Most of us spend our lives seeking the natural world. We go fishing, sit in the garden, have a picnic, live in the suburbs or go to the seaside. The most popular leisure activity in Britain is going for a walk. When joggers jog, they don't run the streets. Every one of them tend to go to the park or the river.

    But despite this, our children are growing up nature­deprived(剥夺). I spent my boyhood climbing trees. These days, children are robbed of these ancient freedoms, due to problems like crime, traffic, the loss of the open spaces and strange new ideas about what is best for children, that is to say, things that can be bought, rather than things that can be found.

    The truth is to be found elsewhere. A study in the US: families had moved to better housing and the children were assessed for ADHD—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder(多动症). Those whose accommodation had more natural views showed an improvement of 19%; those who had the same improvement in material surroundings but no nice view improved just 4%.

    ADHD is one of the great problems of modern childhood. One study after another indicates that contact with nature gives huge benefits to ADHD children. However, we spend money on drugs rather than on green places.

    The life of old people is measurably better when they have access to nature. The increasing concern for the growing population of old people is in quality rather than quantity of years. And study after study finds that a garden is the single most important thing in finding that quality. Even problems with crime and aggressive behaviour are reduced when there is contact with the natural world.

    We need the wild world. It is essential to our well­being, our health and our happiness.

    The technology is great. Without it we wouldn't have been able to put a man on the moon, explore the ocean's depths or eat microwave sausages. Computers have revolutionized our lives and they have the power to educate and pass on knowledge. But sometimes this power can create more problems than it solves.

    Every doctor has had to try their best to calm down patients who've come into their surgery waving an Internet print-out, convinced that they have some rare incurable disease, say, throat cancer. The truth is usually far more ordinary, though: they don't have throat cancer, and it's just that their throats are swollen. Being a graduate of the Internet “school” of medicine does not guarantee accurate self-health-checks.

    One day Mrs. Almond came to my hospital after feeling faint at work. While I took her blood sample and tried to find out what was wrong, she said calmly, “I know what's wrong；I've got throat cancer. I know there's nothing you doctors can do about it and I've just got to wait until the day comes.”

    As a matter of routine I ordered a chest X-ray. I looked at it and the blood results an hour later. Something wasn't right. “Did your local doctor do an X-ray?” I asked. “Oh, I haven't been to the doctor for years,” she replied. “I read about it on a website and the symptoms fitted, so I knew that's what I had.”

    However, some of her symptoms, like the severe cough and weight loss, didn't fit with it—but she'd just ignored this.

    I looked at the X-ray again, and more tests confirmed it wasn't the cancer but tuberculosis (肺结核)—something that most certainly did need treating, and could be deadly. She was lucky we caught it when we did.

    Mrs. Almond went pale when I explained she would have to be on treatment for the next six months to ensure that she was fully recovered. It was certainly a lesson for her. “I'm so embarrassed,” she said, shaking her head, as I explained that all the people she had come into close contact with would have to be found out and tested. She listed up to about 20, and then I went to my office to type up my notes. Unexpectedly, the computer was not working, so I had to wait until someone from the IT department came to fix it. Typical. Maybe I should have a microwave sausage while I waited?

    After I mastered my first (协奏曲) at age 14, my parents decided to get me a nice violin. I tried out dozens of instruments before I found my match: a German violin. It was beautiful, but what I liked best about it was its voice. Confident and strong, it was everything I longed to be.

    I'm not sure how much that violin cost, but my parents made me promise never to let it out of my sight. They didn't understand that dragging a large violin case ran counter to my daily middle school task of being invisible (看不见的). I was a strange, absent-minded kid. When I spoke up in class, my comments brought confused silence from teachers and wild laughter from students. Like a deer in a wolf pack, I tried to be quiet and still.

    In contrast, my new violin was almost shockingly loud. Together, we could drown out the rest of my middle school orchestra(管弦乐队) — which was encouraged, since the other kids made sounds like cats' crying. For one glorious hour every day, I was showered with attention. Everyone wanted to hear what I had to say.

    Between classes, I bent under the combined weight of my violin case and a backpack filled with books. My posture suffered, but my confidence grew. With my violin by my side, I found my voice. More and more, I contributed to class discussions and even made a couple of friends.

    Today, I'm just an amateur violinist with a regular day job. As I sit in my community orchestra, sometimes I feel jealous(嫉妒的) my fellow musicians' instruments with their elegant voices. I may not be the best violinist around, but at least I'm still the loudest.

GAOMI, Shandong, Oct. 11(Xinhua)—China writer Mo Yan said last Thursday that he was “very surprised” at winning the Nobel Literature Prize.

    “I am very happy,” he said. “I was having dinner when I received the news. I was surprised.”

    “Thank you for coming all the way to Gaomi. This should be a season of red sorghum, but no such crop is planted any more. I believe none of you have seen the crop.” he said.

    “The Nobel Literature Prize is a very important literature prize, but not the top award. It represents the opinions of the jury(评审团). I am satisfied with my major works and I still keep writing by hand. My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature. They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country's unique culture and folk customs. Meanwhile, my novels described human beings in the broad sense. I wrote in the perspective（角度） of a human being. These works stand beyond regions and ethnic(民族的)groups,” he said.

    Mo's win brought joy to other writers and readers throughout the country as he is the first Chinese native to win the Nobel Literature Prize in its century-long history.

    “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be a kid?!” My 7-year-old once asked me. My initial reaction to her complaint (抱怨) was eye-rolling, along with thinking, “Being a kid is hard? Are you kidding me?” as I mentally counted all the hard things that her grown-up mama did.

    However, as I thought about it a bit more, I realized how silly my reaction had been. Yes, as we adults look back on our childhood, being a kid seems carefree and easy and full of fun. Coloring at school! Playing games! Riding bikes! How could that be hard? So I asked my daughter why being a kid was so hard.

    “Well, because you don't have your own phone, and you can't eat in the living room,” she said.

     I asked if anything else was hard about being a kid. “Someone else is the boss of you,” she replied.

    I thought some more. What else is hard about being a kid? Well, sometimes, we don't really take kids seriously.

    There are times when I've responded to my children's tears with “It's not bad,” or “You don't need to be upset about that.” Because I believe that a cancelled playdate or a lost toy is no big deal. But for my little ones, it is.

    We don't intentionally ignore these opportunities for connection, but sometimes, in busy moments of parenting, we respond unskillfully. We don't put ourselves in our children's shoes, and we miss an opportunity to practice compassion.

    Compassion means “to feel with” or “to suffer with” another person. It means seeing something the way they do, and experiencing it with them.

    Here's what I've learned about being a more compassionate parent, and I hope other parents can do the same thing.