People are compassionate. With effort, we can translate compassion into action. An experience last weekend showed me this is true. I work part-time in a supermarket across from a building for the elderly. These old people are our main customers, and it's not hard to lose patience over their slowness. But last Sunday, one aged gentleman appeared to teach me a valuable lesson. This untidy man walked up to my register (收款机) with a box of biscuits. He said he was out of cash, had just moved into his room, and had nothing in his cupboards. He asked if we could let him have the food on trust. He promised to repay me the next day.

    I couldn't help staring at him. I wondered what kind of person he had been ten or twenty years before, and what he would be like if luck had gone his way. I had a hurt in my heart for this kind of human soul, all alone in the world. I told him that I was sorry, but store rules didn't allow me to do so. I felt stupid and unkind saying this, but I valued my job.

    Just then, another man, standing behind the first, spoke up. If anything, he looked more pitiable. “Charge it to me,” was all he said.

    What I had been feeling was pity. Pity is soft and safe and easy. Compassion, on the other hand, is caring in action. I thanked the second man but told him that was not allowed either. Then I reached into my pocket and paid for the biscuits myself. I reached into my pocket because these two men had reached into my heart and taught me compassion.

    I always wondered how people would react if I tried to approach a total stranger for help in a busy place like a street corner or in a noisy mall. I have always hurried past a stranger who tried to catch my attention in a busy place or when I am rushing around.

    Yesterday, I was in a busy shopping mall buying a large piece of luggage because I just had the time to do it after many days of planning. After the purchase in one of the large shops, I picked up my phone from my pocket to call my driver waiting in the parking lot but my phone was dead.

    I then requested the shop assistant who had just sold me the luggage to ring the number of my driver for me and she replied that it was the shop policy that they cannot use mobile phones while working in the shop.

    I got out of the shop onto the busy street in front and approached a young mother with her two kids to make a request. As soon as I said “Excuse me, madam”, she grabbed both her kids and ran. I felt like a kidnapper.

    I stood there, wondering how many times I had reacted to strangers like the young mum. I stood there in the busy street with people rushing by, looking at their faces to see if there was a sign of kindness on their faces.

    I saw a man pretty shabbily dressed. He seemed to have noticed me and I just stopped him expecting him to rush past. My request escaped the lips. He immediately called the number of my driver and waited till my car came to be sure I was picked up, and he turned around before I could thank him adequately and was gone. I was surprised by his kindness and hope I will do likewise (同样地) to strangers who try to catch my attention from now on.

    Sports can help us a lot. Taking exercises can make us strong. In collective（集体的）sports like basketball, volleyball or football, we will learn the importance of cooperation(合作). And sports can also help us relax after work or study.

    However, as the saying goes, “there are two sides of everything.” Sometimes we may hurt other players or ourselves if we are not careful enough when participating(参加) in sports activities. What's more, too much or hard practice can be bad for our health.

    Sports can make us healthy both physically and psychologically(心理地). It is also a good way for people to know each other and can improve friendship between people. So long as we are careful enough, sports can do us nothing but good.

    GOING TO UNIVERSITY is supposed to be a mind-broadening experience. That statement is probably made in comparison to training for work straight after school, which might not be so encouraging. But is it actually true? Jessika Golle of the University of Tübingen, in Germany, thought she would try to find out. Her result, however, is not quite what might be expected. As she reports in Psychological Science this week, she found that those who have been to university do indeed seem to leave with broader and more inquiring minds than those who have spent their immediate post-school years in vocational (职业的) training for work. However, it was not the case that university broadened minds. Rather, work seemed to narrow them.

    Dr. Golle came to this conclusion after she and a team of colleagues studied the early careers of 2,095 German youngsters. The team used two standardized tests to assess their volunteers. One was of personality traits, including openness, conscientiousness（认真）and so on. The other was of attitudes, such as realistic, investigative and enterprising. They administered both tests twice—once towards the end of each volunteer's time at school, and then again six years later. Of the original group, 382 were on the intermediate track, from which there was a choice between the academic and vocational routes, and it was on these that the researchers focused. University beckoned for 212 of them. The remaining 170 chose vocational training and a job.

    When it came to the second round of tests, Dr. Golle found that the personalities of those who had gone to university had not changed significantly. Those who had undergone vocational training and then got jobs were not that much changed in personality, either—except in one crucial respect. They had become more conscientious.

    That sounds like a good thing, certainly compared with the common public image of undergraduates as a bunch of lazybones. But changes in attitude that the researchers recorded were rather worrying. In the university group, again, none were detectable. But those who had chosen the vocational route showed marked drops in interest in tasks that are investigative and enterprising in nature. And that might restrict their choice of careers.

    Some investigative and enterprising jobs, such as scientific research, are, indeed beyond the degreeless. But many, particularly in Germany, with its tradition of vocational training, are not. The researchers mention, for example, computer programmers and finance-sector workers as careers requiring these traits. If Dr. Golle is correct, and changes in attitude brought about by the very training Germany prides itself on are narrowing people's choices, that is indeed a matter worthy of serious consideration.

    Positive thinking is a significant element of happiness. In order to become a positive thinker, determination and consistency are important. The first thing to know about positive thinking is that everyone can do it.  With certain cognitive (认知的) and behavioral changes, we can all become positive thinkers. Another important factor is that being a positive thinker does not mean you become numb to anything that is not working properly in your life or is negative - it just means that you approach life and face challenges with a healthier outlook.

    Instead of selectively attending to negative events, focus on the positive ones. Then pay attention to the delayed consequences of your behavior rather than the immediate ones. For example, if a job is not going like you want, focus on the fact that you have a job and how you can take your time to make the situation better.

    Challenge any internal attributions and see if you compare your behavior to standards that are excessively rigid and perfectionistic. If so, change these and be reasonable with your comparisons. For example, if you constantly compare your weaknesses with other people's strengths, then switch this and compare yourself with those who are doing poorer than you as well. Overall, people who focus more on their strengths than their weaknesses but at the same time are aware of their weaknesses have a healthier self-evaluation result.

    When faced with too much fear about a situation, imagine the worst case and visualize a solution for it, then let go of fear. This way, you will be prepared for anything and your fear will not block you from being open and creative to different solutions. For example, if you are constantly worried about losing your job up to a point where it is creating a lot of anxiety and fear and is effecting your performance and your happiness negatively, then think of losing your job, visualize how you will handle it, find solutions in your mind and then let go of the thought and the fear attached to it.

    So positive thinkers are better problem solvers and have better interactions. In addition to that, people who are positive thinkers are happier and more satisfied with their life.

    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.