1 . In the animal kingdom, weakness can bring about aggression in other animal. This sometimes happens with humans also. But I have found that my weakness brings out the kindness in people. I see it every day when people hold doors for me, pour cream into my coffee, or help me to put on my coat. And I have discovered that it makes them happy.

From my wheelchair experience, I see the best in people, but sometimes I feel sad because those who appear independent miss the kindness I see daily. They don’t get to see this soft side of others often. We try every way possible to avoid showing our weakness, which includes a lot of pretending. But only when we stop pretending we’re brave or strong do we allow people to show the kindness that’s in them.

Last month, when I was driving home on a busy highway, I began to feel unwell and drove more slowly than usual. People behind me began to get impatient and angry, with some speeding up alongside me, horning or even shouting at me. At the moment I decided to do something I had never done in twenty four years of driving. I put on the car flashlights and drove on at a really low speed.

No more angry shouts and no more horns!

When I put on my flashlights, I was saying to other drivers, “I have a problem here. I am weak and doing the best I can.” And everyone understood. Several times, I saw drivers who wanted to pass. They couldn’t get around me because of the stream of passing traffic. But instead of getting impatient and angry, they waited, knowing the driver in front of them was in some way weak.

Sometimes situations call for us to act strong and brave even when we don’t feel that way. But those are few and far between. More often, it would be better if we don’t pretend we feel strong when we feel weak or pretend that we are brave when we are scared.

2 . Walking down a path through some woods in Georgia, I saw a water puddle ahead on the path. As I reached the puddle, I was suddenly attacked! Yet I did nothing for the attack was so unpredictable and from a source so totally unexpected. I was being attacked by a butterfly!

Having stopped attacking, I took a step forward. My attacker rushed me again. I retreated a step while my attacker relented in his attack. Yet again, I tried moving forward and I was rammed in the chest over and over again. I wasn’t sure what to do, other than to retreat a third time. After all, it’s just not every day that one is attacked by a butterfly. This time, though, I stepped back several paces to look the situation over. My attacker moved back as well to land on the ground. That’s when I discovered why my attacker was charging me only moments earlier. He had a mate and she was dying. She was beside the puddle where he landed.

Sitting close beside her, he opened and closed his wings as if to fan her. I could only admire the love and courage of that butterfly in his concern for his mate. He had taken it upon himself to attack me for his mate’s reason, even though she was clearly dying and I was so large. He did so just to give her those extra few precious moments of life in case I was careless to step on her. Now I knew why and what he was fighting for. There was really only one option left for me. I carefully made my way around the puddle to the other side of the path, though it was only inches wide and extremely muddy. His courage in attacking something thousands of times large r and heavier than himself just for his mate’s safety justified it. I couldn’t do anything other than reward him by walking on the more difficult side of the puddle. He had truly earned those moments to be with her, undisturbed.

I left them in peace for those last few moments, cleaning the mud from my boots when I later reached my car. Since then, I’ve always tried to remember the courage of that butterfly whenever I see huge obstacles facing me. I use that butterfly’s courage as an inspiration and to remind myself that good things are worth fighting for.

3 . We were designing a wheelchair for a college engineering course. While my classmates were certain that we needed to use steel and felt only steel would be strong enough, I thought steel would be too heavy and aluminum (铝) would be a better option. But the student who strongly argued for steel worked at a bike shop. A few days later, when the big and heavy steel arm kept dropping down, I wished I had shown more determination to defend my position.

I was a crafty kid. Not crafty like fox, but crafty to the point that my parents would come home ready for whatever “artistic” explosion I had made that day — painting, clay sculpting, clothes, and more. But when I studied engineering in college, these pursuits were deep-sixed. Not only was I stretched for time, but I didn’t think they were relevant to my academic work. I hesitated to highlight my female crafting interests in the male-dominated engineering environment where I already felt like an outsider.

When I went on to pursue a Ph.D. early in the epidemic, I felt anxious and turned to crafting. One day I was making a set of dice as a gift for a friend. While putting the liquid resin (树脂) into the silicone mold (硅胶模具), I made a joke to my partner that I was “injection molding” — a standard engineering manufacturing (制造) process. I suddenly realized that although resin art is not injection molding in the technical sense, it shares the spirit and probably some skills.

Soon I saw more connections between engineering and crafting that I had previously ignored. And crafting taught me not to give up when my product didn’t match my initial vision and to consider the failed creation a learning experience, just as an engineer must.

Since then, I’ve built crafting back into my free time. I mentioned my dice-making experience at a robotics conference and explained in a team meeting how we could gain inspiration from art experiences. I was glad that the responses were positive — not rude or unfriendly, as I used to fear.

7 . It wasn’t easy to practice gratitude (感激) every day. After I _________ Cushing’s disease and had an operation a few years ago, my _________ was that everything would be OK. However, I was wrong. I had ongoing aches and pains, and _________ myself to a new life was difficult lor me, I began to notice that I’d become a _________ person.

One day, I heard a discussion about gratitude by Dr Tony Evans. It _________ me and forced me to take a long, hard, honest look at myself. I have a (n) _________ spouse (配偶) and patents. I’d heard the stories of other people’s struggles with Cushing’s disease. Their spouses had left them and they didn’t have family to _________ . I didn’t face any of these problems, yet I didn’t realize that.

I made a decision to start practicing gratitude daily. Once I decided that, my _________ improved, and I began to approach situations _________ . Instead of viewing situations negatively, I started to see them as __________ .

This led me to practice the concept of sowing and reaping (收获), which I learned from my parents. They didn’t just talk the talk, but rather they __________ this concept to us. __________ , it wasn’t until I had my own experiences that I understood what it meant.

Let me explain. When I was __________ by my own pity, my harvest in life was ruined, because everything I was __________ was negative. Since I started practicing gratitude, so many different doors of opportunity have opened up for me.

My advice is starting practicing gratitude until it becomes a part of your daily __________ . Take note of the difference it will make in your life.

9 . It was a cold May morning when I received an interesting email from an old high school friend inviting me to join a 10-day all-girls surf trip. I knew I had to say ________.

The trip seemed simple enough. Ten ________ aged 30 to 45, all complete strangers, meeting on the coast of Portugal to try something new: ________in the Atlantic Ocean.

I have always loved traveling, so I was ________ to send an email to my boss asking for time ________ to make the trip. I met my ________ surfing companion on the grass of the hotel lawn in a small surf town called Ericeira. Although we had our different ________ and backgrounds, we were all united in a lasting desire to ________ ourselves, learn, tackle and grow.

________by our amazing coaches, together, we faced the waves. Sometimes, it poured with rain, and the waves __________ around us, but we were still out there. And with every slip and fall, words of __________ from our coaches filled the air. Honestly, I probably spent most of my days frozen to the bone, but that didn’t matter because learning a new skill taught me the humility (谦逊) that can come from doing __________ at something new, and the pride that develops when you finally __________ to grasp something you’ve been working on.

While surfing might not be my calling, trying it out __________ me to take more risks in life, to __________ my comfort zone and to never stop believing in myself. You never know what you’re capable of if you don’t go out there and try.

There are many things in senior middle school that I still remember clearly. I studied three years in a country school, which is faraway. However, it has a good environment and strict but kind teachers, so I loved the school and all my teachers very much.

One Friday, just as we began to read books in reading class at our desks, our teacher, Mrs. Hill, said that she needed to be out of the classroom for a few minutes. She asked the class to read in silence while she was gone. And she said that those who didn’t read books in silence would have to be punished when she returned. It was well-known that Mrs. Hill was strict. So we had to be on our best behaviour.

But that Friday, Mrs. Hill hadn’t been gone for ten seconds before some students in the classroom started to talk. From one corner of the room I heard Josh ask Nick, “Can I trade my candies for your toy?” At the other end of the room I heard Samantha tell Kayla, “Let’s sit together on the bus for the museum field trip tomorrow.” And so it went all around me, until about half of the students communicated with each other.

After a while, I, too, forgot about Mrs. Hill’s instructions. I turned back and asked my friend Liza, “Can I borrow your storybook and keep it for a day?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Mrs. Hill walked into the classroom. The whole class returned to silence immediately. And we were full of fear.

Mrs. Hill slowly looked around the classroom and said, “If you were talking while I was gone, then please stand up.” The guilt (内疚) suddenly weighed heavily on me. “I shouldn’t have talked while she was not in the classroom. And now I should be honest and admit my mistake bravely. This is what my parents have always told me.” I thought. Then, I summoned up (鼓起) my courage to stand up, worried about the punishment that waited for me. Then I looked around.

To my surprise, no one followed me and I was the only one in the classroom standing.

With Mrs. Hill’s encouragement, another student stood up.