1 . Our house was across the street from the entrance of a famous hospital in the city. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to ________ at the clinic. As I was fixing supper one summer evening, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly ________ man.

He’s ________ taller than my eight-year-old. But the shocking thing was his face-uneven from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was ________. He told me he’d been ________ for a room since noon. For a moment, I ________, but it didn’t take long to see that this older man had a big heart ________ into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was ________ disabled from a back injury. He didn’t complain; ________, he was grateful that no pain ________ his disease.

We ________ him up in the children’s room. The next morning, he asked if he could come back and stay the next time he had a ________. I told him of course. On his next trip, he brought a big fish and the largest oysters I had ever seen as a gift.

In the years he came to stay ________ with us, there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special ________. I know our family will always be grateful to have known him; from him, we learned to accept the bad without complaint and the good with ________.

5 . When Alexa couldn’t crawl, stand or walk as a baby, her mother sensed that something was wrong. _______, doctors told her not to worry— perhaps Alexa was just a “lazy baby”. After seeing a specialist, though, Alexa was diagnosed with a rare disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which affects the central nervous system and the _______ in the body.

Throughout Alexa’s childhood and adolescence, there were no _______ medicines to treat SMA. Her muscles continued to weaken over time. But Alexa was outgoing and loved to exercise her _______ through pretend play and performing. This adventurous spirit led her to work as a child _______, appearing in movies, television shows and commercials.

With hard work, determination and courage—not to _______ plenty of support from her loved ones — Alexa graduated from high school, and attended a law school. While in law school, her symptoms became especially _______. She noticed that it was becoming more difficult to _______ her hands and move her fingers. Around that same time, she _______ an experimental drug for SMA that was in clinical trials. She started ________ to learn as much as she could about this possible medicine and what it might do for her. Finally she received the first-ever approved treatment to ________ the progression of her disease.

Now, Alexa works as an entertainment lawyer for a Hollywood production company. Although Alexa doesn’t let her SMA define her, it has certainly ________ who she is today: optimistic, courageous and ________. The limitations SMA places on her have been a (n)   ________, but they’ve also ________ as a motivator, leading Alexa to get as much out of life as she can.

Michael saw the trouble coming. There standing in the hallway was Frank, the boy who enjoyed making fun of anyone at any given moment. Frank was tall and strong, so few of his victims stood up to him. Michael hated the idea that Frank always got away with his wrongdoing. Yet like most kids who were picked on, he just took it quietly and waited for the unpleasant to pass.

Frank walked up, his eyes locked on the books in Michael’s arms. When they met, Frank stopped unexpectedly, “Hey, let me see those books!” Some students watched as Michael held out the books he was carrying, trying not to give away his nervousness.

Frank took a book, looked inside for a second, and then threw the book at Michael, who dropped all the other books. “Hey, those are school property,” Frank barked, “Be careful!” Then he walked away, laughing loudly.

Michael, his cheeks turning red, half kicked the fallen books. Suddenly a hand picked up one book. “You look like you could use a p ally (盟友),” a friendly voice said. It was Ramon, the most athletic boy in the high school. Michael couldn’t believe Ramon was stopping to help him as they barely spoke.

“Thanks,” Michael sighed with relief. “It’s confusing. I don’t know what his problems is.”

“Well, as I see it,” Ramon said, “you need to find a way to end this.” Michael nodded, stuck for what to say. Ramon continued, “You know my grandmother used to tell me whenever I had a problem with someone. She’d say, ‘You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (醋).’”

Looking puzzled, Michael asked, “What does that mean?”

“It means kindness may be more effective than anger,” Ramon explained.

“Can you just tell Frank to stop picking on me?” Michael suggested.

“That’s vinegar,” Ramon laughed as he walked away. “Try honey instead.”

Ramon’s words left Michael thinking.

The next school day brought Michael’s usual pain. There stood Frank, and Michael knew it would be just seconds before he had to face him in the middle of the hall. Frank came nearer.

Then, suddenly, the unexpected happened.

Michael bent down and quickly picked up Frank’s books on the floor.

A young man named Monty Roberts who was the son of an itinerant (巡回的) horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch (大农场) to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy’s high school career was continuously interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the truck. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 40000 square-foot house that would sit on the 200-acre dream ranch.

“He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read, “See me after class.”

The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, “Why did I receive an F?”

The teacher said, “This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you’ll have to pay large stud fees. There’s no way you could ever do it.” Then the teacher added, “If you rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.”

Paragraph 1:

The boy went home and thought about it long and hard.

Paragraph 2:

Many years later, the same school teacher brought 30 kids to camp on a horse ranch owned by Monty Roberts.

9 . This was the big game. The boys were ________ and excited. It was a clear night, and my son Andy’s baseball team, which had ________ all year, had shocked the better teams by making it to this championship game. The atmosphere was ________: the other team’s slugger (强击手),a big kid, was like a snake, dangerous and ready to ________.

Nervously, I looked out Andy’s way. I was ________ to see Andy looking straight up at the night sky! Obviously he wasn’t ________ on the game. I was horrified that he wouldn’t even know the ball was coming.

“Come on, Andy. ________ out there,” I said to myself.

Thank goodness the big kid made a mistake. We (Andy and I) had been ________, and our team still led by one run.

Andy ran up to me at the ________. I was about to ________ him when he said loudly, “Did you see that shooting star?”

Andy’s eyes were glowing (发光) with ________. I paused.

“Yes,” I said. “Well, one inning (局) to go. Hit a home run (全垒打)!”

“Okay!” said Andy, and he ran back to his ________.

I suddenly realized it was nice my son would take time out to ________ the wonder and beauty in life. You might be surprised by the beauty you can find when you least ________ it. Andy hit a triple in that last inning. But I still wish I had ________ that shooting star, too.

10 . I was the only kid in college with a reason to go to the mail box, because my mother never believed in email, in Facebook, in texting or cell phones. I was literally waiting by the mailbox to get a letter with a warmest comfort from her.

So when I moved to New York and got depressed, I did the only thing I could think of. I wrote those same kinds of letters like my mother for strangers, and tucked them all over the city: in cafes, in libraries, and even in the subway. I blogged about those letters and promised if asked for a hand-written letter, I would write one.

Overnight, my inbox became this harbor of heartbreak — a single mother in Sacramento, a girl being bullied in Kansas, a 22-year-old immigrant, all asking me to write them and give them a reason to wait by the mailbox. And this is how I initiated the act The World Needs More Love Letters.

Today I run a global organization fueled by those trips to the mailbox. It is a miracle. But the thing about these letters is that most of them have been written by people brought up in a paperless world where some best conversations happen on a screen. We have learned to diary our pain onto Facebook, and we speak swiftly in twitter.

Therefore, I’ve been carrying this mail crate (大木箱) with me these days, which is a magical icebreaker. So I get to tell total strangers about a woman whose husband was traumatized (受精神创伤) from war, and how she left love letters throughout the house saying, “Come back to me.” And a man, who had decided to take his life, slept safely with a stack of letters just beneath his pillow, handwritten by strangers who were there for him.

These stories convince me that letter-writing will never need to be about efficiency, because it is an art now, all of it: the signing, the scripting, the mailing.