3 . From the deserts of Southern California to the forests of Alaska, the U.S. possesses an incredible diversity of nature. For most of her life, Joy Ryan never saw the landscape beyond her home state of Ohio. Then, when she was in her mid-eighties, her grandson Brad Ryan decided to take her on a journey to all of the U.S. National Parks — a mission that took eight years to complete. At the age of 93, Grandma Joy has finally seen all 63 parks, ending the monumental feat in the National Park of American Samoa.

“When I learned she had never seen the great wildernesses of America — deserts, mountains, oceans, you name it — I thought that was something that would trouble me if I didn’t take action in some way,” Brad says. This idea sparked their first trip to the Great Smoky Mountains. However, once they were on the road, Brad realized that they could visit more parks nearby, and their trips multiplied. Over the years, they managed to see all the famous sights at Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Redwoods, and so on.

Despite Grandma Joy’s older age, she could hike mountains and do white water rafting. Brad praises her enthusiasm for life as the key to her good health. She expresses gratitude for each new day and is always excited about the next adventure. Finally, their long journey across the U.S. ended with American Samoa. “It’s about 6,700 miles from Ohio, where we live. It’s the only U.S. National Park south of the equator. It’s a long trip, but we’re excited to go,” Brad explains. “We can enjoy the beach and the beautiful tropical paradise. But as we’ve learned from the rangers that work there, American Samoa is an island community firmly rooted in family. And I think that there’s a bit of a poetic beauty to ending it there, too.”

5 . Mary Dickins had been a member of the audience at poetry nights before and knew “the poetry clap”. She made a polite tapping of fingers. But when she made her debut (首次演出) as a performer at the age of 62 at the legendary Bang Said the Gun night in south London, she said, “It was so wild — like nothing I had ever seen before.” The audience stamped their feet and shook shakers. “It felt transformative. I thought, ‘I’ve got to have more of this,’ ” Dickins said. Becoming a performance poet has given her a place on a stage of her own making.

All her life she has written, mostly without being seen or heard. Her mother died when she was nine, and, after she went into a care home at 13, Dickins’ writing stayed in notebooks. Really, she says, a lot of her adult life has been about getting over childhood shyness. At university — she studied education — she met her husband of 40 years, but in three years of seminars she did not say a word. Some of this results from her years at the children’s home. She says, “It gave me a sense of what it’s like to be excluded. I never fitted in anywhere.”

After she graduated, she discovered that she loved working with people with learning disabilities. She became an expert in inclusive education. “That was my niche (称心的职业),” she says. She published books and returned to the University of North London as a senior lecturer in early childhood studies.

Dickins now sees that in adulthood she has been giving herself permission to be silly. “The sillier I allow myself to be, the better the writing is,” she says. Her observations are humorous.

“Putting things into words and giving shape to your emotions is an important part of coming to terms with the things that happen in life,” she says.

Does she still feel like an outsider?

“I think I’ve made it into a virtue. I celebrate the fact that I don’t fit into a box. Finally! You have to wait till you’re 62 to feel confident!” she says. “But I have a sense of who I am and I'm proud of it. I wouldn’t be anyone else now — and it took me a long time to say that.”

6 . My plan to learn to play the cello (大提琴) was a health y choice. So I took the next innocent step of going to a shop that sells and rents string instruments, especially violins, violas, and cellos. The place was a hole-in-the-wall, up a steep flight of stairs. Instruments left a narrow path to the counter where a woman with grey hair and warm eyes greeted me. Since I couldn’t form a question about what I wanted, I just stood there exploring the scene, which felt immensely pleasurable.

I rented a cello, a bow, and a case to hold them. What attracted me to the cello was its enormous size and its soft, smooth, and memorable sounds. It’s an instrument made of beautifully polished wood that I could wrap my arms around and feel its powerful vibrations when the strings were played. That was a good starting point for me. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to play it.

There’s a popular belief that the cello is a particularly difficult instrument to learn. Another is the admonition, “Don’t bother if you are a beginner over age 10!” Well, I was 70, and what others thought no longer influenced me. And besides, I thought of the words of Dr. Cohen, who suggested that learning causes physical changes in the brain.

So I found a teacher who had respect for older adult beginners and I practiced diligently, daily for years, and sometimes disheartened, but I kept up. I’m happy to report that now, more than a decade later, I can hold my own in a string trio and two quartets （two violins, a viola, and me, the female cello）and even a senior community band. Of course, I’ll never sound like Yo-Yo Ma but you could recognize a Mozart piece if you heard me play it. And, more importantly, I don’t need to please anyone but myself.

Whether it’s a pleasurable pastime or a new career, the starting point is the same: wonder, curiosity, determination, and the desire to keep your brain sharp.

7 . It was the dead of winter when Dad told me that he found a delicate small bag in the snow on his way out of a doctor’s appointment. “It was filled with seeds, so I planted them in pots in the living room window that gets such great light.” Dad was excited to have a planting project in the winter. He missed tending his garden plot, which was the size of a small farm.

I now lived out of state, but Dad reported in his daily phone calls, “These plants seem to double in size overnight. It’s only been a few weeks, and they are almost touching the ceiling.” Since Dad had green fingers, I wasn’t surprised about that. I couldn’t imagine what plant would do so well. I knew photos would not come soon because Dad had to use up the film in his camera and then developed the pictures.

During one call, Dad said, “Today at work, one of my co-workers was wearing a T-shirt with a screen-printed picture of the same leaf as my mysterious houseplants. I told him that I had those same herbs, which were growing like weeds, and I had to get rid of them.” Dad continued, “He eagerly took them off my hands, and now I can see out the window again.”

This awakened my curiosity, and I decided to do some research. In those days, that meant going to the library’s reference section. I did some reading and photocopied some articles. I mailed them to my father.

Dad called, “I just couldn’t believe what I read in the papers you sent. Those pictures are exactly what my plants looked like. No wonder my co-worker was so willing to take them.”

We both laughed till we cried when we realized my father had just raised a harvest of precious Chinese herbs used to ease pain.

9 . My wife loves Christmas songs, and she loves to sing them. Sixteen years ago, while we were driving on vacation, she decided to pass the time by singing “The Christmas Song”.

Then she began to sing this favorite song again and again. Suddenly, I had an idea of playing a trick on her. When she got to the line “Jack Frost nipping at (轻咬) your nose”, “Why are you singing that song?” I asked.

When she looked confused at my question, I pretended to be surprised that she was unaware of the story. I went on to lie to her that Christmas songs often had a dark past and that Jack Frost was the name of a violent patient who escaped from an insane asylum (疯人院) on Christmas in the 1920s and went around biting faces, particularly noses.

She was shocked—no, horrified!— that people would sing about him.

Fast-forward to a couple of years ago. It was snowing outside and I was in a good mood. I started singing “The Christmas Song” and my wife scolded me in a joking voice for singing a song to the world’s most terrible mad man. I had no idea what she was talking about.

She then said that Jack Frost, the nose biter, had forever ruined that song for her. I laughed and admitted that I was joking that day and I honestly didn’t think she believed my joke.

Apparently, for the past 16 years she had shared this dark and terrible story with anyone who would listen. As it dawned on her that she’d been cheerfully spreading a lie for so many years, I guessed a sea of confused and disbelieving looks and a crowd of people staring at her as if she were a nose biter.

As for me, I am now the King of Lies who is never to be trusted by a cute and attractive heart again.

10 . When our family drove to our hotel on the night of 29 September, 1994, I prayed I would never be in such a bleak place. The streets were deserted, and we were leaving the hospital where our seven-year-old son lay in a deep unconsciousness. We wanted only to go home, to take Nicholas with us and to hold his hand again. It had been the worst night of our lives. In lives that only a few hours before had been full of warmth and laughter, there was now a total emptiness.

Within days, our personal experience turned into a worldwide story. Newspapers and television told of the shooting attack by car robbers, Nicholas’s death and our decision to donate his organs. Since then, many streets, schools and hospitals in Italy have been named after him.

All this is for a decision—we’ve forgotten which of us suggested it. I remember the silent room and the doctors, hesitant to ask questions about organ donation. “Now that he’s gone, shouldn’t we donate the organs?” one of us asked. “Yes,” the other replied.

Nicholas was dead. The future of a bright little creature had been taken away. It was important to us that someone else should have that future. It turned out to be seven people’s future, most of them young, most very sick.

We are pleased this incident has caused organ donation rates to increase dramatically in Italy—a result called the “Nicholas effect”. It seems unfair, however, to the thousands of parents who have made exactly the same decision. Their loss is no different from ours, but their willingness to share has remained largely unrecognized.

For them, like us, the emptiness is always close by. I don’t believe we will ever be really happy again. But our joy in seeing the life that would otherwise have been lost is so uplifting that it has given us some comfort for what would have been just an act of violence.