When Brantley Harrison and her family rescued a tiny, injured squirrel back, then released her back into the wild, they didn’t expect to ever see her again. Nine years later, however, little Bella, they called the squirrel Bella, still comes to visit them almost every day—as long as snacks are provided, of course.

As a baby, the terrible attack made by an owl (猫头鹰) left Bella near death, she was carefully taken in by the Greenville County, South Carolina family, and raised by them alongside three other squirrels named Larry, Curly, and Moe. Bella stayed with the Harrisons until she had healed successfully thanks to a regular diet of fruit, nuts, and baby food, and was ready to jump on the trees in the forest. The sweet squirrel never goes too far from her adopted home, though, and stops by to say hello whenever she can, despite how much time has passed.

“Bella sits right at the front door waiting for someone to notice she has come by for a visit. If no one notices her, she will jump over to the dining room window to wait for someone to see her,” Brantley told The Dodo. The little lady just isn’t ready to part with the family that succored her life. Whenever she stops by, she asks for nothing more than a handful of nuts.

What is the most amazing part? A few years after Bella’s original stay at the Harrison house, she found her way back to them with an injured foot—and a belly full of babies—spending another few months of recovering. “It was truly amazing to watch the baby I raised raise her own babies,” Brantley said. Bella now even has her own Instagram page, where her human family documents her adventures, with almost 4 thousand followers!

2 . Most people aren’t good at creative problem solving for two reasons: (1) They are not trained in how to be creative. (2) They don’t understand group strength well enough to harness（驾驭）their power to maximize group creativity.

A key element of creativity is applying existing knowledge to a new problem. The more people getting involved in solving it, the more knowledge there is to work on it. Unfortunately, research shows that the traditional brainstorming methods fail to achieve that goal. When groups get together to exchange ideas, they actually come up with fewer ideas overall than if they each had worked alone.

To fix this problem, you should consider the two stages of group problem-solving: divergence（分散）and convergence（集中）. Divergence happens when the group considers as many different potential solutions as possible. Convergence happens when the various proposed solutions are evaluated and reduced to a smaller set of candidate solutions to the current problem.

The essential principle of group creativity is that individuals working alone diverge, whereas group members working together converge. In groups, once a member states a potential solution, that makes others think about the problem similarly. That is why groups working together diverge less than individuals working alone.

Therefore, be aware of when to diverge and when to converge. For example, early in the problem-solving process, have group members work alone to write down statements describing the problem. Then get them back to discuss their descriptions. The group discussion will lead everyone to accept one or a small number of these statements to work on—this is healthy convergence.

When starting to generate solutions, you again want divergence. Have people work alone to start. Then collect people’s initial ideas and send them around to others and allow the divergence to continue as everyone individually builds on the ideas of other members.

Finally, let the group discuss the resulting ideas. This discussion will gradually lead the group to converge on a small number of candidate solutions.

This simple method works effectively, because it respects what individuals and groups do best.

When I told my father that I was moving to Des Moines, Iowa, he told me about the only time he had been there. It was in the 1930s, when he was an editor of the literary magazine of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. He also worked as a professor at SMU, and there was a girl student in his class who suffered from a serious back disease. She couldn’t afford the operation because her family was poor.

Her mother ran a boarding house in Galveston, a seaside town near Houston, Texas. She was cleaning out the attic (阁楼) one day when she came across an old dusty manuscript (手稿). On its top page were the words, “By O. Henry”. It was a nice story, and she sent it to her daughter at SMU, who showed it to my father. My father had never read the story before, but it sounded like O. Henry, and he knew that O. Henry had once lived in Houston. So, it was possible that the famous author had gone to the beach and stayed in the Galveston boarding house, and had written the story there and left the manuscript behind by accident. My father visited an O. Henry expert at Columbia University in New York, who authenticated the story as O. Henry’s.

My father then set out to sell it. Eventually, he found himself in Des Moines, meeting with Gardner Cowles, a top editor at the Des Moines Register. Cowles loved the story and bought it on the spot. My father took the money to the girl. It was just enough for her to have the operation she so desperately needed.

My father never told me what the O. Henry story was about. But I doubt that it could have been better than his own story.

5 . In a classic episode of The Simpsons, Homer’s class reunion ends in shame when one of Homer’s guilty secrets is exposed: he never graduated from high school. To get his diploma, he must pass a science test. As he sits down to retake the exam, he holds one of his trademark dialogues with his brain. “All right, brain. You don’t like me and I don’t like you. But let’s just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.”

Many a true word is spoken as a joke. Homer Simpson’s Everyman character really is an Everyman. For most people, engaging in the kind of effortful thinking that is required to pass a science test feels too much like hard work. It is so much easier to quit and let the brain’s autopilot take over.

And no wonder. Evolution has blessed the human brain with all kinds of mental shortcuts that make life manageable. If we had to think about every action or weigh up every decision, we would break down. As a result, certain ideas and modes of thinking come naturally to us, such as effortless thinking.

But at huge cost. Our mental shortcuts work fine at the level of individuals and small-scale societies, but in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, they are a danger to society. Effortless thinking is at the root of many of the modern world’s most serious problems: terrorism, hatred, inequality and religious extremism. All are caused by people disengaging their critical thinking and going with their gut (非理性的) feeling.

Everybody is capable of gut feeling, but also of the critical thinking. Both thinking styles are needed to make the world go round. Unfortunately, the latter requires training that is unavailable or unappealing to many people.

One of the bright spots in 2017 was the start of a movement called the March For Science. Those who believe in the power of science need to keep on marching, or give more power to people who don’t much like their own brains — or other people’s.

8 . I read somewhere that we spend a full third of our lives waiting. But where are we doing all of this waiting, and what does it mean to an impatient society like ours? To understand the issue, let’s take a look at three types of “waits”.

The very purest form of waiting is the Watched-Pot Wait. It is without doubt the most annoying of all. Take filling up the kitchen sink(洗碗池) as an example. There is absolutely nothing you can do while this is going on but keep both eyes fixed on the sink until it’s full. During these waits, the brain slips away from the body and wanders about until the water runs over the edge of the counter and onto your socks. This kind of wait makes the waiter helpless and mindless.

A cousin to the Watched-Pot Wait is the Forced Wait. This one requires a bit of discipline. Properly preparing packaged noodle soup required a Forced Wait. Directions are very specific. “Bring three cups of water to boil, add mix, simmer three minutes, remove from heat, let stand five minutes.”I have my doubts that anyone has actually followed the procedures strictly. After all, Forced Waiting requires patience.

Perhaps the most powerful type of waiting is the Lucky-Break Wait. This type of wait is unusual in that it is for the most part voluntary. Unlike the Forced Wait, which is also voluntary, waiting for your lucky break does not necessarily mean that it will happen.

Turning one’s life into a waiting game requires faith and hope, and is strictly for the optimists among us. On the surface it seems as ridiculous as following the directions on soup mixes, but the Lucky-Break Wait well serves those who are willing to do it. As long as one doesn’t come to rely on it, wishing for a few good things to happen never hurts anybody.

We certainly do spend a good deal of our time waiting. The next time you’re standing at the sink waiting for it to fill while cooking noodle soup that you’ll have to eat until a large bag of cash falls out of the sky, don’t be desperate. You’re probably just as busy as the next guy.

9 . An elementary school in Scotland gave its students a special present. Instead of being asked to do different kinds of homework or book reports, the children did acts of _________, which is a much more _________ lesson.

The children _________ Galsoil School in Clonty performed these kind acts in December and _________ their acts in writing or pictures in a Kindness diary.

In the project, the teachers _________ the students to do kind deeds for an elderly neighbor or a friend who is feeling _________, any act that helped to _________ someone’s day.

The students were also encouraged to write kind notes to each other that were read at a _________ every week and all the classes got together to discuss and _________ a school-wide project to help the community during the holiday season.

“We are __________ our pupils to think of the real __________ of New Year — kindness and giving,” vice principal said. “There is nobody in this world who wouldn’t __________ from an act of kindness, and __________ the joy of kindness is that it __________ nothing.

A student Andy said, “Kindness is about making people’s lives __________ by changing little things, or doing little nice things to make a __________ to people around.”

The children made a lot of __________ to their grandparents and to seniors in the community to __________ with them over the phone, relieving their loneliness. What the children have learned about kindness is far more __________ than reading, writing, and math. Even the youngest students have __________ much.

10 . While the arts can't stop the COVID-19 virus or the social unrest we see in the world today, they can give us insight into the choices we make when moving through crises and chaos. The arts invite everyone to think in new ways.

We often experience works of art as something that's pleasing to our senses without a full understanding of the creative effort. Great art often shows us contradictions and crises, and we can learn a great deal from their resolutions (解决). Through our understanding of art, we can gain a deeper understanding of how we might overcome our own challenges. In understanding extremes of contrast, we can see the beauty in art with themes that are not simply pleasing for their magnificent features or qualities.

Beethoven offers a wonderful example of moving artfully through crises and chaos. He composed his Symphony No.9 as his hearing loss became more and more pronounced. The opening of the symphony seems to come out of nowhere, from near silence in the opening to a full expression of what many consider to be the joy of freedom and universal brotherhood with Schiller’s Ode to joy (欢乐颂). Beethoven appears to have created a work of art that not only freed him from his personal struggles, but one that also speaks to the joy of living together in peace and harmony.

Have a dialogue between the two opposing parts and you will find that they always start out fighting each other until we come to an appreciation of difference — a oneness of the two opposing forces. The arts offer many lessons that can help us gain the knowledge we need to move more confidently in today's competitive and uncertain environment. An openness to arts-based solutions will give you more control over your future.