4 . Music affects our emotions. We tend to listen to music that reflects our mood. When we’re happy we may listen to upbeat (愉快的) music; when we’re sad we may listen to slower and more moving songs; when we’re angry we may listen to darker music with heavy guitar, drums and songs that reflect our level of anger. We may not know why we prefer the artists we listen to, but we can learn a lot about ourselves through our musical tastes.

Consider John, a pleasant man in his mid-40s who describes his mid-20s as a time when he was figuring out his place in life. At the time, he considered himself to be cold, nervous, shy, well-mannered and sensitive. But the music he preferred to listen to was dark, heavy and aggressive. After some time in therapy (治疗), John realized he’d been repressing (抑制) anger and aggression due to years of childhood abuse, and music had become his voice. Now John has been able to unlock his previously hidden emotions and begin to work through the issues.

Cindy, a woman in her mid-30s, has struggled through years of depression. While depressed, she often listened to music that reflected sadness and emotional pain. However, Cindy also noted that she had a passion for upbeat music that made her want to dance and feel free from emotional struggle. But she rarely felt this energy and freedom without the music encouraging. It turned out that Cindy was an energetic and happy child. However, Cindy’s struggle with depression began after her mother’s death when she was 11 years old. With the help of therapy, Cindy is now in the process of breaking through the layer of depression that has covered her since her mother died.

In summary, while music can move us in an intense emotional moment, it also can be used to teach us about unconscious elements of our emotional structure. If we notice a pattern of emotional music that raises questions about our current feelings or about who we are, it could be an important opportunity for self-exploration.

7 . Most of us would like to be more creative, but we assume there is little we can do about it. Psychology professor K. Anders Ericsson claims that with enough practice, any of us can become experts. However, he is quick to add that this requires a specific kind of practice that Ericsson calls ‘deliberate practice’: that is, pushing beyond one’s comfort zone and setting goals that are above one’s current level of performance. He says he has yet to find the limits on being successful and he doesn’t believe them to be real.

Ericsson has looked primarily at artistic and athletic skills, but can these findings apply to creativity? Most experts agree that even if most people cannot hope to become creative geniuses, they can learn to become more creative through practice. Psychologists claim that there are actually two levels of creativity, which they refer to as’Big C’ and ‘small c’. Big C creativity applies to breakthrough ideas, ones that may change the course of a field or even history. Small c creativity refers to everyday creative problem solving, like creating a new recipe or improving a process, which psychologists subdivide further into similar and different thinking. Similar thinking involves examining all the facts and arriving at a single solution. In contrast, different thinking involves coming up with many possible solutions. What most people think of as creativity generally involves different thinking and can be taught, practised and learnt.

Even with practice, different thinking alone cannot make one creative, however. Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive psychologist, says that most creative people share one personality quality: openness to new experience. Since this quality and these processes have been identified, less creative people can try to emulate them. Normally, we tend to reproduce what we already know because creative ideas move us into unfamiliar territory involving risks and following the usual behaviors is comfortable.

Moving outside of our comfort zone, engaging indeliberate practice and tolerating contradictory ideas, risk and failure are all things we can learn to do better. It is unlikely that doing so will transform any of us into creative geniuses, but it does have the potential to increase our level of creativity.

8 . For most people traveling abroad, their first choice is probably to make a beeline for (直奔) tourist sights. For me, I find lots of joy in grocery (食品杂货店) shopping on holiday.

As a vegetarian (素食主义者), finding restaurants that meet my needs is not always easy abroad.     1     The first thing I do, after dropping my bags off, is to go to a grocery store. That enables me to cook breakfast in the morning without walking around for hours trying to find “vegan breakfast” near me.

The variety of foods attracts me every time I travel somewhere new. In Malta, I found the most delicious chocolate-filled cakes, a product I would struggle to find even in the UK.     2     I was so delighted that I could enjoy such an unexpected treat. Another surprise was their selection of ice cream available even in the smallest grocery stores.

    3     Looking for smoked tofu and corn pancakes turns into quite a mission whenever I visit Cluj-Napoca in Romania. There is usually only one variety of smoked tofu, sold in a very small tub (食品盒) and only in the cafeteria section.     4     That is because they are never available at the smaller ones.

Grocery shopping on holiday sounds unusual. But it means being involved in the day-to-day lives of a country’s citizens. I can pretend I am a local and put myself in their shoes. I can watch kids begging their parents for sweets, an international experience that needs no language, or watch couples pick up snacks and drinks for a party on a Friday night.     5    

9 . Bartek Ostalowski lost both his arms in a terrible aceident in 2006, but that wasn’t enough to kill his dream of one day becoming a professional race-car driver. Finding himself armless at just 20 years old and faced with the difficult task of learning to drive a car on a race circuit (赛车道) must have been quite the shock for Bartek, but he gathered the courage and the drive to push on. In three years, he became a master of driving a race-car with his feet. Today, Bartek Ostalowski is the world’s only professional sport driver who drives using his feet.

In order to deal with his physical limitations, Bartek transformed (改装) his race car according to his needs, adding a new engine, and stronger transmission (变速器). The ambitious Polish driver uses his right foot to control the pedals, while moving on with his left one. The race car is controlled with the shoulder.

“After my accident, I was looking for a solution. I asked myself if I wanted to race again what would I need to do?” Bartek told the reporter of Business Insider. “I heard about someone in Poland who, like me, had no arms, but he drove a car on a daily basis with no problem. After meeting him, my dream and passion for motor sports were alive and strong, and I made the decision to return to racing one day.”

In 2019, Ostalowski finished in ninth place out of 50 drivers in the Polish Drift Championship, one of the most competitive championship series in all of Europe, and the year before that, he won the international Czech Drift Series, beating dozens of other professional sports drivers.

“Of course, I encourage other people with disabilities to get involved in motor sports. It’s a beautiful passion and I think a great form of recovery too. So make your dreams come true,” the Polish driver said.

10 . Nuclear energy is one of the cleanest power on earth. It is cleaner than any energy source except wind. But that doesn’t necessarily mean nuclear is the long-term solution for the world because nuclear material is perhaps the most poisonous matter on earth. In addition, uranium, the element most commonly used in nuclear reactors, is not in limitless supply. But the biggest problem is nuclear waste.

How can we deal with nuclear waste? The answer is simple—put them somewhere where they can stay, undisturbed, isolated, forever. Finland is building just that. This region is largely lacking in natural disasters. It really doesn’t encounter any natural phenomenon that could damage a nuclear waste storage site, especially if it’s 1, 500 feet underground. Beneath an island on the Finnish Baltic Sea coast, the country is digging. They’ re building the very first permanent nuclear waste storage facility in the world in the stable bedrock 1,500 feet below.

Currently they’ re just finishing their dig down, then very soon they’ll start filling the facility with nuclear waste. They’ll dig long tunnels with small holes in which they’ll place nuclear waste then backfill the tunnels with clay to be left forever.

With this system, there’s near zero risk of nuclear material leaking out into the groundwater and, once it’s filled in the year 2120, it can just be left, forever. Because the material will be so far down and so difficult to get to, no human management will be necessary once completed.

No security, no maintenance, nothing which means it should be truly secure, but before leaving it, Finland needs to fight against one thing—human nature. As curious beings, it’s hard to fight a person’s urge of discovery. If someone finds a mysterious structure from thousands of years ago, it’d just be natural to want to open it up, and that’s a problem for nuclear waste sites.

We essentially did just that with the pyramids in Egypt. These structures were built as the final, permanent resting places and we opened them up because we were curious. Opening the nuclear storage facilities would release radiation into a future civilization, so we have to tell them to leave the sites alone, but that’s easier said than done.