2 . I recently visited India to meet women with AIDS. Having AIDS is considered as a mark of disgrace and the punishment is________. Most of these women had been abandoned by their family.

What I ________ most is how much they wanted to touch me and be touched as if physical ________ somehow proved their________.

I spent time with the dying and saw rows of cots(帆布床). Every cot was ________ except for one in the corner, so I went there, hoping to provide some help. The ________ was a woman in her 30s. She had ________ eyes and was skinny.

________, I suddenly felt helpless. I had nothing to ________ her. I couldn’t save her, either.

I ________ down and reached out to touch her—and when she ________ my hand, she grabbed it and wouldn’t let go. We had been there together for a while when she pointed upward. It took me some time to ________ that she wanted to go up to the roof and sit outside. It was getting ________ and the sun was going down, and no one seemed ________ to take her upstairs.

I carried her up. She sat on a chair, facing the west and watching the________. I reminded the workers to ________ her later. Then I had to leave. But she never ________ me.

Sometimes it’s the people you can’t help who ________ you the most. Optimism isn’t a passive expectation that things will get better. It is a(n)________ that we can make things better and we can help people, if we don’t lose hope and don’t look ________.

3 . When I was nine years old，I loved to go fishing with my dad. But the only thing that wasn’t very fun about it was that he could catch many fish while I couldn’t catch anything. I usually got pretty upset and kept asking him why. He always answered, “Son, if you want to catch a fish, you have to think like a fish.” I remember being even more upset then because “I’m not a fish!” I didn’t know how to think like a fish. Besides, I reasoned, how could what I think influence what a fish does?

As I got a little older, I began to understand what my dad really meant. So, I read some books on fish. And I even joined the local fishing club and started attending the monthly meetings. I learned that a fish is a cold-blooded animal and therefore is very sensitive to water temperature. That is why fish prefer shallow water to deep water because the former is warmer. Besides, water is usually warmer in direct sunlight than in the shade. Yet, fish don’t have any eyelids(眼睑) and the sun hurts their eyes...The more I understood fish, the more I became effective at finding and catching them.

When I grew up and entered the business world, I remember hearing my first boss say, “We all need to think like salespeople.” But it didn’t completely make sense. My dad never once said, “If you want to catch a fish you need to think like a fisherman.” What he said was, “You need to think like a fish.” Years later, with great efforts to promote long-term services to people much older and richer than me, I gradually learned what we all need is to think more like customers. It is not an easy job. I will show you how in the following chapters.

8 . Five years ago, Kelly Klein of Minnesota gradually recovered after battling the cancer. But in 2020, it returned, and she had to lie down every day to _______ the treatment again.

The first time around, the beloved teacher was _______ to take six months off work for the monthly chemo (化疗). _______, during these days, she spent her five-hour chemo sessions on the _______ — teaching her students online!

Kelly has been teaching at Falcon Heights Elementary for the last 32 years. She said it’s a process of _______ the society, and more than a job. So the _______ of having to take more time off was _______ what she never expects to do. But the move to online school during COVID-19 made it _______ for her to see her students. Since she has to sit in a chair during each treatment, she realized her monthly _______ was a perfect chance to see her kids!

“Teaching 5-year-olds is like ________ Disney World. Everything there truly ________ them and they’re so excited about everything that it gets me ________ though I’m suffering from the cancer,” she said.

Headmaster Beth Behnke wasn’t ________ when Kelly said she desired to find a way to ________ her students. “Because I know what this ________ to her. It is her cause that she ________ very much.”

Kelly’s battle has been a great ________ this time because it’s terminal. Knowing this, Kelly decided ________ to spend as much time as possible with her lovely students.

What an educator with an abundance of ________! If only every child could be ________ enough to have a teacher like her in their life.

9 . I’m an architect. One of my services is helping clients move into new office space. Last year, a client was moving into a storefront. The space had formerly been occupied by a photography studio, which looked as if it had been abruptly abandoned.

Piled against one wall was a huge pile of photos. I gazed at one photo. A family, all dressed up, smiling. They'd put on their best clothes, come here to the studio, sat for the photos. A moment in time captured (捕捉到) a moment of life. I stood there, picturing all those smiling faces packed into a dumpster (垃圾大铁桶). Two days later, after getting permission, my family drove two minivans to the abandoned studio. We loaded armful after armful of photos into the vans.

“We'll have to put them in the basement. I wonder why the company just left them there," my wife Dawn said when we got home. "It was said the company had gone broke and shut all its stores around the country, " I said.

We pulled the photos into the basement. I looked up the company, a national chain. There were news stories about customers around the country losing their portraits (肖像),calling phone numbers that no longer worked. I imagined what it would feel like to lose a treasured family portrait. I knew all about the power of small gestures to give someone a welcome shot of hope.

The kids helped me sort the photos. We made a spreadsheet of names and whatever contact information we could find, sending a group text message inviting people to set up a time to collect them. People began arriving at the house. But it was only a few people.

“Try social media," said the kids.

I posted a message to a community board on Facebook. The phone rang. And rang. E-mails poured in. Then the COVID-19 temporarily blocked our project. When lockdown eased, we restarted reuniting people with photos, returning more than 60 of the 105 photos.

10 . Our lives changed tracks the day our daughter was born. My wife and I felt _______in the UK-we'd even bought a house 6 months earlier—but the _______of our daughter forced a moment of _______.We wondered whether we should _______to our native Brazil.I remembered looking down at our newborn baby and thinking about how _______her life would be there.In our native country, we'd be closer to our family and _______.But in the UK, I had the funding and lab resources I needed for my _______and highly specialized research program.Would such a move_______career?

Then, a few weeks later, I received a call from my brother, who told me that our father had passed away.The great_______I had about my daughter's birth suddenly gave way to a deep sadness.I felt that I was ________precious time with my loved ones.After that,we had no ________that it was the right time to move back to Brazil.We applied for the professorships in our hometown and both received________

It wasn't ________to start my research in Brazil, however.I didn't receive any start-up funding for my lab.I was able to perform a few experiments myself ________the expensive reagents(试剂）I had brought with me from my lab in the UK, as well as equipment I__________with other Brazil professors.Eventually, I________Brazilian funding, which allowed me to ________a team of bright undergraduate and graduate students and buy reagents and lab equipment on my own.

Looking back, I'm ________that my wife and I made the ________to move back to our home country.I was able to ________Brazilian jujitsu (柔术）training, which I hadn't been able to do during my years abroad.