1 . It started with a bit of casual discomfort on the head, but after a week it had spread to the back of my neck, enough to lead me to my laptop. Annoying as it was, I was ________ to take up my doctor’s time with such a silly complaint and then have a wasted journey only to be informed that it would clear up by itself and that ________ would be of no use at all.

As soon as I’d tapped in ‘online self-diagnosis’, the search engine provided me with over 11.5 million results. And during the time normally spent in the clinic’s waiting room reading the Women’s Weekly, I was able to find a site that would provide a free ________ in the comfort of my chair, and with no need for an appointment,

I answered all the questions until I eventually reached a description exactly matching my ________. As I clicked on ‘More Information’, I was hit with what I’d never anticipated. The worst case scenario was complete hair loss. I couldn’t have been more ________.

I headed off to the doctor for what I thought would be a blood test but which turned out to be a valuable lesson in not ________ everything you read on the internet. It took him less than a minute to guess at and locate head lice (虱子). I was relieved to know that I would be ________ my hair, and horrified to know that it was being occupied.

I learnt my lesson, but for some the worry caused by ________ every ache has led to a new form of hypochondria (疑病症). Named ‘cyberchondria’ by the print media back in 2000, this particular condition has ________ greatly. Although most people’s main point of call is still the doctor’s surgery, it’s estimated that ________ worries are now the second most researched topic on the web. This is truly a serious concern when about 25%of the medical information online is thought to be ________.

Once upon a time, hypochondria required time and effort: you had to go to the library to research your diseases and ________ go through the books. Now it’s just a matter of a few clicks of a mouse. But while your doctor will make a diagnosis ________ your age, appearance and medical history, a search engine will rely simply on algorithms (算法). These come up with results graded according to popularity or numbers of key words. So the most highly ranked hits might actually be for very genuine disease, which are nonetheless extremely ________. One minute you think you’ve come down with the flu, the next you’re under attack from sub-tropical, flesh-eating bacteria. Time spent going to the doctor’s for ________ of mind suddenly seems fair enough.

2 . AN UNLIKELY HERO

Miep Gies was a recently married young office worker living in Amsterdam in 1942. As German occupiers tightened their grip on the city, Gies’s boss, Otto Frank, asked her to hide him and his family from the Nazis, who were sending Jews to concentration camps. For the next two years, Gies ________ her life daily to smuggle food to the Franks and four others concealed in secret rooms above Otto’s business.

When she could no longer protect the family-when the Nazis finally came and took them away in 1944—Gies kept their story alive by saving Anne Frank’s ________. She’s the reason the world has The Diary of a Young Girl.

Later in Gies’s life, people called her heroic. Believing she simply did what she could in evil times, she is said to have made this ________: “Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.”

A Small Light tells Gies’s story in an eight-part mini-series shot in Amsterdam and Prague. In interviews on location, its creators and actors ________ on why Gies remains an inspiration.

“________ most of us are familiar with the diary, what was going on outside the annex...is the mystery,” says Tony Phelan, who with wife Joan Rater headed the project. Rater adds to that idea: “What does hiding people mean on a day-to-day ________? Miep said yes to Otto Frank, and then you have to say yes every day afterwards, even when it’s hard, even when you’re sick, even when you don’t want to. And that, to me the everyday drudgery of it all, is quite dramatic.”

Phelan and Rater, married for 30 years, created, executive produced, and wrote the miniseries after six years of research. It was a 1995 ________, Anne Frank Remembered, that initially ________ their interest, and they visited the Anne Frank House, the museum established where the Franks once hid. After descending its ________, narrow stairs—as Ann had—Rater noticed a girl doing cartwheels(侧手翻) outside.

For A Small Light, Rater turned that memory of a girl’s carefree spirit into a flashback scene: Anne in 1941, on Miep and Jan Gies’s wedding day. She’s skipping, excited over the romantic ceremony. Then within a year, her life would be ________ but fear.

One bright spot for Anne was visits from Gies, who ________ supplies by bicycle. Actress Bel Powley plays Gies and, to get into her character’s mindset, retraced those journeys. “Tony and Joan gave me all these cool maps so that I could cycle Miep’s ________,” she says. Powley, who is Jewish, felt the ________ of telling this story, especially as the shoot neared its end.

The girl who wanted to be a famous writer became one, of course. Still, no one would ever read________ that began “Dear Kitty” had Gies not gathered the scattered papers and the diary with the red-checkered cover and later given them to Otto, the family’s sole survivor. The Miep Gieses of the world—the small lights, the extraordinary ordinary people who did something, who pushed back against tyranny, who pushed back against authoritarians, who pushed back against fascists—remembering what they accomplished, I think, gives us some ________ on what we can accomplish.”

3 . I forgot to pay my property tax last year. Was it a sign of early onset dementia(痴呆)? Had I spent last September as an anti-government tax resister and the entire month of September had ________ my mind? Then I realized the real problem: I have notification ________.

Since 2020, many of us have lived ________ online, relying on a trillion apps to send helpful, pinging notifications. So many notifications that they’ve become a waterfall of sound I no longer hear. I’ve grown ________ of every notification. I live in a continuous state of “oops.”

My bad decisions and my ________ are to blame. My first error was inviting these pings and beeps into my life decades ago. As someone with a memory as reliable as an inattentive goldfish’s, I once depended on a detailed paper calendar and to-do list system to keep me on ________. My careful notes worked for years. But I was eventually ________ transferring all the birthdays from one year’s calendar to the next. The coming of the PalmPilot (掌上电脑) thrilled me: I could enter the info once and, five days before each loved one’s birthday, the device would automatically inform me of the coming date.

That little PalmPilot was a gateway drug. I eventually ________ my brain to more powerful devices. And for years, generally they were at a ________ level. Then the pandemic hit and my notification stream became a series of alerts and even alerts for other unimaginable demands of alertness.

Then the other factor ________ kicked in. My actual hearing loss, a genetic gift from my father’s side, started getting worse, turning the world into a series of dull noises. Even with my hearing aids in, maybe I didn’t hear a notification.

Having become deaf to alerts both ________ and metaphorically, I reasoned that enduring a little wrist vibration with every notification would bring me back into being a responsible adult. ________, I felt like I had severe nerve damage. After month 13 of the pandemic, my general stress level was peaking and I was too ________ to turn some off.

“You’re not the boss of me!” I yelled one afternoon when seven notifications popped up ________. I turned away like a bad-tempered teen. The solution? I’m turning off all notifications and moving my life back to ________. Yes, it will be a tough adjustment. But it will force me to grab responsibility for my daily life back from all the devices.

The good news: Paper doesn’t chirp, buzz, flash or “pop up.” Paper just waits, quietly, non-judgmentally and trust you.

4 . So many of us are terrible at being terrible. As our children venture off to school, sports, dances and music lessons, we urge them: Just try something, keep practicing, you’re only a beginner. And yet, faced with our own failure, we become less confident, and quit altogether.

Images of perfection fill our social-media feeds, along with advertisements assuring us we wouldn’t be so _______ if we just bought this thing or tried that product. Parents often add to the pressure, _______ their kids will end up sliding down the socioeconomic ladder.

What if we’re _______?

“It’s such a _______ not to have to be good,” says Karen Rinaldi, who refers to herself as a horrible surfer. After 20 years on the board, she is still bad, and she loves it. There is the excitement of being out on the water, but there is also the _______ of not having to be the expert, the freedom to _______ help and rely on others in a way she never would at work. Back on land, she says she is more understanding and _______others’ mistakes. “The benefit of not _______ myself every day,” she says, “is that I get to surf every time I want.”

Ms. Rinaldi, whose experience led to a book about what you can learn from failure, recommends asking yourself: “What is it that you’ve always wanted to do or try but were too _______?” Whatever it is, she says, start doing it. Should you struggle, ________ the fact that you’re a beginner. “Go in there with the ________ to say, ‘I’m new,’” she says. “People want to help you learn. It makes them feel good.”

Take myself as another example. I started yoga lessons this summer. When I ________ Syd Schulz, a professional mountain biker, that I was terrible at the poses, her response was “what did you expect?” “It’s a little ________ to people who have spent years and years of their lives acquiring skills to think that you should have those overnight,” says Ms. Schulz. Years spent working on her cycling have taught her that improvement often comes in ________ steps, following long stretches of inactivity or even getting ________.

5 . When a famous commentator (评论员) advised gentlemen over fifty get a PSA test, I called my doctor’s office and made a(n) _________ to have it done.

Ten days later, I got the bad results: my prostate (前列腺) cancer was _________. My doctor explained to me the various treatment _________. I decided to have the prostate removed and get rid of the cancer _________, as it had not spread outside the prostate yet.

My surgery was successful and all the cancer had been _________. The next day, I was _________ from the hospital with post-operative instructions and directions. I soon learned that all the body functions were working _________ and my PSA level was zero.

One morning shortly thereafter, my wife and I _________ a sign by the road requesting _________ for Suncoast Hospice of Florida. We decided it was time to give back for our good ____________. After six informative classes, we became volunteers for Suncoast Hospice. After saving myself, it was now time to help others by regularly visiting nursing-home ____________.

Now, years later, I am still cancer-free, and we are still hospice volunteers. Our days volunteering for Suncoast Hospice have been very ____________ for us. Our first few visits with a nursing-home resident are to give him/her a(n) ____________ to get to know us. Sometimes, our visits with the resident are very short, but sometimes they are quite ____________.

The license plate on the front of my car is from Suncoast Hospice, which reads, “Every Day’s a ____________.”