True happiness is such a rare commodity(有价值之物)that the whole of the world is continuously seeking it and failing to find it. Why is happiness such an elusive(难捉摸的) thing? Is it that it cannot simply be achieved? Or is it that it is not where all of us have been looking for it?

    What is it that we consider happiness? This is how I see it: Happiness is what you feel when what you want to happen happens. And the then we can conclude that unhappiness is what we feel when what we want to happen does not happen.

    The main keyword in definition is "want". The whole trouble starts when we want something. Every moment of our lives we keep on wanting something or the other. Only a small percentage of all our wishes is fulfilled in spite of all our endeavors(努力). The frustration of failing to fulfill most of our wishes sets in. We start feeling weighed down. Desire is a seed which grows fruits of unhappiness. Actually the trouble is that we demand too much. The only solution to this problem is to break out of this cycle of desires and struggles.

    Actually, happiness and unhappiness are two sides of the same coin. The desire for happiness is like asking only for the light and not for darkness. But there is not much difference between light and darkness. It is matter of degree only.

    If we think deeper, we will realize that it is this pain of failure, pain of frustrated desires which is of greater significance to us. It is actually like good health. One can only define health as an absence of diseases. In order to have good health we strive to avoid diseases. You cannot purchase or achieve good health directly. You have to take steps which keep your body free of diseases. Then only the organs of body keep functioning properly and you experience good health. Similarly, when one destroys the root cause of unhappiness, the problems are over. And the root cause of all our unhappiness is DESIRE.

    Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, texting or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers（低头族）.

    Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie（自拍照）in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

    Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying. “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long-term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

    But that's not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Qilu Evening News reported.

    It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents, and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

    He looked like a pirate.

    With his handkerchief tied in a knot behind his little nine-year-old head, he looked like a pirate, a sad pirate. The first time little David came to our camp, he was hairless and worn out from medical treatments. He was also very angry.

    Paul Newman's camp counselors (指导老师) were hoping to fill David's days with fun and laughter. But David stayed inside himself, wanting to be alone, or in a corner of the cabin. At this camp for children with life-threatening illnesses, we had seen some pretty tough children worn out by cancer recover full of energy despite their illness. But we saw little progress in David no matter what we tried with him. Five days into the eight-day session saw a quiet, sad little pirate.

    Then something happened on that fifth night. Something at camp that we would call "huge". It was cabin night. That's the time when campers and counselors spend time together in each individual cabin instead of an all-camp activity. Campers love cabin nights because there's always a bedtime snack. On the cabin table that night were bags of potato chips.

    David slowly walked over to the table, leaving his comer to join the rest of us. He took one of the bags of the potato chips and started smashing(弄碎) it with his little fists, as all the other campers looked on in disbelief, I wondered what the cabin counselor would do.

    The college-age volunteer counselor positioned a bag of chips on die table in front of himself, and he, too, started smashing it with his fist. The campers went crazy as everyone ran to the table to get in on the fun of smashing potato chips with their fists.

    Somehow everyone knew, everyone sensed, that anger within him was now being released.

    For the last couple days of the session, David was a different kid. He was a little nine-year-old boy again, trying to fill the hours of each remaining day at camp with as much fun as could be possible.

    Several days after the session, David came back again. This time, there wasn't anything he wouldn't try to fit in to his day. He sure was having a great time at camp. David asked me if I needed an altar(祭坛)boy when I celebrated Mass in the woods. Sure enough, he was my altar boy. I remembered how carefully he listened to me when I talked about death. I said it's only a doorway. You walk through the door and there's the Lord God and behind God a whole line of people waiting to hug you.

    After Mass, he said to me, "Hey Fatha, a door, huh?"

    A couple more days of fun passed and tonight was the talent show. The tradition is that campers and counselors dress up in costumes, and everyone gets a standing applause for singing and dancing or simply just acting like fools on stage.

    The show had begun: lights, camera, action.

    Unfortunately, the only action taking place in our row of seats was little David making his way from counselor to counselor to say an early good-bye to camp. He had become quite ill and had to go to the hospital because of this new crisis.

    When this little nine-year-old pirate stood in front of me, he gave me a hug and a big wet kiss on my cheek. I was crying. He was crying. A whole row of counselors was in tears. After the hug and kiss, he put his hands on my shoulders, and tears still in his eyes, said: "See you on the other side of the door, Fatha."

    Peter Skyllberg, a Swedish man, was trapped in his car for two months, with temperatures reaching -30^oC, with no food or water, and yet he survived. The best explanation was that his vehicle created an “igloo (snow house) effect” and protected him from the extremely low temperatures and that his body would hibernate(冬眠) during this time.

    Can humans get into a low-energy consumption state like a bear by reserving energy, and reducing body temperature? Chinese scientists are looking for the key to regulating body temperature.

    Scientists have found the hypothalamus (下丘脑), an area in the central lower part of the brain, is responsible for regulating body temperature. Wang Hong, a brain scientist at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led her team to mark the neurons (神经元) responsible for regulating body temperature in mice by means of a cutting-edge genetic biology technique. In the experiments, they injected (注射) drug into mice to make the body temperatures of the mice drop rom 37℃ to 27 in two hours. The team found the change in body temperature caused no harm to the health of the mice. “We don't know if we can develop a drug that can control human body temperature. We still need a lot of study.” Wang said.

    Chinese scientists are not alone in such research. Body-cooling techniques are being used in pioneering hospitals around the world. Dutch doctors are now using low temperatures for patients who have suffered brain injuries in accidents, According to doctors working in Florence, it may even help to save the brains of babies who are born suffering from severe epileptic fits (癫痫病发作).

Standing on the South Pole at the start of the year with the wind blowing across the Antarctic, travel blogger Johnny Ward felt a wave of relief.

Just a week before, in early January 2024, he'd struggled through snow and ice to climb to the top of the Vinson Massif, Antarctica's highest peak. Years before, in 2017, he'd become the first Irish person to visit every country in the world.

Now, after decades of traveling and mountaineering, Ward could claim another world first—the Ultimate Explorer's Grand Slam (大满贯), which involves reaching the highest peak on every continent, and visiting both the North and South Poles in addition to visiting every country.

"I feel relieved," Ward recalled as he slowly made his way back to his home in Thailand after climbing to the top of the Vinson Massif and then setting foot on the South Pole. "But also I'm aware I'm a normal guy, not a world-class athlete, so I guess it was more about resilience and determination more than any ability. Although I met with lots of barriers, I overcame them one by one."

Ward had previously devoted a decade of his life, between 2007 and 2017, to visiting every country in the world. The incredible journey saw him hitchhike (搭便车) a ride on a container ship from Oman to Socotra in Yemen, travel overland from Cairo to Cape Town and travel from South Korea to Australia by bus and boat.

"It had been a huge life goal, over a decade of my life, and then when I finished that I was aimless and had no idea what to do next," he said. "I started eating badly, drinking too much, putting on weight and I ignored my business."

Ward decided that the best way to overcome this was to challenge himself again. He began running ultramarathons (超级马拉松) and climbing mountains, and soon found that with extreme purpose and direction, he was back to loving life again.

So where will Ward go next? Space? The bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest point of the ocean? "All good things come after suffering, and I want to share that with people. So that's the next plan," he said.