Perhaps you think you could easily add to your happiness with more money. Strange as it may seem, if you're unsatisfied, the issue is not a lack of means to meet your desires but a lack of desires—not that you cannot satisfy your tastes but that you don't have enough tastes.

    Real riches consist of well-developed and hearty capacities (能力) to enjoy life. Most people are already swamped(淹没) with things. They eat, wear, go and talk too much.They live in too big a house with too many rooms, yet their house of life is a deserted hut.

    Your house of life ought to be a mansion (豪宅) , a royal palace.  Every new taste, every additional interest, every fresh enthusiasm adds a room.  Here are several rooms your house of life should have.

    Art should be a desire for you to develop simply because the world is full of beautiful things. If you only understood how to enjoy them and feed your spirit on them, they would make you as happy as to find plenty of ham and eggs when you're hungry.

    Literature, classic literature, is a beautiful, richly furnished room where you might find many an hour of rest and refreshment. To gain that love would go toward making you a rich person, for a rich person is not someone who has a library but who likes a library.

    Music like Mozart's and Bach's shouldn't be absent. Real riches are of the spirit. And when you've brought that spirit up to where classical music feeds it and makes you a little drunk, you have increased your thrills and bettered them. And life is a matter of thrills.

    Sports, without which you remain poor, mean a lot in life. No matter who you are, you would be more human, and your house of life would be better supported against the had days, if you could, and did, play a bit.

    Whatever rooms you might add to your house of life, the secret of enjoying life is to keep adding.

    The British are known for their sense of humor. However, it is often difficult for foreigners to understand their jokes. The main point to remember is that the British often use understatement.

    Understatement means saying less than you think or feel. For example, if someone gets very wet in a shower of rain, he might say, “Its a little damp (潮湿的) outside.” Or, if someone is very impolite and shouts at another person, someone else might say, “She isn't exactly friendly.” Understatement is often used in unpleasant situation or to make another person look silly. Understatement plays an important part in British humor.

    Another key to understanding British humor is that the British like to make fun of themselves as well as others. They often laugh about the silly and unpleasant things that happen to our everyday life when someone accidently falls over in the street. They also like to make jokes about people from different classes of society. They like to make jokes about their accents, the way they dress and the way they behave. What's more, the British love to watch comedies (喜剧) about people who do not know how to behave in society. The comedies series Mr. Bean is a good example of this kind of humor.

    Mr. Bean is the character created by British actor Rowan Atkinson in 1990. Mr. Bean doesn't talk often, and instead he uses his body movement and facial expressions to make people laugh. Perhaps what makes Mr. Bean so funny is that he does things that adults in the real world cannot do. Mr. Bean is popular in many countries around the world because you do not have to speak English to understand the humor. Because of this, many people have become familiar with the British sense of humor.

    I think it was October, 1982. A friend had business dealings in the city of Reno, Nevada, and I was asked to accompany her on an overnight trip. While she conducted her business, I was aimlessly wandering down

    Virginia Street，heading into a most gloriously beautiful sunset. I had a strong wish to speak to someone on the street to share that beauty, but I couldn't make eye contact with anyone. Quickly I went into a department store and asked the lady behind the counter if she could come outside for just a minute. She looked at me as

though I were from some other planet and said, “Well…” Surprisingly, she followed me out.

    When she got outside I said to her, “Just look at that sunset! Nobody out here was looking at it and I just had to share it with someone.”

    For a few seconds we just looked. Then I said, “God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.”

    I thanked her for coming out to see it and sharing the beauty.

    Four years later my situation had changed a lot. I had come to the end of a twenty-year marriage. I was alone and on my own for the first time in my life. One day, while my clothes were going around, I picked up aUnity Magazine and read an article about a woman who had been in similar situation. She had come to the end of a marriage, moved to a strange community, and the only job she could find was one she disliked: cosmetic sales in a department store. We had a lot in common.

    Then something happened to her that changed everything. She said a woman came into her department store and asked her to step outside to look at a sunset. The stranger had said, “God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.”, and she had realized the truth in that sentence and that she simply had not been seeing it. From that moment on, she turned her life around.  

    Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving Day and the Friday before Cyber Monday in the United States. It is not a federal holiday, but is a public holiday in some states. Many people take a day of their annual leave on the day after Thanksgiving Day. Some people use this to make trips to see family members or friends who live in other areas or to go on vacation. Others use it to start shopping for the Christmas season. Many organizations also close for the Thanksgiving weekend.

    Shopping for Christmas presents is also popular on Black Friday. Many stores have special offers and lower their prices on some goods, such as toys. Public transit systems may run on their normal schedule or may have changes. Some stores extend their opening hours on Black Friday. There can also be congestion on roads to popular shopping destinations.

    Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days in the USA. There are two popular theories as to why the day after Thanksgiving Day is called Black Friday. One theory is that the wheels of vehicles in heavy traffic on the day after Thanksgiving Day left many black markings on the road surface, leading to the term Black Friday. The other theory is that the term Black Friday comes from an old way of recording business accounts. Losses were recorded in red ink and profits in black ink. Many businesses, particularly small businesses, started making profits prior to Christmas. Many hoped to start showing a profit, marked in black ink, on the day after Thanksgiving Day.

    Give yourself a test. Which way is the wind blowing? How many kinds of wildflowers can be seen from your front door? If your awareness is as sharp as it could be, you'll have no trouble answering these questions.

    Most of us observed much more as children than we do as adults. A child's day is filled with fascination, newness and wonder. Curiosity gave us all a natural awareness. But distinctions that were sharp to us as children become unclear; we are numb(麻木的）to new stimulation(刺激), new ideas. Relearning the art of seeing the world around us is quite simple, although it takes practice and requires breaking some bad habits.

    The first step in awakening senses is to stop predicting what we are going to see and feel before it occurs. This blocks awareness. One chilly night when I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains with some students, I mentioned that we were going to cross a mountain stream. The students began complaining about how cold it would be. We reached the stream, and they unwillingly walked ahead. They were almost knee-deep when they realized it was a hot spring. Later they all admitted they'd felt cold water at first.

    Another block to awareness is the obsession(痴迷) many of us have with naming things. I saw bird watchers who spotted a bird, immediately looked it up in field guides, and said, a "ruby-crowned kinglet" and checked it off. They no longer paid attention to the bird and never learned what it was doing.

    The pressures of "time" and "destination" are further blocks to awareness. I encountered many hikers who were headed to a distant camp-ground with just enough time to get there before dark. It seldom occurred to them to wander a bit, to take a moment to see what's around them. I asked them what they'd seen. "Oh, a few birds," they said. They seemed bent on their destinations.

    Nature seems to unfold to people who watch and wait. Next time you take a walk, no matter where it is, take in all the sights, sounds and sensations. Wander in this frame of mind and you will open a new dimension to your life.

Here are four books recommended by one of the most respected editors from Reader's Digest. If you have time to dip yourselves into the books, they can surely offer much food for thought.

Face It

Debbie Harry

HARPERCOLLINS

Picture this: it's the late 1970s and the punk music scene is starting to take hold. The band releases the album ParallelLines, which becomes the greatest hit. Everyone wants to attend her concert and some teenage girls even dream to be her. Now 75, Harry bares all about herself in Face It, starting from her childhood. Part shocking, this book is as humorous, moving and vigorous as its subject.

Scatterbrain

Henning Beck

NEWSOUTHBOOKS

If there is no obvious connection among what we see, the brain will substitute in the rest of the information without you even noticing, Beck says in the chapter Memory. In this "user's guide for your brain", he argues that mistakes are the keys to success. He combines science with brain-boosting advice and real-life stories to take the reader on a fascinating adventure through human memory.

You're Not Listening

Kate Murphy

PENGUINERANDOM HOUSE

When was the last time you listened to someone? Really listened without thinking about what you wanted to say next? And when was the last time someone really listened to you? Compared with talking, listening isn't considered so important, argues journalist Kate Murphy, but she insists it is actually the more powerful position in communication. Her insights could transform your conversations, your relationships and your life.

The Right-Brain Work Out

Russel Howcroft with Alex Wadelton

PENGUIN

In 1968,1600 five-year-olds were given a creativity test. They were retested at ages 10 and 15 and their scores were compared against adults. While 98 per cent of five-year-olds were assessed in the "highly creative" range (genius level), only two per cent of adults could be considered "highly creative". In The Right-Brain Work Out, the authors promise to re-train your brain to be more creative, using 70 questions to challenge you.