1 . I opened my car window and called out “Ma’am! Ma’am!” The only lady in the parking lot looked around until she saw me. “I just wanted to tell how nice you look today,” I said. “The colors you have on are beautiful on you.” Her face registered surprise for a second, and then she smiled. “Thank you!” she called back. Her final steps to her car seemed lighter, and I smiled to myself.

I grew up with very few cheerleaders in my own life. When I was in the middle of fighting a battle for my life, I had been confirmed depression, along with anxiety. It has taken many years and more effort and determination than I thought I was capable of recovering from this illness. With no cheerleaders in my court, I fought this battle alone. I am proud of the progress I have made thus far. There are times when I thought, if only I had had someone to hold me and say, “Susan, I believe in you. You can do this, and I’ll be there every step of the way.” I wonder how much sooner I would have recovered. I’ll never know.

So I have made it a point in recent years to praise people, especially women and girls. Instead of just thinking that someone looks nice or did a great job, I say it out loud. It doesn’t take long, and it’s easy. So, I wonder, why don’t more people do this? As women, we have learned from our role models to be quiet. We downplay (淡化) our own achievements even when we do receive a rare compliment (恭维). Now, when I compliment someone and she denies, I say to her, “Just say thank you.” Most women are relieved that they don’t have to deny the compliment; they can accept the praise without guilt.

Cheerleading doesn’t require any skills. It only takes a few seconds, although you do have to remind yourself to do it. Eventually, it becomes a habit.

3 . I didn’t go to Santiago, Chile to look for friendship. In fact, Chile was not even on my wish list.

A mid-life crisis woman, I got a chance to study abroad. I only wanted to learn about global business, taste South American cuisine, and check “study abroad” off my wish list.

On the fifth day, I joined a group for a neighborhood work project aided by the anti-poverty (扶贫) organization. Our tasks were to build a water tower and paint the community center. Upon arrival, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like a scene out of a horrible film. That moment redefined poverty for me because I had never seen such terrible living conditions. As advised, I showed no signs of the motional battle going on inside me.

Just as I was about to start work on painting, a request came through for a few volunteers to help Nadia, a local resident who volunteered to cook for us. I raised my hand to help because I wanted spend time with the people of the neighborhood despite my shortage of Spanish speaking skills.

Nadia had a sincere smile but not overly friendly. Even without speaking each other’s language we started to learn about one another. We chatted about our children, our upbringing, shared picture of our family, struggled to instruct each other to communicate in the other’s language, and laugh many times.

After we fed everybody and the dishes were washed, my day was over. But I found myself hesitant to leave. It was as if I had known her my entire life. I had not predicted the unselfishness heart I would encounter, and it was moving.

As we were waiting for the car to pick us up, Nadia showed me her plants that are well-maintains. I could see that despite the hard conditions she was passionate about life. She made me long to be stronger person. She showed me that poverty was external, but happiness was internal. I was seeking to give 100 percent for a well-intentioned cause, but I left receiving 200 percent from her.

5 . I didn’t quite know what I was looking for when I flew to Mongolia for a term abroad. I just needed something different, far from the late-night libraries of my college town. Most different, I hoped, would be my rural homestay: two weeks in central Mongolia with a family of nomadic(游牧的) herders.

I was studying Mongolian at the time, but still, there was so much I couldn’t say or understand. As we walked in the snow behind the goats, my host mom would ask me if I was cold, then giggle (咯咯地笑) and copy a big shiver to make sure I understood. In the evenings, she showed me how to make dumplings with her fingers. My host siblings would talk with me, speaking too fast for me to understand, as we explored the rocks around our tent; I’d listen and nod.

This verbal(言语的) barrier was strangely freeing. In the crowded dining hall at home, meeting new people made me anxious. I’d stay quiet, measuring out my words, struggling for something to say that wouldn’t expose me as unfunny or boring. In Mongolia, I couldn’t perfect my words. I could only smile, and try out one of the phrases I’d mastered: “May I help?” “Where is the dog?” “Are you tired?” My host family laughed at my pronunciation, at the way I threw up my hands and eyebrows in a frequent gesture of confusion. But in their laughter, I felt safe, unembarrassed.

With my Mongolian family on the grassland, I found a feeling of ease I’d never felt before. We were so different, they and I, and not just in language. Their skin was hardened and darkened by sun; I’d been hidden under hats and sunscreen since birth. My host siblings(兄弟姐妹) grew up drawing water from frozen streams and jogging behind herds of sheep; I spent summers at tennis camp.

For me, these gaps made all the difference. Without shared social measures, I wasted no time wondering how I was measuring up. Only real things—kindness, helpfulness—mattered.

8 . PAUL HEMINGTON, 57, is the Assistant Operations Manager at Cheddar Gorge（切达峡谷） and Caves cheddargorge.co.uk

I moved to SOMERSET mainly for my family. My daughter was getting married and I didn’t want to live six hours away, so we made the move. Once we moved, we were made unneeded and it was a mad race to get work. I ended up at here at Cheddar Gorge and Caves.

Cheddar Gorge is like nothing else in the UK. It’s a unique phenomenon, because although there are other caves in the country, you don’t have the gorge elsewhere. This is a major geological feature, it’s three miles long and there’s just this natural, raw beauty. I can sit at my desk in guest services and look out at part of the gorge. It’s amazing.

The Cheddar Gorge spirit is strong. You know, not having worked here or heard about the area, you come here and it gets under your skin in the right way. You become part of it, it becomes part of you. I’m very passionate about it. And there’s the amazing wildlife, the geology, the prehistory — Cheddar Man is still one of the greatest finds in the UK.

Every day at Cheddar Gorge and Caves is different. You’ve got the rock sports side of things, the climbing, the caving. We take people through the caves on tours and we have pre-history, which we do with the museum, whereby we have schools come in and do demonstrations with them. We will dress up as genuinely as we can to reproduce the time period of the Cheddar Man, which is the Mesolithic period, so 10,000 years ago. We do fire lighting, for example, and hopefully it’s inspiring to the young people! It’s really cool to be in the museum garden and have part of the gorge as the background while you’re doing it, so you can really submerge yourself in that moment.

My favourite spot is when you go past the peak on the walk and you can look back down into the gorge or across to the reservoir. The view is amazing. Yes, you can see pictures of it, but honestly you have to be there to fully appreciate it. You might hear some buzzards or see some sheep or goats while you’re up there, just to enhance the experience!

9 . There are a lot of good and logical reasons not to say what you think, especially when others disagree. Offending people isn’t nice, and it can lead to social consequences. Nodding along might seem practical or charitable, despite the fact that you are screaming disagreement on the inside. However, the true act of charity is to say what you really think. Your committing to complete honesty can be an act of love.

One of my friends takes honesty to the extreme. He calls talks with others that get to the complete truth of things, even difficult admissions in views, “love conversations”. Once two people have such a conversation, his theory goes, they can understand each other and act accordingly. As a philosophical matter, my friend’s belief of “love conversations” is Kantian. The German philosopher Kant argued that lying to others prevents them from making choices based on the truth, which is contradictory with friendship and love.

In the 1990s, Brad Blanton argued when the truth is hard to accept, telling it can have costs, including social disapproval and broken relationships. But it is worth the consequences because it can reduce stress, deepen connections with others, and reduce emotional reactivity.

Both sides can’t be right here. Either Kant, Blanton, and my friend are embracing a faulty theory, or our society is missing a big opportunity for moral growth. You might say that little white lies are a society lubricant (润滑剂). They can even seem virtuous. After telling a white lie, I sometimes pat myself on the back, turning my evil into a virtue inside my own head. Some lies might make life easier, but they don’t necessarily make life happier. I wouldn’t want my wife to tell me what she thinks I want to hear, as if we were strangers avoiding conflict, and finding out that she had done so would make me feel distrusted and therefore hurt our relationship. I don’t want a stranger to tell me she likes my writing if she doesn’t, because unreal compliments make me suspicious.

10 . I have a strong faith that the pain is almost gone but the feeling of success will stay forever. I was among the 38,000 runners who participated in the marathon (马拉松赛跑), the largest event of its kind in Asia.

My decision to participate in the marathon was because of the insistence of my wife, who had run the half-marathon previously. This year, she wanted me to participate along with her. Unexpectedly, her application got rejected while mine got accepted.

Though I had been into fitness training before, it seemed to be a daunting task to run 21 km. I started training about 10 weeks before the day. I had made up my mind to finish the run. So I tried my best to accommodate training into my busy schedule whenever I could.

What’s more, I remembered that four weeks into my training, my shoes were worn. I searched and hunted and literally spent a fortune on a new pair of shoes. However, right on the first day of running with them, I felt that they were not for me. I preserved, thinking that my discomfort was because the shoes were new. Eventually, I gave up on them. I even tried looking for another new pair of shoes, but couldn’t find that were as comfortable as my old ones.

Finally, on 16th January 2011, I ran and completed the half-marathon. And I did it in my old shoes.

Now, when I think about it, it all seems so easy. All I had to do was to picture completing the run in good time in my mind.

What I have learned from the experience is that completing a marathon is like any other goal in life — largely a mind-over-matter phenomenon. In other words, unless you believe you can reach your goal, you’ve lost even before you begin. No doubt, factors such as hard work, experience and talent help to a greater or lesser degree. But without your belief that you will get there, every goal remains difficult to achieve.