My teacher gave us an assignment that should have been easy. “OK, class,” he said. “For the month of November, we will turn this wall into our Thanksgiving art gallery. For tonight’s homework, I want you to create a picture of one thing you’re thankful for, and we’ll hang it here.”

We were supposed to spend the last part of class figuring out an idea for our “thankful” picture. But the more I tried to think of the one perfect thing, the more panicked and puzzled became! Finally, the school bell rang, and it was time to pack up and go. “I’m going to make a picture about fishing with my grandpa,” my friend Imani said as we walked home. I told her that this project was making me nervous and that I was worried if I chose one person, everyone else felt left out.

Imani suggested that I should pick a random awesome thing instead. I was surprised and confused because I was thankful for a billion random things. How was I supposed to choose one? Imani smiled. “It’s the ‘just close your eyes’ trick.” I could write down a bunch of choices on separate pieces of paper, spread them out, close my eyes and pick one. I was still worried that I would pick the imperfect one.

“That’s the whole point,” said Imani. “There’s no perfection. Here, I’ll show you!” I followed Imani across the street to a giant tree with beautiful and attractive fallen leaves. So many leaves had fallen onto the grass that it looked like a rainbow-colored carpet. The orange one with green-and-yellow edges was incredible. Those fiery red ones were also amazing. She urged me to pick the very best leaf.

“There are too many,” I said. “It’d be impossible to find the very best.”

“Exactly!” she said. “It’s just like the thankful assignment. There are way too many choices. So just close your eyes and pick one.” I closed my eyes, picked up a leaf, opened my eyes -and we both started laughing our heads off.

Looking at the rotten and sad little leaf in my hand, I was lost in thought.

The next day in class, when appreciating our pictures on the wall, everybody had questions about mine.

4 . Philosophers have a bad reputation for expressing themselves in a dry and boring way. The ideals for most philosophical writing are precision, clarity, and the sort of conceptual analysis that leaves no hair un-split.

There is nothing wrong with clarity, precision, and the like — but this isn’t the only way to do philosophy. Outside academic journals, abstract philosophical ideas are often expressed through literature, cinema, and song. There’s nothing that grabs attention like a good story, and there are some great philosophical stories that delight and engage, rather than putting the reader to sleep.

One of the great things about this is that, unlike formal philosophy, which tries to be very clear, stories don’t wear their meanings on their sleeve — they require interpretation, and often express conflicting ideas for the reader to wrestle with.

Consider what philosophers call the metaphysics (形而上学) of race — an area of philosophy that explorers the question of whether or not race is real. There are three main positions that you can take on these questions. You might think that a person’s race is written in their genes (a position known as “biological realism”). Or you might think of race as socially real, like days of the week or currencies (“social constructionism”). Finally, you might think that races are unreal — that they’re more like leprechauns (一种魔法精灵) than they are like Thursdays or dollars (“anti-realism”).

A great example of a story with social constructionist taking on race is George Schuyler’s novel Black No More. In the book, a Black scientist named Crookman invents a procedure that makes Black people visually indistinguishable from Whites. Thousands of African Americans flock to Crookman’s Black No More clinics and pay him their hard-earned cash to undergo the procedure. White racists can no longer distinguish those people who are “really” White from those who merely appear to be White. In a final episode, Crookman discovers that new Whites are actually a whiter shade of pale than those who were born that way, which kicks off a trend of sunbathing to darken one’s skin-darkening it so as to look more While.

Philosophically rich stories like this bring more technical works to life. They are stories to think with.

As I inch closer to my sixth decade, I can’t help but reflect on my life’s journey.

My path has taken many twists and turns, as it does for most, and I am grateful for each chapter and all the characters who were a part of my script. Through all the seasons, hills and valleys, I have grown in all areas of life and as a human being in general.

My husband and I have always wanted to retire near the ocean. We are active and love the outdoors. Finally, we were getting closer to our goal. I had put in my final years for retirement at MES, the wonderful school I spent the majority of my teaching career. I had three years left, but with Illinois’ bad weather, I had it in my mind to get us to Florida sooner than expected.

Our son is stationed at Hurlburt Field near Destin, Florida, and after visiting him there, we fell in love with the pretty coast. The salt air,heat,and humidity did my sinuses (鼻窦) and body good. I was back to running daily and did not once suffer from knee pain or sinus issues during our time there. We discussed it when we returned to Illinois, and I decided to act. I applied for teaching jobs in the Destin area.

Fortunately, I landed a teaching job at a great school and left MES. We put our house up for sale and were looking forward to this next adventure.

I moved to Florida in late July to start my next chapter while my husband stayed back to wrap things up.

I got into my new school on Aug. 1st and began preparing to move from teaching seventh to fourth graders.

However, back home, we weren’t selling our house. Besides, we couldn’t find housing in Florida. After much discussion, we decided the timing wasn’t right because of many unforeseen factors, so I packed up and drove back to Illinois.

My Life Crossings
I ________ in all areas of life, full of twists and turns.		I’m grateful and ________ with my life.
I wanted to ________ MES.		I was ________ of bad weather in Illinois.
I visited my son and ________ in Florida; the weather was good for my ________.		I fell in love with the pretty coast.
I applied and landed a teaching job in Florida. I moved to Florida and got into the new school, ________ my future.		I was excited and ________.
For some ________, I drove back to Illinois.		I was quiet and ________.

Kuppan was a good badminton player. His rise within the ranks of the badminton players of the school was impressive but unusual. One day he was nothing, the next he was a member of the school team.

In the School Championships, he sprang a surprise by knocking out the top seed, Richard Lee, in the semi final. In the final, he easily beat another competitor Abdul Rauf by 15-3 and 15-10. He was the School Champion. It was unbelievable. The previous year he did not even get past the first round, This year he was the champion.

Success got into his head, He began to think he was really good, In fact, he arrogantly (傲慢地) told Richard Lee and the others that they would never beat him again. He claimed he was simply too good for them, in a league of his own.

Well, it was true that Kuppan was a good and skillful player. He had natural ability and talent. So he picked up the game very quickly and soon became the best. However. he did not realize that nobody can remain at the top all the time. What goes up must certainly come down. Kuppan thought he could stay up indefinitely.

The other players were annoyed by Kuppan’ s declaration. They resolved to train harder to beat the guy who had insulted (羞辱) them, They even trained on their own every day while Kuppan wandered around talking with pride about his success. The State Individual Championships were coming up，So was the Interschool Tournament. The school’s coach worked hard to improve the school players. All of them trained hard, except Kuppan. He would miss training or perform half- heartedly. He was more interested in entertaining the admirers that had gathered around him. He thought he was too strong to be defeated.

The State Individual Championships reached us in time.

Kuppan tried to make a difference in the second round,

9 . Scientific discovery is popularly believed to result from the sheer genius of such intellectual stars as naturalist Charles Darwin and theoretical physicist Albert Einstein. Our view of such unique contributions to science often _________ the person’s prior experience and the efforts of their lesser-known predecessors (前任者).

_________ such greats as Darwin and Einstein—whose remarkable contributions are duly celebrated — we suggest that innovation is more a process of trial and error, where two steps forward may sometimes come with one step back, as well as one or more steps to the right or left. This evolutionary view of human innovation weakens the idea of _________ genius and recognizes the accumulative nature of scientific progress.

Consider one _________ scientist: John Nicholson, a mathematical physicist working in the 1910s who assumed the existence of ‘proto-elements’ in outer space. By combining different numbers of weights of these proto-elements’ atoms, Nicholson could recover the weights of all the elements in the then-known periodic table. These successes are all the more noteworthy given the fact that Nicholson was _________ about the presence of proto-elements: they do not actually exist. Yet, amid his often fanciful theories and wild guesses, Nicholson also _________ a new theory about the structure of atoms. Niels Bohr, the Nobel prize-winning father of modern atomic theory, _________ this interesting idea to come up with his now-famous model of the atom.

What are we to make of this story? We propose that science is constantly _________, much as species of animals do. In biological systems, organisms may display new characteristics that _________ random genetic mutations (变异). In the same way, random or accidental mutations of ideas may help pave the way for __________ in science. __________ mutations prove beneficial, the animal or the scientific theory will continue to thrive and perhaps reproduce.

__________ for this evolutionary view of behavioral innovation comes from many domains. Consider one example of an influential innovation in US horseracing. The so-called ‘acey-deucy’ stirrup (马镫) placement, in which the rider’s foot in his left stirrup is placed as much as 25 centimeters lower than the right, is believed to give important speed advantages when turning on egg-shaped tracks. It was developed by a relatively unknown jockey named Jackie Westrope. Had he __________ the speed advantage that would be provided by riding acey-deucy? No. He suffered a leg injury, which left him unable to fully bend his left knee. His __________ just happened to coincide with enhanced left-hand turning performance.

Plenty of other stories show that fresh advances can arise from error, misadventure, and also pure serendipity — a happy __________. The time seems right for abandoning the naive notions of intelligent design and genius, and for scientifically exploring the true origins of creative behavior.