1 . It was one of those moments every new parent dreads (恐惧). My baby son was screaming as if I’d just dipped him in a bucket (桶) of battery acid. It felt as if he’d been screaming like that for years, though he was only two months old. Even worse, this was happening in public— I was sitting with my howling baby in the food court of a Los Angeles mall, despairing (绝望) as other diners silently judged me while watching us over plates of food.

Until, that is, one woman— a complete stranger— did something and taught me a lesson about kindness that lingers to this day. She walked over to me and put her hand on my shoulder. “This won’t last forever,” she said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but things will get better. He’ll stop crying. You’ll get some sleep.”

It was such a small thing, a tiny kindness, really, but it made all the difference. It was 2001 and I was living in a foreign city with a newborn, without friends or family, and I was terribly lonely. This woman had seen me, if only for a moment, and taken the time to make a human connection. It was just a minute out of her day, but it has stayed with me for nearly two decades.

We all want to be better in the world and more giving to others. But we can easily get hung up on the sheer (完全的) importance of that challenge— making time to regularly volunteer or finding money to donate to a cause. Doing good doesn’t have to be an important task, though; it can be incremental (递增的). It can be as quick as a smile, a word, a phone call, an email. It can be the note you send to a friend who is feeling blue or the baby carriage you help carry down the subway stairs for a parent on their own, even though you’re late for work.

I’m reminded of a line from Brian Goldman’s bestseller, The Power of Kindness: “The opposite meaning of empathy is apathy (冷漠).” That is, the opposite of doing good isn’t doing harm; it’s doing nothing. Every tiny act of generosity— every door held open, every coffee bought for a stranger— builds a bridge to another person. It says, “I see you.” Today, when we spend most of our time looking at our phones, and not at people’s faces, that’s invaluable.

So, while I’m not particularly good at regularly volunteering or running marathons to raise money for charity, I’m committed to small gestures. I try to send a note of praise every day to someone whose work I admire. I’ve become phone friends with a lonely 87-year-old woman who contacted me about something I wrote, and who lives in a city far from her own children and grandchildren. On airplanes, I find the new parents with panicked eyes and offer to hold their babies. I remember what it felt like when the screaming baby was mine. I remember when a tiny kindness felt monumental, enough to change the world.

4 . A star athlete at the college where I work recently stopped by my office. After committing a few unforced errors during a weekend match, she suffered severely by self-criticism.

This student, like many I teach, strongly believes she should be able to control the outcomes of her life by virtue of her hard work. In her mind, “Nothing can stop me but myself”. So when these students fall short of what they imagine they should accomplish, they are filled with self-blame, reasoning, “If my accomplishments are mine to control, my failures must be entirely my faults, too”, which makes it extremely difficult for them to move on.

We often owe young adults struggling with failure to their parents’ over protection of them from discomfort. But there is another factor at play—a message transmitted by indulging (纵容的) parents who have falsely promised them that they can achieve anything if they are willing to work for it. However, the cruel reality of life is that you can do everything in your power—and still fail. _______

Psychologists Luthar and Kumar urge parents and teachers to spend time helping students find purpose, or goals they genuinely love to pursue and that make an impact on the world, which may help them gain greater life satisfaction and become more psychologically mature. Besides, instead of allowing our kids to beat themselves up when things don’t go their way, we might all question a culture where one is considered lazy without full devotion. The point is to remind them that life has a way of sucker-punching (出其不意) us when we least expect it. It’s often the people who learn to say “stuff happens” who get up the fastest.

6 . Life can bring us down from time to time. At some point, you may find yourself in what you will consider as your darkest hour. As you try to find your way out of that bad situation, you should try to remind yourself that there will always be a reason to be grateful.

If you look at your situation now and compare it with someone else who is in much deeper trouble than you, I am sure that you'll find something to be thankful for. We all have our share of problems, but complaining about them so much only makes us blind to the fact that there are the miracles (奇迹) which happen around us each day.

When all your needs are provided, then you should be content and happy. If you have a roof over your head, some proper clothes to wear, enough food on the table, a comfortable place to sleep, clean water to drink and you are free to make your own choices, then you should be happy and grateful. Many people all around the world, especially those who are at war or those in very poor countries, would give anything to be in your shoes.

Even if you lose all your money or possessions and your heart is broken for some reason, as long as you are still alive, then everything you have lost can be regained. If you have a few good friends who will be there to support or help you, then be glad because true friends are hard to find. As long as you have someone to love and someone to love you back, then you are a very fortunate person. Remember to be patient and trust that things will get better.

After supper last night, I went to the park nearby take a walk with my parents. To my surprised, there were so many people there. Over one hundred people were dancing with music. Another group of people were standing in a circle at the corner of the square, singing some old song. Some small kids, acompanying by their parents, were painting toy dolls. It seemed that everybody enjoys themselves very much. I was moved by the scene in the front of me. I noticed most of us were not rich as they didn’t dress well, and they seemed to be very happy. All of a sudden, I realized that they were the really ones who know the truth of life.

9 . Each morning a rich man found a poor man sitting on a bench(长凳) in the park. The poor man always sat there, looking at the big hotel in which the rich man lived. One day, the rich man got out of his car and said to the poor man, “Excuse me. I want to know why you sit here and look at my hotel every morning.” “ Sir, ” said the poor man, “ I am a failure. I have no money, no family, no home. I sleep on this bench, and every night I dream that one day I’ll sleep in that hotel.” The rich man said, “Tonight your dream will come true. I’ll pay for the best room in that hotel for you a whole month.”

A few days after, the rich man went into the poor man’s room to ask him how he was enjoying himself. To his surprise, he found that the man had moved out of the hotel back to his bench. When the rich man asked why, he said, “You see, when I’m sleeping on my bench, I dreamed I am there, in the big hotel. It’s a wonderful dream. But when I was there I dreamed I was back to this cold bench. It was a terrible dream, and I couldn’t get any sleep at all.”