One day when I was 15 years old, I was making food in the kitchen. My brother came in. He placed his beef next to my thick one and said, “Courtney, your beef is bigger than mine. You don’t need to eat; you’re too fat.” Then he walked out laughing. From then on, I was unwilling to wear shorts until I was 30 years old. For the next 15 years, I spent summer after summer roasting in long pants.

But then I met Ragen Chastain. I couldn’t believe that this almost 300-pound woman who, like myself, was so energetic and happy in her own skin. I listened as she shared her own journey to recovery and self-love. She talked about how amazing our bodies are, simply because of the things they do every day — like breathing, pumping blood to every cell and walking.

Walking! I suddenly realized how foolish I’d been for so long. There are people who are born without legs, or who lack properly working legs, or who lose their legs, and I’d been hiding my perfectly strong, healthy and beautiful legs in shame. The next day, I bought three pairs of shorts and a sundress and spent the entire summer letting my legs see the sun and feel the breeze.

The next time anyone comments on your body in a negative way, look them straight in the eye, smile and say, “If what you see bothers you so much, feel free to practice the ancient art of looking somewhere else.” That’s Ragen’s own creation, but I don’t think she’ll mind if you use it.

Fifteen years ago, I took a summer vacation in Lecce in southern Italy. After climbing up a hill for a panoramic (全景的) view of the blue sea, white buildings and green olive trees, I paused to catch my breath and then positioned myself to take the best photo of this panorama.

Unfortunately, just as I took out my camera, a woman approached from behind, and planted herself right in front of my view. Like me, this woman was here to stop, sigh and appreciate the view.

Patient as I was, after about 15 minutes, my camera scanning the sun and reviewing the shot I would eventually take, I grew frustrated. Was it too much to ask her to move so I could take just one picture of the landscape? Sure, I could have asked her, but something prevented me from doing so. She seemed so content in her observation. I didn’t want to mess with that..

Another 15 minutes passed and I grew bored. The woman was still there. I decided to take the photo anyway. And now when I look at it, I think her presence in the photo is what makes the image interesting. The landscape, beautiful on its own, somehow comes to life and breathes because this woman is engaging with it.

This photo, with the unique beauty that unfolded before me and that woman who “ruined” it, now hangs on a wall in my bedroom. What would she think if she knew that her figure is captured (捕捉) and frozen on some stranger’s bedroom wall? A bedroom, after all, is a very private space, in which some woman I don’t even know has been immortalized (使……永存). In some ways, she lives in my house.

Perhaps we all live in each others, spaces. Perhaps this is what photos are for: to remind us that we all appreciate beauty, and that we all share a common desire for pleasure, for connection, for something that is greater than us.

That photo is a reminder, a captured moment, an unspoken conversation between two women, separated only by a thin square of glass.

Now 68 the father of six and grandfather of eight goes to school six days a week to complete his studies and escape a lonely home life following the death of his wife.

Walking into the secondary school and the noise created by 200 children is a welcome contrast(对比)to the silence of the cold one-room home. “ To forget my sorrows I go to school,” Kami, one of the oldest students in Nepal, said in the classroom where he studies together with 14 and 15-year-olds.

His family was so poor that Kami couldn’t finish his studies as a child and achieve his goal of becoming a teacher.

The teacher, Koirala, then invited Kami to his school, which provided the grandfather with a school uniform including grey trousers, blue tie and white shirt. “This is my first experience teaching a person who is as old as my fathers’ age, Koirala said. “I feel very excited and happy.”

The 20 children in his grade 10 class have called Kami “Baa”，which means “father” in Nepal, but despite his age their elderly classmate joins in all activities, including volleyball in the schoolyard. “I used to think ‘why is this old man coming to school to study with us?’ but as time passed I enjoyed his company,” Kami’s 14-year-old classmate Sagar Thapa said.

Kami said he wanted to study until his death, adding he hoped it would encourage others to get over age obstacles(障碍). “If they see such an old person like me studying in school they might get motivated as well,” he said.