When she looked ahead，Florence Chadwick saw nothing but a solid wall of fog.Her body was numb (麻木的)．She had been swimming for nearly sixteen hours.

    Already she was the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.Now，at age 34，her goal was to become the first woman to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast.

    On the morning of July 4th，1952，the sea was like an ice bath and the fog was so thick that she could hardly see her support boats.The wind was strong and it was raining heavily.Against the cold water of the sea，she struggled on—hour after hour.Millions of people at home were watching her in front of the television.

    In one of the boats，her mother and her trainer tried their best to encourage her.They told her it wasn't much farther.But all she could see was fog.They urged her not to give up.She never had...until then.With only a half mile to go，she asked to be pulled out.

    After thawing her cold body several hours later，she told a reporter，“Look，I'm not excusing myself，but if I could have seen land I might have made it.” It was not tiredness or even the cold water that defeated her.It was the fog.She was unable to see her goal.

    Two months later，she tried again.This time，despite the same thick fog，she swam with all her strength and her goal clearly pictured in her mind.She knew that somewhere behind that fog was land and this time she made it! Florence Chadwick became the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel!  

"Dad," I say one day …..take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    My father had just reired……….. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me drfting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

    He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

" What is our first stop?" asks my father.

"What time is it?"

"Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite(), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

"Unbelievable," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then left the final touches to his son.

We stare up and I ask myself, Would I ever devote my life to anything?

No directions, …… I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad? I ask.

"Only once," he says. " I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.">

    The kast sebtebce—it's probably the same thing I's say about my father. And what I'd want my child to say about me.

In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize—— and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

"The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says." We have got to take another trip like that sometime.

    I tell him I've learn decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch.

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention, and especially if it's given from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but listen to them. Just take them Just listen to what they're saying and care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this. It has taken me a long time to believe in the power of the simply saying "I'm so sorry" when someone is in pain, and meaning it.

    One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story, people often interrupted to tell her that they had once had something just like that happen to them. Eventually she stopped talking to most people. She was just too lonely. We connect through listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen, they know that we care. Many people with cancer can talk about the relief of having someone just listen.

    I have ever learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues(纸巾), until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.

    Everyone knows about New York City's most popular attractions, but here are some activities you might not think about doing on your NYC( New York City) vacation. Surprise yourself with some great things to do in New York City.

    Looking for something thrilling to do while you visit New York City? For over ten years, Trapeze school New York has been teaching people how to fly on the trapeze. Their beginner classes last two hours and cost $50-70, plus one-time $22 registration fee. From April to October, their outdoor location on the Hudson River offers a spectacular setting for the experience, but they also have an indoor location that is open year-round.

    Learn to Surf

    Rockaway Beach is a popular destination for East Coast surfers, but even if you've never surfed, there are plenty of folks happy to teach you at Rockaway Beach. Locals Surf School offers two-hour group lessons starting at $80, including all the vehicles you need. Frank from Rockaway Beach also offers surfing lessons.

    Get Kissed by a Sea Lion

    Sign up for a Sea Lion Encounter at the New York Aquarium, and you'll have the chance to get to get up close and personal with the Sea Lions after the show. After a short orientation, participants will each get a chance to pose for a photo and get a kiss from a sea lion. Sea Lion Encounters cost $20 and are offered after Sea Lion Celebration shows. Participants must be at least 5 years old, and those who're 5-7 years old must be held by their parents/caregivers during any animal interaction (互动).

    Experience Fall Leaves

    Although New York City doesn't have as many colorful leaves as New England, there are still some great ways to enjoy the changing leaves during a fall visit to New York City, both in the city and beyond. Whether you want to walk around one of New York City's great parks or take a fall leaves sightseeing cruise up the Hudson River, you can get a taste of the beautiful fall colors when you visit New York City.

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    When one tried to unify gravity with quantum mechanics (量子力学), one had to introduce the idea of 'imaginary' time. If one can go forward in imaginary time, one ought to be able to turn round and go backward. This means that there can be no important difference between the forward and backward directions of imaginary time. Yet there is a big difference between the forward and backward directions of 'real time' in ordinary life. Imagine a cup of water falling off a table and breaking into pieces on the floor. If you take a film of this, you can easily tell whether it is being run forward or backward. You can tell that the film is being run backward because this kind of behavior is never observed in ordinary life.

    The explanation that is usually given as to why we don't see broken cups gathering themselves together off the floor and jumping back onto the table is that it is forbidden by the second law of thermodynamics (热力学). This says that in any closed system disorder, or entropy (熵), always increases with time. In other words, it is a form of Murphy's law: things always tend to go wrong! An intact cup on the table is a state of high order, but a broken cup on the floor is a disordered state. One can go readily from the cup on the table in the past to the broken cup on the floor in the future, but not the other way round.

    The increase of disorder or entropy with time is one example of what is called an arrow of time, something that tells the past from the future, giving a direction to time. There are at least three different arrows of time. First, there is the thermodynamic arrow of time, the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Then, there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes, the direction in which we remember the past but not the future. Finally, there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction of time in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting.

    There was a man playing the piano in a bar. He was a good piano player and always performed in this bar. People came in just to hear him play. But one night, a customer told him that he didn't want to hear him just play the piano any more. He wanted him to sing a song.

    The man said, "I don't sing." But the customer was persistent(执着的). He told the bar manager, "I'm tired of listening to the piano. I want that man to sing!" The manager shouted across the room, "If you want to get paid, sing a song. Our customers are asking you to sing！" So he did. He sang a song. A piano player who had never sung in public did so for the first time. And everyone was surprised by his song Mona Lisa. He got lots of applause(掌声) that night.

    He had such a talent for singing, but he just had been sitting on his talent for the past years! If without such a chance, he may have lived the rest of his life as a no­name piano player in a no­name bar. However, now he has become one of the best­known singers in America.

    You, too, have skills and abilities. Maybe your "talent" is not as great as the singer above, but it may be better than you think! And with effort, most skills can be improved. So, in your life, you should be brave enough to try doing different things and find out what talents you really have!