Every time my family makes special plans, they end up getting canceled due to some incidents. Every time that happens, my parents would tell us to look on the bright side and make the best of a bad situation. However, I never managed to do that until this spring.

On a sunny morning this April, my aunt Kate invited us to the annual outdoor spring celebration on her farm. Since my family hadn't done anything different for ages, the whole family was very excited and everyone tried their best to make sure everything went well as planned. In order to add more fun to this exciting trip, my little sister Alice and my little brother Bill even joined me in making an extra-special treat-cupcakes. Full of joy and expectation, we were ready to set off.

The picnic was supposed to last from twelve to three. There was not enough time left. After checking the car again and again, my parents loaded books, a picnic blanket, and a whole big pack of foods and drinks into the car. The moment of our departure finally came at 11 o'clock.

However, everything went wrong the instant we bravely drove off. First, we had to stop and wait for Bill to find his shoes. Next, as we were driving down the road, we had to go back to the house because my mom left her wallet behind. Then, about halfway to Aunt Kate's house, we had to drive far out of our way to find a place for Alice to use a bathroom.

After that, my parents decided it'd be quicker to take one little side country road as a shortcut (捷径). But the shortcut ended up turning into a long way! We drove forever on a winding road with wildflower fields spreading endlessly out on both sides and the deep green pine trees going on and on within our sight. I had no mood to appreciate all of those. Spotting hundreds of birds flying in the sky, I was seized by a growing sense of desperation, for I entirely had no idea when we could hit our destination.

However, we had to stop on the way, for we were trapped there.

"Could we have a great time here?" I wondered.

Edison, a five-year-old boy had a nice holiday on the Big Island, Hawaii with his parents. The sun shone on the golden beach, and the sparkling sea unfolded in front of them. There were a large number of people on vacation, and the houses in the distance were neatly lined up. After Edison played for a while, he sat on the beach, enjoying the beautiful trees in the distance and listening to the cries of the seagulls (海鸥).

However, having recently returned from Hawaii, they were shocked by a TV news — a deadly wildfire on Maui steals Hawaiians’ homes and history. Scores of birds lay dead on the ground. Houses were burned to ruins, and cars were destroyed.

“Mum, do the kids have no toys or even a bed?” Edison asked sadly. “What shall I do to help them?”

“Will you donate your pocket money?” Mom asked.

“Sure, but that’s not enough. What about setting up a lemonade stand (柠檬水小摊) on the street? I think people are willing to buy something and give a helping hand.”

“Sounds great! My boy.” Dad agreed. “Besides pink and yellow lemonade, we can sell sandwiches, ice creams, candies and sparking water (气泡水).”

“Let’s start to make these things. It won’t take long.” Edison urged his parents.

The next few hours saw this family making sandwiches and lemonade, putting all the stuff on a stand, with a board saying “Food and Lemonade for Hawaii. One dollar per cup.”

“Will people buy our stuff?” Edison wondered.

Soon, drivers and passers-by stopped and made generous purchases. Even though the lemonade sold for 1 dollar per cup, they regularly paid 5, 10 or even 20 dollars.

“It is really considerate of you to do this. Please donate the change!” Touched by the behavior of Edison, people generously donated. “Thank you!” Edison expressed his gratitude to everyone who lent a helping hand.

With the collected funds, the family purchased essential supplies, such as food, water, blankets and toys. Though they were physically exhausted, they felt happy inside.

The family decided to go to the disaster-stricken island and offer their time and efforts.

It was the day of the big cross-country run. Students from seven different primary schools in and around the small town were warming up and walking the route (路线) through thick evergreen forest.

I looked around and finally spotted David, who was standing by himself off to the side by a fence. He was small for ten years old. His usual big toothy smile was absent today. I walked over and asked him why he wasn’t with the other children. He hesitated and then said he had decided not to run.

What was wrong? He had worked so hard for this event!

I quickly searched the crowd for the school’s coach and asked him what had happened. “I was afraid that kids from other schools would laugh at him,” he explained uncomfortably. “I gave him the choice to run or not, ad let him decide.”

David had a brain disease which prevented him from walking or running like other children, but at school his classmates thought of him as a regular kid. He always participated to the best of his ability in whatever they were doing. That was why none of the children thought it unusual that David had decided to join the cross-country team. It just took him longer — that’s all. David had not missed a single practice, and although he always finished his run long after the other children, he did always finish. As a special education teacher at the school, I was familiar with the challenges David faced and was proud of his strong determination. I decided to encourage him to keep on. Hearing my inspiring words, David nodded willingly, deciding to join in the cross-country team.

I watched as David moved up to the starting line with the other runners.

I was eight years old when my family moved from Towoomba to England in 1950. My mother was suffering from a rare disease and had to take treatment in London. The day before we boarded the ship, Father sent his five-year-old red heeler (Australian cattle dog), Spider, who was loved by us all, to his friend Sandy, as Sandy was to be his guardian while we were overseas. We didn’t know how long my mother’s treatment would take or how long we would be away.

Six weeks later, an airletter arrived from Sandy, giving my father the news that Spider had run away just two weeks after we had sailed. I will always remember my father’s face as he read this news. My mother and I tried to comfort him, knowing in our hearts how useless this was.

Sandy had advertised constantly on the media. Despite many “sightings”, the dog was never found. It seemed Spider just kept running and searching for us. My father worried he would be shot or dead from starvation. But our family thought that Father held a secret hope that Spider was still alive.

We sailed back to Australia two years later and my father immediately began his own search for Spider. He repeated calls to the people who had said they had seen his dog, but it turned out to be clueless.

One cold winter’s Saturday morning, eight months after our return, my father had a call from Gin Gin, 375 kilometers from Toowoomba. An elderly lady living on her own was putting food out “for a very old yellow dog”. This had been going on for a few weeks. Immediately we set off.

Five and a half hours later, we found the old house beside the bush (灌木丛). Sadly, the lady told my father that the dog hadn’t been around for a few days. My father had an upset look in his eyes. He put two fingers to his mouth and did his special whistle for Spider.

Suddenly there was a sound in the bush.

Once home we gently cleaned him up.

6 . Search “toxic parents”, and you’ll find more than 38, 000 posts, largely urging young adults to cut ties with their families. The idea is to safeguard one’s mental health from offensive parents. However, as a psychoanalyst (精神分析学家), I’ve seen that trend in recent years become a way to manage conflicts in the family, and I have seen the severe impacts estrangement (疏远) has on both sides of the divide. This is a self-help trend that creates much harm.

“Canceling” your parent can be seen as an extension of a cultural trend aimed at correcting imbalances in power and systemic inequality. Today’s social justice values respond to this reality, calling on us to criticize oppressive and harmful figures and to gain power for those who have been powerless. But when adult children use the most effective tool they have—themselves—to gain a sense of security and ban their parents from their lives, the roles are simply switched, and the pain only deepens.

Often, what I see in my practice are cases of family conflict mismanaged, power dynamics turned upside down rather than negotiated. I see the terrible effect of that trend: situations with no winners, only isolated humans who long to be known and feel safe in the presence of the other.

The catch is that after estrangement, adult children are not suddenly less dependent. In fact, they feel abandoned and betrayed, because in the unconscious, it doesn’t matter who is doing the leaving; the feeling that remains is “being left”. They carry the ghosts of their childhood, tackling the emotional reality that those who raised us can never truly be left behind, no matter how hard we try.

What I have found is that most of these families need repair, not permanent break-up. How can one learn how to negotiate needs, to create boundaries and to trust? How can we love others, and ourselves, if not through accepting the limitations that come with being human? Good relationships are not the result of a perfect level of harmony but rather of successful adjustments.

To pursue dialogue instead of estrangement will be hard and painful work. It can’t be a single project of “self-help”, because at the end of the day, real intimacy (亲密关系) is achieved by working through the injuries of the past together. In most cases of family conflict, repair is possible and preferable to estrangement—and it’s worth the work.

9 . The curb cut (下斜路缘) is a convenience that most of us rarely, if ever, notice. Yet, without it, daily life might be a lot harder — in more ways than one. Pushing a baby stroller (婴儿推车) onto the curb, skateboarding onto a sidewalk or taking a full grocery cart from the sidewalk to your car — all these tasks are easier because of the curb cut.

But it was created with a different purpose in mind.

It’s hard to imagine today, but back in the 1970s, most sidewalks in the United States ended with a sharp drop-off. That was a big deal for people in wheelchairs because there were no ramps (斜坡) to help them move along city blocks without assistance. According to one disability rights leader, a six-inch curb “might as well have been Mount Everest”. So, activists from Berkeley, California, who also needed wheelchairs, organized a campaign to create tiny ramps to help people dependent on wheels move up and down curbs independently.

I think about the “curb cut effect” a lot when working on issues around health equity (公平). The first time I even heard about the curb cut was in a 2017 Stanford Social Innovation Review piece by PolicyLink CEO Angela Blackwell. Blackwell rightly noted that many people see equity “as a zero-sum game.” Basically, there is “a prejudice that intentionally supporting one group hurts another.” What the curb cut effect shows, Blackwell said, is that “when society creates the circumstances that allow those who have been left behind to participate and contribute fully, everyone wins.”

There are multiple examples of this principle at work. For example, investing in policies that create more living-wage jobs or increase the availability of affordable housing certainly benefits people in communities that have limited options. But the action also provides those people with opportunities for better health and the moans to become contributing members of society — and those benefits everyone. Even the football huddle (围成一团以秘密商讨) was initially created to help deaf football players at Gallaudet College keep their game plans secret from opponents who could have read their sign language. Today, it’s used by every team to prevent the opponent from learning about game-winning strategies.

So, next time you cross the street, or roll your suitcase through a crosswalk or ride your bike directly onto a sidewalk, think about how much the curb cut, the design that benefits one group of people at a disadvantage, has helped not just that group, but all of us.