One day, a woman traveled alone in the mountains．When she was walking, she found a precious (珍贵的) stone．She was very happy and put the stone into her bag.

    The next day, the woman met another traveler．The traveler was hungry and the woman opened her bag to s hare her food with him．The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and said, “How beautiful the stone is! Can I have a look?” The woman gave it to the traveler．The traveler looked and looked, and then he asked the woman whether she would like to give it to him．She gave the stone to him without hesitation (犹豫).

    The traveler left．He was very happy because he knew he could get lots of money by selling the stone and he could live a rich life．But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the woman.

    “I know how precious the stone is,” the traveler said． “But I gave it back．I hope that you can give me something even more precious.” “Even more precious? What is that?” the woman asked． “Your beautiful mind is more precious than the stone,” the man said.

    It was about 1：00 in the morning. It was bright light in my neighbor's kitchen. I thought he might be having midnight food so I went back to my bed. Soon, there was a burning smell and I realized there must be something wrong. I jumped out of bed at once and went to have a look. I saw fire coming out of his kitchen. I shouted, "Fire！Fire！"But nobody heard me. I ran quickly to my house and called the Fire Department(消防队) and went back to my neighbor's house.

    I knocked at the door and called my neighbor's name, but there was no answer. I tried to break into the house and saved a cat and a chicken. Then I poured water through the kitchen window but it was no use, because the fire was too big. Luckily, the firemen arrived and put out the fire in time.

    When my neighbor came back, he was sad because his kitchen was burnt down, but he thanked me for calling the Fire Department and saving his pets.

    A week later, my neighbor invited me to his home for dinner. In his new kitchen, he took a photo of me. Later on, he gave me the photo as a gift. It made me happy.

    In the 1950s, a female swimming athlete set a goal for herself. She decided to swim across the English Channel before she retired. If she could make it, she would be the first person in the world who did it.

    On that day, she jumped into the sea without any hesitation and swam towards the opposite bank.

    In the journey, she faced heavy fog, heavy rain and heavy waves. Though she was very tired, she carried on swimming.

    But in the end, she gave up. And what she didn't know at the moment she gave up was that the opposite bank was only 1 mile away.

    Later people asked her about the reason. And she said," The reason why I gave up is that I could not see the destination which I was so close to. "

    Too many stories about success have been lecturing us about courage and persistence(坚持). But they never told us where to find courage and persistence.

    You can have courage only when you know where your goal is. You can manage to persist only when you know where your goal is, and prepare yourself well mentally(心理上).

    Courage and persistence never fall from the sky. They come from weighing between input and output.

    A life without goals is like a ship without a compass. It goes nowhere. There is no courage or persistence in a life without goals.

Being disabled doesn't stop Guilhem Gallart, a French musician, from making music. For many years, he was a successful record producer and recording artist. He was known as "Pone" and helped spread hip hop in France in the 1990s and early 2000s, creating many popular songs with his music group Fonky Family.

In 2015, Pone was told to have ALS. ALS is an illness that can influence the ability to move, speak, eat and even breathe. There's no medicine that works for ALs at present. Because of it, Pone has to depend on a machine to breathe, and can't move any of his body parts except his eyes.

But technology has given Gallart new possibilities. With the help of the certain software (软件), his eye movements are tracked (跟踪), and as a result, he is able to write.

"I have once again discovered Pone that I knew before," said his wife Wahiba. "And even stronger than he was before."

The effort has resulted in a album (专辑), Listen and Donate, which came out in June, 2021. With this album, Pone hoped to raise money for the organization called Trakadom. The charity (慈善机构) was set up by him with two doctors. Its goal is to train more care takers and help patients to receive care at home. "Talking about this with my doctors, nurses and care takers, I found that they weren't trained well enough, and that many of them wanted the chance. So Trakadom was born," he said.

"If there's a message in my story, it's that anything is possible," said Pone.