1 . One of my wonderful memories is about a Christmas gift. Unlike other gifts, it came without wrap (包装).

On September 11th, 1958, Mum gave birth to Richard. After she brought him home from hospital, she put him in my lap, saying, “I promised you a gift, and here it is.” What an honour! I turned four a month earlier and none of my friends had such a baby doll of their own. I played with it day and night. I sang to it. I told it stories. I told it over and over how much I loved it!

One morning, however, I found its bed empty. My doll was gone! I cried for it.Mum wept and told me that the poor little thing had been sent to a hospital. It had a fever. For several days, I heard Mum and Dad whispering such words as “hopeless”, “pitiful”, and “dying”, which sounded ominous.

Christmas was coming. “Don’t expect any presents this year,” Dad said, pointing at the socks I hung in the living room.“If your baby brother lives, that’ll be Christmas enough.” As he spoke, his eyes filled with tears. I’d never seen him cry before.

The phone rang early on Christmas morning. Dad jumped out of bed to answer it. From my bedroom I heard him say, “What? He’s all right?” He hung up and shouted upstairs. “The hospital said we can bring Richard home!”

“Thank God!” I heard Mum cry.

From the upstairs window, I watched my parents rush out to the car. I had never seen them so happy. And I was also full of joy. What a wonderful day! My baby doll would be home. I ran downstairs. My socks still hung there flat. But I knew they were not empty; they were filled with love!

2 . Running is often tiring and a lot of hard work, but nothing beats the feeling you get after finishing a long workout around the track.

But while it’s long been believed that endorphins (内啡肽) —chemicals in the body that cause happiness—are behind the so-called “runner’s high”, a study suggested that there may be more to this phenomenon than we previously knew.

According to a recent study published by a group of scientists from several German universities, a group of chemicals called endocannabinoids (内源性大麻素) may actually be responsible for this familiar great feeling.

To test this theory, the scientists turned to mice. Both mice and humans release high levels of endorphins and endocannabinoids after exercise. After exercising on running wheels, the mice seemed happy and relaxed and displayed no signs of anxiety. But after being given a drug to block their endorphins, the mice’s behavior didn’t seem to change. However, when their endocannabinoids were blocked with a different drug, their runners’ high symptoms seemed to fade.

“The long-held notion of endorphins being responsible for the runner’s high is false. Endorphins are effective pain relievers, but only when it comes to the pain in your body and muscles you feel after working out,” Patrick Lucas Austin wrote on science blog Lifchacker.

Similar studies are yet to be carried out on humans, but it’s already known that exercise is a highly effective way to get rid of stress or anxiety. The UK’s National Health Service even prescribes (开药 方) exercise to patients who are suffering from depression. “Being depressed can leave you feeling low in energy, which might put you off being more active. Regular exercise can improve your mood if you have depression, and its especially useful for people with mild to moderate (中等的) depression,” it wrote on its website.

It seems like nothing can beat that feeling we get after a good workout, even if we don’t fully understand where it comes from. At least if we’re feeling down, we know that all we have to do is to put on our running shoes.

3 . You probably know who Marie Curie was, but you may not have heard of Rachel Carson. Of the outstanding ladies listed below, who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?

Jane Addams (1860-1935)

Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. Addams helped the poor and worked for peace. She encouraged a sense of community (社区) by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need. In 1931, Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

If it weren’t for Rachel Carson, the environmental movement might not exist today. Her popular 1962 book Silent Spring raised awareness of the dangers of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world’s lakes and oceans.

Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-present)

When Sandra Day O’Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School, in 1952, she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman. She became an Arizona state senator (参议员) and, in 1981, the first woman to join the Supreme Court of the United States. O’Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 25 years on the top court.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a passenger. Her simple act landed Parks in prison. But it also set off the Montgomery bus boycott (抵制). It lasted for more than a year, and kicked off the civil rights movement. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” said Parks.

4 . How to Make Friends

Friendship is a very important human relationship and everyone needs good friends. Good friendship has many benefits. It offers companionship, improves self-worth and promotes good health. There are times in our lives such as when we have recently moved into a new town, or changed our jobs or schools. Such changes often leave us without a friend.     1     But for many of us the process is difficult and requires courage. Below are some helpful suggestions on how to make and keep friends.

1. Associate with others.

The first step to making friends is associating with other people. You can go to public places to meet new people. Besides, you will need to make yourself known by becoming an active member of such places.

2. Start a conversation.

Starting a conversation is the second most important step in making new friends.     2     You can always start the conversation. Being able to make small talk is a very useful skill in relating with other people.

3.     3    

Choosing friends with common interests is important in building friendship as these interests would always bring you and your friend together. Hanging out will always be a pleasant experience.

4. Let it grow.

It is a good thing to stay in touch. However, try not to press your new friend with calls, messages or visits as this would likely wear him or her out and finally you may lose your friend.     4     The best friendships are the ones that grow naturally.

5. Enjoy your friendship.

The best way to enjoy your friendship is to allow your friends to be themselves.     5     Try not to change them from who they are to what you want them to be. Become the kind of friend you will want your friend to be to you.

5 . As the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has gone global, we’ve watched professionals fail as they try to improve their emotional intelligence because they either don’t know where to focus their efforts or they haven’t understood how to improve these skills on a practical level. In our work consulting with companies and coaching leaders, we have found that if you’re looking to develop particular EI strengths, it helps to consider areas for improvement others have identified along with the goals you want to achieve and then to actively build habits in those areas rather than simply relying on understanding them conceptually.

The first step is to get a sense of how your self-perception (how you see yourself) differs from your reputation (how others see you). This is especially true for the development of EI because we can be blind to how we express and read the emotional components of our interactions. For example, most of us think that we’re good listeners, but very often that’s really not the case. Without this external reality check, it will be difficult for you to identify the ways that your actions affect your performance. Getting teed back from others can also provide proof of the necessity of shifting our behavior and motivation to do so.

To give you the best sense of where the differences lie between your self-perception and reputation, you should use a 360-degree feedback assessment that takes into account the multiple aspects of EI. The key is to find one to give you feedback, which is focused on development and not on performance assessment. And that can give you a detailed understanding of how other people’s assessments of you differ from your own assessments.

Secondly, when you get your feedback from an assessment, let that inform what you want to improve. But also consider what your goals are. When it comes to cultivating strengths in emotional intelligence, you’re at a huge disadvantage if you’re only interested because others say you should be. Your emotional intelligence is so tied up in your sense of self that being intrinsically (内在的) motivated to make the effort matters more when changing longstanding habits than it does when simply learning a skill.

That means the areas that you choose to actively work on should lie at the intersection of the feedback you’ve gotten and the areas that are most important to your own aspirations (抱负). Understanding the influences of your current EI habits relative to your goals will keep you going over a long period at time as you do the work or strengthening your emotional intelligence.

6 . In general, our society is becoming one of giant enterprises directed by a bureaucratic(官僚主义的)management in which man becomes a small, well-oiled cog in the machinery. The oiling is done with higher wages, well-equipped factories and piped music, and by psychologists and “human-relations” experts; yet all this oiling does not alter the fact that man has become powerless, that he does not wholeheartedly participate in his work and he is bored with it. In fact, the blue-collar and the white-collar workers have become economic puppets who dance to the tune of automated machines and bureaucratic management.

The worker and employee are anxious, seemingly because they might find themselves out of a job or they would say that they are unable to acquire any real satisfaction or interest in life. In fact, they feel desperate as they live and die without ever having confronted the fundamental realities of human existence as emotionally and intellectually independent and productive human beings.

Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates. They are even more insecure in some respects. They are in a highly competitive race. To be promoted or to fall behind is not a matter of salary but even more a matter of self-respect. When they apply for their first job, they are tested for intelligence as well as for the right mixture of submissiveness and independence. From the moment on they are tested again and again by the psychologists, for whom testing is a big business, and by their superiors, who judge their behavior, sociability, capacity to get along, etc. This constant need to prove that one is as good as or better than one’s fellow-competitor creates constant anxiety and stress, the very causes of unhappiness and illness.

Am I suggesting that we should return to the pre-industrial mode of production or to nineteenth-century “free enterprise” capitalism? Certainly not. Problems are never solved by returning to a stage which one has already outgrown. I suggest transforming our social system from a bureaucratically managed industrialism in which maximal production and consumption are ends in themselves into a humanist industrialism in which man and full development of his potentialities - those of all love and of reason - are the aims of social arrangements. Production and consumption should serve as means to this end, and should be prevented from ruling man.

9 . The light from the campfire brightened the darkness, but it could not prevent the damp cold of Denmis’s Swamp creeping into their bones. It was a strange place. Martin and Tom wished that they had not accepted Jack’s dare. They liked camping, but not near this swamp (沼泽).

“So,” Martin asked as they sat watching the hot coals. “How did this place get its name? ”

“Are you sure you want to hear it? It’s a scary story,” warned Jack.

“Of course!” cried out Tom. “If there were anything to be scared of, you wouldn’t have chosen this place!”

“Ok, but don’t say I didn’t warn you,” said Jack, and he began this tale. “Way back in time, a man called Dennis tried to start a farm here. He built that cottage over there to live in. In those days, the area looked quite different—it was covered with tall trees and the swamp was a crystal-clear river. After three hard years, Dennis had cleared several fields and planted crops. He was so proud of his success that he refused to listen to advice.”

“You are clearing too much land,” warned one old man. “The land is a living thing. It will hit back at you if you abuse it.”

“Silly fool,” said Dennis to himself. “If I clear more land, I can grow more crops. I’ll become wealthier. He’s just jealous!”

Dennis continued to chop down trees. Smal animals that relied on them for food and shelter were destroyed. He was so eager to expand his farm that he did not notice the river flowing slowly towards his door. He did not notice salt seeping (渗出) to the surface of the land. He did not notice swamp plants choking all the native plants.

“What happened?” Martin asked. It was growing colder. He trembled, twisting his body closer to the fire.

“The land hit back--just as the old man warned,” Jack shrugged. “Dennis disappeared. Old folks around here believe that swamp plants moved up from the river and dragged him underwater. His body was never found.”

“What a stupid story,” laughed Tom. “Plants can’t .” Before he had finished speaking, he screamed and fainted. The other two boys jumped up with fright, staring at Tom. Suddenly, they burst out laughing. Some green swamp ivy (常春藤) had covered Tom’s face. It was a while before Tom could appreciate the joke.

10 . While still in its early stages, welfare reform has already been judged a great success in many states —at least in getting people off welfare. It’s estimated that more than 2 million people have left the rolls(名单) since 1994.

In the past four years, welfare rolls in Athens County have been cut in half. But 70 percent of the people who left in the past two years took jobs that paid less than $6 an hour. The result: The Athens County poverty rate still remains at more than 30 percent - twice the national average. For advocates for the poor, that’s an indication that much more needs to be done.

“More people are getting jobs, but it’s not making their lives any better,” says Kathy Lairn, a policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington.

A center analysis of US Census data nationwide found that last year, a greater percentage of single, female-headed households were earning money on their own, but that average income for these households actually went down.

But for many, the fact that poor people are able to support themselves almost as well without government aid as they did with it is in itself a huge victory.

“Welfare was a poison. It was a toxin that was poisoning the family,” says Robert Rector, a welfare-reform policy analyst. “The reform is changing the moral climate in low-income communities. It’s beginning to rebuild the work ethic, which is much more important.”

Mr. Rector and others argued that once “the habit of dependency is cracked,” then the country can make other policy changes aimed at improving living standards.