Strange it may sound, this is a true story about a lesson of honesty happening between a lucky thief and a worthy professor.

Once a thief won a lottery ticket but left it at his crime(犯罪) scene when he stole a suitcase from a professor. To his great surprise, his victim, who picked up the ticket and took the prize money of ￡25 000, managed to get in touch with him in order to return him the case. The robbery took place when John Smith, a math professor was changing a tyre on the motorway. The thief happened to pass by. He appeared to be a warm-hearted guy and stopped “to help”. When the professor found his suitcase in the car missing, the thief had driven off as fast as he could. The professor picked up the dropped ticket on the floor and put it in his pocket before driving home.

John Smith didn’t realize it was a winner until he knew the lottery results on TV. He got the prize money and began a battle with himself silently in his heart. At last,he decided not to keep the money although he just had been robbed of his suitcase by the owner of the ticket. He set out to advertise in newspapers and on radio for finding the owner, “ Don’t be surprised that I’m trying to find the man who robbed me in order to returned him the ￡25 000—a lottery win. Please meet me without telling me your real name if you don’t want to. ”.

Later John received tens of hundreds of calls from people around the country trying to trick him into handing them the cash. But he didn’t arrange to meet the right person in the park until he recognized the voice. The robber, was moved into tears when he returned the suitcase. “Why didn’t you keep the money? ”he asked, not believing what was happening. The honest professor replied simply, “Because it’s not mine.” With these words, he walked off,spurning the thief’s offer of a reward.

I am a big laugher. I’ve been told that even in a room of a thousand people, you can always hear me laughing over the crowd. For me, laughter is the ultimate form of embodied joy. And by “embodied”, I mean that my whole body is involved when I laugh. On the inside, it’s like a bubbling fountain of joy spilling out all over the place.

But what is joy, anyway?

Life can be terrible, but if you decide to follow the sound of the joy-fountain, you will find joy showing up in all kinds of places: pets playfully bouncing around, kindness, or even in nothingness.

How can joy be found? A friend moved into a new apartment and needed some help, so I helped him. Afterwards, he was obviously so much happier and at case. I noticed that playing even a small part in his happiness brought me great joy, and I took a moment to let this feeling of embodied joy in. We can practice letting joy in by noticing how it feels to smile. Where does your body light up when you smile? When I smile, it makes me want to take a deep breath, and I notice my shoulders and belly relaxing. When I embody caring and loving, it feels great!

Sadly, many of us are unaware of joy, or suspicious of it. Maybe you arc afraid to open up to joy, or maybe you are so unfamiliar with what joy feels like that you ignore or resist it when it comes knocking. No one, other than you, owns your happiness, but you might unknowingly block feelings or experiences that help you embody joy. The fact is that when you can’t embody joy, you miss out on one of life’s essential vitamins.

Want more joy? Don’t be afraid to look silly. Silliness helps us take things less personally. It helps us see the world the way a kid does. When we can find more joy in the smalls of everyday life, we can embody happiness, rather than just pursuing it.

As I started to be recognized as a promising student, around eighth grade, I was told by someone,“You're smart and you're from the hood. Colleges will love you.”Why did he say that? I always looked at being from the hood as a bad thing.

In my life, I've had a lot of unfortunate experiences. So when it came time for me to write my personal statement for college applications, I knew that I could sell a story about all the struggles I had overcome. Each draft (草稿) I wrote had a different topic. The first was about growing up without my dad being involved, the second was about the many times my life was threatened, and the third was about dealing with anxiety. Every time I wrote, and then gave up and then redrafted, I didn't feel good. It felt as if I were trying to gain pity.

Conflicted, I spoke to my teacher Nathaniel Sinckler. When he was applying to Morehouse College, he“felt pressured to write about something he could oversell.”“I knew enough to write about hardships I had faced,”he said, “but although I didn't have enough, I didn't go without.”This made him feel that he was at a disadvantage because he was competing with kids on the same academic level who had faced even more hardships. He explained that the focus becomes no longer who you are as a person but rather if you've been challenged enough. Mr. Sinckler asked me to question what actually makes up my identity, because while struggles are important, they're not the only contributions to it.

Pain is one of life's teachers. We are molded (塑造) by it, and some will choose to write about it urgently and passionately. Yet I would encourage those who feel like their stories were written in tragedy (悲剧) to rethink that, as I did. When you open your mind to all the other things you've offered in life, it becomes liberating (令人感到解脱的). Let's show college admissions officers what they're missing out on, not what they already know.