It had coaster brakes and only one gear (齿轮). My two older brothers used it before me. The twenty-inch, black frame showed its age. It was scratched and nicked from years of use, but I didn't care, It was mine now.

My tricycle stood by the front steps of our house----forgotten. In the front yard.. I held the handlebars, swung my right leg over and settled myself onto the seat. My legs weren't long enough for both to touch the ground at the same time. I leaned to one side one foot supported me, I looked around, made sure no one was watching and kicked off My feet reached for the pedals and began to pump.

After a few wobbly (不稳定的))yards, I fell off, and landed on my shoulder in the grass. I jumped up, brushed myself off, got back on and fell again.

A week later, I rode in circles around the yard. Always to the left, I didn’t wobble or fall. I was steady as I followed the beaten trail ['d created in the grass. I was free and I was flying.

“Michacl!” Mum called. ‘Supper is read!’

I turned toward the front steps, wobbled and fell to the ground. I didn’t know how to go straight or to the right. I’d learned to travel in circles to the left.

A year later, I was bicycling all around the neighbourhood. At twenty years old, I left home and cried. It was a lonely time in my life. Mum wasn't there It was time to learn how to turn again. I married and became a Dad ---- I stumbled（跌跌撞撞）. There was someone else to think about new turns to stumble through.

Each time I fell. I got up, brushed myself off and turned around the obstacle (障碍). Each time I think i'm on a straight road, life throws a turn in front of me. I may fall, but I always climb back on my seat.

Ever since Donald Trump was elected the next president of the US, the entire Trump family has been put under a microscope(显微镜).

In China, the spotlight has been mainly focused on Trump and his daughter Ivanka. She is described on WeChat as an extremely influential role model with stunning beauty, a successful career, and a happy family.

She leads a dream life that a million girls would kill for. Yes, she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. But she got where she is by herself.

There’s always going to be articles that say people born into wealthy families are better looking and have a better family background than you, but these people do work harder than you.

Are you a loser if you were raised in an ordinary family? Should you feel guilty that you sleep eight hours a day because Ivanka sleeps five? If you just want to keep a stable（稳定的） nine-to-five job, does it mean you are not ambitious? How about if you don’t work out or eat healthy, does that mean you will not find your Mr. or Miss Right?

There is a tendency in media nowadays to encourage elitism(精英主义).They are trying to brainwash young people into thinking that they should invest（投资）a large amount of time and money in bodybuilding and appearance. They encourage lifestyle makeovers: wine tasting classes and expensive trips overseas. They make you believe that if you do as they say, you can improve the quality of your life and join the elites (社会精英).

But what’s the downside of being ordinary? Do you really need to go to the gym five days a week? Do you need to take hundreds of selfies（自拍） and Photoshop the selected ones to post on WeChat? Do you really need to break your neck and sacrifice to earn your first pot of gold only to worry constantly about how to enter high society later?

Don’t let the idea of elitism get to you. Everybody has a right to the life they want. Human beings should not be judged as a success or failure based on whether they are a part of the elite or not. As long as you lead a happy and comfortable life, why bother to chase after other people’s shadows? Choose your own life path and go for it.

My favorite novel is Albert Camus's The Plague(鼠疫). It was published in 1947, after Word WarⅡ.

On the surface, it's a story about an Algerian coastal town threatened by a mysterious plague. But the symbolic idea works on the concrete presentation of a metaphysical(形而上学的) problem, which is the cruel fact of suffering. Like the plague, it's just a thing that happens in the world whether we want it to or not. Camus's novel asks if we can think of suffering not as an individual burden but as a shared experience—and maybe turn it into something positive.

The key is to recognize the universality of suffering. A plague is an extraordinary event and the horror it results in is extraordinary, too. But suffering is anything but extraordinary. Every day you leave the house, something terrible could happen. The same is true for all. All of us are subject to forces over which we have no control.

A pandemic(大流行病) forces us to think about our responsibilities to the people around us. The hero of The Plague is a committed doctor named Rieux. From the very beginning, Rieux devotes himself to resisting the plague that united its victims. Each character in the story is defined(刻画) by what they do when the plague comes. No one escapes it, but those who reduce the suffering of others are the most fulfilled. The only villains are those who cannot see beyond themselves. The plague, for these people, is either an excuse to flee or an opportunity to make profits. Because they can't see that their condition is shared, a spirit of unity is completely foreign to them. And that blindness makes community impossible.

At the very end of The Plague, Camus stated his philosophy that the struggle against suffering is never over for good. The plague will return, and so will everything else that upsets humans. But the point of the book is that a shared struggle is what makes community possible in the first place.

A pandemic, terrible though it is, highlights our mutual interdependence in a way that only tragedy can. The beauty of The Plague is that it asks the reader to map the lessons of the pandemic onto everyday life. The principles that drive the hero, Rieux, are the same principles that make every society worthwhile—understanding, love and unity.

If we learn these lessons, in a moment of crisis, we'll all be better off on the other side of it.