Last week, four speakers shared, at the Skoll World Forum, why they find themselves smiling in spite of everything.

Ava Duvernay

I don’t believe that all of the problems are happening to us. I believe they’re happening for us. Lonnie Holley is a wonderful artist who uses waste material to create artworks. He says we shouldn’t think of it as garbage. Rather, it can be turned into something new.

Mahali Hlasa

I love my family. I was brought up in a very close family. Of course we fight, but we also laugh together. We share all the joys and the pains and find comfort in that. When I want to be happy, my family is always there for me. With these people who I love, I know that I am safe.

Rodrigo Paris Rojas

I find optimism in villages and slums (贫民窟). That’s because despite the difficult environment around them, they still come together and celebrate at different times of year.   They bring so many smiles and so much joy. When I see that, I say, “I have more money and more education than them, but they’re way happier than me. ”So I find optimism in those ways of celebrating life and building community.

Edgard Gouveia Jr.

I’ve found optimism among kids — Black, white, poor, rich. They play. They enjoy life. They connect. It’s only later that they learn about differences and start to behave differently. But when I see how they interact as children, it’s all about playfulness. Even during war times or in very poor neighborhoods, I see kids finding ways to create joy among themselves.

Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten, and I wished her every success. But part of me didn’t. I actually wanted her to fail in some ways because I believe that failure can be good for our learning process. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or doing something correctly the first time, which can often be a problematic (存在问题的) victory. First-time success is usually a fluke (侥幸). First-time failure, by contrast, is supposed to be the natural order of things. Failure is how we learn.

In Africa they describe a good cook as “She who has broken many pots.” If you’ve spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking. I once had dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much credibility (可信) their failures gave them.

I earn my living by writing a daily newspaper column. Each week I am aware that one column I write is going to be the worst column. I try my best every day. I have learned to cherish that column. A successful column usually means that I am discussing my familiar topic, writing in a style I am used to or saying the same things as anyone else but in a fancy way.

My younger daughter is a trapeze artist. She spent three years putting together a show, and she did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change it but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored. And if she was bored, there was no point in subjecting (使……服从于) her body to all that stress. She risked failure and great public embarrassment in order to feed her soul.

My granddaughter is a perfectionist. She will feel her failures, and I will want to comfort her. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do better next time. I hope I can tell her, though, that it’s not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning.

There is an old saying in Chinese: “To do a good job, one must first sharpen one’s tools.” When it comes to photography, however, it’s not exactly the case. In this year’s National Geographic Travel Photo Contest, Greenlandic Winter, a picture by Chinese photographer Chu Weimin, took first place in the cities category and won the overall grand prize as well.

When asked why he chose Upernavik, a small fishing village in Greenland, to take his pictures, Chu described the first time he spotted the village from an airplane. “Through my entire flight, I could only see the land, covered by pure white ice and snow. But I suddenly saw a big, warm dot in the far distance — Upernavik,” he told National Geographic. “The beauty of this tranquil (宁静的) village was beyond my imagination. It was a ‘wow’ moment for me.” This ability to identify a “wow moment” is what makes a good travel photographer.

According to Chu, he was moved by Upernavik’s blue tint at dusk, the warm yellow light from the windows, and the family of three walking along the snowy street. Although he is a professional photographer, many of Chu’s Greenland pictures were shot with his phone.

This attitude echoes that of Austrian-American photographer Ernest Haas (1921-1986). Haas told his students that they were too obsessed with cameras to understand the essence of photography. “The camera doesn’t make a bit of difference,” Haas said. “All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to SEE.”

Perhaps it’s not just in photography that we’ve put too much emphasis on the role of tools. How many of you are reluctant to start a new sport or learn new software simply because you don’t yet have the “right” outfit (装备) or computer?

It’s true that “sharpened” tools make the work easier, hut as reporter Abhilash Pavuluri wrote on Firstpost: “In the end, it’s really the artist that makes a good painting, not the paintbrush.”