2 . For some days I just found the mail delivery in our street a little different. I opened my mailbox as usual. Nothing, but my neighbors’ mail. The man who delivered the mails must have made a mistake. What else could it have been?

I was reaching out for my neighbor’s mailbox when a tall man ran out of my neighbor’s house, shouting about messing with his friend’s mail. He snatched (夺过) the mail from my hand, opened the mailbox and pointed to the mail inside. “What are you going to do with it?”

Feeling my face burning, I shook my head, “No, believe me. I got this mail by mistake in my box today. I was just bringing it to them.” He gave me a funny look and went back into his house.

I got the knock on the door the next morning by two very polite officers. The annoyed tall man had phoned the police and told them I was a crazy old woman going around mixing up everyone’s mail. Before I could finish telling them about what was going on, everyone, including the officers, the tall man and me, was surprised by what was happening outside. A dog approached my mailbox with mail in his mouth. He took out the mail that was in my box and put some letters in. Then, he pushed the door closed with his nose, picked up the new pile of mail he had gotten from my box, and repeated this all the way down the next street. We all started laughing.

The dog had kept company with the postman, who had died last month. The dog had been trained to put mail in and take mail out of the boxes. After he was left alone, he was settled in a local animal shelter. When he got loose for some reason, he assumed his duties.

I shared the whole story with the tall man. He said sorry to me and got touched by the dog story. He did, moreover, adopt the little guy.

4 . Five-year-old Willard Wigan couldn’t tell the difference between an M and a W or a 6 and a 9 because of dyslexia, a learning disability. Usually, his mind drifted—to playing outside, to his dog, or to the ants. Willard was especially curious about those ants. He felt like them, small and insignificant. He noticed the ants were coming and going from a hole in the dirt. Gathering pieces of wood, Willard constructed a little building for ants.

At school, Willard had problems, but he knew he could do something special. Willard created tiny furniture for the ant houses. His artistic skill increased, and a love for little things began to grow. At age nine, Willard began carving (雕刻) faces on toothpicks. When he showed his mother the carved faces, she said, “This is what you do well. You must work hard to be the best.” Years later, Willard carves the tiniest artwork in the world! His sculptures are so small that several can fit on a full stop at the end of a sentence.

Willard works best at night when there are few disturbances. He often works for months to complete a sculpture. Willard’s favorite paintbrush is one hair from the back of a dead fly! To move his sculptures, Willard uses an eyelash. But even that can be tough. Once, while moving a microscopic Alice in Wonderland, his cell phone rang. Terrified, Willard took in a quick breath. When he looked back, Alice was gone. After laboring for weeks to carve her, he’d accidentally breathed her in!

Willard sculpts everything from famous people to fictional characters. Because of their beauty and rarity, his sculptures have made Willard a wealthy man. But he says, “Success isn’t about material things like an expensive watch or a costly ring; it’s about persevering and achieving your dreams.” Willard Wigan who felt small as a boy has shown something small can really be big.

5 . There was once a captain who loved money so much that he cheated his sailors at the end of every voyage and took their wages.

On the last day of one voyage, the ship was in a small port. It was winter time, and the sea was very cold, so the captain said to his sailors, “If one of you stays in the water during the whole night, I will give him my ship. But if he comes out before the sun appears, I shall get his wages.”

The sailors had heard about the captain’s cheating, so they didn’t trust him. But then one of them, who thought that he was cleverer than the captain, said that he would do it. He got into the water, and, though it was very cold, he stayed in it. When it was nearly morning, some fishermen lit a fire on the shore about half a mile away.

“You are cheating”, the captain said to the sailor. “The fire’s warming you.”

“But it’s half a mile away!” said the sailor.

“A fire’s fire,” answered the captain. “I have won.”

The sailor came out of the water, and said, “Perhaps you think that you are clever because you have won my wages, but you can’t cook a chicken.”

“I can,” answered the captain.

“If you cook this chicken,” said the sailor, “I shall work for you without wages for seven years, but if you can’t, you will give me your ship.”

The captain agreed, took the chicken and said, “Where’s the fire?”

“There it is,” answered the sailor. “On the shore.”

“But it’s half a mile away,” said the captain angrily.

“A fire’s fire, you said,” answered the sailor. “If it is enough to warm me in the water, it is enough to cook your chicken.”

6 . Ida Nelson was relaxing herself in her sister’s sauna (桑拿室) when she heard the sound of a small airplane circling the nearby airport.

It was 11: 30 at night in a remote village with a population of 70, and, as she told the newspaper reporter, Any time a plane flies over that late, you know something is wrong. Nelson and her sister leaped out of the sauna, ran to the window, and saw the problem-the airport’s runway lights were out. Nelson threw on some clothes, jumped into her jeep, and floored it to the airport, where she found a local pilot trying to turn on the lights manually.

Normally, if you push the button 10 or 15 times, the lights will just light up, Nelson told the reporter. Not this time. Meanwhile, she and the pilot learned of the plane’s exigent mission - it was a helicopter there to transport a seriously ill local girl, to the nearest hospital, 280 miles away in another city.

Nelson had a plan. Driving her jeep to the end of the runway, she shone her headlights on the road for the plane to follow. Great idea, but it wasn’t enough. More light was needed so a neighbor called nearly every home in the village 32 of them.

Within 20 minutes, 20 vehicles arrived at the airport, many of the drivers still in pajamas. Following directions from the helicopter pilot, the cars lined up on one side of the runway. The helicopter made its final approach and, guided by the headlights, landed safely. The young patient was loaded onto the aircraft, and the plane immediately took off again Her illness was never publicly known, but she has since been recovered.

Without them, the girl might not have made it. However, for Nelson, it was only a small deed.

7 . My name is Alice. Early last year, I was troubled by an anxiety that crippled (削弱) my ability to do anything. I felt like a storm cloud hung over me. For almost a year I struggled on, constantly staring at this wall that faced me. My perfectionist tendencies were the main root of this: I wanted to be perfect at whatever I did, which obviously in life is not possible, but it consumed me.

One day, I attended a presentation (报告) by wildlife conservationist Grant Brown at my high school. His presentation not only awed (使惊叹) and inspired me, but also helped create an inner desire to make a difference in the world. I joined a pre-presentation dinner with him and that smaller setting allowed me to slowly build up my courage to speak one-on-one with him—an idea that had seemed impossible. This contact was where my story began.

A month later, Brown invited me to attend the World Youth Wildlife Conference. Looking back, I now see that this would be the first in a series of timely opportunities that my old self would have let pass, but that this new and more confident Alice enthusiastically seized. Shortly after I received his invitation, applications to join the Youth   for Nature and the Youth for Planet groups were sent around through my high school. I decided to commit to completing the applications, and soon I was a part of a growing global team of young people working to protect nature. Each of these new steps continued to grow my confidence.

I am writing this just six months since my journey began and I’ve realized that my biggest obstacle (障碍) this whole time was myself. It was that voice in the back of my head telling me that one phrase that has stopped so many people from reaching their potential: I can’t. They say good things come to those who wait; I say: grab every opportunity with everything you have and be impatient. After all, nature does not require our patience, but our action.

8 . When White met the pit bull puppy in 2018, Darby was young, playful, strong as an ox. Then, in the summer of 2019, came Darby’s date with destiny.

White was fishing in Northern Caledonia’s Bodega Bay. He left Darby, then a year old and 100 pounds, in the parked car with windows down, while he cast his line a few yards away. The fish weren’t biting, White recall, until, suddenly, they were.

At first, White thought he had hooked a stingray. But as he reeled (绕线) it in, he realized it was a sevengill shark, about 6 feet long. Not uncommon but still dangerous He brought it close and carefully unhooked it, expecting it to swim away. It didn’t. The shark bit his ankle.

“All of a sudden there was blood everywhere,” says White. He yelled for help, hoping the fishermen down the beach could hear. But they didn’t seem to know what was going on. Fortunately, Darby did. He jumped out of the car and ran toward the water. He ran right up to the shark and sank his teeth into its gills (鱼鳃).

“That just made the shark bite down harder,” White says. Darby backed off, then regrouped and attacked the shark’s tail. The shark released its grip (紧抓), and White managed to push it into shallow water, where it swam off. “The whole thing took less than a minute,” White says, “but it left plenty of damage.” White was able to stop the bleeding and get to a hospital, where he learned that the wound was very severe.

That would’ve been the end of it, had Darby’s story not gone viral. White was contacted by NBC News and CNN. That’s when the countless cash offers started to come in. But the big dog was not for sale.

9 . I was 6 years old when my father told me we were leaving the Big Apple Circus (马戏团). Until that point, I had spent most of my life on the circus lot, playing with the other circus kids. The circus, by its nature, is one that has a loose structure. So the early years after my leaving the circus to sit in a classroom all day felt more like a prison.

But years later, I found areas that interested me. I took the skills I had learned from being onstage and applied them to broadcasting. And so when Boston’s news station WBUR offered me a job out of college, I jumped at the chance. Along the way, I found I really enjoyed the work. I became WBUR’s news reporter. The flexibility and adaptability I’d learned in the circus as a child helped me do my job naturally and easily in a stressful situation — whether it was a destructive tornado outside Boston, or the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013.

But then a serious infectious disease appeared. Suddenly, for the first time in my adult life, I went for a year without doing any shows. But it became clear to me that performing was what I truly wanted. For me, the circus symbolizes who I am. And stages have always been where I’ve felt the most free. Some people get nervous before they go onstage, but by assuming (扮演) the character of Jacques ze Whipper and drawing a stupid moustache on my face, all my social anxiety disappears.

Circus performances go beyond age, socioeconomic status (地位), and even language. It’s the type of performance where you can go anywhere in the world to entertain anyone — help anyone forget their troubles for 5, 10, and even 30 minutes. And most importantly, for me, it means coming home.

10 . One afternoon, after finishing shopping in a supermarket, my family and I went to the checkout. I suddenly thought we didn’t need the junk (垃圾) food, and we gave up all those, saving $300.

That got me thinking about all our meaningless cost in life. Why not make a change? With butterflies in the stomach, we decided to take a try. The rules were that we would buy nothing for 30 days except necessities (必需品).

Our adventure (历险) began with a great start. By 9 A. m. , my wife, Ruth, had already made cakes from old strawberries and picked flowers I didn’t even know we had in the garden. I cleared the car by hand for the first time for years. I read and returned the neighbor’s newspaper before he woke up. Total spending on the first day: $0.

As days turned into weeks, we became so experienced at living simply. We started riding our bikes to save gas. My child’s finger painting was recycled as gift wrap for the homemade presents. We started to use an Internet application like Skype for free phone calls and ask neighbors with gardens for extra vegetables and herbs.

In the end, we saved more than $2000 by not spending for a month. When we began, I imagined we would rush out the moment we were done and buy a lot of things in the supermarket, then maybe hit the mall or go to the movies.