1 . Approaching 96, at an age when most are lonely and in poor health, Olga Murray, full of energy, has been eagerly planning a trip to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, while keeping in contact with hundreds of friends around the world. How can she be in such good shape? Is it her good genes? (Her mother lived to 98.) Her daily salads and three-times-a-week workouts? Or might it have something to do with the retired lawyer’s second career as founder of a nonprofit organization?

Scientists increasingly are finding that the answer—call it living with purpose, finding meaning in life or just engaging with something larger than yourself—can be a particularly healthy pursuit. Living with a sense of purpose can improve the quality of those final years. Murray offers a vivid example of how to create a sense of meaning.

Murray’s story began in 1984, after she had worked 37 years as a lawyer and was starting to think about retirement(退休). At 59, while traveling in Nepal, Murray found herself amazed by the children there. “They were poor beyond anything I had ever experienced,” she recalled in a self-published memoir(自传)years later. “Yet they were the most joyful little kids anywhere on earth.” She wanted to put the rest of her life into helping educate Nepalese children.

Returning to Nepal the next year, she met Allan Aistrope, then a volunteer English teacher at the country’s only orphanage(孤儿院). The two combined forces, beginning with organizing college scholarships for four of the orphans. After another five years, they had launched the Nepal Youth Foundation(NYF), which by then was supporting several hundred scholarship students and raising 60 homeless children. In 1994, the two hired Som Paneru, a former scholarship student, as executive director. Murray has taken several steps to make sure the NYF will survive after the unavoidable loss of her presence. She handed over the presidency to Paneru in 2012. Now, she is busy as usual, leading lots of fundraising campaigns.

4 . It was a day in late June, gray and depressing, with clouds hanging low. My husband and I were driving to Nova Scotia, Canada,______a vacation. We traveled silently,______to reach rest and dinner ______the rain came. Suddenly, on a lonely stretch of ______, the storm struck. It shut us in, making driving ______. We pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and ______.Then, as though someone had ______ a faucet（水龙头）, the storm______. A soft gentle light, like a spray of gold, spread from the______. The very road shone, and a _______arched            (拱起)across the sky. It was as though this beam of _______had been built for us alone. We could _______speak for awe (惊叹) and joy.

Most of us have experienced such joyful moments, when we_______to understand ourselves and the world and, for a single______,know the truth of happiness.

Here,______, is the story of a man who remembers a day when he went swimming alone and ______the crazy childish joy with which he played in the water like a fish. He was so overwhelmed by his great happiness that he shouted again and again with joy.

Apparently almost ______may serve as the motivation (激发) of such a feeling. Whatever the source, such experiences provide the most ______moments of life.

____we’re more likely to experience a moment of happiness if we can ______there is more to life than we have understood; if we can acknowledge a world greater than our own.