Once when I was facing a decision that involved high risk, I went to a friend. He looked at me for a moment, and then wrote a sentence containing the best advice I've ever had: Be bold and brave — and mighty (强大的) forces will come to your aid.

      Those words made me see clearly that when I had fallen short in the past, it was seldom because I had tried and failed. It was usually because I had let fear of failure stop me from trying at all. On the other hand, whenever I had plunged into deep water, forced by courage or circumstance, I had always been able to swim until I got my feet on the ground again.

          Boldness means a decision to bite off more than you can eat. And there is nothing mysterious about the mighty forces. They are potential powers we possess: energy, skill, sound judgment, creative ideas — even physical strength greater than most of us realize.

       Admittedly, those mighty forces are spiritual ones. But they are more important than physical ones. A college classmate of mine, Tim, was an excellent football player, even though he weighed much less than the average player. “In one game I suddenly found myself confronting a huge player, who had nothing but me between him and our goal line,” said Tim. “I was so frightened that I closed my eyes and desperately threw myself at that guy like a bullet（子弹） — and stopped him cold.”

       Boldness — a willingness to extend yourself to the extreme—is not one that can be acquired overnight. But it can be taught to children and developed in adults. Confidence builds up. Surely, there will be setbacks (挫折) and disappointments in life; boldness in itself is no guarantee of success. But the person who tries to do something and fails is a lot better off than the person who tries to do nothing and succeeds.

       So, always try to live a little bit beyond your abilities—and you'll find your abilities are greater than you ever dreamed.

    China's Singles Day, which falls on Nov. 11 every year, has far surpassed its U. S. counterparts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday—combined Last year, Americans spent a record $ 12.8 billion online between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday. It's impressive until you compare it to the $ 17.6 billion in sales made by Chinese consumers in a single 24-hour period during 2016's Singles Day.

    Singles Day is known as “Bare Sticks Day” or “Bare Branches Day” in Chinese-because the date “11/11” looks like bare branches and “one” is the loneliest number. Singles Day began in the early 1990s in the dorm rooms of Nanjing University when a group of single friends were sorry about the lack of significant others and decided to mark the day by organizing activities as a group of singles and reducing their loneliness by buying themselves a gift.

    Then in 2009, sensing a break between the sales period of China's National Day on Oct. 1 and Chinese New Year in late January or early February, Alibaba's Jack Ma saw an opening: sell to comfort lonely hearts.

    The first year did only $7.5 million in sales, but just 8 years later, shoppers spent $ 25.3 billion, or 168.2 billion yuan, this year—a 40 percent jump from last year's $ 17.6 billion. For comparison, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U. S. only netted $ 6.79 billion in 2016. Amazon doesn't release sales figures for July's Prime Day, but it's pretty safe to believe the not-quite-national-holiday doesn't come close to $ 25 billion.

    “More than $ 25 billion in one day is not just a sales figure,” Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said in a statement. “It represents the desire for quality consumption of the Chinese consumer, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully accepted the combination of online and offline sales.”

    Binge-watching (刷剧) is when a person watches more than one episode of a TV show one after another. With developments in the speed and connectivity of the Internet, increases in technology and the rise of on-demand entertainment companies, people can now watch their favorite shows directly on the Internet at their convenience.

    This behavior is nothing new. In fact, “binge-watching” has been officially listed in dictionaries since 2015. The entertainment companies recognize this behavior and many take steps to encourage it. Often, instead of releasing each episode on a week-by-week basis, an entire series will become available at the same time. Once the episode finishes, many platforms will display pop-ups with “you might like” suggestions, or will automatically play the next episode.

    However, this wonderful gift may in fact be poisonous. Recent research from British media Ofcom suggests that this behavior may have become a hindrance (障碍). Out of the more than half of British adults who watch more than one episode of a show in a row, almost a third have admitted missing sleep or becoming tired as a result; and one quarter have failed to do their household chores. Next well be missing work!

    Bingeing has other connections—binge eating, binge drinking and binge smoking, all of which are often associated with compulsive (强迫性的) behavior, a lack of control and possible route to addiction. Lindsey Fussell, consumer group director at Ofcom, said, “The days of waiting a week for the next episode are largely gone, with people finding it hard to resist watching multiple episodes around the house or on the move.” If people find binge-watching hard to resist, coupled with the fact that it has shown to lead to negligence (疏忽) in many, are we witnessing the birth of a new type of addiction?

    The large amount of information and entertainment that television and online media can bring us is, many would say, a good thing. It offers us opportunities to better understand the world we live in, educate ourselves and enjoy much needed downtime. However, like any behavior done to an extreme degree, it can become dangerous. And when the activity begins to bleed into other areas, causing us to stop functioning-then it becomes a problem. So, what's the answer? Neither a tiny amount, nor too much. After all, as the old proverb says, a little of what you fancy does you good.

    Around the world, 62 million girls are not in school. The White House's Let Girls Learn effort aims to change that.

    At 13, Hawa Abdulai Yorke left her family's home, in Ghana, Africa, to live with an aunt who promised to send her to school. Instead, the aunt put Yorke to work as her maid. Determined to go to school, Yorke returned home and began selling water in a nearby city to raise
money for her education. She did that for three years. What hurt most was that her father had the money to pay the school fees. But he chose to spend the money on a motorcycle.

    Yorke's story is familiar to girls growing up in Ghana. There, a girl's place is in the home. Educating girls is considered a waste of money.

    “It happens more than it should, where parents have money to send their girls to school but choose not to,” says Ryan Roach, a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, where nearly 55% of girls are not enrolled in secondary school. “Cultural beliefs say education is not a wise investment(投资)”

    The White House's Let Girls Learn is working to change this view of girls' education, in Ghana and in countries worldwide. First Lady Michelle Obama says parents have to be persuaded that girls' education is a better investment than marriage or household labor. A World Bank study backs that up. It shows that for every year of secondary-school education, a girl's earning power increases by 18%.

    Today, Let Girls Learn works in 13 countries, and there are plans to expand the program. Recently, Let Girls Learn hosted a 24-hour event at which girls in different parts of Ghana joined Peace Corps volunteers, tech experts, and university students to brainstorm creative solutions for the barriers to girls' education. Yorke's team came up with an idea for an app that sends a recorded message to parents' phones from a Ghanian celebrity about the benefits of girls 
attending school.

    Yorke, now 22, is about to finish high school. Thanks to Let Girls Learn, she plans to attend college and study computer science. She says working alongside women college students at the Let Girls Learn event strengthened her determination. “I'm focused on my books,” says Yorke. "I know if I study hard, I, too, can go to the university and live a happy life."

    Whenever we're introduced to strangers, we make snap decisions about them according to our first impressions. Are they attractive or how much do they earn?

    For most Brits, simply asking someone how much they're worth' financially is considered very impolite. Thankfully, most people are kind enough to drop several hints (暗示)about their relative wealth or successful careers They always post on social media about flying to a meeting for work. They're always wearing clothes with labels big enough to silently scream about how rich they are and how well they're doing.

    It's a worrying trend, and I'm not immune to it. I've felt the warm happiness of knowing I earned more than somebody, and the baseless grey irritation of knowing that I earn less than another. I've checked into places while I know full well that anybody reading it will get jealous.

    It seems as though self-worth is increasingly being tied to the careers we choose and the money we earn. A study in 2013, for example found that nearly 17% of unemployed Americans were depressed compared to almost 6% of those who had a permanent job.

    We need to stop placing so much value on what a person earns. Don't get me wrong-being ambitious is not a fault, and achievements should always be celebrated. But when a person uses their success to judge you negatively it becomes a problem.

    If you want to know what you're really worth, here's a tip: It doesn't have anything to do with your bank account. It's about how many times you've been there for your friends. It's how many times you've been kind to a stranger It's every time you did something unselfish, or told your partner you loved him/her, or treated someone with respect no matter where they were in their own life.

On that hot August day in 2023, as ash rained down and flames closed in, Jim Rhodes didn't want to be anywhere but Coulterville. "My kid called from Alabama. We first heard ·about the fire from him," Rhodes recalls. "He said, ‘Evacuate（撤离）!'I said, ‘Evacuate? To where?'"

Coulterville is a tiny town located among dry hills where local people raise cattle and other livestock. It has a main street, a park and a museum. It's got a cafe, a grocery shop and a post. And with summer temperatures routinely topping 100 degrees, it has fires—sometimes big fires.

Eventually, this big fire got a name: the Moc Fire, for the tiny town of Moccasin-where it began as a brush fire.

It burnt for 10 days, consuming almost 3,000 acres.

Rhodes woke to find his truck covered in ashand the news was broadcasting evacuation orders. Ranchers（牧场主） across the region were fighting to protect their animals, loading them into the truck or just setting them loose to find safety. Volunteers were readying fairgrounds nearby to shelter animals. Already they were filling up with dogs, cats, chickens, horses, cattle, goats, sheep and rabbits.

As residents and animals were brought out, firefighters poured in. "With them came the biggest bulldozer（挖土机）I've ever seen," says Rhodes. "And they were sent to cut the firebreak that could save the town. We knew that if it made the cut, we'd all have to get out of here."

The situation was clear. The danger was growing. But slowly Rhodes realized that he hadn't come to Coulterville just to leave when the town needed him. He stayed, joining the handful of residents who gathered around the main street where fire officials posted updates. He knew he could help somebody, somehow.

Around midmorning, a farmer he'd never met came by asking for help with animal evacuation. Rhodes's phone was still ringing, but he knew what to do. "I hung up my phone, got in the truck and headed down to his farm," he says.