As a child, I started learning to play the piano, my favorite musical   (1)  ,but I was forced to give up when I started my middle school   (2)   I could concentrate more on my studies.

 It’s one of my biggest   (3)  to stop practicing the piano when I recall sadly today. During the following years, I kept telling my piano teacher that I would  (4)  . However, I didn’t keep my promise because I was   (5)   with my study.   (6)   I lost touch with my teacher. Some years later, my teacher died. I was very sad because I lost such a good teacher. She was a very warm and gentle person. It hurts me to think she may have been   (7)   that I never returned. I haven’t taken lessons since then but to be honest, I   (8)   to. Sitting at the piano, I couldn’t help recalling many   (9)  -- times of my practising at home and playing before my teacher and one time my teacher   (10)   me after I played entire pieces of music wrong in front of her colleagues. I was so  (11)   that I could hardly say anything. But her  (12)   helped ease my shame. These memories,   (13)  , good or bad, never caused my   (14)   for playing the piano again.

 This thought then led me to think that  (15)  is like music, and that we all try to play different   (16)  in the instrument of our life. Sometimes the pitch(音高) is   (17)  when we play it well, but sometimes we are out of tone. However, we all continue to create our own   (18)  style of music. No matter what style our music is, it is   (19)   that we sing the songs of joy, quietness and love. Though I may never make it back to piano lessons, it doesn’t  (20)   that I’ve stopped making music.

 A famous writer was in his study. He picked up his pen and started writing:

   Last year, I had a surgery and my gall bladder(胆囊) was ____1____ I had to stay in bed for a long time. At the same time, I was sixty and had to ____2____ my favourite job. The same year I experienced the ____3____ of the death of my father. And my son ____4____ in his medical exam because he had a car ____5____.

   In the end he wrote: Alas! It was such an ____6____ year!

   When the writer's wife ____7____ the room, she found her husband looking sad, lost in ____8____. Behind his back, she read what was written in the ____9____. She left the room ____10____ and came back with another paper and ____11____ it on the side of her husband's writing.

   When the writer saw this paper, he found this written on it:

   Last year I finally got rid of my gall bladder because of pain. I ____12____ sixty with health and got ____13____ from my job. Now I can make full use of my time to write something better with more ____14___ and peace. The same year my father, at the age of 95, ____15___ in peace. Meanwhile, my son gained ____16____ with a new life. My car destroyed but my son stayed alive without getting any disability. In the end she wrote: This year was a ____17____ year and it passed well!

   ____18____, the same incident has different viewpoints. In our daily lives we must ____19____ that it's not happiness that makes us grateful but gratefulness that makes us happy. There is always, always, always something to be ____20____ for!

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the   (1)  close to Japan have not held many fish for decades. So to   (2)  the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went a longer way than ever. The  (3)   the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip    (4)  more time, the fish were not fresh.

To settle this  (5)  , fish companies installed(安装) freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers   (6)  the boats to go farther and stay longer.

  (7)   , the Japanese could taste the difference   (8)  the fresh and the frozen fish. And they did not like the taste of the frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower   (9)   . So, the fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and put them in the tanks, fin to fin. After struggling for some time, they stopped moving and became   (10)   and dull. Days later, they lost their fresh-fish taste. The fishing industry    (11)   a coming economic crisis!

But today, they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan. How did they   (12)  ? To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies  (13)   put the fish in the tanks but with a small shark. The fish are challenged and therefore are constantly on the   (14)  . The challenge they face keeps them    (15)   and fresh!

Have you   (16)  that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time not active or awake? So we need   (17)   , which, basically in our life, are new challenges, to keep us awake and moving. If you are steadily   (18)  challenges, you are happy. “Your challenges keep you  (19)   and fresh. Don’t create success and enjoy it in a state of   (20)   . You have the resources, skills and abilities to make a difference.”

One summer day my father sent me to buy wire for our farm. At 16, I liked (  (1)    better than driving our truck,   (  (2)    this time I was not happy. My father had told me I'd have to ask for credit at the store.

Sixteen is a    (  (3)     age, when a young man wants respect, not charity. It was 1976, and the ugly (  (4)      of racial discrimination was (  (5)     a fact of life. I'd seen my friends ask for credit and then stand, head down, while the store owner (  (6)     whether they were "good for it." I knew black youths just like me who were (  (7)      like thieves by the store clerk each time they went into a grocery.

  My family was    (  (8)  . We paid our debts. But before harvest, cash was short. Would the store owner (  (9)       us ?

At Davis's store, Buck Davis stood behind the cash desk, talking to a farmer. I nodded  (10)  .I passed him on my way to the hardware shelves. When I brought my   (11)    to the caskh desk, I said  (12)    , "I need to put this on credit."

The farmer gave me and amused, distrustful  (13)  . But Buck's face didn't change. "Sure," he said  (14)   "Your daddy is  (15)   good for it." He   (16)   to the other man. "This here is one of James Williams's sons."

The farmer nodded in a neighborly   (17)  . I was filled with pride. James William's son. Those three words had opened a door to an adult's respect and trust.

That day I discovered that the good name my parents had  (18)     brought our whole family the respect of our neighbors. Everyone knew what to  (19)  from a Williams: a decent person who kept his word and respected himself   (20)   much to do wrong.

I’ve read lots of stories about family memories. In those    (1)    , I’ve found voice of sadness and longing. It’s true that so much in our daily lives makes us    (2)  all the time. We find ourselves with less and less time to spend with our   (3)   and friends. I’ve had the same    (4)   myself.

I used to have    (5)   times with my grandfather when we lived together. When I was very young, I often enjoyed spending time in his    (6)   , watching the flowers and watering the fruit trees. But as I grew up, I   (7)   became “selfish”.

  Once, when I was 6, we went shopping together. As we took the wrong bus and ended up getting   (8)   , unable to find our way back, I couldn’t stay   (9)    and shouted rudely in his face. I was so stubborn that I wouldn’t say sorry   (10)  returning home, thinking I had done nothing wrong.

Now I     (11)    how ridiculous（荒唐的）I was at the time! And I also realize how   (12)    it was when I finally admitted(承认) I was    (13)   ! When I truly wanted to express my   (14)   , my grandfather had left us   (15)   , leaving me with no more chance to    (16)   my mistake. I couldn’t   (17)    say to him the three words –– “I am sorry”.

We are spending more and more time outside, with less and less time to  (18)    with our families at home. So     (19)    the most of every second you have with your loved ones, because time     (20)   going, waiting for no one.   

Year after year my brothers，sister and I would lie in bed awake on Christmas morning. We were just   (1)  to hear my father’s voice saying it was all right to   (2)    .

 One of the most successful and influential women in American history, Eleanor Roosevelt once said that she had one regret: she wished she had been   (1)  . Who hasn’t felt the same way? We are all too aware of our physical imperfections. To overcome them, we   (2)    billions of dollars every year to cosmetics, diet products, fashion, and plastic surgery.

  Why do we care so much about   (3)  we look? Because it matters. Because beauty is powerful. Because even if when we learn to value people mostly for being kind and wise and funny, we are still  (4)  by beauty. No matter how much we argue  (5)  it or pretend to be immune（免疫）, beauty   (6)    its power to us. There is simply no  (7)  .

  Aristotle said, “ Beauty is a greater recommendation than any form of   (8)   .” It’s not fair, but it’s   (9)  . We simply treat beautiful people better than we do others.   (10)   a photograph of a beautiful author to an essay,   (11)     people will think that is more creative and more intelligently written than exactly the same essay   (12)   by the photo of a homely author.

  Our   (13)   to physical beauty is not something we can   (14)   at will. We are born with it. Experiments conducted by psychologist Judith J. Langlois   (15)    that even small babies prefer to look at attractive faces and are  (16)  to the same faces which adults have   (17)  to be attractive.

  There are more important things in life than beauty. But as Etcoff   (18)   it, “We have to understand beauty, or we will always be a (n)   (19)   to it.” If you aim to be wise and kind and funny, it doesn’t follow that you can’t also try your best to look beautiful. There is no reason to feel  (20)    about being moved by beauty’s power. It moves us all.

  We often talk about ourselves as if we have permanent genetic defects(缺陷) that can never be changed. “I’m impatient.” “I’m always behind.” “I always put things   (1)   !” You’ve surely heard them. Maybe you’ve used them to describe   (2)  .

   These comments may come from stories about us that have been   (3)  for years—often from   (4)   childhood. These stories may have no   (5)  in fact. But they can set low expectations for us. As a child, my mother said to me, “Marshall, you have no mechanical（操作机械的）skills, and you will never have any mechanical skills for the rest of your life. ” How did these expectations   (6)  my development? I was never    (7)  to work on cars or be around   (8)  . When I was 18, I took the US Army’s Mechanical Aptitude Test. My scores were in the bottom for the entire nation!

   Six years later,   (9)  , I was at California University, working on my doctor’s degree. One of my professors, Dr. Bob Tannbaum, asked me to write down things I did well and things I couldn’t do. For my strong points, I  (10)  down, “research, writing, analysis, and speaking. ” For thE   (11)  , I wrote, “I have no mechanical skills. ”

    Bob asked me how I knew I had no mechanical skills. I explained my lifE   (12)  and told him about mY   (13)   performance on the Army test. Bob then asked, "   (14)  is it that you can solve   (15)  mathematical problems, but you can’t solve easy mechanical problems?”

   Suddenly I realized that I didn’t   (16)   from some sort of genetic defect. I was just living out expectations that I had chosen to   (17)  . At that point, it wasn’t just my family and friends who had been   (18)  my belief that I was mechanically hopeless. And it wasn’t just the Army test, either. I was the one who kept telling myself, “You can’t do this!” I realized that as long as I kept saying that, it was going to remain true.    (19)  , if we don’t treat ourselves as if we have genetic defects that we can never get over, we can do well in almost   (20)  we choose.