another source for adaptations. Studies show that natural selection favoring a change allowing adults to produce lactase – the enzyme (酶) that breaks down milk sugars – is why some groups of people can digest milk. Over 80 per cent of northwest Europeans can, but in parts of East Asia, where milk is much less commonly drunk, an inability to digest lactose is the norm. Like high altitude adaptation, selection to digest milk has evolved more than once in humans and may be the strongest kind of recent selection.

Yet, despite these changes, natural selection only affects about 8 per cent of our genome. But scientists can’t explain why some genes are evolving much faster than others. We measure the speed of gene evolution by comparing human DNA with that of other species. One fast-evolving gene is human accelerated region 1 (HAR1), which is needed during brain development. A random section of human DNA is on average more than 98 per cent identical to the chimp comparator, but HAR1 is so fast evolving that it’s only around 85 per cent similar. Though scientists can see these changes are happening – and how quickly – we still don’t fully understand why fast evolution happens to some genes but not others.

10 . People generally see themselves through achievements. In doing that, they end up caring more about their image than the reality of who they actually are. Rather than their performance at work, they end up defining themselves by external markers that they hope will earn them respect.

The problem with this is that it encourages both themselves and other people to judge their worth based on some relatively unimportant measure. For example, one day, their educational diploma may overshadow what they actually learned. Therefore, a better way to know a person, I think, is to ask a different set of questions: What motivates them? What makes them ache? What do they long for?

It’s in this spirit that I want to publicly share my values. They are the compass(罗盘) that guides my life. The kindest and most sincere thing I can do is to see, recognize, and understand another person before I make judgments. From there, I can learn to treat others appropriately, depending on the context, learning from my mistakes with time and experience. It's just a reminder that life is hard for all of us, while at the same time accepting that it's important we are all also held accountable for our actions.

I have learned that we are all deeply self-interested. I hope to be self-aware enough to check out of the power and status games. That means I'm not competing with anyone for a shiny object; I'd rather compete with myself. It's about becoming so uniquely different that it would be an insult for me to measure myself against someone else. I believe if I do the work to be internally free from the pull of the power and status games, then I can add value to others based on my unique knowledge and experience.

If this resonates with(与……共鸣) you, I invite you to join me on this journey in understanding and relating to this complex world. It's a wonderful mystery, and I think together we can better define it—not just personally, but also collectively.