Both my parents left for work. And what did I do with myself on that glorious _________day, with no adult in charge and no _________ on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the _________for a shoplifting?

Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, held a blanket, and began to _________. I was thrilled and _________by a book-it was Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises-and I _________needed to be alone with it for a little while. I had accidentally _________the key to perfect happiness: I had become _________absorbed by something I loved.

Please _________that absorption is not the same as distraction or obsession. To be absorbed by something is to become it and when we __________it, we are richer for it. To be distracted by thing is also to disappear, but not in a good way. We become nothing at all. We don't get __________. And to be obsessed by something, __________, is to become absorbed and destroyed by it. __________, the trick to happiness, then, is to find something that absorbs you and become that thing by __________it with devoted attention.

__________it now, I can see that some subtle (微妙的) things were happening to my mind and to my life __________I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway's __________was quietly entering my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant __________, a good and solid plot. __________, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was hot on the trail of my own fate. Writing now __________ me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.

The word “happy” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by hardship. The circular motion between happiness and ________ is the one I’ve been dealing with lately.

A year ago, I developed troubling symptoms in my left ________. My husband sent me ________ to a specialist who said I had already suffered some everlasting loss of vision and would, without ________, go blind in that eye within months. And I urgently ________ to begin painful eye injections. Almost blind? Painful eye injections? I was ________. What if the ________ medicine didn’t work? What if my right eye developed the same condition? I ________ thought that, amazingly, the medicine was only three years old; before that, patients just went blind.

Over that long week, I ________ myself to casually ________ sadness, to cry and acknowledge my fears about my very fragile body. I ________ to be near anybody but my husband. Fortunately, I ________ pretty quickly, within the week. During this ________ time, I posted my ________ in my blog and received great care and support from friends online, which filled my heart with ________ and encouraged me to receive the eye injections. Besides, the doctor ________ the efficacy ( 功 效 ) of the medicine. In the end, I bravely received the eye injections and they were very successful. I was lucky enough to see the world again with my healthy eye.

Finally, I gained a ________ insight: being your happiest self isn’t equal to a lifetime of ________ skies, and we are bound to ________ storms of life. Knowing this can help us ________ difficulties optimistically and adapt to the change of life.

As I opened my eyes, a jet flew above me at high speeds. I watched my parents and my sisters talking and laughing at the front of the ________. Many boats, ________ with families and friends, were on the lake. Another jet flew past. I thought about how much the world has ________ and how little people ________ the one thing time cannot change: relationships.

Pilots in their jets flew by at high speeds. At that moment, our life seemed comparatively ________. We casually listened to each other ________ the pilots performed above. How ________ these times seemed ________ the trials and skills required of the men high above travelling at record-breaking speeds.

Just as the jets ________, so does our daily life. Lifestyles change with time, but time will never change people’ s ________. Parents love their children the same as they did thousands of years ago. ________, children now and the children of the past love their parents ________. Friends and family have played important roles in our lives for centuries; ________, we don’t appreciate them enough when we are together. Why not ________ the one thing time has not changed?

Two jets passed overhead. I sat up and ________ my back against a lifeline(救生索) on the side of the boat. I felt ________ as the air show approached its end, yet renewed by my ________ at-titude to the world. I stood up to ________ my sisters at the front of the boat and sat beside them.

They turned, their eyes met mine and I smiled. ________ not to be excluded(排除在外) a moment from my family, I added a comment and contributed to the ________ filling the front of the boat.