2 . I got on an overnight, bus journey from Kolhapur to Aurangabad in India. The bus — an ordinary, air-conditioning-free one — was more than ______. All 55 seats were taken and there were some 20 people ______ in the aisle (过道). The hot day ______ the discomfort of the 10-hour journey. Because I was travelling on a student bus pass I had no choice but to-stand.

After approximately two extended hours, I was wet with _______ in the noise of the bus. I suddenly ______ a hand tapping my hand, asking for ______. Turning around, I found a middle-aged man with a smile looking up at me. He stood up and said I could take his ______ for a little while. I was pleasantly ______ and immediately accepted his offer, my entire body feeling a sense of relief. And the man just stood next to me, looking around. After about 20 minutes, I signaled him to ______ his space. Another man, who was sitting by the window on the other side of the bus, had observed our’ ______.

Just then, something ______ happened. Our observer stood up and offered his seat to another standing man. Unexpectedly, we had caused a chain reaction: almost all the standees got a(n) ______ to be seated. More surprisingly, people-even started chatting with each other while exchanging their positions, and soon began sharing jokes. Needless to say, the rest of the journey was quite ______.

The bus reached its destination the next morning. I stood in the early morning light, waving goodbye to the groups, who-went-their separate routines. But this extraordinary experience has stayed with me after all the years. I am always ______ of an important life lesson — that we can all ______ what we have, including our burdens, and help our co-passengers in the journey of life.

3 . If doctors lie, it is surely inexcusable. One of the basic _______ the public have of doctors is honesty. But what would you think if I told you that research has shown that 70 percent of doctors _______ to lying to their patients?

Mrs. Walton was in her eighties and _______ to see her husband. “He’s on his way, don’t worry,” I said this to calm her down. But it was a lie. He died two years ago. The truth is that it is a _______ to lie sometimes.

Mrs. Walton is one of the dementia (痴呆) sufferers, who lose their memory of _______ events, but hold memories from the distant past. Many of them realize that the past bears little _______ to the present, but are at a loss to explain. They often feel scared that they are _______ by strange people, even when they are with their family. They look at their adult children _______ and wonder who they could be.

I have countless families not knowing how to react as their loved one moves back into distant past and they are _______ in the present. And how, as a doctor, does one manage sufferings that come with having no ________ of these patients’ life for the past ten or 20 years? Maybe he can tell them lies that are not big and elaborate — they are ________ comforts intended to calm and allow the subject to be swiftly changed.

________ with them about this false reality is not unprofessional — it is actually kind. That’s not to say that lying to patients with dementia ________ is right. But what kind-hearted person would put another human being through the unimaginable pain of learning, ________ again and again, that they have lost their beloved ones. It would be an unthinkable cruelness.

Sometimes honesty is ________ not the best policy.

4 . When we talk about healthy brain ageing we are really discussing one of two things: how to minimise ongoing damage to the hardware of the brain, mostly by keeping its blood supply as good as possible; or how to improve the operation of the brain’s software. Many ways of doing this have been suggested, but few have _______ weight behind them. There is currently no magic bullet to protect the brain, but one area that has been best researched, and about which we can say with reasonable _______ , “this will help”, is mental activity.

There is plenty of evidence that older people who stay mentally active, by learning a new language, doing crosswords or taking part in other _______ challenging activities, preserve full cognitive function for longer. They have spent more time doing cognitively demanding activities over a lifetime, and they are, to some extent, buffered (缓冲) from the _______ effects of brain ageing and degenerative (退行性的) diseases. We call this buffer “cognitive reserve” — a(n) _______ reservoir of brain function that can _______ from the consequences of brain damage, allowing us to continue to perform well. _______, people with a higher IQ, longer education or cognitively challenging employment have been found to have a(n) _______ risk of developing dementia. This is despite the fact that their brains actually show normal amounts of age-and disease-related _______.   In fact, studies have found that people with higher cognitive reserve who do get dementia exhibit less severe symptoms even when they have more brain damage than those with lower cognitive reserve.

Yet there’s still much to discover about the _______ of cognitive reserve for optimising the brain’s resilience. The more we understand about its role in protecting our brain and how to boost our reserve, the more effective we will be in designing _______ to keep the human brain healthier for longer.

The good news is that cognitive reserve isn’t _______ to those who have the IQ of a genius or who’ve devoted their life to theoretical physics. We think it can be _______ throughout life for everyone. _______, taking part in cognitively challenging activities, learning new skills and continuing to “use it or lose it” probably apply no matter how old you are. Crucially, it’s never too late to _______.

5 . A winter storm dropped huge amounts of snow overnight on January 16 in western Pennsylvania. ________ Brian Delallo, who worked on a local high school football team, decided to call off his players’ weightlifting ________. He texted his ________ saying: “Due to the expected severe weather, Monday’s weightlifting workout has been ________. Find an elderly or disabled neighbor and shovel (为……除雪) their driveway. Don’t ________ any money — that’s our Monday’s workout.”

The players received the ________ and went out to work on the more than six inches of snow that fell overnight. They said that they removed snow from dozens of ________. Some players texted their coach afterwards to tell him how ________ it was. “We all feel great about it,” said team captain Gavin Moul. “It’s not only helping them, but it’s helping us to become a better team.”

Many of the people whom the team members approached couldn’t believe that the players refused any payment. Sometimes people even ________ their help because they wouldn’t take money for it.

________, it was not the first time for the team to have shoveling workout. It was started by a coach more than two decades ago. It was one of the many ________ the team kept.

“It’s about community.” the coach said. “It is an inspiring way for us to interact with our community and show that it ________. Shoveling snow is just one of those opportunities to show ________ to the community that supports us.” The team got a workout and gave back to the community by doing these acts of ________ at the same time. It was a ________ for all.

7 . A few years ago I went through a period of such severe depression that life didn’t seem worth living. It was like permanent _________, so dark and cold that the sun would never shine.

Then I saw snowdrops pushing through the _________, iron-hard ground. I looked at them every day until I felt that if they could _________, then so could I.

_________ spring came, I started to put in more and more plants, until the garden was _________ with colour. Life was growing through my hands, gentle, peaceful, but, above all, _________. If I gave love, it was _________, a hundred times.

I could spend hours _________ in gardening. The form of depressive illness I have is biological. It has _________ generations of my family and follows no rhyme, reason nor circumstance. I can be __________ when the sun is shining or I am surrounded by a group of loving friends.

Of course, fresh air and exercise help to __________ depression, but for me gardening is more than that. It represents endurance as well as __________.

At the end of the first garden I made __________ a tree, huge and magnificent. It withstood freezing temperatures and strong winds. It bent but never broke.

The leaves dropped until it looked no more than a(n) __________ skeleton (骨架), but it always, always came back to life. And so I learned that we may be battled and __________, but hope is a living thing.

9 . From the very beginning, the girl’s family objected strongly to her dating this guy though the girl loved the guy deeply. After a couple of years, the guy finally graduated and decided to ______ his studies overseas. Before leaving, he proposed marriage to the girl and promised to love her the whole life. The girl agreed, and with the guy’s determination, the family finally ______ . Before going abroad, they got engaged. They often sent their ______ through emails and phone calls. Both never thought of giving up.

One day, on her way to work, the girl was knocked down by a car. The collision (碰撞) on her brain has caused her to lose her ______ . The girl did not want to be a ______ to him. She wrote to him ______ that she did not wish to wait any longer. With the letter, she sent the ring back to him. The girl decided to move away, hoping she could ______ forget everything. In the new environment, the girl ______ the sign language and started a new life. She told herself every day that she must ______ the guy. One day, her friend came and told her that he was back. But she asked her friend not to let him know what had happened to her. Since then, there wasn’t any more _____ of him.

A year later, her friend came with an envelope, ______ an invitation card for the guy’s wedding. The girl was shattered (打击). Opening the ______ , she saw her own name in it. She was about to ask her friend what was the matter when she saw the guy standing in front of her. He used the ______ telling her, “I’ve spent a year learning the sign language. I want you to know I haven’t forgotten my ______ . Let me have the chance to be your voice. I love you.” With these, he _____ the ring back into her finger. The girl finally smiled.

10 . By the time he was 24 years old, Imran Nuri quit his job in a bold move, and emptied his savings account to carry out an ambitious _________ he’d been bearing in mind. Nuri would drive his car to every state on a 100-day trip to find 1,000 _________ and ask them to share one thing they wish they’d _________ when they were younger. Nuri was hoping for answers that might help him _________ the rest of his life.

He _________. But to his shock, he chose a _________ person for the first time. He met a man, who had a dark look at Nuri. Nuri thought the man was going to _________ him. Then, doing the most _________ thing he’d done, he introduced himself, “I’m _________ around the country to talk to 1,000 unfamiliar people. I’m asking them for pieces of life advice about things they wish they knew __________.” The man remained silent for a minute or so and __________ said, “We should spend more time with our family.”

In Colorado Springs, Colorado, a man in his 50s who had stage 4 terminal cancer told Nuri, “Life is about the human __________. There would be no life without social interactions.”

In Tillamook, Oregon, a waitress — a college student — told him, “Whether it’s changing your major or changing your whole life path, you don’t have to __________ yourself for taking a step back and reevaluating your past choices. Just do what you think to be right.”

Nuri found beauty in every place as well as __________ from the people he met. Those people taught a lot. Now he always puts himself in other people’s shoes even when a person __________ the world differently.