4 . This is my driver Jacob. He was sent to _______ me up and take me to where I’ll be working.

He _______ with me that since the pandemic he had had to change _______ and was currently spending six days a week away from his family in a town that had more work. He _______ the name of his hometown Nah Bok and shared that he had to spend five hours on his _______ day off on the three different buses to get there and back to spend one day with them.

My father had _______ away when I was young. Sometimes away for weeks and months at a time. I _______ us kids waiting for our turn to have just a couple of minutes on the _______ with him. So two hours into our drive when I saw a _______ saying Nah Bok I asked him if that was where his family ________. He said yes and it was about 5 miles down the road. I said why didn’t we ________ and say hello. He looked at me like I was ________ or joking and I said again.

As we ________ his wife was chatting on the side of the road with his mother. All of the children came out. They were so ________ to see him.

Be kind. Slow down and listen to people’s stories. Take the time to give somebody else a ________ even if it’s just your time.

6 . “Today I will give you a special test,” said the English teacher with a smile on his face.

All the students set up straight and ________ for the test to begin. The teacher began to ________ the test papers to all the students. ________ he finished handing out the test papers, he asked them to begin.

The students were very ________ to see that there was not a question but a black dot (圆点) in the centre of the paper. The teacher ________ the students’ surprise and said, “I want you to ________ about what you see there.”

At the end of the class, the teacher took all the students’ answer sheets (答题纸) and read the answers. ________ of them described the black dot. After reading all the answers, the teacher said, “Here everyone only paid attention to the black dot, ________ no one wrote about the white paper.” The whole class listened ________, because they were afraid to fail in the exam.

Then the teacher said, “Don’t worry about your ________ for this test. I just want you to think about our life. The white paper is like our whole life and the black dot in the centre of the paper ________ problems in our daily life.”

Our life is a ________ given to us by God, with love and care. Still, we just pay attention to the problems like ________ and poverty, and never see that these problems are very ________ compared to everything else we have in our life.

So we should try to take our eye off our problems and ________ each moment life gives us.

7 . People are always afraid of making mistakes. But sometimes it’s not bad to make mistakes, and here is why.

At first, mistakes are a clear sign that you are trying new things. It’s always good to try new things, because when you are trying new things you are growing. If you never try new things, how can you improve? How can you create? The simple answer is, “You can’t.” Look around you, everything you see is the result of someone trying new things.

Another good thing about mistakes is this: when you are making mistakes, you are learning. Consider this: Edison failed 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb. When he was asked how he felt to fail that many times, he said that he hadn’t failed 10,000 times, but rather had learned 10,000 things that didn’t work.

Finally, when you make a mistake, you are that much closer to success. Why? Because you have said what you should say, and you have done what you should do. Every time you make a mistake, you are closer to success. But it doesn’t mean that you can make mistakes without thinking. Instead, when you try new things you have to think them over, so that you can keep away from some unnecessary mistakes.

We shouldn’t spend all our time and money on the only one way, but use them correctly. Because our time and money are limited (有限的).

There is an old saying, “If you are not making mistakes, you are not trying hard enough.” So go bravely and make mistakes. And learn. And grow. And succeed.

8 . When I was a kid, my mom set aside some breakfast food for supper every now and then. I remember one night after a long, hard day at work, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage, and a plate of extremely burnt biscuits on the table. I waited to see if my dad would get annoyed.

All my dad did was to reach for the biscuits, smile at my mom and ask me how my day at school had been. I don’t remember what I told him that night but I do remember watching him add butter and jelly on that ugly burnt biscuit and ate every bite of that thing. He never made a face nor uttered a word about it!

When I rose from the table that evening, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for overcooking the biscuits and I will never forget what he said, “Honey, I love burnt biscuits every now and then.”

Later that night I went to say goodnight to my daddy, and I wondered if he really liked his biscuits burnt. He wrapped me up in his arms and said gently, “Your mom put in a hard day at work today and she is really tired. Besides, a little burnt biscuit never hurt anyone!

As I have grown older, I’ve thought about that many times. Life is full of imperfect things and imperfect people. Learning to accept each other’s faults and choosing to celebrate each other’s differences contribute to a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship. We could extend this philosophy to any relationship, such as a husband-wife, parent-child, or friendship. Don’t put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket. Keep it in your own. So, please pass me a biscuit, and yes, the burnt one will do just fine.

9 . When the great library of Alexandria burned, the story goes, one book was saved. But it was not a valuable book and a poor man got it.

The book wasn’t very interesting, but between its pages there was something very interesting indeed. It was a thin strip of vellum (羊皮纸) on which was written the secret of the “Touchstone (点金石)”. The touchstone was a small pebble that could turn any common metal into pure gold. The writing explained that it was lying among thousands and thousands of other pebbles that looked exactly like it. But the secret was this: The real stone would feel warm while ordinary pebbles are cold.

So the man sold his house, bought a tent, camped on the seashore and began testing pebbles. He knew that if he picked up normal pebbles and threw them down again because they were cold, he might pick up the same pebbles hundreds of times. So, when he felt one that was cold, he threw it into the sea. He spent a whole day doing this but none of them was the touchstone. Yet he went on and on this way. Pick up a pebble. Cold — throw it into sea. Pick up another. Throw it into the sea. The days stretched into months and the months into years.

One day, however, about mid-afternoon, he picked up a pebble and it was warm. He threw it into the sea before he realized what he had done. He was used to throwing each pebble into the sea as soon as he picked it up. So when the one he wanted came along, he still threw it away.

So it is with opportunity. Unless we are careful, it’s easy to fail to realize an opportunity when it is in hand and it’s just as easy to throw it away.

10 . Being good at something and having a passion for it are not enough. Success________fundamentally on our view of ourselves and of the________ in our lives.

When twelve-year-old John Wilson walked into his chemistry class on a rainy day in 1931, he had no________ of knowing that his life was to change________. The class experiment that day was to ________ how heating a container of water would bring air bubbling (冒泡) to the surface. ________, the container the teacher gave Wilson to heat_________held something more volatile (易挥发的) than water. When Wilson heated it, the container________, leaving Wilson blinded in both eyes.

When Wilson returned home from hospital two months later, his parents________to find a way to deal with the catastrophe(灾难) that had________their lives. But Wilson did not regard the accident as a________. He learned braille (盲文) quickly and continued his education at Worcester College for the Blind. There, he not only did well as a student but also became a________ public speaker.

Later, he worked in Africa, where many people suffered from________for lack of proper treatment. For him, it was one thing to________his own fate of being blind and another to do something in his power to help those________. He acted on the thought and tens of millions in Africa and Asia can see because of the________Wilson made to helping________their sight.

Wilson received several international________for his great contributions. He lost his sight but found a________. He proved that it’s not what happens to us that________our lives-it’s what we make of what happens.