In 2004 ,when my daughter Becky was ten , she and my husband ,Joe, were united in their desire for a dog . As for me , I shared none of their canine lust.

    But why , they pleaded. “Because I don't have time to take care of a dog.” But we'll do it. ” Really? You're going to walk the dog? Feed the dog? Bathe the dog?” Yes, yes , and yes .”I don't believe you .” We will . We promise.

   They didn't . From day two (everyone wanted to walk the cute puppy that first day ) , neither thought to walk the dog . While I was slow to accept that I would be the one to keep track of her shots , to schedule her vet appointments , to feed and clean her , Misty knew this on day one . As she looked up at the three new humans in her life (small, medium, and large) , she calculated ,”The medium one is the sucker in the pack .”

    Quickly, she and I developed something very similar to a Vulcan mind meld (心灵融合) . She'd look at me with those sad brown eyes of hers , beam her need , and then wait , trusting I would understand — which , strangely , I almost always did . In no time , she became my feet as I read , and splaying across my stomach as I watched television .

    Even so , part of me continued to resent walking duty . Joe and Becky had promised. Not fair , I'd balk (不心甘情愿地做) silently as she and I walked . “Not fair , ” I' d loudly remind anyone within earshot upon our return home .

    Then one day — January 1, 2007 , to be exact — my husband ‘ s doctor uttered an unthinkable word : leukemia ( 白血病) .With that , I spent eight to ten hours a day with Joe in the hospital , doing anything and everything I could to ease his discomfort. During those six months of hospitalizations, Becky, 12 at the time, adjusted to other adults being in the house when she returned from school. My work colleagues adjusted to my taking off at a moment's notice for medical emergencies. Every part of my life changed; no part of my old routine remained.

    Save one: Misty still needed walking. At the beginning, when friends offered to take her through her paces, I declined because I knew they had their own households to deal with.

    As the months went by，I began to realize that I actually wanted to walk Misty. The walk in the morning before I headed to the hospital was a quiet, peaceful time to gather my thoughts or to just be before the day's medical drama unfolded. The evening walk was a time to shake off the day's upsets and let the worry tracks in my head go to white noise.

    When serious illness visits your household, it's , not just your daily routine and your assumptions about the future that are no longer familiar. Pretty much everyone you acts differently.

    Not Misty. Take her for a walk, and she had no interest in Joe's blood counts or 'one marrow test results. On the street or in the park, she had only one thing on her mind: squirrels! She Was so joyous that even on the worst days, she could make me smile. On a daily basis she reminded me that life goes on.

After Joe died in 2009，Misty slept on his pillow.

    I'm grateful一to a point. The truth is, after years of balking, I've come to enjoy m' walks with Misty. As I watch her chase after a squirrel, throwing her whole being into the here-and-now of an exercise that has never once ended in victory, she reminds me, too, that no matter how harsh the present or unpredictable the future , there's almost always some measure of joy to be extracted from the moment.

    The lives of the Ancient Greeks revolved(运转) around Eris, a concept by which they defined the universe. They believed that the world existed in a condition of opposites. If there was good, then there was evil； if there was love, then there was hatred; joy, then sorrow; war, then peace; and so on. The Greeks believed that good Eris occurred when one held a balanced outlook on life and coped with problems as they arose. It was a kind of ease of living that came from trying to bring together the great opposing forces in nature. Bad Eris was evident in the violent conditions that ruled men's lives. Although these things were found in nature and sometimes could not be controlled, it was believed that bad Eris occurred when one ignored a problem, letting it grow larger until it destroyed not only that person, but his family as well. The Ancient Greeks saw Eris as a goddess: Eris, the Goddess of Discord, better known as Trouble.

    One myth that expresses this concept of bad Eris deals with the marriage of King Peleus and the river goddess Thetis. Zeus, the supreme ruler, learns that Thetis would bear a child strong enough to destroy its father. Not wanting to father his own ruin, Zeus convinces Thetis to marry a human, a mortal(凡人) whose child could never challenge the gods. He promises her, among other things, the greatest wedding in all of Heaven and Earth and allows the couple to invite whomever they please. This is one of the first mixed marriages of Greek Mythology and the lesson learned from it still applies today. They do invite everyone . . . except Eris, the Goddess of Discord. In other words, instead of facing the problems brought on by a mixed marriage, they turn their backs on them. They refused to deal directly with their problems and the result is tragic. In her fury(狂怒), Eris arrives, ruins the wedding, causes a jealous argument between the three major goddesses over a golden apple, and sets in place the conditions that lead to the Trojan War. The war would take place 20 years in the future, but it would result in the death of the only child of the bride and groom, Achilles. Eris would destroy the parents' hopes for their future, leaving the couple with no legal heirs (继承人) to the throne.

    Hence, when we are told, “If you don't invite trouble, trouble comes,” it means that if we don't deal with our problems, our problems will deal with us .with a revenge! It is easy to see why the Greeks considered many of their myths learning myths, for this one teaches us the best way to defeat that which can destroy us.

    This is a family story my father told me about his mother, my grandmother.

In 1949, my father had just returned home from the war. On every American highway you could see soldiers in uniform hitchhiking home to their families, as was the custom at that time in America.

    Sadly, the thrill of his reunion with his family was soon overshadowed. My grandmother became very ill and had to be hospitalized. It was her kidneys, and the doctors told my father that she needed a blood transfusion immediately or she would not live through the night. The problem was that grandmother's blood type was AB-, a very rare type even today, but even harder to get then because there were no blood banks or air flights to ship blood. All the family members were typed, but not one member was a match. So the doctors gave the family no hope; my grandmother was dying.

    My father left the hospital in tears to gather up all the family members, so that everyone would get a chance to tell grandmother goodbye. As my father was driving down the highway, he passed a soldier in uniform hitchhiking home to his family. Deep in grief, my father had no inclination at that moment to do a good deed. Yet it was almost as if something outside himself pulled him to a stop, and he waited as the stranger climbed into the car.

    My father was too upset to even ask the soldier his name, but the soldier noticed my father's tears right away and inquired about them. Through his tears, my father told this total stranger that his mother was lying in a hospital dying because the doctors had been unable to locate her blood type, AB-, and if they did not do it before nightfall, she would surely die.

    It got very quiet in the car. Then this unidentified soldier extended his hand out to my father, palm up. Resting in the palm of his hand were the dog tags from around his neck. The blood type on the tags was AB-. The soldier told my father to turn the car around and get him to the hospital.

    My grandmother lived until 1996, 47 years later, and to this day no one in our family knows the soldier's name. But he is always remembered by us.

    During my stay in Mumbai, I often went to Pune. Though the two cities are only about 145 km away from each other, traveling that distance is a headache. But work required me to do it and I would have to travel at least twice a week at some point.

    This time I was traveling around October. We started from Pune at around 5 p.m. Like all the drivers, this taxi driver also struck up a general conversation about me and my city. He started by saying that kids are one's greatest happiness. As a bachelor(光棍汉), I got a little angry when he started all about kids and family. Then he said something that really attracted me. He said he was a musician. I asked him which instruments he played, he replied,"I have an electronic system". Thinking that taxi drivers tend to be unable to buy an electronic system, I doubtfully listened to him continuing with his story.

    His name was Naveen. He was basically a musician who was expert in playing guitar and the keyboards. Naveen had left his family after a quarrel with his father over taking music as a career. Naveen had his instruments but didn't know how to earn money. The only other thing he could do was to drive. So he joined Mumbai-to-Pune taxi services. That served him as the regular income in weekdays and in the weekends he'd perform in Pune, Nasik or Mumbai. By now, he'd become a slightly famous musician in Maharashtra. But he had a condition wherever he played. He asked that the place couldn't be ticketed. They can charge for food or drinks if it's a pub or a restaurant but no tickets.

    I heard Naveen's songs. He was amazing. He had a trick which made me call him a genius(天才). Among all the faceless drivers, Naveen stood out. He inspired me to leave my job and start a theatre career in Delhi.

    Fish have different personalities which change as they experience life's highs and lows, according to British biologists.

    Researchers identified different "personalities" in their fish by observing the boldness(大胆) or shyness of individuals, according to The Nature. Like people, some fish are very confident in the face of novelty or conflict, while others are silent and fearful.

    The scientists selected particularly bold and shy rainbow trout(虹鳟鱼), and tested whether they changed their outlook depending on what life threw at them. They arranged some fish to fight and others to watch to see how both the participants and observers responded to victories and defeats. Winning or losing a fight, or even watching fellow fish overcome the difficulties influenced the future behavior of the creatures studied in the lab.

    The researchers made fish compete with much larger or smaller opponents(对手), to ensure that they would win or lose their fights. These bold fish that won their fights tended to be even bolder when later presented with a novel food item; losing their fight caused them to be much more cautious.

    Fish also learn by watching others. Bold fish watching a shy fish exploring a mystery object were much more nervous when later given a novel item for themselves.

    Predictably, shy fish that won a fight also gained more confidence, but surprisingly, shy fish that lost their fights also grew bolder when exploring strange new food, Sneddon said, adding that this could be due to what she calls a "desperado effect"(亡命徒效应).

    The new research suggests that animals can gradually adapt(使适应) their personalities. The results agree with the effects that life experience can have on humans.

    The greatest recent changes have been in the lives of women. During the twentieth century there was an unusual shortening of the time of a woman's life which was spent in caring for children. A woman marrying at the end of the 19th century would possibly have been in her middle twenties. They would be likely(可能) to have seven or eight children and four or five of them lived till they were five years old. By the time the youngest was fifteen, the mother would have been in her early fifties and would expect to live a further twenty years. During the twenty years, chances and health made it unusual for her to get paid work.   

    Today women marry younger and have fewer children. Usually a woman's youngest child will be fifteen when she is forty five and is likely to take paid work until they are sixty. Even while she has to take care of children, her work becomes easier by eating fast foods and using washing machines , cleaning robots and so on.

    This important change in women's way of life has only recently begun to play a role in their position.   Even a few years ago most girls left school at the first chance and most of them took a full- time job. However, when they married, they usually left work at once and never returned to it. Today the school -leaving age is sixteen. Many girls stay at school after that age, and though women are likely to marry younger, more married women stay at work at least until their first child is born. Many people return to full or part-time work after that. Such changes have caused a new relationship in the family, with both the husband and the wife accepting a great share of the duties and satisfactions of family life, and with both the husband and the wife sharing more equally in supporting the family, according to the abilities and interests of each of them.